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Summerhouse Time Eleven-year-old Sophie’s book of poetry begins with great anticipation, 59 days prior to the annual extended-family visit to a beach house, and continues through the journey back home again. She learns that nothing is ever quite as we remember it to be. People change and grow. Places seem different than when we last experienced them. Still, we, like Sophie, embrace vacations with expectancy, hoping for the perfect time. In addition to typical summer adventures, Sophie’s family makes a disastrous visit to a crab shack, tells scary stories by the beach, helps each other through challenging times, and takes comfort in Grandmom’s mint tea. As the middle cousin in age, Sophie’s perceptions of cool Colleen, phobic Cooper, needy Tammy, and baby James endear her to readers. Sophie’s voice is honest, her thoughts are insightful, and her ways of coping with difficult situations help her to help others. Wanting to still be Colleen’s best cousin, Sophie is disappointed when Colleen does not share her enthusiasm for their relationship; at the same time, she is tested by Tammy’s desire to be her own best cousin. When |
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Remembering Mrs. Rossi The title of this heartfelt book, Remembering Mrs. Rossi, brought to my mind the lovely teachers I have known whose careers and lives were cut short by sudden illness. Mrs. Rossi’s sixth-grade students loved her dearly, and their memory book about her is reproduced at the end of the novel. Annie, the third-grade narrator, is not one of Mrs. Rossi’s sixth-grade students, however. She is her daughter, frustrated by the changes in her family life and distraught without the mother she loved so much, who passed away suddenly from complications from pneumonia. Through the memories shared in the class book about her mom, Annie savors those special things she wants to evoke, especially when she feels like she cannot recall details about her mother. Like me with my deceased grandma, Annie even wonders if she forgot to tell her mother she loved her. Though this poignant story is about grief and dealing with sorrow, it is also about living through the heartache in the everyday events of life. Annie’s character lives like a third grader should. She cannot believe her dad’s poor parenting decisions. How could he even consider going to work on a snow day instead of playing with her? How could he send her off without boots? How could he return from the store without her favorite cereal? Annie is not immune to manipulation and attempts to influence her dad in the decision to buy a dog. Meanwhile, her dad is struggles with a life far different than he wanted or imagined, and his need for reflection and distance is difficult for Annie to comprehend. Annie’s honest telling of her story is tender by itself, but the soft illustrations bring her sensitivity to an even greater level. Somehow, this sad story becomes an expression of the joy a mother brings to a child’s life through her intense love, bringing smiles along with a few tears. Mrs. Rossi’s students help Annie, Annie’s dad, and themselves guard her memory in their lives. |
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Little Klein With rough-and-tumble older brothers named Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you’d expect the youngest boy to have a name like John. Instead his parents name him Harold Sylvester George Klein, which is why everyone calls him Little Klein. His brothers, the Bigs, are hearty adventurers, wandering through their small town like lords, their curiosity leading them into trouble as easily as sneezing. The whole family protects Little Klein, believing he’s fragile because of his small size. There’s a parallel story here—LeRoy’s. A stray dog, he chooses the Klein brothers, Little Klein in particular, as his new family. From his point of view, he’s home, even though Mother Klein doesn’t want him there. The chapters written from LeRoy’s point of view are poignant, perfectly dog-like. Ylvisaker captures the feeling of summer and boyhood and dog with such ease that you’ll find yourself smelling the dirt road and itching to run through the meadow. There’s plenty of spirited action here. In fact, the climactic scene is so tense that I had to take a break from reading. You’ll find yourself caring deeply for these characters, especially boy and dog, going back to read favorite passages such as “The sky drained for days and by the time it paused, cabin fever was epidemic. An unbearable stillness hung over the town, a heat so soggy Little Klein’s socks lay still damp by his bed in the morning.” This is an author who notices all the small, important details of life and shares them with us, her lucky readers. |
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Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat Author Jonell has created an offbeat premise to the talking animal fantasy genre. In this case, several rodents have been discovered to contain strange powers that affect humans. The rodents are held captive and used for nefarious purposes by the evil nanny Miss Barmy against the young Emmy and her parents. The fast-paced plot opens with Emmy discovering she can talk to the class pet rat. The reader eventually learns that when the rat, who goes by the name of Raston, bites someone, that person is able to communicate with the rat. If Raston bites them a second time, the human shrinks. And if they are bitten a third time well, that would give away an important part of the ending. Other rodents have different odd powers and Emmy and her new allies – both human and animal – learn to use them against Miss Barmy. I would especially recommend this book to Roald Dahl fans. Like Dahl, Jonell is able to connect with readers with a combination of action and humor. The Oil of Beaver, for example, is used “to sniff out a lie.” When secretly applied to Miss Barmy, it causes her to become very gassy. For additional fun, there is a “flip book” feature that adds to the overall packaging of the book. |
