It’s been a while since I read the book (simply because my husband and I trying to do this joint review which seemed to take forever!) so I’m not sure I could do a plot summary justice.   At the heart of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County is a story of two sisters.  One beautiful, petite sister, Serena Jane, whom everybody adores and then there’s Truly, who came into this world at the cost of the death of her mother.  She’s plain looking and abnormally large.  Their father does his best to raise them but ultimately fails and both sisters are split and live in different homes.

Truly narrates this beautiful story as they grow into adulthood and their lives take very different paths.  Also, at the heart of this story is Robert Morgan, the town doctor and Serena’s husband.  When Serena Jane abandons her family, Truly steps in to relieve the burden and take care of her nephew.

The story is so simple but yet so deep.  Although big on the outside, Truly has a heart to match and I found myself wishing and hoping that she’d gain everything she loved and desired.  Including true love and her long lost sister.

There is so much more to this story than that very, very basic story line.  You just have to read it.  It was nothing short of amazing.  I loved it.  It’s the type of book that I look at sitting on my bookshelf, and saying, oh yes, I enjoyed reading that book (the book on the bookshelf, not me sitting on the bookshelf!).

It’s very rare for my husband and I to read the same book but he finished reading The Little Giant of Aberdeen County before I even started.  He was thoroughly engrossed with this book and quickly finished it.  In fact, with the exception of Twilight (that’s a whole other story) and Harry Potter, I’ve never really seen him so involved.  I’m taking advantage of the situation and bringing to you my very first joint review with my husband.

Our Conversation About The Little Giant of Aberdeen County

Natasha:  So you normally don’t read these type of books, why did you pick this book up?

Taylor: Because it was sitting on the floor.

Me:  Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that you have to read it.

Taylor: Because of the nice cover.  And this first line was really good, “The day I laid Robert Morgan to rest was remarkable for two reasons.  First, even though it was August, the sky overhead was as rough and cold as a January lake; and second, it was the day I started to shrink.”  I kept reading it and the rest of it was just as good as the first line.  And I just kept on reading until it was all done.  I liked the style of the writing, the way the words sounded together.

Natasha:  I really liked the cover too.  That’s the first thing that I was drawn to about this book.

Taylor: Her words are just so cool, I haven’t read anything like it before.  ” . . . his spindly fingers gnarled together in a knot over his heart, awaiting judgment.”  There was another sentence in here, I really liked, “Amelia and I ate together alone on the big rock shaped like a turtle, peeling the waxed paper off of our sandwiches silently and eating glumly, hunkered into our own separate miseries.”  Also,

The morning my sister left him, Bob Bob woke up and knew it without opening his eyes.  It was the absence of the usual odors in the house – the cottony scent of her breath captured in hollow of the pillow next to him, the slightly acrid aroma of coffee wafting up the stairs, followed by the grease of bacon frying.  He lay perfectly still in the bed, his nose twitching, but there was nothing.*

So, what did you like about this book?

Natasha:  That’s too general of a question.

Taylor: What did you find intriguing about the characters?

Natasha:  I really like how the author never told us exactly how big she was.

Taylor:  And you like that because it’s audience participation.  You fill in the blanks and you become part of the story.

[So we Googled the condition that Truly has (and if I can find the official name again, I'll edit it in) and apparently as a giant you can either grow vertically or laterally.  The images that we found were fascinating.]

[long, long silence from Taylor]

Natasha:  Do you have anything else to say about how big she is?

Taylor: No.  I can’t think of anything.

Natasha:  This is going to be the most boring review ever.  You’ve got to work with me here.

Taylor: How can we make it funny?

[nobody speaks for about five minutes . . . I'm waiting him out]

Taylor: I’m drawing a blank.  Wait!  Don’t put that in there.

Natasha:  Well, it has been a while since we read the book because it’s been hard to get us to sit down.

Taylor: It’s one of my favorite books I’ve read. And I was really surprised because there wasn’t time travel in this story . . . or werewolves.  It was a simple story but it was so well written, I enjoyed it.

Natasha:  What did you think of the doctor?  Do you think that by treating Truly he had good intentions?

Taylor: That’s giving to much away!

Natasha:  No, it’s not.

