Tag Archive | US author

Journey of Dreams (fiction)

Jun22

Let’s go to Central America for World Wednesday, where the designs of Guatemalan huipiles tell stories, woven into the cloth, strand by strand, using a backstrap loom. It would take many weeks for Tomasa or her mother to weave enough cloth for an entire skirt or blouse.

Tomasa tells her story as she would weave a huipil, strand by strand, row by row, along the jungle paths and strange city streets of their journey. Guatemala’s long civil war was at its height in 1984, when thousands of Native Mayan families like hers fled from their land as soldiers destroyed their villages. Many thousands more were killed in the government’s “scorched earth” campaign – it was a bitter time.

Questions about refugees or immigrants often have no easy answers, but hearing the stories of others’ lives can help us understand how their world is different and perhaps show us ways to make life better for others.
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Book info: Journey of Dreams / Marge Pellegrino. Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2009. [author’s website] [publisher site]

Recommendation: As she and her mother weave, Tomasa hears the helicopters carrying soldiers. As they wash clothes at the river, she worries aloud about the planes spraying poisons, trying to force people from their small farms. Stones are thrown at their house, wrapped with notes threatening them to keep quiet about the planes and the pesticides.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe tonight, the army will come for the older schoolboys, like her brother Carlos, to make them soldiers against the rebels who are trying to save their land, to make them shoot at their neighbors.

Mama and Carlos slip away one night, escaping to the north. Soon, Papa decides it is too dangerous for the rest of the family to stay, and they flee in the darkness, just ahead of the soldiers who burn the crops, bulldoze down the houses, try to erase their village from the map of Guatemala.

Tomasa helps Papa lead her little brother and baby sister through the jungle, across rivers, and even into cities, looking for Mama and Carlos. When sanctuary workers locate them in the United States, the journey becomes even longer and more perilous.

Can the family get through Mexico to find Mama and Carlos? Will they die crossing the borders, as so many refugees have? Who can hear Tomasa’s dreams of running, of friends left behind in the ruined village?

Tomasa weaves into her huipiles many symbols from the Qui’che legends that Papa retells, the faith of the Church, and the love of her family in this compelling look at the Central American refugee experience, as seen through a 12 year old’s eyes. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Atomic Weight of Secrets, by Eden Unger Bowditch (book review) – inventions, intrigue, adventure

Jun21

book cover of Atomic Weight of Secrets by Eden Unger Bowditch published by Bancroft Press | recommended on BooksYALove.com“Strange round bird with three flat wings, Never ever stops when it shivers and sings” – what an odd song to learn as a child! And not to know any other nursery rhymes or children’s stories…

Welcome to the slightly steampunk world of The Young Inventors’ Guild in 1903! Meet five brilliant children with incredibly talented, intelligent parents – parents who are swept away from them as the children are brought from around the world to a small farm outside Dayton, Ohio, USA.

And those mysterious men in black who take them to and fro in black carriages and other conveyances – every time the children see them, they’re wearing different all-black outfits, including tam o’shanters and top hats, Zouave pants and riding breeches, fur coats and inflatable vests.

Their parents hardly even write letters to them (this is 1903, after all), yet dear Miss Brett (their teacher in the farmhouse) assures the children that they are quite alright. The children’s various discoveries lead them to decide that they must invent something to ensure their safety and escape from the men in black.
Perhaps there are some grown-ups they can trust to provide some necessary assistance in this covert operation?

Feel free to share this adventure with younger readers as we wait for the next volume of The Young Inventors’ Guild Trilogy to be published.
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Book info: The Atomic Weight of Secrets, or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black / Eden Unger Bowditch. Bancroft Press, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer]

My book talk: Five brilliant children whose parents are talented scientists – why have they been brought to a farm in Ohio in 1903 from their homes all over the world by mysterious men in black costumes of all sorts? And what about their new weekend homes in the city nearby, with wonderful nannies and bedrooms for their parents who never arrive?

Having school with Miss Brett at the farm is much nicer than being bullied at their school in London, think Jasper and Lucy, but where are their parents? Faye misses working in her parents’ laboratory in India, where she was treated like a princess. Noah can’t play his violin right now, worrying that his mother doesn’t know where he is (she left to star in another opera just before…). And Wallace, well, his late mother said he’d make a discovery before his 10th birthday that would save the world – and he has just a few days to finish the project.

The youngsters teach Miss Brett about their advanced experiments, and she introduces them to the wonderful world of stories and rhymes and children’s games that their tutors and scientific encyclopedias never covered. During the week, they discover farm animals’ habits and hopscotch and how to bake biscuits, then are taken “home” to their nannies by roundabout routes in black carriages or autocars by men in odd black outfits every weekend. Whether at the farm or in town, patrols of men in black circle around their residences like clockwork, week after week.

