families

Review: My Life in Black and White by Natasha Friend

| Tasha

my life in black and white

My Life in Black and White by Natasha Friend

Lexi has always been known as the beautiful girl.  Her sister Ruthie is the smart one.  Her best friend Taylor is the fun one.  But that all changes when Lexi and Taylor go to a high school party.  When Lexi sees her best friend together with her boyfriend, she thinks her world has ended.  But then she is in a car accident and her face goes through the windshield.  Now Lexi has to figure out how to go on after losing the one thing that defined her beyond everything else, her beauty.  Plus she has to face it all without her best friend or her boyfriend by her side.  It’s like she lost everything in one single night, and maybe she did.

Friend excels at honesty in her teen novels.  Lexi starts out as a fairly vain young woman but after her series of disasters, readers are firmly on her side.  It is wonderful to see a book that takes the time to explore the process of grief, anger and finally acceptance so fully.  Lexi is a young woman who is strong, vital and much more than her face.  As the book proceeds, readers see beyond the beauty just as Lexi herself is discovering that there is more to her as well.

The writing here is clear and clean.  Friend explores not just Lexi’s relationship with her friends, but also how her sister is affected and how her parents cope.  There are no easy situations here, her father wants to fix everything and her relationship with her mother completely shatters.  There are sexual situations in this book, making it firmly a teen novel more appropriate for high school audiences.

There is plenty of pain in this novel, plenty of growth, but it is also smart and funny, just like Lexi herself.  Appropriate for ages 16-18.

Review: Laugh with the Moon by Shana Burg

| Tasha

laugh with the moon

Laugh with the Moon by Shana Burg

After her mother dies, Clare’s father takes her to Malawi where he had worked as a young doctor.  Clare is determined to never speak to her father again.  She has lost not just her mother, but her best friend and the potential for her first boyfriend at school.  Now she is stuck in Africa where there is little hot water, mosquito netting over the bed, and monkeys screaming outside.  As Clare starts to relax into life in Africa, she begins to make incredible friends at her new school.  Memory, a girl from the local village, quickly becomes her closest friend.  Memory too has lost her mother, though the girls don’t speak of their losses together.  Memory makes sure that Clare has things that she can eat, explains the school day to her, and even warns her of the bully in class.  As Clare faces her new school with its new language, visiting chickens, and scurrying insects, her relationship with her father starts to get better.  Clare still has big issues to face, including teaching English, putting together a play, and another large loss in her life.

Burg truly brings Malawi to life with its strong culture, the stark differences between America and Africa, and the warmth of the people.  Her writing is an invitation to explore Africa.  She celebrates both the differences in cultures and the universal aspects of life, filling the book with details that paint a full picture. 

Clare is a complex character, grieving from the loss of her mother, at first she seems remote and difficult to relate to.  Happily, she soon grows past that, becoming a vivacious personality with opinions and skills.  Her art forms a connection between her and other people who may not speak the same language, but it is her open personality that does the rest. 

The book would make a good choice for reading aloud in a classroom setting since it explores so many themes and topics.  There is plenty to discuss from death and grieving to dealing with living in another part of the world.  The glorious cover will get this moving from the shelf into young hands directly too.  Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from copy received from Delacorte Press.

Review: The Girl with Borrowed Wings by Rinsai Rossetti

| Tasha

girl with borrowed wings

The Girl with Borrowed Wings by Rinsai Rossetti

This is a stunning debut novel that will have your heart beating fast for many reasons.  Frenenqer was created in the brain of her father, the perfect girl.  So she tries to be exactly that for him by following his long list of rules about how to hold her fork, close doors silently, and never embarrass the family.  But she can also feel the absence of wings on her back, as if she had been meant to have them all along but instead she has the pressure of her father’s finger there.  Her life is lonely and dull, not even allowed to walk outside on her own in the oasis where they live surrounded by desert.  Everything changes though when she rescues the dying cat in the market, against her father’s wishes.  That dull lump of fur turns out to be a boy who can shapeshift, who can fly and who can show her new worlds and remembered places.  As their relationship grows into something beyond friendship, Frenenqer has to face her own life of isolation and her part in her father’s controlling ways.

Rossetti’s writing is magnificent.  She creates such a sense of claustrophobia in Frenenqer’s life, such a world of stifling expectation, lack of humanity and perfectionism.  That feeling is amplified by the setting of the oasis, limiting even further her options of a different sort of life.  When her rescuer arrives he represents breaking those rules, throwing them aside, and a freedom that she had never dreamed of.  Here is where Rossetti makes a choice that sets her book apart from others.  Frenenqer does not tumble easily into that freedom, she fights it, struggles with it, and almost rejects it.  And it all makes wonderful sense.

