deception

Review: Black Helicopters by Blythe Woolston

| Tasha

black helicopters

Black Helicopters by Blythe Woolston

Valley’s mother was killed by the black helicopters while she was out in the garden when Valley was four years old.  Raised by her father, she has been taught to hide at all times.  There is a den in their house where she and her brother Bo can never be found.  Valley knows above everything else that Those People will kill her without even thinking about it, just like a coyote.  But now Valley is out of the house and on the road with explosives strapped to her and the trigger waiting for her to decide exactly when to use it.  When the first explosive goes off prematurely, Valley is left on her own in a world she has had little contact with.  But Valley knows how to read people and how to manipulate them, right up to the end she is in complete control.  Or is she?

This taut thriller turns the world on its head.  Valley’s story is told in flashbacks so readers know that they are learning the backstory of a domestic terrorist.  And what is amazing about the writing and the storytelling here is that despite that knowledge, readers will begin to understand Valley and the way she was raised and how she came to be the person she is now.  That alone is a tremendous achievement.

Then there is Valley herself.  A girl who is bitter, strong and lonely.  She has lived much of her life in the company of only her father and brother and much of that she spent hiding completely alone.  She is bright and fierce, burning with a hatred for Those People that her father carefully instilled in her.  And she is wrong, oh so very wrong, about the world and about others and about her own family.  She is flawed and ever so human under that bomb.

Well written and carefully paced, this book is tantalizingly taut and thrilling.  In the end though, it is about a girl caught in a web of lies that she cannot see past.  Appropriate for ages 15-18.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: The Fairy Ring by Mary Losure

| Tasha

fairy ring

The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World by Mary Losure

This is the true story of two young English girls who fooled everyone with the photographs they took.  Elsie and Frances were cousins who hadn’t met until Frances moved to England from South Africa.  When Frances, age 9, visited the beck behind their small house, she saw tiny little brown men in green clothes walking about.  But the grownups teased her about seeing fairies, and there was one thing that Elsie at age 15 wouldn’t tolerate and that was teasing.  So the girls set out to take a photograph of fairies that would stop the teasing entirely.  It was all meant to be a little joke, but quickly got out of hand as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got involved along with international publicity.  It wasn’t until much later that the ruse was finally admitted to.  But in the end, there is still one magical photograph that wasn’t staged by the girls, and you can decide if there are really fairies in it.

This well-researched nonfiction book for children has the appeal of fairies and also the intriguing story of two young people who lied and got away with it for a very long time.  Losure manages to recreate the world that the children were growing up in, but not dwell on overly long descriptions.  It is a brief book, one that looks closely at the truth behind the photographs but also one that keeps one small part open to the wonder of fairies too. 

The girls could have been depicted in a quite different way than Losure handles them here.  They did deceive people and created more images that spread more lies.  But Losure does not show them as calculating at all, rather they are caught in the life that their small prank takes on, unable to admit the truth and unable to stop the insatiable curiosity about the images.  There is an exceptional dignity to the way their story is told here, one that pays homage to both the lie and to the belief.

A very readable nonfiction work that will be enjoyed by children reading the popular fairy series out right now and may lead those fiction readers to find more nonfiction to enjoy.  Appropriate for ages 8-11.

Reviewed from library copy.