The children investigate a pageless journal Lucy found in her mother’s room and discover that it once contained pages written by the Young Inventors’ Guild. They decide to use it to chronicle their experiments as they pool their knowledge of scientific principles so they can escape the mysterious men in black and rescue their parents!

Are their parents safe? Why don’t they write or even use that newfangled telephone device in the farmhouse closet?
Can the birdwatcher seen near the farm help them?
What about Faye’s cousin or those clever brothers they met in town?

Mystery, science, and the song of The Strange Round Bird (which they all learned as tiny children) meld in this exciting first volume of The Young Inventors’ Guild series. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Clarity, by Kim Harrington (book review) – psychic gift or curse?

Jun20

book cover of Clarity by Kim HarringtonIt’s a mystical Monday. What’s your ideal summer job? Bet it’s not like Clare’s, where “the family business” uses the psychic gifts of the Ferns.

Her brother loves summer, when he can romance the visiting girls – what local high school girl would date a guy who gets messages from dead people?

The Ferns can tell tourists about hidden things which have happened in the past, but the new psychic in town starts taking away their customers by promising that she can predict the future.

Add a murder to the summer crowds during an election year, and suddenly Clare’s gift for psychometry is in demand by the local authorities.

Kim Harrington says that Perception (Clarity #2) is due out in March 2012. Hope YA paranormal fans can wait that long! (She’s also writing a middle grades detective series, due out next summer).
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Book info: Clarity / by Kim Harrington. Point (Scholastic), 2011. [author’s website] [author’s blog] [publisher site] [book trailer]

My Book Talk: Just another summer at the family psychic business, where Clare sees what happened with an object by just touching it, brother Perry sees spirits, and Mom hears people’s thoughts. They can’t predict the future, but Cape Cod tourists wanting answers keep them in business.

Too bad the town residents aren’t as accepting of the Ferns – Clarity and Periwinkle (named by hippie parents) have been bullied and scorned ever since their gifts began to manifest. Just another year of high school and they can escape to somewhere else… especially after Clare’s only boyfriend cheated on her.

A murder – the first in decades –shocks everyone on the Fourth of July weekend. The mayor is up for re-election and asks Clare to help the police find clues. So she’s stuck with the mayor’s son (her ex-boyfriend) and the new detective’s son (completely anti-psychics) as she visits the murder scene… and finds that Perry was with the woman before she died! He assures Clare that he did not kill the woman, but they’re not sure that the police will understand visions instead of evidence.

On tourist row, a new psychic arrives, saying she can foretell the future and luring clients away from the Ferns. Perry disappears when a witness states that he was seen leaving a restaurant with the victim. Clare’s worst bullies boast about inside knowledge, then vanish.

How can Clare keep working with Justin when she still can’t forgive him? How can she convince Gabe that her visions are the truth (without telling too much)? Can Clare find the real killer without becoming the next victim? (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

What Happened to Goodbye (fiction)

Jun18

Shhhh… it’s my first Sneak-in Saturday, when I bring you a book that I read, loved, and reviewed BEFORE it rose to the bestseller lists. But it’s not fair to tell y’all about books months and months before you can buy them in your local indie bookstore or find at your library, so I have to wait till release date is near. And sometimes the darn pre-orders take a book to superstar status before it’s even published. Sigh.

So as a moving-all-the-time-kid myself, I really could identify with Mclean’s wish to just stop packing up and going away. Moving during high school stinks, let me tell ya.

It’s nice to find that Dessen is not a “formula” writer, that her situations and characters aren’t just carbon-copies from one book to the next. Her funny tweet today: “Most surreal experience: half asleep in terminal bookshop, hearing commercial for my own book on store TV. Whoa.” on her way to Houston.

Identity, family, friendship, and the future – one of the books y’all will love (even if it did wind up a bestseller, darn it). And some great insights into the restaurant industry and college basketball fandom, too.

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Book info: What Happened to Goodbye / Sarah Dessen. Viking Children’s, 2011. [author’s website] [author’s blog] [publisher website] [book trailer one and two]

Recommendation: Eliza, Beth, Lizbet –at each new school, Mclean uses part of her middle name to reinvent herself after the horrible divorce, as she and her dad travel from town to town so he can help failing restaurants. After Mom left Dad for the basketball coach at the university, their favorite team and shared passion, how could she stay in her hometown?

So she’s the drama rebel in one town, the joining-every-club girl in another, but never makes close friends because they’ll move again soon. She keeps Dad organized while he saves or closes down each restaurant – that and her schoolwork are enough.

