Written by Jenna Burtenshaw
Published by Greenwillow, 2011
ISBN 9780062026422

Albion is a country at war. For decades, wardens have raided the towns and villages, grabbing every able-bodied person they can find to fight. Shadowcry begins when the wardens return to the town of Morvane where, ten years earlier, they took Kate Winters’ parents away. Now they are coming for Kate.
 
“The townspeople had become complacent, preferring to live with the pretence of freedom rather than living in fear. They no longer checked their escape routes as often as they should, or kept horses bridled by their doors at night. Soon only the two quiet owners of the dusty old bookshop had been left with their suspicions. Morvane had begun to relax. The townspeople’s lives went on. And so, on the day the wardens finally did return, only the Winters family was ready.”

Kate’s uncle Artemis hides her in a secret room in the cellar. From there, she can only watch in horror as the wardens break in and then take him away. With the help of her friend Edgar, Kate escapes in the nick of time, but has to watch as her beloved bookstore burns to the ground. When Silas, a man who is “neither fully dead nor completely alive” learns that Kate has escaped, he pursues her, catches her and takes her to Fume, the capital city. There she encounters Da’ru, an evil member of the High Council. Da’ru is determined to find Wintercraft, a book written by the Skilled, of which Kate is one, that holds the key to controlling the veil that separates the living from the dead. As Kate battles to protect the book and free her uncle, she learns that her power is greater than anyone ever imagined.
 
Shadowcry is a dark fantasy. It is filled with interesting twists and turns, but also, murder and intrigue. It is a book for young readers who enjoy an intense story and aren’t frightened by violent scenes.

-Jane Bedell, author

So that’s it!  The end of two reading challenges for 2011, though there are lots of books still in my to-read stack that will spill into 2012.  It’s been really informative to focus my reading in this way.  I still deeply love historical fiction and have great respect for the good work of debut authors—many who wrote historical—twice as good for me.  A number of books are on both lists.  Here is how the two challenges shake out:

Historical Fiction—Needed 15, Recommended 15
Crossing the Tracks, by Barbara Stuber
Forge, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys
The Trouble with May Amelia, by Jennifer Holm
The Year We Were Famous, by Carole Estby Dagg
Okay for Now, by Gary D. Schmidt
Sylvia & Aki, by Winifred Conkling
The Lost Crown, by Sarah Miller
Queen of Hearts, by Martha Brooks
In Trouble, by Ellen Levine
My Name is Not Easy, by Debby Dahl Edwardson
Inside Out & Back Again, by Thanhha Lai
With a Name Like Love, by Tess Hilmo
Anya’s War, by Andrea Alban
City of Orphans, by Avi

Debut—Needed 12, Recommended 13
Crossing the Tracks, by Barbara Stuber
Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys
Warped, by Maurissa Guibord
Words in the Dust, by Trent Reedy
Sylvia & Aki, by Winifred Conkling
The Mostly True Story of Jack, by Kelly Barnhill
Wildwood: The Wildwood Chronicles, Book 1, by Colin Meloy with illustrations by Carson Ellis
Frost, by Marianna Baer
Inside Out & Back Again, by Thanhha Lai
The Faerie Ring, by Kiki Hamilton
With a Name Like Love, by Tess Hilmo
The Pull of Gravity, by Gae Polisner
Anya’s War, by Andrea Alban

Editor’s note: These titles can all be found in the alphabetical list on the right.

—Kari Baumbach, children’s literature enthusiast

Written by Avi
Illustrated by Greg Ruth
Published by Atheneum/Richard Jackson, 2011
ISBN 9781416971023

City of Orphans takes place in the Lower East Side of New York City, in the midst of The Great Panic of 1893.  Times were hard as factories closed and jobs were lost.  Among the people struggling to survive were immigrants trying to navigate life in a new country.  This story focuses on one family of Dutch immigrants—one thirteen-year-old boy named Maks Geless in particular, and the people they encounter. The story begins:

“Amazing things happen.
Look at someone on the street and you might never see that person again—ever. Then you bump into a stranger and your whole life changes—forever. See what I’m saying? It’s all ‘bout them words: ‘luck,’ ‘chance,’ ‘coincidence,’ ‘accident,’ ‘quirk,’ ‘miracle,’ plus a lot of words I’m guessing I don’t even know.”

