The opening paragraph of Dovey Coe by Frances O’Roark Dowell had me completely hooked.  Take into account that Dovey is only twelve-years-old and I’m even more hooked. I loved this book!  The voice.  Oh my goodness the voice.  Dovey Coe’s character was simply amazing and has a voice that is simply unforgettable.  And the sense of place.  Oh my goodness again!  It’s as if I was right there in the Appalachian mountains and with the mountain folk who lived there.

Dovey’s older sister is being courted by Parnell, the son of the richest man in town.  There’s not much that’s very nice about him and Dovey’s afraid that he’ll stop her sisters dream of going away to college.  On top of that, he’s real mean to her older brother who’s deaf which doesn’t mean he’s stupid.  Dovey has always spoken her mind, so when Parnell turns up dead (no spoiler there – we find out he’s dead in that first paragraph but how he died is the mystery) the town turns to Dovey as the most likely suspect.

LOVED it.  A great plot, fantastic characters and one heck of a voice in Dovey had me all giddy over this one.  I almost want to put everything down and reread it right now and I’m not much of a rereader.  Having ADORED Shooting the Moon also by Frances O’Roark Dowell, and now being two for two, I think I need to explore this author’s books even more.  She’s becoming a fast favorite.  Did I mention that I loved it?

Links of interest: Maw Books review of Shooting the Moon also by Frances O’Roark Dowell, Frances O’Roark Dowell’s website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Historical Fiction, approx ages 9-12.
Publisher: Aladdin. November 1, 2001
Paperback, 192 pages. ISBN 0689846673
Source copy: Own
Dovey Coe is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Two examples of two different viewpoints of the same event:

johnny reeves
we took a pine
40 feet high and
lashed a cross arm
to it and set the
cross in the ground,
its arms stretching above the town, we soaked burlap bags
in kerosene and wrapped the bags around the wood.
at the foot of the cross i smashed
a railroad torch.
the fire took off so fast.  a divine
sight, neighbor,
the flames spread
from the base to the
top.  in a matter of
minutes the cross arm
pulsed with fire.  the
flames leaping,
seeking heaven
neighbor, the white
crucifix scoring
the night
blazed perfect.
perfect.

leanora sutter

i woke up saturday night
because the light coming through
my bedroom window changed.

on the hill across the valley
i saw
a flame
rising.
but it was
no wild fire. it
was a
cross,
burning.

silently,
silently,
i crept down the hall,
into the closet
where,
at the back,
mamma’s cotton dress
still dangled over her shoes,
and the walls smelled of hair oil and oranges.

in that dark and narrow place,
i opened a hole for myself
but no matter how i turned,
the light from the cross
curled its bright claws under the door.

I did find it interesting but also a bit distracting that there was no capitalization in the entire book.  I suspect that Hesse was stripping the text down to its most simple form.

I have yet to meet a free-verse novel that I didn’t like and this one was no exception.  Hesse has taken on a grim subject matter and thoughtfully portrayed those who were caught up in something larger than themselves.  Beautiful.

Links of interest: More book blogger reviews.
Genre: Historical Fiction, free-verse, ages 9-12.
Publisher: Scholastic. March 1, 2003. Originally published 2001.
Hardcover, 168 pages. ISBN 0439272009
Source copy: Own
Witness is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Set in the 1870’s, fifteen year-old Gabriel, his mother and little brother have settled with their new stepfather on a struggling farm in Kansas, where black men aren’t fighting so much against the white folks but rather the land.  Gabriel grows increasingly dissatisfied with his new lot in life and the drudgery of homesteading.  When his orphaned friend James suggests that they get hired on with a group of cowboys headed to Texas, Gabriel abandons his family for the call of adventure.  But what begins as an exciting trek soon turns into much more then the boys bargained for as they come to realize that two of the men are brutal and dangerous.  While Gabriel is trying to leave his past behind him, he faces a future is even worse then he could ever imagine.