Until this time, when she introduces herself as Mclean to the guy next door and winds up with a circle of unlikely friends at school. Getting involved with a community project being built in the restaurant’s upstairs room was a fluke, but what about getting involved with David next door?

How can she avoid her mom’s requests that she visit her new baby brother and sister at the coach’s big new house more often? How long will it take Dad to fix or shut down Luna Blu? When they leave this time, will she be able to just vanish from school again, without any goodbyes?

Another great story with heart from Sarah Dessen – 402 pages. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Fish (fiction)

Jun17

Ahoy, and welcome aboard on Fun Friday! But ’twere no fun for Maurice Reidy to give up country life and become an errand boy for his uncle in Dublin. The only swimmer in his large and impoverished family, he’s known as “Fish” and would certainly rather swim than fight.

How was Fish to know that he’d be kidnapped by pirates during his very first errand? And what a crew of pirates! A captain who’d rather search for treasure than capture other ships, a gunner who’s expert in cannons and cheese, and a girl cook!

Life on board a pirate ship challenges both Fish’s swimming skills and his conciliatory abilities, as he tries to stave off mutiny while the captain solves an intricate puzzle, then “The Scurvy Mistress” must outrace other would-be pirates to the treasure.

A rollicking read on the high seas, and a great addition to any pirate’s library of fantastic fiction – with nary an Arrrggh in sight!
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Book info: Fish / by Gregory Mone. Scholastic, 2010. [author’s website] [author’s blog] [publisher site] [book trailers one and two]

Recommendation: Living in bustling Dublin or a poor country farm? At age 11, Fish (nicknamed for his swimming skills) will soon find out which he prefers as he leaves his large family’s small farm to work for his uncle as a courier. But his first parcel is snatched just as he is delivering it to Mr. Swift on the city dock! Chasing the thieves, Fish watches them row toward a menacing ship across the harbour and decides to swim after them to recover the bag of coins.

The sailors aren’t going to give up their prize easily, and Fish finds himself kidnapped – aboard a pirate ship! A good captain (and his wife!), a skilled ship’s cook (a girl!), a silent giant, a first mate plotting mutiny, and Fish’s own determination to survive without fighting make life aboard ship complicated. The coins are part of a treasure map that must be unpuzzled…

Ahoy! “The Scurvy Mistress” is being pursued by Mr. Swift and his ship full of treasure hunters who shoot first and talk later! And they want those coins so they can complete the treasure map!

As they race to find the treasure predicted by the mysterious coins, Fish and crew must overcome treacherous waters, nefarious plots, and terrible smells. Who will discover it first – the honest pirates or the dishonest treasure hunters?

Travel the high seas with a young man who’s true to himself in this tale of adventure and danger (and really funny characters!). (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

This Thing Called the Future, by J.L. Powers (book review) – tradition, love, AIDS, hope in South Africa

Jun15

Tomorrow is South Africa Youth Day, celebrating the 1976 youth protest in Soweto. Khosi’s mother and father were among the many who fought for freedom from apartheid, the South African government’s brutal racial discrimination policy.

Although apartheid has crumbled, Khosi and Zi are growing up in an era of changes, as traditional beliefs clash with Christianity, and new menaces stalk the villages and cities of Africa. “The disease of these times” Khosi calls it – HIV and AIDS leaves many children orphaned.

I visited with author J.L. Powers at TLA, and she told me of life in today’s South African townships, the funeral bells, the push for education. Reading this strong book, we can believe that Khosi will stay in school and find a way to balance her beliefs, avoid threats to her health, and see a bright future.
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Book info: This Thing Called the Future / J.L. Powers. Cinco Puntos Press, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer]

Recommendation: Khosi wants to do well in school, keep her family safe, escape AIDS, “the disease of these times” in South Africa. Life can be so confusing at 14, as she prays to the great God-in-the-sky at the church and also honors her ancestors with traditional ceremonies, uses herbal cures from the sangoma as well as modern medicines from the clinic. Born on the day that her grandfather died, Khosi often has vivid dreams – are they merely warnings from her ancestor or dire predictions of the future?

She and her little sister live with their grandmother in Imbali township, while her mother teaches in another city, coming home on the weekends; their father lives so far away that they see him only on holidays. Khosi wishes that Mama and Baba were married, but during the struggle for Liberation who could afford the lobolo, the bride price?

A widowed neighbor accuses Mama of stealing her late husband’s money, a drunken man near Gogo’s house follows Khosi and Zi home from school every day, and the witch woman calls out that she will take Khosi’s spirit! How Khosi wishes she could just ignore these things and plan her future as someone who heals or dream about her crush on Little Man at her school …

When Mama comes home, sick and skinny and weary, Khosi fears that the neighbor and the witch have cursed her family. What can she do?