The narrator of this story addresses the reader from time to time while telling the story through three points of view: 

Thirteen-year-old Maks Geless, the oldest child in a family of Dutch immigrants—a newsie, calling out headlines to sell his copies of The World newspaper and earn his eight cents which he contributes to help pay the family’s fifteen dollar per month rent.  One of Maks’s sisters is ill with tuberculosis and another sister, Emma, has been accused of stealing from the Waldorf hotel where she works as a maid.

Willa, whose mother recently died of tuberculosis, saves Maks when he’s cornered by the Plug Uglies street gang in the alley where she sleeps.  She picks rag for ten cents per week and believes her father, who was not a nice man, is dead. 

Seventeen-year-old Bruno, an orphan, is head of the Plug Uglies gang:  “Bruno and his gang have been slamming world newsies, beating ‘em up, stealing their money, burning their papers.”

Despite their own hardships, Maks’s family takes Willa in to their home.  Maks and Willa team up to prove Emma’s innocence with the help of an experienced but very ill detective, while avoiding the wrath of the Plug Uglies.

Ruth’s lovely pencil drawings are scattered throughout the book.  The story is full of specific detail to set you in a time and place.  The writing reflects the sparseness and grittiness of life for kids surviving on the streets during a difficult and complex time in history.  Central to the story is the vulnerability of the poor and how when a community is formed among people, hardships can be overcome.

—Kari Baumbach, children’s literature enthusiast

Written by Andrea Alban Gosline
Published by Feiwel & Friends, 2011
ISBN 9780312370930

As Hitler rages through Europe fourteen-year-old Anya’s family flees Odessa, suspected of being anti-Communists, to the French Quarter of Shanghai—A safe haven for Jewish people. 

The French Quarter of Shanghai holds a fascinating mixture of cultures: French, Chinese, and Russian, along with Jewish superstition and Chinese magic which add rich detail, interest, and humor to the story.  The family’s young Chinese cook warns: “It’s too dangerous to swim during the month of the Hungry Ghost Moon. A ghost is waiting at the bottom of every pool to drown children.” 

Though the danger of Japanese invasion occupies their thoughts, Anya’s family is wealthy enough to be protected from much of the misery in Shanghai, allowing Anya the luxury of normal girl things—riding her new bicycle and a crush on a boy.  The Shanghai poor are everywhere and the family has learned to walk past them, as others do—even past the undesirable baby girls left on the streets to die.  Anya is a feisty protagonist with opinions who doesn’t always do what she’s supposed to do, which oftentimes gets her into trouble, but occasionally is the exact right thing to do. 

When she uncovers a basket in the gutter outside her home that she thinks contains a kitten and finds a discarded baby girl, everything changes.  Anya listens to her inner voice while acknowledging the responsibility she’s uncovered and prays for guidance: “God, I know I should pray to the Jade Emperor since this little girl is Chinese.  Even though you are my Jewish God, could you please talk to the ruler of the Chinese heavens?  Between the two of you, I’m sure you can agree to help this poor baby?  Good Jews don’t throw out baby girls.  Mama and Papa kept me.  The Torah says all children are precious.”  All girls are precious.  We’re all the same.

Even within their safe haven there are prejudices—Anya’s grandmother looks down at Oriental Jews who she says made their fortunes trading Opium.  The family of the boy Anya has a crush on look down on Russian Jews, like Anya, because they are thought to be thieves.  The dialogue is engaging and is laced with cultural details and attitudes. 

Anya’s War is the story of a Russian Jewish girl’s struggle to protect a Chinese baby girl while a larger war rages around them.  It’s the story of how she grows and changes through her efforts and hardships.  It’s a weighty, important story about the value of human life and about prejudice, all balanced by the humor and interest that come from a this fascinating mix of cultures and people.  AND it’s based on the author’s family history.

—Kari Baumbach, children’s literature enthusiast

Written by Gerald McDermott
Published by Harcourt, 2011
ISBN 9780152165963

Caldecott winner Gerald McDermott once again introduces us to an impish trickster, this time a monkey taunting a crocodile. The tale itself,  “Sumsumara-Jakata”, comes from the Buddhist tradition in India and is the last of McDermott’s series of six trickster tales.

Chattering Monkey desperately wants the mangos growing on an island in the wide, flowing river. But how does he get there? Tricking Crocodile into returning him to shore where he supposedly left the heart Crocodile wants to eat, Monkey then finds his own way across the rocks to the mangos. In the end, after tricking Crocodile once again, Monkey is a bit more careful where he steps.

McDermott’s brightly colorful collage images created from torn paper pop the story off the page, making it a fun read-aloud for younger learners and a good starting point for students creating their own trickster tales.

