Heart of a Samurai

Margi Preus
Amulet Books 2010

When a storm at sea takes Manjiro's fishing boat far from the coast of his beloved Japan, he fears he will never see his home again. After months on a desert island, he and his companions are rescued by terrifying barbarians who hunt the oceans for great whales. No foreigners are allowed to land on Japan's shores, so Manjiro has never seen men like these. At first frightened, then curious, Manjiro gradually befriends the captain of the ship, who offers to take him back to America, a land that no Japanese person has ever seen before.

In this story of courage and overcoming prejudice, Manjiro discovers a new life in America, but never loses his longing for his homeland. In the end, he becomes instrumental in forging the first friendship between the two nations he had called home.


This book is a fascinating fictionalized biography of a man who brought two cultures together for the first time. Recommended for readers 11 and up.

The Wednesday Wars

Gary D. Schmidt
Clarion Books 2007

Holling Hoodhood is sure his seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates his guts.

And that was before he accidentally wrecked the cream puffs, and before he accidentally let loose her pet rats, and before he started spouting curses from his Shakespeare reading (that was on purpose).

Repairing his relationship with Mrs. Baker is important. Mrs. Baker's family owns a sporting goods store, and Holling's father is hoping to get the architectural contract for their new building. As The Son Who Is Going to Inherit Hoodhood and Associates, Holling had better shape up and do whatever it takes to get on Mrs. Baker's good side, even if it means playing a dorky fairy in the community production of "The Tempest."

Set over forty years ago against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, The Wednesday Wars is the hilarious story of a boy trying to navigate the rocky shoals of seventh grade. Holling's voice has an air of tall-tale telling that kept me laughing. But the book isn't all comedy. Holling's evolving relationships with the people around him reveal some poignant insights on friendship, on racism, and on what it means to be a hero.

One of the best books I've read in a long time. I recommend The Wednesday Wars for ages eleven and up.

The Gate in the Wall

Ellen Howard
Atheneum Books for Young Readers 1999

Ever since she was seven, Emma has known nothing but long, grueling days at work in the silk factory. While her sister stays home with a sickly new baby and her sister's drunken, abusive husband looks for work, Emma's wages are the only thing keeping bread on the table. Battered, numb, and ragged, Emma never imagines that another world, another life, lies just on the other side of the wall.

One day, late for work, shut out from the factory and terrified of the beating she'll get back home, Emma sees an open gate in the wall and steps through to find a shining canal and a long, painted boat full of potatoes. Half starved, Emma doesn't think the owner of the boat will miss just one. But when the surly old boatwoman comes back and finds out what Emma has done, she presses Emma into service to pay for the missing potato.

At first Emma thinks she'll run away back to her sister's house at the first opportunity, but as the days go on Emma comes to love her new life on the canal. For the first time in years she's clean and well fed, and she enjoys walking all day alongside the horse that pulls the canal boat. Still, Emma can't help worrying about her sister, and about her little nephew. Emma struggles to choose between deserting her sister and deserting the boatwoman who has given her a new chance at life.

The Gate in the Wall reveals a world within a world, a colorful society of boatpeople with their own fascinating culture that flourished on the canals alongside and almost outside the grim, sooty reality of the industrial revolution. Throughout the book I enjoyed watching Emma bloom in their community, journey from abused factory waif to confident young woman. Recommended for ages nine and up.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963

Christopher Paul Curtis
Yearling, 1995

Kenny's older brother Byron is big trouble. Hanging out with his delinquent friends, playing with matches in the bathroom, stealing cookies from the grocery store---Byron is not the kind of older brother a kid can look up to. When Byron dyes his hair his parents decide that's the last straw. His sentence - leave Flint, Michigan and spend a summer with Grandma Sands in Birmingham, Alabama. The whole family piles into the "Brown Bomber" and takes off on a marathon drive from the icy north down to to the deep south to drop of Byron at Grandma's Detention Center.

Sure, there's been some trouble down there in Alabama, something about segregation, but that won't stop the Watsons from taking a trip to the old hometown.

Byron's antics and Kenny's hilarious commentary create a heartwarming picture of a family just trying to do their best to get along in hard times. Quirky and human in a deeply believable way, by the end of the book the Watsons feel like part of your family.

Which makes the Sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church Bombing so much more than a historical event. It becomes a heart-stopping tragedy.