Frenenqer is a unique character.  She is a mix of world traveler and solitary reader.  She yearns for freedom and shuns it.  She longs to be touched but rejects that too.  She is shown love of a new sort and doesn’t know what to do with it.  She is beyond brave but also terrified.  She is certainly abused mentally by her father, ignored by her mother, but also defies them in small ways that show you she is not cowed by them yet.  She is pure and lovely complexity that works.

Beautifully written, wonderfully sculpted, this novel is a fresh look at fantasy from a new author.  Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Reviewed from copy received from Dial Books.

Review: Grammy Lamby and the Secret Handshake by Kate Klise

| Tasha

grammy lamby

Grammy Lamby and the Secret Handshake by Kate Klise and M. Sarah Klise

Larry wasn’t very excited when his grandmother came to visit.  She invented a secret handshake for the two of them on the very first time she visited.  The three squeezes meant “I love you.”  His grandma also loved to talk and sew, and that’s what she did much of the time she spent at their house.  When they went to church, Grammy Lamby wore a big hat and sang louder than anyone else.  She even had big plans for trips they would take together when Larry was older.  But Larry didn’t want to go anywhere with Grammy Lamby.  The next time Grammy Lamby visited, a storm blew into town and tore a hole in their roof.  Grammy Lamby sprang into action, fixing and hammering.  It was a whole new grandma from Larry’s perspective.  And a whole new hero for him to admire.

The Klise sisters have created a winning picture book here.  The hesitance of a child with a relative their don’t see often is captured very cleverly here.  The way it is approached honors both of the people in the relationship:  Larry is cautious and overwhelmed and Grammy Lamby is friendly and trying very hard to be liked.  The use of an emergency to have the two of them come together works well, allowing Grammy to display her real skills and character.

The illustrations have a warmth to them that is wonderful.  They have small details that invite readers to linger a bit yet are large enough to work with a group. 

A great addition to story times about grandparents, this would also make a good present for any long-distance grandparent to give.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Henry Holt and Company.

Review: Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts

| Tasha

happy like soccer

Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts, illustrated by Lauren Castillo

Sierra loves to play soccer, especially on the field that is well maintained with a real soccer goal, not two garbage cans next to each other.  But now that she plays on a team, her aunt can’t come to her games because she has to work.  Sierra’s coach tells her he is glad to have her on the team and asks her if there is anything she needs, but Sierra always says no.  When her aunt manages to get time off to attend Sierra’s final game of the series, the game is rained out.  Sierra knows that her aunt can’t get two Saturdays off in a row, can’t ask for two favors so close together.  Sierra has to figure out how to fix this herself, because her aunt just has to see her play at least once this season!

Boelts has written this book poetically, with the lines in stanzas that make it read like a poem.  She also uses phrases that turn it into poetry, repetition and spare but true language.  Her writing has a great lilt to it, pointing to someone who speaks with an accent that makes their own phrasing dance.  It’s beautifully done, fully capturing the love between Sierra and her aunt and the fact that the two of them are a complete family. 

Castillo’s art adds to this feeling of family.  The book is set firmly in an urban environment, one that is escapable by bus but also one that is home.  The illustrations cement that setting.  The thick black lines and bright colors also have a subtlety that is unexpected.

A celebration of a small family, an urban community and sports, this picture book glows with love.  Appropriate for ages 5-7.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: A Path of Stars by Anne Sibley O’Brien

| Tasha

path of stars

A Path of Stars by Anne Sibley O’Brien

Dara has a close relationship with her grandmother, Lok Yeay, who tells her stories about life in Cambodia when she and her brother were growing up.  She remembers Cambodia as a place of beauty, filled with moon and star light.  Lok Yeay also shared her darker memories of the soldiers coming and hiding in the jungle until they could make their way to Thailand.  But when the phone call came and Lok Yeay found out that her brother had died, she stopped telling stories.  In fact, she stopped getting out of bed entirely and stopped eating.  The entire family was worried.  Dara went to the garden and picked a rose and a ripe tomato.  Then she put them on a tray along with a photograph of Lok Yeay’s brother and went into the darkness of her grandmother’s room.  They shared the tomato and prayed for her brother, and Dara shared a story of the future and going back to visit Cambodia.

Commissioned by the Maine Humanities Council, this book reflects the story of a family that survived the Killing Fields in Cambodia and came to Maine afterwards.  According to her author’s note, O’Brien did extensive research not only about Cambodia’s history but also about its culture and environment.  As a reader, it is clear that she took Cambodia into her heart and showed its beauty.  O’Brien focuses on the intergenerational relationships in the family, demonstrating the importance of the grandparent in the Cambodian culture.  Additionally, the book is about war, families torn apart, and grieving. 