Author J.L. Powers’ time in South Africa has given her great insight into the lives of its girls and women, ever-shadowed by HIV, neighborhood violence, and the struggle to rise above poverty, as she brings us a powerful story that still holds hope for This Thing Called the Future. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Vespertine, by Saundra Mitchell (fiction) – visions at sunset, perilous forecasts

Jun13

Mysterious, metaphysical Monday, and we look to the Sunset, the beginning of evening, those bright moments before dusk and the fall of night… In those fiery glows, is there perhaps the thinnest opening from the spirit world into our own?

In Amelia’s day, spiritualism was a popular pastime with society ladies and their daughters, who enjoyed visits to mediums as part of their social calls. But I don’t think they honestly expected Amelia’s visions to come true…neither did she!

Mitchell is busy on a companion novel, The Springsweet, which will take us west to Oklahoma – due out in Spring 2012.

This is a delightfully spooky tale with a psychic gift that’s rather out of the ordinary and definitely beyond Amelia’s control. Would you believe the Vespertine’s visions?
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Book info: The Vespertine / by Saundra Mitchell. Harcourt Children’s Books, 2011. [author’s website] [author’s blog] [publisher site] [book trailer]

Recommendation: Sunsets brought the visions to Amelia, unasked for. She’d come to Baltimore to finish school and perhaps find a husband, not to capture visions of futures good or bad.

Amelia’s never had a friend her own age or traveled away from her tiny Maine town, so she has much to learn about party manners and calling cards and everything that Zora considers vital for them as well-bred young ladies of 1889. Her cousin soon whirls her into the dances and dinners and archery and park outings favored by the young people of the city. Amelia looks forward to seeing Nathaniel, even though the painter is not in their social class, according to Zora’s mother.

When the red-orange flash of sunset causes a prediction to fall from Amelia’s lips, Zora is intrigued; when it quickly comes true, she’s enthralled. Word spreads among their friends, then among the society ladies of Baltimore, and Amelia is hailed as “Maine’s Own Mystic” for her visions of the future, seen only at the hour of Vespers, at sunset.

But when one vision becomes a perilous reality, Amelia’s world is torn apart. Will she ever stop seeing the future? Can she and Nathaniel find a way to stay together? Will “the Vespertine” be forever entranced and ensnared by the sunset?

Hopeless and hopeful, gloomy and gleaming – sunset may be the finale of one day or the beginning of tomorrow in this stunning book. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity, by Dave Roman (book review) – middle school in outer space!

Jun10

book cover of Astronaut Academy Zero Gravity by Dave Roman published by First Second BooksIt’s Fun Friday – Time for school in space! Yes, Dave Roman’s new graphic novel takes us straight to Astronaut Academy, with a curriculum you just won’t believe. Oh, some things in middle school are the same even in outer space (the principal, snarky former best friends), but Astronaut Academy’s variations on ball games and emergency drills are amazing.

Of course, Hakata Soy’s crime-fighting superhero past may catch up with him…

The former comics editor of Nickelodeon Magazine took advantage of its closing to concentrate on his own cartooning, so watch for more of his self-published minicomics to grow into full-fledged books.

Dave is married to Raina Telgemeier who wrote and drew Smile (5/13/11 featured book) – yes, he proposed to her via webcomic! Just imagine two cartoonists in the same apartment… I heard them at a Texas Library Association presentation in April, then met Dave again in May at International Reading Association. Just waiting for their next books!
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Book info: Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity / written and illustrated by Dave Roman. First Second, 2011 [author interview] [publisher site] [book trailer] [selected pages]

My Book Talk: Everyone else is already at Astronaut Academy, but Hakata is late for school! A few weeks late, since he and his mecha-friends were busy saving the world of Hoppiton from the terrible Gotcha Birds.

Senor Panda teaches Spanish (and spying), Doug just wants to wear his spacesuit and stay out on spacewalk all day, and Marcos wonders why at least one of Hakata’s hearts is broken. If the Gotcha Birds decide to attack Astronaut Academy to get the bunny students from Hoppiton, it could disrupt the Fireball Tournament!!

Students, teachers, and non-students take turns telling/showing their stories in this wacky graphic novel – does your Astronaut Academy have classes in Advanced Heart Studies, Fire Throwing, Run-on Sentences, and Wearing Cute Hats? (you can’t win Dinosaur Driving Races if you don’t wear a Cute Hat… just ask Maribelle Mellonbelly)

Action! Adventure! Oxygen gum and flashbacks! The first semester at Astronaut Academy has it all…with an extra helping of funny! (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)