A book that reminds us how precious life is, how ugly hate is, The Watsons Go to Birmingham is a great piece of historical fiction. Mild language and vulgarity, some bullying situations. For readers 13 and up.

Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone

Dene Low
Houghton Mifflin 2009

The very title of this book made me want to pick it up and read it.

Petronella Arbuthnot would like to be a very proper Victorian-era young lady, but never lets that aspiration get in the way of her adventurous spirit. When her coming-out party is overshadowed by a collapsed party-tent and a couple of political kidnappings, she puts on her sleuthing hat, and, in company with her dearest friend and dearest friend's bothersomely attractive older brother, scours the countryside and braves the foggy streets of London in search of clues. With a hilarious cavalcade of bossy aunts, irritating cousins, undesirable suitors, and helpful domestic servants in tow, Petronella carries the day with dash and style...

...and saves nearly everyone!

Packed with delightful period details, this book sparkles with personality as mischievous Petronella narrates her sometimes rather un-ladylike adventures. Best enjoyed by readers ages twelve and up.

The Golden Goblet

Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Puffin, 1961

Time to introduce another one of my favorite authors, Eloise Jarvis McGraw. She wrote a stack of books in her lifetime, historical fiction, fantasy, and even added three volumes to the Oz franchise. My favorite thing about her writing is her minor characters. In most books, the minor characters are shallow, flat, uninteresting creatures. You never meet one of those in McGraw's books. Every last character who walks on the scene is a living, breathing, fascinating, complex human being. I wish I could have met her. From the way she writes her minor characters I'm guessing she had the gift to see everyone in the world as a real person.

She also does her homework. Set in ancient Egypt, The Golden Goblet rings with authentic details about Egyptian culture and life. But in addition to historical fiction, this book is a crime-solving mystery. Ranofer, who dreams of apprenticing to a goldsmith and becoming an artisan, is forced to work for his older brother instead. Then Ranofer discovers his brother has been grave-robbing, and Ranofer has unknowingly been helping to sell the goods. Can Ranofer expose his brother without being caught and punished himself?

This book offers a compelling story of a boy who wants to be free to pursue his dream and find his place in the world, along with a lot of sneaking around night-time Egyptian streets, and a nail-biting action climax in a dark, Egyptian tomb. Recommended for readers ten and up.

Behind the Bedroom Wall

Laura E. Williams
Milkweed Editions, 1996

Korinna thought she had nothing to fear.

A loyal German, a staunch member of the Nazi Youth organization, Korinna dreams of the day when Hitler will restore her country to greatness. If some of her neighbors are arrested for treason, it is only for the good of the Fatherland. She jots in her small, black Jungmadel notebook when she notices anyone showing less than fervent adoration for Hitler and his New Germany.

Then she discovers the unthinkable. Her parents are hiding Jews behind her very own bedroom wall.

It is her duty to report her parents as traitors, but traitors are shot!

In this book, Laura Williams explores the emotions of a young girl caught in a world of hate and fear, where things are not what she's been told and there are few people to trust. Will she betray her parents and the fugitives they harbor, or pay the price of standing for freedom?

A Long Way From Chicago

Richard Peck
Dial Books for Young Readers, 1998

I love trickster characters- Anansi the spider, raven and coyote, Brer Rabbit, and Grandma Dowdle.

In Richard Peck's A Long Way from Chicago, Joey Dowdle and his little sister Mary Alice get a taste of small town life each summer when they take the train from Chicago to spend a week with Grandma. Year after year, the hilarious adventures pile up, chronicled in the chapters of this book. Grandma Dowdle is a woman of folk-hero proportions, getting the best of all her small town neighbors, except on the rare occasion where her own cleverness comes back to bite her. This collection of stories would make a delightful summer read for ages ten and up.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Brian Selznick
Scholastic, 2007

When Hugo Cabret's cruel uncle disappears, it is up to Hugo to keep the clocks running in the Paris train station where he lives. If anyone finds out his uncle is gone, Hugo will be taken to an orphanage. Not only will he lose his freedom, but he'll lose the chance to repair the only thing he has left from his father - a mechanical man that Hugo believes will write a message for him if only he can get the mechanism to work.