Taylor: It seemed like he didn’t, but I think it’s left up to the reader to decide.  I can imagine that guy as a cross between William Defoe and Crispin Glover.

Natasha:  William Defoe.  I don’t even know who that is.

Taylor: The green goblin in Spiderman.  And there’s this girl at Trax [our light rail system] that reminds me of Truly.

Natasha:  Why?  Is she really big?

Taylor: Yep.

Natasha:  Do you think this is more of a women’s book?

Taylor: Yes.  It’s about relationships.  And because the main character is a woman. 

Natasha: Would . .  [gets cut off]

Taylor: Unless the main character is Angelina Jolie then it’s probably a woman’s book.

Natasha:  Would you recommend it to your all male book club?

Taylor: I would.  Right now we are reading The Thirteenth Tale.

Natasha:  Have you started that one yet?

Taylor: Not yet.  Still trying to finish Mistborn 2. I definitely would like to read whatever book she writes next.  The story was so simple, I wonder if she wrote a fantasy book, or a more complex book, if it would work with her style.

Natasha:  I don’t think that a book needs to be fantasy to be complex.

Taylor: Take that line out.  Are you taking it out?

Natasha:  No.

Taylor: Hey!

Natasha:  We aren’t getting very deep.

Taylor: You’re not erasing stuff.  You’re typing everything I say.  Usually, when I ask you about a book you say that you liked it and that’s all you say.

Natasha:  Well, ask me a deep question.

Taylor: What’s a deep question?

Natasha:  You’re not giving me much to go on. This is really boring.

Taylor: Well, you’ve got to edit!  That’s all I had to say about the book.

Natasha:  Okay, then I think we’re done.

[argument takes place about how awful this whole thing went]

Go forth and read.  It was beautiful.

Links of interest:  Tiffany Baker website and blog.
Genre:  Literary Fiction
Published:  Grand Central Publishing, January 8, 2009.
Hardcover, 341 pages.  ISBN 978-0446194204
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.
*Quotes taken from an Advance Reading Copy and may not reflect bound copy.

The book jacket:

Growing up in Hong Kong in the 1940s and 1950s, young Bruce Lee had an active mind, boundless energy, and a knack for finding trouble.  As he grew older, Bruce also developed an interest in martial arts.  He thrived on the grueling training but struggled to understand and apply the principles of gentleness and yielding that the master taught.  Only after he set sail for the United Sates at the age of eighteen did Bruce truly embrace the value of martial arts and discover his own path to inner calm.

Bruce Lee eventually became a pioneer of martial arts cinema, and his legacy lives on in popular culture.  But it is his boyhood journey toward self-discovery and his courage to overcome obstacles that will inspire all who search for their way in the world today.

Ken Mochizuki does an excellent job taking the young reader (and this mom!) into the life of Bruce Lee.  He was a good kid but often skipped school stating that he didn’t need an education because he was going to be a famous film star one day.  Knowing he needed a outlet for his boundless energy, he enrolled in Master Bruce’s martial art class where he trained for four to six hours a day.  But when his master learned that Bruce was using his skills to fight others on the street, he taught him that he was misusing his skill.  He taught him the discipline of gentleness, harmony, and yielding.  Bruce was confused about this principle but finally understood when he realized that “Water, the softest substance on Earth, could never be hurt because it offered no resistance.  But with enough force it could break through anything in the world”

This particular biography ends as Bruce Lee is sailing to America at the age of eighteen.  But there is a great afterword which tells the rest of Bruce Lee’s story until his untimely death at the age of thirty-two in 1973.  Ken Mochizuki stresses that Bruce Lee fought against the Asian stereotypes that were often seen in film by refusing to play parts in movies that stereotyped Asians, stressed education, literacy, and interracial dating and marriage.

I highly recommend this biography for fans of Bruce Lee or for those who are ready to discover him for the first time.  Join me in an author interview today with Ken Mochizuki where Ken reveals what is favorite thing about Bruce Lee is.  Can you guess?  Before I read Be Water, My Friend I didn’t know this fact about Bruce Lee.

In addition to Be Water, My Friend:  The Early Years of Bruce Lee , Ken Mochizuki is also the author of the picture books Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story (reviewed here), Baseball Saved Us, Heroes, and the young adult novel Beacon Hill Boys. Illustrated by Dom Lee.

