I have a fun video for you of us reading Leonardo the Terrible Monster together.  At one point, it gets most rambunctious.  Another book that we will be sad to return to the library and will be added to boys permanent wish list.

Links of interest:  Mo Willems website and blog, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction Picture Book, approx ages 4-8.
Publisher: Hyperion Book. August 23, 2005
Hardcover, 48 pages. ISBN 0786852941
Leonardo the Terrible Monster is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Ann has stayed at her friends house too long and now must walk home in the dark.  Using her wild imagination, all the odd shapes are very hairy scary animals and monsters.  The text rhymes and repeats so it’s easy for the boys to follow and to anticipate what’s next.   They loved to turn the page to see what was the very hairy scary thing on the next page.  I even heard my little four year old talking to himself in the bathroom mirror repeating the lines from this book.

It was a pleasure to read this book out loud because of the rhyming and repeating text.  We got pretty loud when we yelled out BAT, SPIDER, LION, SKUNK!  I personally, did not like the style of the illustrations at all.  I think the book could have gone up another notch with better illustrations and would have me wanting to add this to my permanent collection.  But as is, my boys enjoyed this one so much that we will continue to read it from the library until Halloween (although I wouldn’t consider this one strictly a Halloween book).

And as a side note, Rick Walton is prolific local Utah picture book writer.  We have his book Bullfrog Pops which is just adorable.

Links of interest:  Rick Walton’s website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction picture book, approx ages 4-8.
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile. August 19, 2004.
Hardcover, 32 pages. ISBN 0399238581
A Very Hairy Scary Story is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

And to tell you the truth that’s all of the jacket copy I read.  Because I tend to only read the first sentence of jacket covers in fear of knowing too much about the book.  But that was just enough to make me anxious to dive into the book right away.  A book set during World War II.  Score!  A book set in India during World War II?  Double score! I’ve never read a book set in India during the war that I can recall.

Let me go ahead and share the rest of the summary from the dust jacket with you.  Simply because I’ve written three reviews in a row tonight and well, despite my own avoidance of them, this particular summary does a fine job.

When tragedy strikes, Vidya and her brother, Kitta, are forced to move into a traditional household with their grandfather and their extended family, where men live separately upstairs and the women who live below are meant to be married, not educated.

Breaking the rules, Vidya finds refuge in her grandfather’s second-floor library.  There she meets Raman, a young man also living in the house.  Surprisingly, he treats her like and equal and encourages her intellectual curiosity.  But soon it’s clear Raman wants more than just friendship, and when Kitta makes a shocking choice the family cannon condone, Vidya’s life becomes a whirlwind of personal and political complications.  Will she be strong enough to survive the storm?

What a wonderful book.   I loved Vidya sneaking upstairs and reading Oliver Twist, Hans Brinker, Ivanhoe, Pride and Prejudice, The Mayor of Castorbridge and more.  I loved how Vidya defied all conventions that was expected of her.  She desperately wanted to go to college, she did not want to get married young, and she wanted to be treated as an equal with her male counterparts.  I hated that women in her society were meant only to serve the men.  Vidya wanted so much and stood up for her rights.  I love a girl who can stand up for herself.   I desperately wanted to see her hopes and dreams come true.

A great historical fiction novel set in India.  It was wonderful.

Links of interest:  Padma Venkatraman website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre:  Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile.  May 1, 2008.
Hardcover, 256 pages. ISBN 0399247467
Climbing the Stairs is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Loved it.

Read on . . .

One of my favorite types of books to read are books that take place around World War II and the Holocaust.  There will never be a drought of stories to tell from this horrific part of history.  But I was shocked when I picked up Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf.  I had never read a book told from this particular perspective during the war.  Completely and utterly fascinating to me.  A true example of how a piece of historical fiction can open my eyes into a world that I knew nothing about.  I could not put this book down.  I carried it with me everywhere the day I read it.

Just a few short weeks after Milada’s eleventh birthday, Nazi’s storm every home in her town in Czechoslovakia and take everybody away.  Milada, her mother and grandmother are immediately separated from her father and brother and taken to a gymnasium where she undergoes a physical and doctors measure her features.  Milada and another classmate are torn again from their families, placed on a bus and sent to Poland.  When they arrive in a new girls school, Milada realizes that each girl there shares two traits in common:  blue eyes and blonde hair.  In addition, each has exactly the right size head or nose.