Creeping between walls, stealing food, and collecting uncle's paychecks (though he doesn't know how to cash them) keeps Hugo from being discovered. But Hugo needs parts for his mechanical man, and when he tries to steal them from the strange old toymaker who owns a shop in the train station, Hugo stumbles into an even bigger secret than the one hidden in the mechanical man's gears.

Cinematic illustrations take turns with sparse, direct prose to tell a moving story of mystery, tragedy, and redemption. For ages 8 and up.

Wind Rider

Susan Williams
Laura Geringer 2006

In this beautiful novel, Susan Williams imagines how humans and horses may have begun their long friendship. A young girl of a hunter-gatherer tribe finds a young horse trapped in a bog. The girl's struggle to free the horse, tame it, learn to ride it, and then earn acceptance for her new friend from her tribe is only the beginning of the adventure. Told as only someone who loves horses, nature, and people could, this story moved me more than any other I have read this year. It is a book about life, about growing up, about courage and love.

Although the book is billed for middle grade readers, I thought the themes were more appropriate for young adults.

The Gawgon and the Boy

Lloyd Alexander
Dutton Juvenile 2001

My mother-in-law works at a book store. This suits me fine! For birthdays, instead of clothes or toys, my children get books! Lloyd Alexander's The Gawgon and the Boy came in a box with a few other books as a gift to my ten year old son a few weeks ago. I recognized the author's name of course, as I had read all the Prydain books both as a child and then again as an adult. Neither pass had impressed me greatly, so at first I regarded the book with cool disinterest. Could Lloyd Alexander still be writing books? Inside the front cover, the list of his published works spanned two pages. Still, I was skeptical. With his reputation, he could probably publish any old thing.

So the book languished on my front room table. One day I picked it up during what was supposed to be a five minute break from house cleaning. I opened the book, turned over the table of contents, and found the little bylines on the family tree perfectly charming. Intrigued, I went on to page one and was immediately caught by the cheerful, boyish relish the main character felt for having a near fatal case of pneumonia. I read on. Every page I told myself that it would be the last, that I must get up and do more housework, but the book was too much of a delight! Only decades of writing fiction can give an author the poise to dash off such a piece of work.

Finally, in chapter five, I managed to tear myself away for a few hours, but I was soon back. The convalescent boy is put under the tutelage of an elderly aunt. At first frightened of his aunt, whom he nicknames "Gawgon" after the gorgon Medusa, the boy soon finds out there's more to the old woman than he thought.

My favorite parts of the book are the yarns the boy spins in his imagination. A delightful blend of history, mythology, literature, geometry, and an eleven year old sense of high adventure, these stories kept me laughing as the boy's family faces the Great Depression and the changes it brings about in their lives.

In the friendship between the boy and his aunt I remembered my favorite teachers, the ones who really inspired me to learn. I loved the jolly cast of the boy's eccentric extended family. Full of sparkly, funny bits, this book is a marvelous read. I highly recommend it.

So why weren't those Prydain books more like this? I suppose thirty years of writing books does count for something.

Uprising

Margaret Peterson Haddix
Simon and Schuster 2007

Uprising tells the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire through the eyes of three young women. I loved Bella the most, the poor immigrant girl willing to come to a strange land and put up with abuses she could never have imagined in order to send some money home to her impoverished family. I often laugh out loud when I read a book, but I seldom cry. I wept for Bella, sobbed right out loud. This book moved me because of her.

Yetta, the young visionary social activist who walks the picket line for months, both inspired and frustrated me. As much as I wished she would get off her high horse, get over her obsession, and enjoy life a little now and then, she also made me want to give up writing my silly fantasy novels and write something that would fight evil instead. Something more like Uprising.

I thought this book should have been Haddix's long overdue Newbury honor. She deserves one.

Endymion Spring

Matthew Skelton
Delacorte Books for Young Readers 2006

I spotted this book on a shelf in a shop. The cover intrigued me, so I picked it up and read the first few pages. I was hooked! This is a fantasy book about. . . books! My favorite subject!

The story runs on two levels. First comes the historical fantasy, well researched and brilliantly written, in which Johann Gutenberg's young shop assistant tells his tale. I ate it up. Dr. Fust (Faust), Gutenberg's business partner, arrives in town with something mysterious locked in a scary looking chest: magic paper that can reveal all knowledge to a chosen innocent. The shop assistant is the chosen one, and soon realizes that he must find a way to keep Fust from exploiting infinite knowledge for his selfish ends.