Are you a Bruce Lee fan?  Or know of somebody who is?  Do you have any trivia for us?

It isn’t long before Dr. Norcom begins making sexual advances on Harriet, even to the point of building Harriet her own cottage to be out of the house from his wife.  Harriet begs to be married to a free black man, but Dr. Norcom becomes enraged.  Thinking that if she becomes pregnant with a white man’s baby, Dr. Norcom will sell her, she does just that not once but twice.  But to no avail.  When she realizes that he plans to sell her two children to a plantation owner, she knows that she must take matters into her own hands.

She does manage to trick Dr. Norcom to selling the children who are then purchased by their white father, who athough is a kind man, doesn’t set them free.  Harriet then sets her eyes on her own escape to freedom.  Harriet runs away and leads Dr. Norcom to believe that she has fled North, but in all actuality she is hiding in a crawlspace at her grandmothers house.  She lives in this tiny crawlspace for SEVEN years watching her children, unbeknown to them, through a peep hole in the wood.  She eventually does escape to the north and is able to be reunited with her children and become a force in the abolition movement and writing her autobiography.

The notice put out by her master, when she escaped:

Letters from a Slave Girl is written in a journal format, as letters that Harriet writes knowing full well that they’ll never be sent (she writes to some who have already passed on).  I particularly enjoyed this format of storytelling.

Mary E. Lyons, the author, states in the author’s note:

Harriet Ann Jacobs did not actually write Letters from a Slave Girl.  But a biographer is also a storyteller, and after reading Harriet’s correspondence, a letter format seemed the natural way to tell her story.

Letters also suit Harriet’s biography because learning to read and write was a rare accomplishment for an enslaved child.  Many slaveholders were fearful that literate slaves would be more difficult to control.

. . .  To retell portions of Harriet’s story, particularly her childhood years, I reconstructed details thout would bring her to life: social occasions, meals eaten, words spoken.  (Even Harriet, when recalling events from years long past, had to make up dialogue for her autobiography.)  But the major events in Letters from a Slave Girl are true.  Every person and place mentioned in the letters really existed.  Even the weather conditions are accurate.

Letters from a Slave Girl is a great book to introduce younger readers to Harriet Jacobs and her amazing story.  You can learn more about Harriet Jacobs at PBS, or of course, read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. I think Mary E. Lyons did an excellent job conveying Harriet’s voice and story.

Letters from a Slave Girl is part of my themed reading for the month of February which celebrates Black History Month.  Join me this month as I explore books that celebrate the history of African-Americans.  Also reviewed this month: The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles, The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox,  Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope by Nikki Grime, The Well by Mildred D. Taylor,  Freedom Walkers, The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Russell Freedman, Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges and  Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson.  Other reviews of interest:  A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg, Yankee Girl by Mary Ann Rodman, Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson, and Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis.

If you don’t know the premise by now, The Graveyard Book opens on a sinister note as we witness the murder of an entire family.  All but one.  A toddler avoids his own death by simply leaving his bedroom and walking out the door.  He ends up at a graveyard where he is adopted by ghosts and taken into protection by Silas, an individual who isn’t quite dead but not living either.  Nobody Owens, or Bod, as they call him grows up learning every nook and cranny of the graveyard and getting an ear full of history as his closest friends are the ghostly inhabitants of the graveyard.

The story is told in short episodes that could almost each stand on their own.  The story progresses as Bod copes with wanting to join the outside wold but remaining secure in the graveyard as his killer is still trying to finish what he started.

Did I like it?  Well, yes and no.  To be honest, I just don’t think this genre is the type of book that I enjoy in the first place.  The story just didn’t grab me.  I would often set the book down and leave it.  In fact, it took about a week to read which is unusual for me.  I also didn’t care for the illustrations by Dave McKean.  But all that said, I can totally see why The Graveyard Book is so popular.  It’s story premise is unusual and Gaiman is a natural born storyteller.  I enjoyed Bod’s adventures and the graveyard inhabitants.  Overall, I’m happy that I read it.  I’m always up for trying something new.  But, I just don’t think I’ll be runnning out to read his other books right away.  Maybe eventually, but not at the moment.

The Graveyard Book book trailer:

Neil Gaiman website and blog.  What’s your favorite Neil Gaiman book?