The writing in Gabriel’s Story is beautiful.  It made me slow down and savor what I was reading.  And it felt great to slow down.  One such passage:

Gabriel had the feeling that something was slipping away from him.  The earth moved under his feet instead of he over the earth.  He was aware of conversations taking place, but he played no part in them.  He heard Jack express his regrets and say his goodbyes and watched him ride off, slow and quiet but still going.  He heard the snap of Bill’s whip over the oxen and saw them enter the river.  The creatures sank in up to their necks and surged forward in rhythmic thrusts, like aquatic beasts of burden harnessed in a fable from some pre-Biblical time.  Gabriel watched them emerge on the other side and move off.  He saw James’s face before him, troubled almost to tears and filled with questions.  He turned and sought out Marshall and found only the man’s back, some thirty yards away.  He was smoking and talking quietly with Caleb, oblivious of the shift in the earth and as calm as any wayward angel whose work is still blessed by providence.  And still the earth rolled beneath the boy’s feet, like a slowly undulating ocean that did not yet drown him but might at any moment.

The American West was as much a character in this book as anything else.  I love it when the landscape plays such a large part in the story.

The San Juans rose before Gabriel like a great receding barricade conceived by the gods and built of the earth itself.  He knew he would have to learn mountain travel through trial and error.  He could construct an image of what was to come from dimly remembered descriptions, but he felt surer each day that he could complete this journey – if not the whole of it, at least that day’s portion.  He wove his way into the foothills, seeking passage through small gaps in the hillsides, over mounds of wind-scoured sandstone, around tilted slabs of granite.  Each ridge gave way to another and another, each higher than the one before.  He learned to gauge the scale of the peaks only slowly, with his wary progress from base to peak and down again.  He felt minuscule below the mountains, like an ant, a tiny thief crawling over the toes of giants.  Thus he rode or led the horse with hushed respect, as if he feared to wake the mountains, and he listened – at first for signs of other people, but increasingly to the many voices around him.

Gabriel’s Story is a quiet story of one boy’s coming of age in set against a loud backdrop.  I really enjoyed this one although a word of warning:  these cowboys are no saints.  Foul language, murder and rape are very present in the story and served to make me hate these men so much.  Durham did an excellent job portraying just how evil they were and just how intimidated Gabriel was.

So glad I read this one. My short review just doesn’t do this one justice.  Excellent.  Like give it some love excellent.

Gabriel’s Story 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.
Links of interest: author Author website, book blogger reviews.
Genre: Historical Fiction, Western (Note: although it features a juvenile character this is not a children’s book)
Publisher: Doubleday. January 16, 2001.
Hardcover, 304 pages. ISBN 0385498144
Gabriel’s Story is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Miracle’s Boys is a beautiful exploration of what happens when parents die, leaving their children behind to cope in their absence.  Ty’ree, the oldest, gives up college to care for his two younger brothers.  Charlie has was just been released from Rahway Home for Boys for armed robbery and twelve-year old Lafayette is just trying to make it through each day.

Although this is a story about each brother in the aftermath of such a loss, it is Lafayette’s story and he is our narrator.  Lafayette is full of guilt.  Why did his father die?  Why did his mother die?  Why must Ty’ree sacrifice for him?  Why is Charlie so different after coming home?  Could he have done something different?  What did he do in the past?  Could he have changed it?  Will his family be taken away from him?  Will Ty’ree be able to keep them together?  Will Charlie mess everything up?  On top of all of that, Ty’ree lives with the guilt and the secret that he thinks he caused his mother’s death.

On Jacqueline Woodson on Miracle’s Boys (from her website):

I wanted to write a story that had no girls in it. I also wanted to write about how hard it is to be poor sometimes. I also wanted to write about how hard it is to lose someone you love—in this case, both parents—and how that pain starts shaping itself into other things sometimes like anger and isolation. Most of all, I wanted to write about three brothers who are funny, handsome, searching, and caring of one another.

Loved it.  Plain and simple.  You will too.

And because I can:

Links of interest:  Maw Books reviews of  Feathers, If You Come Softly, Behind You, Show Way, Locomotion, Peace Locomotion, I Hadn’t Mean to Tell You This, Hush, and After Tupac and D Foster.    Jacqueline Woodson website.
Genre:  Fiction, approx ages 9-12.  A great book for boys.
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile.  December 31, 2001.
Paperback, 192 pages.  ISBN: 0698119169
Source: Own
Miracle’s Boys is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

It has been six months after the death of Rob’s mother and Rob and his father are hoping to make a fresh start by moving. A fresh start consists of living in a motel doing maintenance work and getting beat up by the school bullies. Rob’s father tells him “There ain’t no point in crying. Crying ain’t going to bring her back.” And so Rob keeps everything bottled up inside.