Fast forward to the twenty first century. A young boy named Blake has to hang around Oxford University while his mother does some scholarly research. He quickly becomes involved in a desperate race to find the pieces of the Book of All Knowledge before the bad guys beat him to it.

As much as I adored the historical fantasy portions of the book, the modern day part just wasn't so well done. First of all, I had very mixed feelings about the fact that Blake's parents were separated. On the one hand, I'm tired of that theme. Could we please have some fiction where the parents are not divorced or separated? Almost half of all real children still live in traditional nuclear families with married parents, but it seems that only about ten percent of fictional children do. On the other hand, Skelton handled it well. The emotions and reactions of the characters in relation to the separation were all honest and believable. On the other, other hand, it was completely irrelevant to the plot and it added about a hundred pages to a book that was nearly a hundred pages too long.

Secondly, in the modern day part, Skelton goes a little overboard with the poetic devices. Sometimes he hits it spot on, as in the following:
"A small rectangular lawn, brilliant green by day, but black by night, lay in front of them: a pool of darkness moated by a silver path."
That was beautiful! I could see it perfectly!

But other times:
"Dressed in a black leather jacket that made a crunchy sound when he moved, he sauntered up to the main counter and deposited an iridescent green helmet, like a decapitated head, on its surface."

Like a decapitated head? Did Skelton really intend to put that much horror and revulsion in that image? And what about the helmet was like a decapitated head? The shape? Maybe. The size? NO! The color? NO! The way the man set it down? Certainly not, unless he's used to handling decapitated heads!

Thirdly, Blake's story needed a little more work. For one, it contained too many characters. I had a hard time keeping them all straight. Also, Skelton began to resort to cheap tricks towards the climax. I mean, if you know the bad guys are hot on your tail, do you ever leave your little sister unattended for even one second? NO!

The reason I have written such a long and passionate review about this book is that I feel it could have been so much better! The ideas were GREAT! I loved the parts of the book that took place in 1452. If only Skelton could have refined Blake's story into a more compelling yarn. Ah well, it is only his first book. Maybe next time.

Greetings From Planet Earth

Barbara Kerley
Scholastic Press 2007

I first met Greetings From Planet Earth by Barbara Kerley a couple of weeks ago at the library. The spine really caught my attention. That font, those colors - the book looked like it ought to be thirty or forty years old. But the book had a shiny new plastic jacket and a "NEW BOOK" sticker half-covering the first letter of the author's name. I had to investigate.

The cover illustration looked just like the cover illustrations on the books that had been published when I was very young - scratchy line drawing filled in with pools of uniform colors like bright red and pale turquoise. The end paper was that bumpy stuff you never see anymore. Published in 2007 but set thirty years ago, I held in my hands a piece of historical fiction about WHEN I WAS ALIVE ALREADY! I must be getting really old.

I smiled at the book designer's cleverness and popped it back on the shelf.

But I couldn't get it out of my head. Two weeks later I was back to check it out. I am glad I did. This is unlike any book I have read before. It deftly combined the wonder of moon exploration and the Voyager probes with the tragedy of Vietnam, all through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy who wants to know more about his missing father. The book made me think, made me laugh, made me cry, made me wonder. What more could I ask?

Someone Named Eva

Joan M. Wolf
Houghton Mifflin 2007

I love World War II historical fiction, and this is one of the best! Chilling, almost science-fiction-like, it deals with a relatively small Nazi program that kidnapped children from occupied countries who fit the Aryan mold, "reprogrammed" them, and then adopted them out to good Nazi homes. Of course those who couldn't take the reprogramming got shipped off to prison camp.

Clear, unaffected prose lets the power of the story shine through. As I read I had to keep reminding myself that this really happened. Sixty years ago in Europe, modern civilization went very, very wrong. Could it happen again? Could it happen here?

I want my children to read this book and see the spiral of destruction that blind hate and bigotry can lead to. This book is a memorial, a warning, and an offering of hope. As I read this book I had the benefit of knowing that the war would end, that Germany would surrender, that some time in 1945 the skies would grow quiet again and the Nazi regime would crumble. I could urge the characters on - hang on, survive a little longer, and the night will be over, and once again you will have a chance to live. If I should ever face such dark times myself, I will remember - the night ends, the sun comes up in the morning.