Unfortunately, her father has just been admitted to the hospital after a terrible car accident and it’s unsure if he’ll live.  This means that Mibs is not only worried about him but must celebrate her birthday with the preachers family.  A big no no.  One of my favorite lines was when Mibs says, “That night, I prayed that no one – no one- would come to my birthday party.”

But her prayer didn’t come true.  Instead she finds herself on an adventure with her two brothers, two of the preachers childrens, and two unsuspecting adults that will take them on an unforgettable ride as Mibs tries desperately to get to her father in time to hopefully save him.  She’s not without her inner conflict though:

For half of a half of a half of a second I hated Poppa.  I hated him for working so far away from home and for having to take the highway every day.  I hated him for getting in that accident and for ruining our post roast.  Mostly, I realized that my perfect cake with its pink and yellow frosting was probably not going to get made, and I hated Poppa for wrecking my most important birthday before it had even arrived.  Then I felt the burning shame of even having those thoughts about my good, sweet poppa and sank low in my chair.  To make amends for my selfish feelings, I sat quietly and ate every last unwelcome green bean from beneath my mashed potatoes, as Fish’s rain lashed against the windows and Rocket caused every light bulb in the house to explode with a live-wire zing and a popping shatter, sending shards of glass tinkling to the floor and pitching the house into darkness.

Savvy was fun, whimsical, and touching.  Growing up in a magical family always has its adventures as each are trying to just pass for normal.  Each character is engaging, memorable, and makes a transformation at the end of the novel.  It just feels good. And while lighthearted, I came away with a appreciation for the simple things in life.

The Savvy book trailer:

Savvy is also a Cybils shortlist and has been getting some Newbery buzz as well.  Highly recommended.  I think it would also make a great book club selection or read-a-loud for middle readers

Visit Ingrid Law’s website.  Also, Book Dads is currently giving away a copy of Savvy.  You have until Feb. 1st to enter.  While you’re there, check out Steven’s review and author interview.

Frankie likes the attention and even lands herself a senior boyfriend who is a member of an all exclusive all male secret society, whose purpose is mainly to pull off campus pranks.  But Frankie wants to be more than just the pretty girlfriend.  Frankie wants to be a part of the society.  She wants to prove that she’s just as good, if not smarter than the boys.  They don’t know that she knows about it’s existence.  She hatches a plan and what follows is a series of episodes in which she leads the boys unknowingly along on the best pranks they’ve seen in a long time.  But will it be worth it?  Or will she land herself in more trouble than what it is worth?

Overall, I liked this book.  I didn’t read to much into it and enjoyed the plot.  It was good to see a girl in a role where she’s capable, intelligent, and smart enough to pull off the pranks.  She was sassy and fun.  But, I did have a couple of problems with the characters.  I just couldn’t relate to Frankie in any way.  I just didn’t get why she wanted to be part of the secret society in the first place.  The boys in this book were just plain silly.  The secret society was just a fancy way to say that the boys got together and ate pizza and belched a lot.  I kept shaking my head, saying, why?  Why does she care so much?  And then I remembered.  Oh yeah.  She’s fifteen.  I  was fifteen once.  What we won’t do for boys when we are fifteen.  At fifteen it’s the end of the world if our love life isn’t going the way we want it to.

And her boyfriend.  I couldn’t figure out why she felt like she was in love with him.  I just didn’t see what the draw to him was.  For him, he was in it because she was eye candy on his arm.  But of course, this attribute is really what drove the story.  Frankie didn’t like being just eye candy.  She wanted to prove that she had the brains and the pretty face.

Worth checking out.

Agnes and Honey have been best friends since the day they were born.  Both were separated from their parents (Honey is later orphaned) at birth and placed in a communal nursery in order to form a parental attachement to their religious commune leader rather than their own parents.  As they have gotten older, Honey has become more skeptical of the commune, its teachings, and its leader Emmanuel while Agnes has made it her life’s purpose to become a saint and be perfect in every way.  Neither of them can understand why the other believes the way they do.

