Tag Archive | war

Disunited States of America, by Harry Turtledove (book review) – alternate history with no USA!

Jul5

book cover of Disunited States of America by Harry Turtledove published by Tor TeenYesterday was a day for fireworks, picnics, and patriotic celebrations. At least, it was in this timeline for the USA… but what if the Constitution were never ratified? What if the states never united?

Welcome to “alt hist” – the alternative histories produced by wondering “what if” some key event of history had happened differently, then writing in great and grand detail about the results of that new path through time.

Turtledove is an acknowledged master of alternative history (his Guns of the South and WorldWar series are epic), and this trip with Crosstime Traffic to an alternate timestream is as thought-provoking as it is dangerous for Beckie (native to that timestream) and Justin (visiting with his mom on a trading mission).

Biological terrorism launched before the antidote is ready? Rampant racism and unrest? Remember, this is an alternate history, right?

Among all the freedoms that we celebrate today, be sure to exercise your freedom to read!
**kmm

Book info: The Disunited States of America (Crosstime Traffic #4) / Harry Turtledove. Tor Teen, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

My Book Talk: War between Ohio and Virginia? In Beckie’s world, it could happen any day. Justin’s seen enough alternate timelines to know that, as a Time Trader traveling through the many realities of how Earth’s history could have turned out.

Justin and his mom travel to Beckie’s alternate to make sure that researchers there hadn’t discovered Crosstime secrets and to help improve race relations. That North America is a crazy-quilt of big and little countries, and there are certainly no equal rights. If you weren’t white and male, you were powerless (except in Mississippi…strange, strange Mississippi).

This alternate never saw the states become united under the Constitution, so Beckie and her grandmother must have passports and visas and permission-to-travel letters for every border crossing between the civilized nation of California and Grandma’s hometown in rural Virginia. The “cousin” who gives them a ride across the bridge from Ohio gives her the creeps…the big guns hidden in his car give her the chills.

Beckie is glad to meet someone her own age when Justin visits the aunt and uncle she’s staying with. Justin is careful to speak like the locals, trying to blend in. Soon, they’re both glad that they met.

Suddenly, people in border towns start dying of a mysterious fever and Ohio is blamed for it. As Virginia soldiers roll in and bombing begins, Beckie and her ever-grumbling grandma search for a safe place, Justin is separated from his mom with communication lines cut, and the fever is confirmed as the plague. Plague! Who has a cure for the plague?

Will Beckie ever get home to California?
Will Justin and his mom find their way through time to their world?
Can Justin tell Beckie where he’s really from without poking holes in the fabric of time?

Turtledove is the master of alternate history, and his “Time Traders” series takes readers to fascinating timelines that truly make you wonder… what if? (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (book review) – future USA Homeland insecurity

Jul2
book cover of Little Brother by Cory Doctorow published by Tor Teen

Another Sneak-In Saturday, with one of my favorite books which has crept onto bestseller lists before I could get my recommendation to you!

This chilling near-future USA tale has won numerous awards, including 2009 John W. Campbell Science Fiction Novel of the Year, and is included on many best books lists for young adults.

Through 6 July 2011, you can download the mp3 audiobook of Little Brother FREE at SYNC’s site (2 free YA audiobooks each week all summer – yay!) with free Overdrive listening service, no DRM restrictions.

Or you can have Little Brother delivered free by e-mail (the whole book, in 139 chunks) through the fabulous Daily Lit service on the schedule you select (stop and start as you wish, have the next chunk delivered now, etc.)!

And any time you can download a text-readable version of Little Brother FREE here, with the author’s permission and blessing. Yes, really! Cory has found out that folks read his books and short stories online/on screen, then go buy the print books or eBooks (he’s right – that’s what I did).

Of course, you can pop down to your local library or indie bookstore to get it, too!
Don’t miss Little Brother! Stay free!
**kmm

Book info: Little Brother / Cory Doctorow. Tor Teen, 2008. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailers one and two]

MY Recommendation: When terror attacks strike San Francisco, Marcus and his friends were skipping school to play a high-tech search game. Getting past the school’s ever-present cameras and snooper-computers had just been a game, too, but the authorities think those technogeek talents may connect the teens to the attacks. Although Darrell was stabbed during the panic following the bombings, Homeland Security detains them for days without their parents’ knowledge.

When the friends are released, but Darrell is nowhere to be found, Marcus vows to use his technical talents to strike back against intrusive security surveillance in every neighborhood, constant wiretapping, and increasing loss of citizens’ personal liberties. Hundreds of others join him online to fight against the “Big Brother” tactics being used to monitor everyone in the city.