It is at this school that their indoctrination to Germanization begins.  She is renamed Eva and each girl is trained to forget everything about their past.  They have no past.  They only have futures of being the perfect German citizen and be raised up to be perfect German wifes.  Eva struggles with her new identity, the new language and to remain true to her upbringing and background.  She holds on to a pin from her grandmother to always remember who she is.

And then the impossible happens.  Eva can no longer remember her true name.  What did people use to call her?  Can she recall it?  She can’t remember her name.  The Germans have taken everything from her.

After the intense period of training, each girl is adopted into a German family.  With a new name, a new language, a new sister and a new mother and father, will Eva be able to remember who she really is?  Or will she be lost forever?

Stunning.  This story had me jaw dropping all over the place.

There is a seven page author’s note at the end of the book which really brought the whole thing home for me.  Inspired by the true events that took place in the town of Lidice where Hitler had a personal vendetta for a particular officer there, Hitler ordered the entire town to be emptied and razed.  The men and boys were shot immediately while the women and children spent three days in the Kladno school gym.  Their heads were measured and their eye and hair colors examined to see if they matched Aryan standards.  Children who were selected for “Germanization” and the very youngest were sent directly to orphanages where they were adopted by German citizens.  Many children in the retraining program were literally kidnapped off of the streets.  At the end of the war, these Lidice children were tracked down and returned back home to their families.   And for the smallest children who remembered nothing of their former lives were traumatized when removed from their adoptive German parents.

Someone Named Eva introduced me to this horrific aspect of World War II.  Eva’s story was beautifully told and I felt so drawn to her.  Even to the very last page, I had no idea where Eva’s story would go.  I’d love for more people to pick this book up.  It deserves a wide audience.  In fact, the more I think back on this book, the more I love it.  An excellent book and I’d highly recommend it for readers of all ages.

(And by the way, the hardcover has a terrible cover.  It’s the copy that I read.  Thank goodness they improved the paperback.)

Links of interest:  Joan M. Wolf website.  More book blogger reviews.
Genre:  Middle grade historical fiction.  Approx ages 9-12.
Publisher: Clarion Books.  July 16, 2007.
Hardcover, 208 pages. ISBN 0618535799
Someone Named Eva is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

15-year-old Sam has always been defined as the pastor’s daughter.  But not all is well behind closed doors.  Citing the pressures of being a pastor’s wife, Sam’s mother is an alcoholic who after one too many DUI’s is now in treatment.  But it’s not a fact that Sam wants her friends (who often don’t invite her along to less questionable activities – you know – the whole being the pasture’s daughter thing) to know about nor is it something that Sam and her father openly talk about with each other.

It is during this crisis in her family, that her community faces a crisis of its own.  A young girl in the church has mysteriously gone missing and no one is free from suspicion including her own father and the girl’s older brother, whom Sam has always crushed on.  This family and community crisis shakes Sam to her inner-core where she also experiences her own personal crisis – one that questions her faith, hope, and belief in something that is bigger than she is.

Although the events of this beautiful novel are huge – alcoholic parent, missing girl – it is also so quiet.  Sam is a character that feels so real.  Does she really live in those pages?  It can’t be possible.  She’s out there somewhere.  Living.  Breathing.  The questions that she asks herself are ones that any teen struggling to learn to identify who they are in the world will relate too.  Scratch that.  Not just teens.  Heck, even I found myself relating to Sam in my life right now and supposedly I’m supposed to have it all together right now.

Sam asks herself this question:

Do I believe?

I believe just enough that Jody is alive that I think we should keep looking.

I believe just enough in my mom to try to make a garden for her to work on when she gets home.

I believe just enough in my dad that he’ll have an explanation even if that explanation is that he’s only human.

I believe just enough in myself to know that even if I start in a new school I’ll be okay.

I believe just enough in forgiveness that eventually we’ll be a family again.

I believe just enough in God that I’m praying right now that Nick means what he says.