When Agnes’s grandmother, Nana Pete,  pays them a surprise visit, she learns of a deep secret involving the commune, its leaders, and members.  When Agnes’s brother threatens to lose his hand after a terrible accident and Emmanuel proclaims that he’ll perform a miracle to heal it, Nana Pete secretly takes him, Honey, and Agnes back home with her.  For all three children, it’s the first time that they have ever left the commune.  While Honey relishes in her first Big Mac, Honey fasts and tightens the ropes she has around her stomach to remind her of her sins.  The journey tests their lifelong friendship and reveals some deep dark family secrets.

Before I go on about how much I liked this book, I must admit that it had some problems.  I wanted to see more conflict with Emmanuel.  It was also very predictable.  I guessed the ending from a mile away, although truthfully, it didn’t hamper my enjoyment of it.  I also thought the ending was taking a bit of the easy way out.  I had a hard time believing that Honey would be so accepting of the outcome.  She struggled so much during the book and at the end she seemed fine.  She just went through this lifelong brainwashing and I don’t think it’s that easily shaken off.

Having said that, I loved this book, I could not put it down.   It delves deep into identity, faith, loyalty, abuse and friendship.  It’s intense and emotional.  The characters were believable.  I loved the difference between Agnes and Honey.  How two similiar girls growing up in the same community can turn out to be so different.

But perhaps what I found most fascinating after I read The Patron Saint of Butterflies was visiting Cecilia Galante’s website. I loved her fifty things about me in which she says she once was dared to eat a worm and she did.  But perhaps most important is the fact that she was born and raised until the age of fifteen in a religious commune.  Her FAQ was simply amazing as she recounts her close knit family, how the commune fell apart, and how difficult it was to be out in the “real world.”

I thought I would share with you this question and answer that I thought was particular insightful:

Given your history, when writing your novel were you careful of who and what you were depicting so that it would not appear as if you were replicating any facet of your own life, or was that never a concern?

The bottom line is this: I didn’t want to write a story about my life. I just wanted to write a good story. I remember a certain time, maybe in my early 20’s, when I realized suddenly that my history was rife with possibility. Story-telling possibility, I mean. I spent a good deal of my life feeling ashamed of being so different. (I have yet to meet a person who shares a past similar to mine, although I know they are out there.) My childhood circumstances were unique and took me a great deal of time to embrace that, instead of trying to hide it from the world. But when I accepted it, when I realized that my history was what in fact, made me who I am today, it was much easier to start appreciating it for what it was: a really interesting, at times even fascinating account, instead of something I had to keep a secret. And so I began to write about these interesting, fascinating things. Eventually, they took on a life of their own and as I delved more deeply into it, the characters began to tell me what it was they wanted to do and say, how they wanted to think and feel.

I think when all is said and done, while facets of my own life may have been drawn upon, this story belongs to Agnes and Honey.

The authors back story alone makes this worth the read.

Kit Tyler knew, as she gazed for the first time at the cold, bleak shores of Connecticut Colony, that her new home would never be like the shimmering Caribbean islands she left behind.  She was like a tropical bird that has flown to the wrong part of the world.  And in the stern Puritan community of her relatives, she soon felt caged as well, and lonely.  In the meadows, the only place where she could feel completely free, she meets another lone and mysterious figure, the old woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond.  But when their friendship is discovered, Kit is faced with suspicion, fear, and ager  She herself is accused of witchcraft.

I loved Kit.  She is headstrong but naive.  When she arrives in Connecticut with her seven or some odd trunks full of fancy silk dresses she soon realizes that she’ll have no use of them in a country without servents to call her own and endless chores.  The villagers who have no use for Shakespeare or swimming quickly single her out as not only odd but a Witch as well.  It doesn’t help that she’s made friends with “The Witch of Blackbird Pond” who the villagers believe to be responsible for a sickness spreading through the town.  When harm is threatened against the “witch” Kit must not only warn her but save herself as well.

The other characters were believable, although I must admit that I was probably reading too quickly because I couldn’t keep straight the names of all the boys (only three or four) and found myself going back to double check.  The plot was strong and I sincerely felt fear for Kit’s future.  The setting that Elizabeth George Speare created was perfect and I enjoyed learning more about the suspicion that Puritans had against “witches,” as well as the belief that All Hallow’s Eve was a sinner’s holiday.

Highly recommended.

I know what you mean about wanting to like someone’s book because you like that person or something they stand for.  I’ve had several experiences where I was disappointed by something someone wrote, so your nervousness at reading my book makes perfect sense.