But the pressure is on – Why is his social studies teacher replaced with someone who lectures that the Bill of Rights only applies sometimes?
Why don’t the US newspapers report about the chaos in San Francisco?
Will Marcus be able to keep up the fight for freedom of speech while staying a jump ahead of the authorities and still keep his friends safe?

A cautionary tale with a techno-twist. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

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.
**kmm

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.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs (book review) – monsters are real

Jun7

book cover of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs published by Quirk BooksUntil it’s grown, you don’t known if that weedy stuff is crabgrass or horrible, clawing grassburrs.

Likewise, Jacob didn’t realize that the monsters that Grandpa warned him about were real until it was too late, as he looks up from the dying man to see the horrifying creature…and the monster sees Jacob.

Author Ransom Riggs started collecting old photos some years ago, drawn to the captions often written on them. For the most peculiar images, he began inventing their backstories and what the oddest captions might have been.

In this thriller, Riggs’ imagination has gone far beyond those idea seeds planted by the old photos, as he brings the “peculiar children” to life, as well as the monsters that pursue them…and Jacob.
**kmm

Book info: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children / by Ransom Riggs. Quirk Books, 2011. [author’s blog] [publisher site] [book trailer]

My Book Talk: Jacob stopped believing in Grandpa’s monster stories years ago, but what else could kill someone so thoroughly? Fatally attacked, Grandpa gasps that Jacob “must go to the island” where he will be safe, as he sees the blackened creature of his nightmares disappear into the Florida woods.

Now 16 year old Jacob has the nightmares, the monster alternating with the old photos of “peculiar children” who were his grandpa’s friends at the Welsh orphanage which rescued him from the Holocaust – an invisible boy, the floating girl…real or faked? Clues found at Grandpa’s house convince him that he must find that island and the orphanage, or go insane!

Thankfully, his psychiatrist agrees, so Jacob and his dad head for Wales, and the mystery grows deeper.
If the orphanage was bombed-out in 1940, how did Grandpa get there later?
Why can Jacob hear voices in the old building when no one else can?
Who is following them on the tiny island?

As the past and present tangle and unravel, Jacob finds the old photos to be new truths as the monsters pursue children for their peculiar talents. A chilling debut novel for very mature readers which ponders how the balance point between good and evil loops through human history… (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Fire, by Kristin Cashore (book review) – power of beauty, lure of power

Jun2

book cover of Fire by Kristin Cashore published by DialWe usually think of monsters as horrific, terrifying, and hideous (like the Creature from the Black Lagoon).

But what if the monstrosity was purely inner? These are the monsters of Fire’s world, the monsters whose dazzling physical beauty and powers of mind control are an irresistable lure and a snare to entrap mere humans.

As a monster-human hybrid, Fire knows the power of her beauty, yet her human half strives to overcome it. In an unstable kingdom attacked by monster creatures as well as human treachery, Fire may be the key to a possible peace… or utter ruin.

Fire is chronologically a prequel to Cashore’s stunning debut novel, Graceling. Each story can stand alone, but you’ll want to read both. Check the author’s blog for her progress on their sequel Bitterblue.

Book info: Fire / Kristin Cashore. Hardback – Dial Books, 2009. Paperback – Firebird, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

My Book Talk: In these days of war, Fire travels watchfully to her music students’ homes in the mountains. But Fire is a human-monster, capable of controlling minds, far more dangerous than any bandits. Raised by a foster family of humans, she has become a master archer, like her foster brother, and loses herself in her music to forget her father.

She’s determined not to become like him, her full-monster father who ruled the king’s mind and being as they stripped the Dells of its safety, emptying the treasury for pleasures and drugs. Cansrel and King Nax are dead now, leaving unprepared young King Nash on the throne, with lords in the North preparing to battle him for the crown.

An assassin whose mind is completely blank, King Nax’s widow in voluntary exile, the armies of Lord Myddogg and Lord Gentian gathering in the North, the increasing number of monster-animals attacking humans, first with their irresistible beauty and then with claws and teeth – can the Dells survive such threats and dangers?

When Prince Brigan asks Fire to travel to the King’s City to help them hold the kingdom together by using the powers of her mind, she wants to refuse. Is she truly their only hope? Can she resist the lure of continuing to manipulate people’s minds after the crisis has past? Is there any future for the last human-monster in this suspicious, vicious world?

A companion to Graceling, Fire’s story stands on its own, asking questions about humanity and responsibility and society in a fantasy world that may be too much like our own. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Dogtag Summer, by Elizabeth Partridge (fiction) – Vietnamese orphan, California challenges

May30

book cover of Dogtag Summer by Elizabeth Partridge published by BloomsburyFor most Americans, Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer. We rarely remember its 1868 origins as a remembrance of those who have died protecting our nation and our freedoms.