As a side note, I loved that Sam wanted to create the perfect garden for her mother to take care of.  As a gardener myself, I understand how gardening can heal.  How the creation of something can bring one hope.  When I garden, I’m basically telling myself that I’ll be around to reap the benefits of my work.  I have faith and hope in the plants and my ability to bring forth something that will bloom into something beautiful for me to enjoy later.  Gardening is an activity that while is enjoyable in the moment is one that is always looking to the future.  Sam wants to create a xeriscape garden:  a garden which can thrive on very little care.  Which I can’t help but think is how Sam thinks of herself, her mother, and her family.

Sara Zarr lives locally to me and it’s been my pleasure to be able to chat with her on numerous occasions.  I love that blogging has bridged that gap between author and reader for me.   The beautiful thing that I loved about Once Was Lost was that the author completely disappeared in the narration.  I did worry that knowing the author behind the book would taint my reading of it.  There’s nothing worse than hearing the author’s voice instead of  the characters.  But I completely forgot about Sara except that I had to keep reminding myself that  this amazing story came out her head.  How do people do that?  Honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised because Story of a Girl and Sweethearts, are very popular books for teens, but I was in awe of the talent and the story that she’s able to tell.

Once Was Lost has a little bit of it all.  A mystery to pull you along, a family in crisis, a young teen discovering her identity and even a bit of romance.  But mostly it’s a novel about faith and how to hold on to that faith when the world we know comes crumbling down around us.

I was able to attend Sara Zarr’s launch party at The Kings English Bookshop in Salt Lake City on release day for Once Was Lost.  Tons of fun as always as so many other local authors came out to attend the big day.

I captured some video to share with you! In this video Sara talks about how the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart (which happened in our SLC community) inspired the writing of Once Was Lost:

Sara talks more about the writing process for Once Was Lost including how the safe return of Elizabeth Smart and Sara’s own therapy changed the outlook of the book:

And last, Sara reads from Once Was Lost (no spoilers – she reads from beginning of book):

Sara is doing a fun video tour of current book tour, I was thrilled to catch a one second image of myself in her last video!

Links of interest:  Sara Zarr website, more book blogger reviews, Maw Books reviews of Story of a Girl, Sweethearts, interview with Sara and  breakfast smoothie recipe.
Genre:  Young Adult Fiction
Publisher:  Little, Brown Young Readers.  October 1, 2009
Hardcover, 224 pages.  ISBN 0316036048
Once Was Lost is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Marcus is having a hard time both at home and in school.  Since the death of his sister, his father has moved out of the house and his mother is having a hard time just keeping it together.  Marcus has begun to fight at school and is headed down a road that will get him kicked out of school and his house and one that will be difficult to travel back from.

While at the park, he is challenged to a game of chess from C.M., a nickname that stands for Chess Man, Check Mate and Chess Master.  It is through their games together that Marcus begins to learn how to keep his own emotions in check and to always be looking at least three moves ahead – both on the chess board and in real life.

The dust jacket says, “Inspired by inner-city school chess enrichment programs, Chess Rumble explores the ways this strategic game empowers young people with the skills they need to anticipate and calculate their moves through life.”  This is a statement that I would completley agree with.  I do also agree with Ms. Yingling’s statement that the size and format (including page stock) of the book borders too closely of a picture book.  I just can’t see a teenage boy feeling cool touting this book around, if you know what I mean.

Chess Rumble is also told in verse, a format which I always enjoy. Overall, I liked Chess Rumble and found it well worth the read.  I just wonder if the same could be said of its intended audience.

Book trailer:

Links of interest:  G. Neri website, follow on Twitter, more book blogger reviews,
Genre:  Middle Grade Fiction, approx age 9-12.
Publisher:  Lee and Low Books.  November 8, 2007
Hardcover, 64 pages.  ISBN  1584302798
Chess Rumble is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Hush is the story of Toswiah.  Toswiah has a nice life.  In fact, a great life.  Her family is great,  her best friend is great, school is great, she loves the mountains of Denver and her father loves his job as a cop.   But everything changes when her father witnesses the murder of a black boy from two white police officers.  Loyalty is the most important thing in the agency but when he considers testifying against the men, his family is put at risk.  So much so, that they have to leave in the  middle of the night and join the Witness Protection Program.