My feelings exactly.  While reading a interview with Donna Gephart from Cynthia Leitich Smith at Cynsations I really enjoyed Donna’s own summary of her book.  So instead of my summary, I bring you hers:

A brief summary: Preparing for spelling bees, having a secret admirer, and waiting for her chest size to catch up with her enormous feet are pressure enough, but Vanessa Rothrock must also deal with loneliness and fear as her mother, Florida’s Governor, runs for President of the United States.

Young readers will learn about primaries during this election season as well as the trials and t-r-i-b-u-l-a-t-i-o-n-s involved in competing in spelling bees. All the while, they will hope for this klutzy character to come to terms with herself, her mother’s campaign and ultimately find the courage to thwart an assassination attempt.

Just in time for election day!  A novel that not only is a wonderful coming of age story about the pressures of growing up, but a glimpse into the behind the scenes happenings of an election.  What I love about As If Being 12 3/4 . . . is that it’s a perfect blend of Vanessa’s life.  It’s not heavily focused on the election and it’s not heavily focused on her school day or the spelling bees, although it’s too funny that she has a Secret Service agent guard her locker and stand outside the bathroom. And things get crazy when a secret admirer starts passing her notes and it becomes a national security issue.

Donna Gephart’s writing is great.  Not only does she successfully combine a wide range of topics such as grief, single parenting, working mothers, mother/daughter relationships, the election process and the life and times of a “want to be normal” teenager but she does it with style.  The storyline keeps you turning the page for more and cheering Vanessa on as she deals with crushes, embarrassing moments (which are national embarrassing moments), and other teenage insecurities.

I can only imagine if I read this as an almost thirty something mom and enjoyed it, that preteens will enjoy it even more.  Vanessa is a character that they will be able to relate to and enjoy.  They’ll come away with the thought, “I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way” even if their next move might not be to the White House.

And stick around, coming up next is a great interview with Donna and a yummy recipe for “Mrs. Perez’s Drop-Dean Delicious Lemon Squares” which I kept wanting to taste while reading the book!

Links of interest:  Donna Gephart’s website and blog.  Edited  to add:  My author interview with Donna and her yummy lemon square bars.
Genre:  Middle Grade Fiction, approx ages 9-12.
Publisher:  Delacorte Books for Young Readers.  February 12, 2008.
Hardcover, 240 pages. ISBN:  0385734816
As If Being 12 3/4 Isn’t Hard Enough, My Mother is Running for President is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, or Amazon.

In the meantime, the wealthy white man that Addie Ann and her uncle work for dies and leaves his garden to the entire community, meaning both blacks and whites are meant to work it together.  But of course the whites won’t let the blacks have anything to do with it and a community already riled with racial tension threatens to break out into violence.  When Uncle Bumps life is in danger, Addie Ann must decide if she has the courage to stand up and take action.  And in the process she not only learns how her father really died but also about bravery, life, love, and the power of a single individual.

Addie Ann’s voice is wonderfully real and authentic.  She begins as a small girl worried about the little things in life and is swept up in a movement that is much bigger than she is.  Through her voice and her eyes we learn about the injustices that blacks faced including segregation, church bombings, fighting to receive the vote, and the Klu Klux Klan.

Shana Burg reminded me of Mary Ann Rodman (my interview with Mary Ann), author of Yankee Girl.  Both authors had fathers who played a role in the civil rights movement in the south during the ’60’s and both wrote novels about coming of age during that time.  I’d recommend reading both.

I can’t recommend A Thousand Never Evers enough, it’s one that you don’t want to miss!  It is Shana Burg’s debut novel and I have a feeling that she has a great career ahead of her.  Shana is also wonderfully nice and lives in Austin (where my parents live) and even invited me to coffee next time I visit!  How often does one get that invitation?  Shana was gracious enough to share an interview with the Maw Books readers.  Watch for it up next!  You don’t want to miss it!

Links of interest:  Shana Burg’s website and blog.  Edited to add: Maw Books author interview and Shana’s butter bean cookies.
Genre:  Historical Fiction, approx ages 9-12
Publisher:  Delacorte Books for Young Readers.  June 10, 2008.
Hardcover, 320 pages.  ISBN: 0385734700
A Thousand Never Evers is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.