As her summer begins, 12 year old Tracy thinks it’ll be like most summers, but what she and pal Stargazer uncover changes everything she thought she knew about herself and her adoptive family.

The Vietnam War era was chaotic and divisive for countless families on both sides of the Pacific, with many questions and no simple solutions. Perhaps a few answers will shine through for Tracy after all…
**kmm

Book info: Dogtag Summer / Elizabeth Partridge. Bloomsbury, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Recommendation: During the summer before 8th grade, Tracy starts having flashbacks to her childhood in Vietnam. Her adoptive parents have pictures of her arrival in the USA as a tiny 6 year old in 1975, but before that time, she has only an empty place inside her memories. As she and her friend Stargazer search in her garage, they find an ammo box and Army dogtags.

Now she dreams of her mother being away at DaNang as a laundry worker for the Americans, her uncle gone as a Viet Cong soldier, soldiers from both sides searching her grandmother’s hut in the jungle, families divided by war. How can she ask her adoptive father about the dogtags with another man’s name when he never talks about being in Vietnam?

As a Vietnamese-American, she was shunned by village neighbors and is taunted by California classmates. Sometimes, things are too quiet at her house now, but Stargazer’s easy-going parents accept her and welcome her to their place in the forest. When his peace-loving father sees the dogtags and calls the US soldiers in Vietnam “babykillers,” Tracy knows that she will have to be brave enough to ask her Dad about the past, about the dogtags, about why she came to this family in the US instead of another.

A story from the heart to go with the history book facts, readers will walk and dream with Tracy through that dogtag summer, through the questions and answers to better understanding of a difficult chapter in America’s history. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Green Witch, by Alice Hoffmann (book review) – stories of hope, love may come too?

May29

book cover of Green Witch by Alice Hoffmann published by ScholasticSurviving disaster is one thing. Living beyond the confines of your grief is another. Making memorials to mark the passing of loved ones should help ease the pain…

In this sequel to Green Angel,  Ash begins to heal, as the memories of her former world cry out to be recaptured, the captives to be freed, the forbidden technologies whisked out of sight of the invaders. And so she writes down the memories, travels to hear the stories, uses the machines, regardless of the peril.

Are there parallels to our own history in the events of Green’s world?
Can we learn to see different stories as reasonable, to live together in peace?
May this hopeful tale lead us to hopeful times.
**kmm

Book info: Green Witch / by Alice Hoffman; illustrated by Matt Mahurin. Scholastic, 2010. [author’s website] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

My Book Talk: Green had watched as the City burned, consumed her family, turned the world to ash as the Horde tried to destroy all technology. Scarred, then healed, she now watches her garden grow tall and strong near the memorial stones for her father, her mother, and her sister.

The village folks come to Green’s farm and tell her their stories, so many stories that she must make new paper to write them all down (books are the first things that the Horde destroys). And they tell her of “the witches,” the wise ones who never come to the village, who have special powers after The Fire. But Green will only write down a story directly from its source, so she journeys to find each of the witches and learn their stories, her sister’s dog as her companion.

When the Finder of hidden technology asks her to help rescue his sister from the Horde’s prison, Green uses the stories of the witches to guide them. Might she find her lost love, as well?

This beautiful sequel to Green Angel shows hope shining through the ashes of war and destruction. (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Green Angel, by Alice Hoffmann (book review) – past happiness, ashes today

May28

book cover of Green Angel by Alice Hoffmann published by ScholasticAnd the world as you know it ends.

What would you do if everyone, everything was taken from you? How could you cope, not yet 16, the ash falling, falling, falling… The end of Days? Prophecy coming to pass? Invasion?

This slim volume holds much sadness, many fears, and a fragment of hope as a young woman tries to go on living after unimaginable disaster.

Followed by Green Witch,  tomorrow’s featured book.
*kmm

Book info: Green Angel / by Alice Hoffman; illustrated by Matt Mahurin. Scholastic, 2003. [author’s website] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

My Book Talk: Black ashes fill the sky, as the City across the river burns. Green thought it wasn’t fair that she had to stay in the garden while her little sister and parents took their produce to the market across the bridge. Soon she would be 16 and could move to the city if she wanted to. She was always shy around other people while her sister, Aurora, glowed with happiness. But fire rained down on the City, burned the bridge, and consumed her family.

Green doesn’t need her ember-burnt eyes to see how the ashes kill the birds, blanket the garden, and smother the plants. She tattoos herself with each memory of loss, hacks off her hair, and armors herself against the world in her father’s coat sewn over with thorns, renaming herself Ash.

Food becomes scarce, and looters try to take over the farm. Hearing more than seeing, Ash gets through one day, then the next, with her sister’s dog as companion.