Rob had a way of not-thinking about things. He imagined himself as a suitcase that was too full, like the one that he had packed when they left Jacksonville after the funeral. He made all his feelings go inside the suitcase; he stuffed them in tight and then sat on the suitcase and locked it shut. That way the way he not-thought about things. Sometimes it was hard to keep the suitcase shut. But now he had something to put on top of it. The tiger.

The tiger.

Behind the Kentucky Star Motel Rob finds a tiger in a locked cage, which proves to be a diverson from his troubles. Rob isn’t quite sure what to do with the tiger but his new friend in town Sistine insists on letting him free.

Through their actions Rob delves deep into his emotions, lifts his burdens from his shoulders and truly makes a fresh start in life. The Tiger Rising was beautifully written. Sad but powerful. I’d recommend this one for children, or in fact anyone who needs a helping hand in dealing with loss in their life.

Visit Kate DiCamillo’s website here. It looks like I’ve now read all of her novels. As an author that I’ve just begun to read this year, I’m disappointed that I don’t have anything else to move on to.  Perhaps I should start in on the Mercy Watson series.

Have you read this one? What did you think?

In The Breadwinner, eleven year old Parvana lives with her parents and siblings in a one room bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city. They didn’t always live there, they used to have a nice home with nice things, and both of her parents were educated with well paying jobs. But now that the Taliban have taken control of the country all of that has changed. Women are no longer allowed to hold jobs, leave the house without being in the company of a man, no part of their body must be seen, they must never be heard, must not laugh, and girls are no longer allowed to attend school. You know the story.

Parvana’s mother and siblings haven’t left their one room apartment for a year and a half. Parvana, still young, accompanies her crippled father to the market each day where they slowly sell off all of their possessions and read and write letters for the illiterate in order to make money. The family is “riding out” the war when Taliban soldiers throw Paravna’s father in prison for having a foreign education. With his whereabouts uncertain, Parvana must now step up and take care of her family as the sole provider. She cuts her hair, dresses as a boy and each day carefully goes out to earn money anyway she can; reading letters, digging up bones at the cemetery, or selling cigarettes off a tray.

With the prospect of marriage for her older sister, everyone in her family except Parvana (how does one explain changing into a boy to extended family members?) travels to another unoccupied town, leaving Parvana with Mrs. Weera who has taken up residency in the apartment. Surprisingly, her father comes home, but when they find out that her departed family is in danger they decide to leave and go find them.

And then the story ends. Just like that. I wanted to know what happened. Did they find them? Was everybody okay? Did they get caught? I wish I knew with certainty the rest of these fictitious characters lives. Perhaps we are not meant to know.  Edited to add: Ha! Thanks to some extra savvy readers, this is a trilogy! I’ve since read and reviewed  Mud City and Parvana’s Journey by Deborah Ellis.

The following video is similar to Parvana’s experience in providing for her family.

The Breadwinner is a great read for children to teach them about Afghanistan, the wars, and the Taliban, and let’s not forget, for adults like me. Thanks Shelf Elf for a great recommendation!

Links of interest: More book blogger reviews. Maw Books reviews of Mud City and Parvana’s Journey by Deborah Ellis.
Genre: Middle Grade Fiction, approx ages 9-12.
Publisher: Groundwood Books. November 10, 2001.
Paperback, 170 pages. ISBN 0888994168
Source copy: Library
The Breadwinner is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans

Synopsis: “Whatever the reason, I find that with each passing Christmas the story of the Christmas Box is told less and needed more. So I record it now for all future generations to accept or dismiss as seems them good. As for me, I believe. And it is, after all, my story.” So begins, the touching story of a widow and the young family who moves in with her. Together they discover the first gift of Christmas and learn what Christmas is really all about.

My thoughts: I was first given this book when it was first published as a gift and I have since read it about 2-3 times. Interestingly, this year as I began reading it I could not remember what it was about, only that it’s about a young family who moves into a mansion. This reading, however, probably had the most impact on me as it was the first time I’ve read it since the birth of my two children. I truly know what a mothers love feels like. I hope to never know the pain and sorrow from losing a child.

