Tag Archive | visions

Beyond the Mask

Jul24

Crossing the sea in a time before maps, searching for home using distant childhood memories…

Away from Grassland at last, Coriko’s group hopes to find Pippa’s family,
to find a good place to live, to perhaps find safety.

But the raiders of the Outside Lands have other ideas, and our young friends must help village folk and their priest survive the attacks. Can help from Grassland reach them in time?

You’ll want to meet Coriko and friends in book 1, Escape the Mask, and watch them grapple with new truths and new dangers in book 2, Beneath the Mask.

Then enjoy this thrilling conclusion of The Grassland Trilogy, filled with adventure and danger, from the days before written history when story taught about the past and perhaps about the future.

Book info: Beyond the Mask / David Ward. (Grassland Trilogy #3) Amulet, 2010. [author’s website] [publisher site]

Recommendation: Far north of Grassland, Pippa and her friends search for her home village, a place safe from the kidnapping and fighting life of the iron-masked Spears. The boys have been trained as warriors, but hope their skills are not needed on the journey.

At last, they find Pippa’s home and her father, but not a safe place, as raiders from the Outside Lands attack the village, again and again. How can a few young warriors help the villagers defend themselves? Could they get help from Maramuk and the Spears, across the sea in Grassland? Can the village priest’s wisdom and Tia’s leadership vision truly find a way to keep the Outsiders away from the north villages and Grassland for good?

This final book in The Grassland Trilogy is full of promise and peril, as Coriko, Pippa, Feelah, Thief, and Tia must struggle to find their places in a world much larger than they ever dreamed. (227 pages) (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Plain Kate, by Erin Bow (book review) – lose her shadow, lose her life?

Jul18

When your family is all you have, what can you do when they are gone?
How do you decide who you can trust?
What happens if you make the wrong decision?

On this Mysterious Metaphysical Monday, we find young Kate orphaned and alone in a superstitious world. Her fine woodcarving skills are ignored by the Guild, yet sought-after by the townsfolk who want charms against evil. But being different is more than just a bit dangerous here – it could be deadly.

Desperate to escape, Kate bargains with a mysterious stranger and finds herself on a perilous journey with a talking cat, a dwindling shadow, and frightening glimpses of the past that might be the future.

A haunting book that will have you checking your shadow now and again, it’s recently been released as Wood Angel in the United Kingdom.
**kmm

Book info: Plain Kate / Erin Bow. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2010. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Ny Book Talk: Skilled as a woodcarver, Plain Kate lost her place at the workshop when her father died, and the guild gave it to another. No mother, no kin, Kate was alone in the world at age 12, a world of superstitions and talismans and witches burned.

When mysterious Linay appears in the village, few trust the albino minstrel. He promises Kate “the wish of her heart” in exchange for her shadow, and when rumors swirl that her carving skills are witchcraft, she takes up Linay on his offer.

Suddenly, Kate has a talking cat as she travels up the river to escape the village. She and Taggle meet up with a clan of performing Roamers, with their bright wagons and acrobatic graces, and are allowed to travel with them until danger comes near and all are threatened.

As Kate’s shadow slowly disappears day by day, the fever which struck down her father and many others begins to make its way up the river, too.

Why did Linay need her shadow?
How can a talking cat be Kate’s dearest wish?
Will the Roamer clan and her friend Drina survive the fever and the witchburnings?
Are real witches darkening the daytime sky and sending frost across the summer day?

An exciting and suspenseful tale of yearnings and journeys, of superstitions and the supernatural! (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Beneath the Mask (fiction)

Jul17

How far would you go to protect your friends? Would you learn to fight, learn to kill, learn the secrets of those who enslaved you?

Once again we travel back to Grassland, the ancient place that evokes pre-Roman Britain and seafaring raiders.

Koriko, Bran, and Thief suddenly must decide if they’ll become as tough and brutal as the Spears who kidnapped them from their families – or be separated from Pippa, Feelah, and Tia forever.

Adventure, peril, and visions – these strong young men and women must face them together or risk losing the family ties that they’ve created.

This second volume of Ward’s Grassland Trilogy answers some questions raised in Escape the Mask , but the young people will face invaders, mysteries and concerns aplenty in Beyond the Mask (#3).
**kmm

Book info: Beneath the Mask / David Ward. (Grassland Trilogy #2) Amulet, 2009. [author’s website] [publisher site]

Recommendation: After escaping from the cave-prison of Grassland, Coriko and his friends plan for a new life, away from the Spears who guarded them. Tia is oldest and a strong leader, Pippa has visions and a healing touch.

The group works to secretly repair a small sailboat near the shore without alerting the remaining Spears who spy on them from the mountain. But avoiding the Strays who had left the group to raid the burned Spear villages leads them into a trap. Now the Spears separate the girls from the boys, forcing the boys to learn to fight with shields and knives…or to die trying.

If Coriko, Thief, and Bran ever want to see Pippa, Feelah, and Tia again, they must become ferocious fighters. They must wear the iron masks of the Spears. They must learn to sail and row the large ships. They must help kidnap small children, just like the Spears stole them from their families and their villages when they were young.

Will the boys become Spears in their hearts as well? What is happening to the girls while the boys are training, training, training? Will the group ever escape from the Spears?

This is the second book in The Grassland Trilogy and promises an exciting conclusion in book 3: Beyond the Mask! (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

WorldCat find library: http://www.worldcat.org/libraries

IndieBound store finder: http://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder

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?
**kmm

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)