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Someone Named Eva Imagine that you are eleven-year-old Milada, a Czech girl in love with your life and enamored with stargazing. Soldiers break into your home. Your father and brother are herded into one grumbling truck, the women another. In one night, the Nazis empty every house in your village. You are marched into a school gymnasium where you sleep on hay. Doctors examine you. Your hair and eye color are compared with a color chart, and your nose measured. They compare favorably. Without a drop of German blood in your veins, you have been selected to be an Aryan child, “the German salvation,” You, Milada, namesake of your grandmother, no longer exist. Will you emerge as a Nazi, brainwashed through regimen, fear and chocolate by a woman who conceals “so much poison under all [her] beauty”? This riveting, convincingly rendered historical fiction was inspired by Hitler’s revenge in 1942 on the small town of |
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel in Cartoons Like another 2007 book – The Invention of Hugo Cabret – Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a hybrid of a graphic novel and standard fiction. Young Greg Heffley documents his first days of middle school with a journal filled with his drawings. He states “middle school is the dumbest idea ever invented” and shares several personal feelings and encounters many young teens experience. These are delivered by author Kinney with large doses of humor. Greg’s Halloween run-in with older kids results in his grandmother’s house being covered with toilet paper. He tries out for the part of a tree in the production of The Wizard of Oz so he can pelt the lead actress with apples. And he fails to become the school paper’s cartoonist to a former friend who ends every comic strip with the catch-phrase “Zoo-Wee Mama.” The strength of the book is the protagonist’s voice. “The best I can figure is that I’m somewhere around 52nd or 53rd most popular this year. But the good news is that I’m about to move up because Charlie Davis is above me, and he’s getting his braces next week.” The liberal use of illustrations is also one of the book’s strengths. The pictures propel the book at a fast speed and add a new dimension to the humor. An example is the picture of boys, upon hearing that they are going to have wrestling in gym, start doing many pro-wrestling moves on each other in the school cafeteria. Diary of a Wimpy Kid is now at the top of my recommendation list for reluctant readers, particularly boys. However, all readers will recognize their early adolescence years in this story and enjoy the book as well. |
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London Calling goes straight to my list of all-time favorite books. It held me in its grip such that I lost a night of sleep, unwilling to close the covers until I reached the end. In the midst of a depressing life at a private school in New Jersey, Martin Conway is realistic about his parents—who live apart, his few friends at school—he's an object of contempt as a scholarship student, and his chances of living up to the legacy of his sterling namesake—his deceased and revered grandfather. In fact, Martin is so realistic that he takes to sleeping in his basement room for days at a time, skipping school, eating little, and being uncommunicative with his family. Slapped in the face by the school's bully, Hank Lowery—who must also live up to the legacy of his grandfather, General Henry M. "Hollerin' Hank" Lowery, Martin has sunk low in his own esteem. Then, at his grandmother's funeral, Martin is bequeathed her Philco 20 Deluxe radio, a "cathedral" model Nana has cherished since World War II. The radio is a means of traveling across decades. Before her death, Nana had insisted that Martin help Jimmy—but Martin doesn't know a Jimmy. From the events preceding the London Blitz, Jimmy calls to Martin through the radio, enabling Martin to witness the events of that time. History motivates Martin as nothing else has—he soon demands that his father take him to |
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Finn's Going This debut novel is a journey, both psychologically and geographically. Danny and Finn are identical twins. One has died. The other has run away and narrates his struggle to cope with the loss of his twin. The specificity of this boy’s world gives the story rich texture and is at times surreal, “this old lady with a walking stick and a tiny poodle on a lead. The poodle looks blue and its nails are painted pink,” which hints at an altered reality. It’s interesting to be inside this boy’s head, seeing the world as he sees it. The humor is wry and the narrator is genuine and innocent, deserving of the reader’s affection. The surprise ending, just a few words, make a reader rethink all she’s just read. |
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