No longer twelve-year-old Toswiah from Colorado, she is Evie from San Francisco.  Her father spirals into a deep depression, her mother is overcome with religion, and her sister is making plans to leave for school the first moment she can.  Hush is a coming of age story but how does one come of age when you are suddenly forced to reinvent yourself?  To leave everything behind – your entire identity and look to the future when you can no longer speak of the past?

I appreciated this quote from Woodson from a Reading Rants interview:

A lot of what Hush, the book about the witness protection program, the big question is, when someone takes your name away, who do you become? If I woke up tomorrow and I couldn’t be Jacqueline Woodson, what would that mean? How would I begin to re-identify myself?

I ask the same question about myself.  What if I was no longer Natasha Maw?  How would I reinvent myself?  And if this had happened to me when I was twelve, instead of thirty, how would that have changed me?  Would I have splintered off into somebody completely different?  And what happens when permanence is taken away?  When you are no longer defined by even the possessions, momentos, and even family photos that you had in the past?

In Evie’s/Toswiah’s own words: “Does it matter what I am, if I’m not anyone?!”

Beautiful book.  Highly recommended.

I read Hush as part of Banned Books Week in which I’m reading and reviewing a challenged or banned book a day. Hush was on the Challenged Children’s Books compiled by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  However, my internet searches of why it’s been challenged have turned up empty.  There was one instance of a friend calling her sister retarded and then went on to explain mentally challenged.  It might be a stretch but this is the only thing that I can even think of of why it could have been challenged.  Nothing else sticks out to me at all.

Links of interest:  Jacqueline Woodson website,   More book blogger reviews of Hush.  Other Woodson books reviewed by Maw Books:  I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This, Show Way, Feathers, If You Come Softly, Behind You, Peace Locomotion, Locomotion, and Miracle’s Boys.  My experience meeting Woodson at LA Times Festival of Books.
Genre:  Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile.  January 7, 2002.
Hardcover, 192  pages.  ISBN:  0399231145
Hush is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Observing my continual gushing and geeking out when I met Woodson at the LA Times Festival of Books, Amy at My Friend Amy decided to try her out and fell in love with Woodson’s writing and story (how could anybody not?).  When Amy reviewed I Hadn’t Mean to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson, a title that I hadn’t read yet, and sobbed her way through it, I put a hold on it at the library immediately.  Yes, something about people sobbing through books attracts me a great deal.

And thus we come circle.  I love turning readers onto new authors who then turn me onto titles from said author that I haven’t read yet.  I love that blogging about books makes reading books a social activity.   So it’s my hope that for all those who have yet to pick up a Woodson title (despite the fact that I keep reviewing them here!) will do so.

Jacqueline Woodson’s writing is incredibly beautiful and I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This is no exception.  But while the writing is beautiful, the subject matter certainly is not.   It is unbelievably sad and gut-wrenching.  Marie is twelve-years-old and lives well off in a black suburb.  She never wants for money, nice clothes, or friends.  Her father is a college professor and she’s got a full ride scholarship in her future.  But what is missing in her life is her mother.  A mother who was so depressed with her life that she leaves both Marie and her father behind in favor of living her life by seeing the world.

Lena, a new white girl moves to Marie’s school and it’s fairly clear that she’s what everybody, including her father, calls white trash.  She doesn’t take care of herself, she’s dirty, and her clothes are old, baggy and clearly hand-outs.  Despite their differences the two girls are drawn to each other and Lena desperately wants to be her friend.

Marie soon comes to know that Lena has also lost a mother.  Through this common bond, Lena shares a secret so deep that Marie doesn’t know what to do.  Does  her silence help Lena or will reaching out be able to save her from a nightmarish home?

I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This is a short 114 pages.  It can easily be read in under an hour and a half.  But it’s that short hour and a half that will stay with you forever.  As a fair warning to both teens and their parents, the subject matter of this book is about sexual abuse of a child.  It’s a subject that’s never easy to read but it’s books like this that bring it out into the open to be discussed.  And on top of that, Woodson effectivally explores the themes of child abandonment from a parent and also the death of a parent.