The art in the book is done in oil paints and oil crayon.  It has a wonderful jewel-tone and great depth and richness.  The illustrations focus on the family relationship, none of them showing the atrocities of war at all. 

This is a strong picture book that looks at the Cambodian Americans and the violent history that they fled from.  Appropriate for ages 7-9.

Reviewed from copy received from Charlesbridge.

Review: Alek by Bodil Bredsdorff

| Tasha

alek

Alek by Bodil Bredsdorff

This final book in The Children of Crow Cove series has Doup as the main character.  Doup came to Crow Cove as a child with the Crow-Girl.  He has lived there all of his life but misses his older brother Ravnar who has moved away.  Doup reclaims his birthname of Alek and heads off with his father to town to find Ravnar.  They discover his empty home that is dirty and dank. Ravnar only appears when his boat is in harbor, otherwise he is out fishing for a living.  Alek’s father leaves him with Ravnar and returns to Crow Cove.  But one night, Alek witnesses a shipwreck on the beach where the sailors were tricked into beaching the boat.  He then sees a man murdered and discovers a young girl hiding away from the beach.  Alek takes the girl home with him, though she doesn’t speak his language.  Young Alek has to figure out what happened and then what to do about it.

I’ve adored this series for some time.  The writing is so natural and easy.  It is steeped in its seaside setting and filled with small details that bring their world to life.  This final book has plenty of action to move the story along, but it still remains a book about everyday life and creating a family out of the people who are with you.  From the small details of hunting and farming to information on meals and shopping, this book like the others in the series is a small book filled with the largeness of a life well led.

Definitely start with the first in the series.  As the series moves forward, the characters grow and age, offering a look at the results of their decisions in earlier books.  The strength of these books are in the complex characters, the fine details and the glory of the natural setting.

This is a fittingly strong final volume in a delight of a series.  Appropriate for ages 10-12.

Reviewed from copy received from Farrar Straus Giroux.

Review: When I Was Small by Sara O’Leary

| Tasha

WhenIWasSmall_cover

When I Was Small by Sara O’Leary, illustrated by Julie Morstad

Henry asks his parents what they were like when they were small.  The book starts out normally enough with his mother explaining that she was called Dot because her full name, Dorothea, was too big for her.  But then things get creative!  Dot was so small she wore the same shoes as her doll.  She swam in the birdbath.  She jumped rope with a piece of yarn.  Her bed was a mitten.  Her father built her a doll house, and she lived in it.  At the end of this story from his mother, the two of them agree that one of the reasons that his mother looked forward to growing up was to share stories with a child of her own. 

O’Leary writes with a quiet joy that infuses the entire book.  There is a gentle playfulness throughout and children will immediately know that this is a story being told and not the truth.  Morstad’s illustrations have a delicacy to them that works particularly well with the more tall tale parts of the story.  The illustrations have a sweetness to them that make me think of the old Golden Books.  They are never saccharine thanks to their whimsy.

This is the third in the series about Henry, but the first one that I have read.  The first book in the series won the 2007 Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award in Canada, so that one is definitely worth seeking out too.  Appropriate for ages 3-5.

Reviewed from pdf received from Simply Read Books.

You can also view the trailer below:

Review: Homer by Elisha Cooper

| Tasha

homer

Homer by Elisha Cooper

Homer is out on the porch when the day starts.  Everyone seems to have something that they want to do that day.  The other dogs want to run around and play chase.  Homer doesn’t want to.  He doesn’t want to play in the field either, or walk to the beach, or swim, or go to the market.  He stays on the porch.  One-by-one the others return from their day and everyone tells Homer about it.  The dogs are tired from running. He gets to smell the flowers from the field and even wear one. There are shells to smell, wetness from the beach, and produce from the market.  People finish their days out on the porch with Homer.  At the end of the day, Homer heads inside, eats his dinner, and happily falls asleep in a chair.

Cooper does several things in this very simple picture book.  First, he pays homage to the relationships of dogs and humans, the sort of dog that is quiet, steady and always there.  Homer is the sort of dog everyone wants on their porch too.  Second, Cooper speaks to the importance of simplicity and a life well lived.  This is done quietly as one watches Homer’s day, realizing the bliss that it brings him. 

The setting of the seaside and the summer activities, make this a great book to share when you have sand between your toes.  Even better if a dog is thumping his tail nearby.  Appropriate for ages 2-4.

Reviewed from library copy.