—Heidi Håvan Grosch, educator and children’s literature enthusiast

Written by Linda Glaser
Illustrated by Claire A. Nivola
Published by Houghton Mifflin, 2010
ISBN 9780547171845

“Give me your tired your poor/your huddled masses yearning to breath free…”

We associate this poem by Emma Lazarus with the Statue of Liberty, but how did it come to be written? In this simple to read picture book by Linda Glaser we learn about Emma’s life as a child and her eye-opening introduction to poverty and immigration as an adult, a cause that quickly became near and dear to her heart.

She wrote her famous lines in The New Colossus as one of many poets in a collaborative book written to raise money for the statue’s pedestal. Writing from the heart, about a cause she was passionate about, Emma’s became the words we all remember. Her legacy was secured when friends engraved her text on a brass plaque and placed it inside the entrance to the pedestal for all to see.

“Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me/I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

This is a great introduction to immigration, the Statue of Liberty and an example of how a single poem can change lives. The last page contains an author’s note with more information about Emma as well as the entire text to the poem.

—Heidi Håvan Grosch, educator and children’s literature enthusiast

Written by Gae Polisner
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011
ISBN 9780374371937

This moving and witty coming-of-age story begins as Nick Gardner, who suffers from Febrile seizures that cause hallucinations, exits his house in his Christmas boxer shorts to climb a water tower, thinking it’s a large can of cherry cola.  Nick’s father, who spends his days sleeping on the couch since depression set in after a heart attack and a job loss, sleeps through the entire episode.  Before Nick can reach a height on the water tower that would certainly result in his death if he fell, his friend, the Scooter, convinces him to stop climbing.  Nick does fall but breaks his leg, not his neck.   

The Scooter, one year older than Nick, has “Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, which speeds up the aging process and is totally incurable and rare.”  The two boys have been friends and neighbors all their lives, though they’ve drifted lately. Scoot is Star Wars obsessed and quotes Yoda, often joking about his disease and teasing his friend: “When nine hundred years you reach, Nick Gardner, look as good, you will not.” 

During the time the boy’s drifted Scooter made friends with Jaycee Amato, a girl in his class with purple streaks in her hair who wears troll doll necklaces.  She’s made a promise to the Scooter she has every intention of keeping.

When Nick meets Jaycee, whose stepfather is a reporter covering Nick’s father’s journey—walking to New York to lose weight—and learns of her friendship with and loyalty to Scoot, the three start spending time together.  Scoot’s condition takes a bad turn, and Jaycee and Nick set out on a journey of their own to fulfill the promise Jaycee made to their dying friend.  It involves the boy’s father and a first edition signed copy of John Steinbeck’s, Of Mice and Men.  The inscription in the rare book reads: “True valor comes in all shapes and sizes—and often from those you’d least expect.” 

The three main characters in this story are quirky, genuine, and completely lovable.  The first person narrative is a voice you want to spend time with and the story moves, surprises, and is difficult to put down.  This is a story about individuality, courage, friendship, first love, and about what happens when you make plans—a theme from Steinbeck’s book.  Stories such as this one are why I love realistic fiction.

—Kari Baumbach, children’s literature enthusiast

Written by Tess Hilmo
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011
ISBN 9780374384654

In 1957, Ollie Love, daughter of the Reverend Everlasting Love, is the oldest of five girls.  The Reverend Love is a traveling preacher to “humble people,” so the family lives in a 1941 travel trailer, moving every three days.   Ollie yearns to stay in one place:

“Maybe a preacher could make a decent living and buy a fixed-to-the-ground house with a mailbox, telephone, and refrigerator.  Ollie thought it might even be a place where a girl could go to a real school and have an honest-to-goodness teacher, instead of being taught by her mother and a couple of hand-me-down books.”

When the family lands in Binder Arkansas, Ollie meets Jimmy Koppel, who lives alone in a run down shack in Mason’s Holler with a frog ranch of one hundred beloved frogs.  Jimmy’s mother is in jail for murdering her husband, Jimmy’s father.  In two weeks she’ll be transferred to the state prison in Little Rock and Jimmy will be sent to live with an aunt he’s never met in Tennessee. 

The whole town seems to be against Jimmy.  His mother has signed a confession, but he insists she’s innocent.  When Ollie champions his cause, talking her father into staying in Binder long enough to solve the murder of Jimmy’s father and prove his mother’s innocence, terrible things happen—really terrible.

The story takes lots of twists and turns as readers guess who the murderer is and who’s causing trouble for the kids as they search for the truth.

—Kari Baumbach, children’s literature enthusiast