It’s a heavy handed book for sure but yet Woodson leaves you with a glimmer of hope and the knowledge that you have just experienced a beautiful book that seems almost effortless to achieve.  I’ll leave you with the same quote that Amy chose in her recent review:

Yes, of course I wanted to fly. I wanted to cast off, feel the ground droop slowly out from beneath me. “What is air, Mama?” I asked when I was five. Caressing the back of my neck with her hand, my mother waited a moment before she answered. “Air,” she said, “is something there isn’t enough of here.”

Links of interest:  Jacqueline Woodson website, more book blogger reviews, Maw Book reviews of other Woodson title’s including  Show Way, Feathers, If You Come Softly, Behind You, Peace Locomotion, Locomotion, and Miracle’s Boys.  My experience meeting Woodson at LA Times Festival of Books.
Genre:  Young Adult fiction.
Publisher:  Speak.  June 8, 2006.  First edition 1994.
Paperback 128 pages.  ISBN 0142405558
I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Eve always wanted to join the Peace Corps but once she realized that she was all talk and that she wasn’t getting any younger, she finally arrives at the Peace Corps office only to find that her recruiter, John, is not only really cute but one heck of a nice guy too.  As they arrange for her two years abroad, she secretly wishes that she could stay home instead and try to win John’s heart.  So in a round about way she gives up her comfortable life in New York, leaves John behind, and heads to the jungles of Ecuador and hopes that this sentiment will be enough to prove to John that she’s the type of girl that he wants.

After living in Ecuador for a year and unable to recover from the now unburied memories that surfaced after her co-worker was raped, Eve returns to the busy and frantic States and finds herself overwhelmed just by shopping in the soup aisle.  But she’s happy to have her cappuccino’s and other comforts of life back.  John and Eve marry and it’s not long after that he get’s a job with CARE and they are packing for yet another adventure – this time to a remote outpost in Uganda.

I loved Eve’s experiences and the way in which she shared them with us.  Having a background in AIDS education, Eve had visions of doing great work among the Africans but instead found herself without work and playing tennis everyday.  The story got really good when Eve became pregnant but yet nobody could confirm the pregnancy.  The Dr. asked her if she felt pregnant and if so, then yes!  Eve joked around about needing to write a book about What You Need to Know When You’re Expecting In Africa because the only good that the American book did her in Africa was to smack all the bugs in the house.

The scene that will be most memorable to me is when she recounts that early in her pregnancy, she went to the bathroom, sat down and went about her business.  When she was done, she looked down and there was a creature in the toilet! Not just any creature, but a rat!  A rat that was in the toilet the whole time!    I loved it when she said, ” . . . I knew I would never enjoy a leisurely sit on the toilet again.”  Oh my goodness!

I loved Eve’s portrayal of all the people whom she met on her journey.  I imagine that the highlight of traveling and living in different countries would be all the interesting people.  I also loved how Eve showed that living abroad isn’t all fun and games but yet she had a lot of fun and played a lot of games.  There are ups and downs and she wrote about them with not only a great deal of consideration but with a lot of sass.  She’s fun and witty and the book was a real enjoyable read.  I imagine that she’d be the life of the party wherever she goes.

Links of interest:  Eve Brown-Waite website. Other blogger reviews.
Genre:  Memoir
Publisher:  Broadway.  April 14, 2009
Hardcover, 320 pages.  ISBN:  0767929357
First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Frankie Pickle is half chapter book and half graphic novel, a format that works well especially for its intended audience: young boys.  It’s a great balance between the comic book form and text and will appeal to both type of readers, those who need the visual and others who are more comfortable with text.  My initial reaction what that the book is heavy on the preachy side, “It’s better to have a clean room than a messy one.”  Looking back on it now I’m not as bothered and think that kids won’t even bat an eye over the storyline.  Who knows.  Every parent needs a little bit of subliminal messaging don’t they?  And the illustrations are entertaining.

A fun book for the young boy in your life.

What type of kid were you?  Could your room have been described as  a “closet of doom?”

Links of interest:  Book Dads has a great in-depth book review.  Eric Wight website.
Genre:  Juvenile Fiction/Graphic Novel approx ages 4-8
Publisher: Simon & Schuster. May 5, 2009.
Hardcover, 96 pages. ISBN: 1416964843
Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.