Will the sun never shine again?
Why was the City attacked?
Will this world remain ashes and death forever, or will it be green again someday?

This short lyrical tale traces Ash’s despair and Green’s hope. Next in the series is Green Witch. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

I Love Him to Pieces, by Evonne Tsang (book review) – Baseball and zombies! My Boyfriend is a Monster series begins

May22
book cover of My Boyfriend is a Monster by Evonne Tsang art by Jenina Gorrison published by Graphic Universe

Romance, baseball, zombies… a typical high school day, right? This is such a great comic! Its subtitles – “My Date is a Dead Weight, or He Only Loves Me For my Brains” – hint at the tone of the whole book – really funny, a little creepy, a touch slapstick.

The writer and artist together have crafted a very plausible way for the “mutated Cordyceps fungus” to infect people and, uh, dissolve their brains. And it doesn’t take long for the “zombie fungus” to do its work… Hey, the CDC just released Emergency Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse on 5/16/11 – life imitates art?!

Tsang’s writing is humorous and serious in all the right places, while Gorrissen’s drawings make every character distinctive and real – both cartoonish and lifelike at the same time (except thoroughly dead, in the zombies’ cases).

Dicey is a hoot, playing baseball on the varsity team and giving the guys back what they dish out, while Jack is super-brainy, getting totally flustered when Dicey agrees to a date = you can just see him blush, even though the whole book is in black and white.

I was excited to see that I Love Him to Pieces was nominated for YALSA‘s 2012 “Great Graphic Novels for Teens” list. So nice that they confirmed my enthusiasm!
**kmm

Book info: I Love Him to Pieces (My Boyfriend is a Monster #1) / by Evonne Tsang; art by Janina Gorrissen. Graphic Universe/Lerner, 2011. [author interview] [artist’s website] [series site] [publisher site]

My Book Talk: Who knew that being “egg parents” together for a school project would lead to making a stand against the undead on a senior skip day?

The “zombie fungus” should never have reached Florida. But suddenly varsity baseball star Dicey and her super-scientific boyfriend Jack are in the middle of it, as zombies begin to take over their city.

Are Jack’s researcher parents safe in Mexico, at the meteorite crash site where the fungus was first discovered? Are Dicey’s dad and little brother safe across the bay? What about their fantasy-gaming friends and the baseball team at St. Petersburg High School? Just one bite from a zombie, and it’s all over…

Somehow, the stunningly detailed art in black and white makes the zombies scarier than a blood-and-guts palette would – fantastic! First in the graphic novel series “My Boyfriend is a Monster,” each book featuring a different writer/artist pairup and a different variety of monstrous boyfriend. (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)  Review copy  and cover art courtesy of the publisher through NetGalley.com.

Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card (book review) – Guest Post by Maggie Fanning

May19

Welcoming guest blogger Maggie who highlights a ‘forgotten gem’ of YA fiction – in this case, classic science fiction that may turn out to be closer to reality than we’d like to believe.
**kmm

Book info: Ender’s Game / by Orson Scott Card. Tor-Forge Books (Macmillan), 1994. [author’s website] [publisher site] First book in the Ender Quartet. [book trailer by a fan]

Maggie’s Recommendation: An oldie but a goodie, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (published in various story forms since 1977) takes place in a post-Cold War dystopia in which parents are discouraged from having more than two children. Disgracefully, Ender is a Third, but, although he should be the spare – the expendable one – he is selected by the powers that be to be trained on a space station orbiting Earth. He is put through rigorous, even abusive, combat training which alienates him from the other recruits on board the station. His final “training exercise” requires him to command a fleet of space ships launched in an offensive against an alien home world – such a realistic videogame.

Card did not first intend to write a young adult novel, but his themes reach out to a much wider audience than he ever intended to address. In his acceptance speech for the Margaret A. Edwards Award, he admits, “Ender’s Game was written with no concessions to young readers. My protagonists were children, but the book was definitely not aimed at kids” (Card, “Margaret” 15). Nevertheless, he writes, “Young readers… are… deeply inside Ender’s character. They still live in a world largely (or, with younger readers, entirely) shaped by the adults around them. Ender’s attitude is revelatory to them” (Card, “Margaret” 17).

Although some see Ender’s Game as dated by its post-Cold War binaries of East and West – and subsequently Human and Alien – this novel, like many by Card, has a long lasting appeal to readers of all ages.

Works Mentioned
Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. New York: Tor, 1991.
—. “Margaret A. Edwards Award Acceptance Speech.” Young Adult Library Services (Fall 2008): 14-18.

Guest Blogger Bio: L. Maggie Fanning, M.A. English professor, creative writer, and professional editor. Respond to my reflections at http://thehappybibliophile.blogspot.com or at fanning.editor@gmail.com.