Reading Group Guide Here

The Christmas Box Miracle by Richard Paul Evans

Synopsis from Richard Paul Evans website: It has been six years since Richard Paul Evans’ debut novel, The Christmas Box, catapulted him out of obscurity and onto to the bestseller lists. Now, the international bestselling author reveals the tragedies, triumphs, and turning points that led to his initial publishing success. In his first work of nonfiction, Evans is also at his most intimate. “This book is about forces that move about us like wind – unseen, yet powerful enough at times to knock us over. And it’s about a little Christmas tale I wrote that was the result of such forces. Some call these forces divinity, others call them coincidence. Some just call them magic.”

In the process of sharing his personal odyssey with readers, Evans also reveals the genesis of many of the characters and themes that run throughout his novels. Woven into this engaging memoir are letters from and extraordinary stories of people whose lives have been affected and transformed by The Christmas Box. Evans writes, “As a novelist I find it ironic that this story, the most unlikely of my books, is the only one that is true…More incredible are the stories I encountered along the journey – miraculous stories of healing and curious coincidence that often defy explanation. These are experiences that have changed the way I view the world.”

My thoughts: Richard Paul Evans is a local Utah author, so I enjoyed reading this book purely because it told a little bit about his life.  Personally, I was surprised to find that he attempted to open his own claymation studio. I passed this tidbit on to my husband Taylor who is an animator by profession, he didn’t believe it.

Reading Group Guide Here

Finding Noel by Richard Paul Evans

Synopsis from Richard Paul Evans Website: “There are stories, Christmas stories that are stored away like boxes of garlands and frosted glass ornaments, to be brought out and cherished each year. I’ve come to believe that my story is a Christmas story. For it has forever changed the way I see Christmas.” The Christmas season is supposed to be full of joy, but not for Mark Smart. Life had dealt him one body blow after another: he lost his scholarship and had to drop out of school; his beloved mother had died in a car crash; his girlfriend dumped him, and now, late on a snowy night in November, his car had broken down. Stumbling into a coffee house, he was looking for a phone to call a tow truck. What he found was a beautiful young woman with an unusual name who, through a simple act of kindness, changed his life forever. Macy Wood had little memory of her birth parents, and memories she’d rather forget of her adopted home. A Christmas ornament inscribed with the word “Noel” was the only clue to the little sister she only vaguely remembered, a clue that would send her, and Mark on a journey to reclaim her past, and her family. From the author of the beloved classic, The Christmas Box, comes another inspiring story of the power of love and the wonder of Christmas.

My Thoughts: An easy read of a very simple story. Mark Smart comes into Macy’s life just as she’s trying to find a long lost sister, during this time their affection for each other grows. I felt that the characters were stiff and monotone, as Evans had very little descriptive elements in the way they communicated with each other. I was humored by the fact that the story takes place in Salt Lake City, my hometown, but felt that he gave way to many details about locations, street names, etc. It’s as if he really wants to make everything accurate. Yes, I knew exactly which Home Depot he was referring to, but was it necessary? All in all though, a nice read.

The Gift by Richard Paul Evans

Synopsis in Richard’s own words from his website:

“The Bible says that God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. My story is about one of God’s weak things. His name is Collin, a frail, beautiful little boy with a very special gift.” -The Gift

What if you discovered your child had the power to heal people, but it made him sick and could even cost him his life?What if someone came to you for help because their child was dying?
Knowing that there are people who would do anything for your child’s power, would you ever tell anyone?

What if someone found out about his power?

Healing is the premise of my newest book, The Gift. Nathan Hurst meets Addison Park when they’re snowed in at the Denver airport. As Nathan is falling in love with this woman, he discovers her son’s gift of healing. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one. As Addison tries to protect her son, Nathan is drawn into the melee that unfolds. But there are things Addison doesn’t know about Nathan’s past….and her own son’s future.

My Thoughts: This was a very interesting concept and indeed answered the question, “If Jesus were to come again, how would he be received?” Although the boy was not Jesus, there were many parallels. I would recommend this book, it was an interesting read. Books don’t make me cry, but if they tend to make you cry, you may want a box of Kleenex handy.

Reading Group Guide Here

Video on The Gift: