The Dangerous Book for Boys
Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden
HarperCollins, 2007
ISBN 978-0061243585

I happened upon this book while buying paper towels and facial tissues at a superstore. There it was on the shelves: The Dangerous Book for Boys. Irresistible title for someone with omnipresent curiosity.

The authors, brothers who grew up in the UK, write “In this age of video games and cell phones, there must still be a place for knots, tree houses, and stories of incredible courage. The one thing that we always say about childhood is that we seemed to have more time back then. This book will help you recapture those Sunday afternoons and long summers—because they’re still long if you know how to look at them.”

Reading that, the book came that much closer to finding a place in my cart. Thumbing through the book cinched it. With topics as widely varied as “Navajo Code Talkers’ Dictionary,” “Cloud Formations,” “Secret Inks,” “Understanding Grammar,” “How to Play Poker,” “Making a Periscope,” and “Seven Poems Every Boy Should Know,” I was hooked. I wanted to know all those things.

Opening the book up at any spot immediately draws the reader in. A parts list and clear instructions have me convinced I can build a go-cart. One of the seven poems is “Invictus,” ending “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” An explanatory note tells the reader that William Ernest Henley had a foot amputated when he was a child, that he was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, and he may have been the inspiration for Long John Silver.

If you (or, excuse me, the children you know) are blessed with omnipresent curiosity, this is the right book. Well-designed, well-written, well-chosen, there are even badges at the back of the book for those who have mastered the topics within (and you can print them out at dangerousbookforboys.com). Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m learning about “Timers and Tripwires.” You never know when you’re going to need a good tripwire.

—Vicki Palmquist

Tracking Trash: Flotsam,
Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion
by Loree Griffin Burns
Houghton Mifflin, 2007
ISBN 978-0-618-58131-0

A new entry in the excellent Scientists in the Field series, Tracking Trash is nonfiction with a compelling narrative. Two scientists are featured in the book: Curtis Ebbesmeyer and W. James Ingraham, Jr. Each in his own way contribute to the science of charting ocean motion, which has implications for climate, health, and our environment. Do you think scientists actually used messages set adrift in bottles to conduct their experiments? They did. It was slow and unproductive, waiting for bottles to wash ashore. They lost many more than they found. Then Ebbesmeyer began tracking Nike sneakers that washed ashore after a violent storm unleashed twenty-one containers from a Korean transport ship into the Pacific. Beachcombers became Ebbesmeyer's scientific scavengers, finding sneakers more than three years later as far away as Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands and California. Beachcombers also assisted in the recovery of thousands of floating bathtub toys, once again washed overboard from a ship. In fact, a father and son team in Alaska recorded recovery dates and locations for more than 12 years before turning in their finds to Ebbesmeyer at a beachcombers' festival. Jim Ingraham created a computer program that not only tracks, but also predictively models how the ocean currents carry debris. Another scientist, Captain Charles Moore, was the first to discover the Eastern Garbage Patch. If plastics seem harmless to you, the evidence in Tracking Trash will convince you otherwise. The photos, information graphics, illustrations, and captions are essential to the book, seamlessly enhancing Burns' research and writing. Supporting material on tides, currents, latitude and longitude, and what readers can do to help will inspire children and adults. Anyone with curiosity and a caring heart for Our Home will find this book as fascinating to read as a good mystery and as satisfying as the best in nonfiction.

—Sydney Lange

The Illustrator’s Notebook
written by Mohieddin Ellabbad
Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2006
ISBN 0-88899-700-0

It’s rare in western children’s literature to find a book that portrays Arab men not as terrorists, religious zealots, or exotics. Egyptian author and illustrator Mohieddin Ellabbad’s invitation to peek inside his drawing notebooks is all the more valuable, not just for the art and inspiration he shares, but for the glimpse we get of his playful, creative, child-supportive, and inquisitive mind—attributes of Arab men the west seldom recognizes.

Ellabbad’s book is less about how to make art, than it is about what inspires art, and what makes a person create. He includes his own idiosyncratic bits of inspiration, an airplane shadow, postcards, stamps, henna tattoos and clippings, and musing such as, “What do artists do when they have to draw a wolf?” He considers the wolf in the zoo, and wolves from fairy tales and prehistoric times. In the end, he concludes, “A good artist is the one who can mix up all these different memories and pieces of information so that what his pencil conjures up is a real wolf, a beautiful wolf.”

Ellabbad’s book synchs well with the recent flood of imaginative and culturally aware graphic novels and manga for kids. His book would be a goldmine for thoughtful, artistic kids who are beginning to write and draw their own works, as well as explore how their art reflects their own and other’s ethnicity. He compares western superheroes like Superman to traditional Arabic heroes he drew, and questions why the paint tube labeled Flesh Pink never matched the skin on his or his friends’ hands.

Readers also discover the beauty of the Arabic language when art and writing combine as calligraphy. Though printed in English, Ellabbad’s thoughts are also all written here in Arabic script. He shows readers an Arabic phrase drawn as a pear, and fools around writing his own name in the grandiose script of the sultans.

The book reads from right to left, as it would if it were published in Arabic, again, no surprise to manga reading kids. Ellabbad explains to readers how in English comics move from left to right, but in Arabic, like the written language, comics move from right to left. “I haven’t really thought about how Arab people dream, but I think that we must even dream from right to left!” he muses. His rich dreams can’t help but inspire the direction of readers’ dreams too.

—Cathy Camper

With a Little Luck:
Surprising Stories of Amazing Discoveries
written by Dennis Brindell Fradin
Dutton, 2006
ISBN 978-0-52547-196-7

At the Vienna Hospital in 1846, a new doctor discovered a horrible mystery. There were two separate childbirth clinics in the hospital, and many more women in Clinic 1 died of "Childbed Fever" than in Clinic 2. In fact, records showed that sometimes the death rate was as high as four times more in Clinic 1. Women would beg and plead with their doctors not to be sent to Clinic 1. Other women would have their babies at home, or on the streets, because they were afraid of the deadly illness. 

Why did so many women die in Clinic 1? Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis decided to find out why. He knew that midwives took care of women in Clinic 2, but trained doctors took care of women in Clinic 1. Why would more women die if they had expert doctors looking after them? His grisly discovery will surprise you, and the changes he made in his hospital saved many lives. 

—Joni Kreuser

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew
and the Women Who Created Her
by Melanie Rehak
Harcourt, 2005
ISBN 978-0-15603-056-4

The history of a publishing syndicate drew me to this book. Edward Stratemeyer published his first story for children in 1889. It was called "Victor Horton's Idea." He had been convinced from age six that he would become a writer. It's safe to say he had no idea how prolific he would be. Other syndicates existed at the time he began writing series books. He admired Horatio Alger's and Oliver Optic's stories and emulated them. Responsible for the Nick Carter, Hardy Boys, and Bobbsey Twin series, the Stratemeyer Syndicate was also the birthplace of Nancy Drew. Even though generations of readers, since the 1930s, have been grateful to Carolyn Keene, the perceived author, this series was penned by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Mildred Wirt Benson. Women of adventure themselves, this book provides all the background information that everyone has wondered about for years. It also places the series against the perspective of women's history, which provides an important framework. Series books are key to children's reading and the Nancy Drew books continue to have a profound effecting on readers. Highly recommended.

—Vicki Palmquist

This Land Was Made for You and Me
written by Elizabeth Partridge
Viking Press, April 2002

Folk songs connect people, history, and music in a way that few other types of music do. And few folk musicians have understood that connection as well as Woody Guthrie. This extraordinary book draws the reader into the chaotic life and times of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. Born in Oklahoma during the land rush, growing up at the time that Oklahoma was turning into the Dust Bowl, he had a mother whose behavior was erratic and sometimes destructive. Early in life, Guthrie developed a pattern of being home as little as possible. Four walls seemed to make him nervous. He never finished high school, never had a typical full-time job, and yet he was a brilliant man, well-read, and well-traveled. He had two families, but he was not a reliable father or husband. He took off on his travels at a moment's notice. In a life of contradictions, people loved this man, found him fascinating, and grieved when he descended into the hereditary disease that had made his mother's behavior so erratic. Most of all, it is his music and his lyrics that make us remember him. Elizabeth Partridge has done an admirable job of relating Woody Guthrie's life in a fair but thorough way. He was a difficult person with an outstanding number of gifts to give to the world. This information book has all the tension, surprises, and detail of a good novel—this reader is filled with admiration for how well written this book is and how deeply I was drawn into this man's unforgettable life.

—Vicki Palmquist

Nobody Gonna Turn Me Round
written by Doreen Rappaport
illustrated by Shane W. Evans
Candlewick Press, October 2006
ISBN: 978-0-7636-1927-5

Tracing the Civil Rights movement from Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954 to the passing of the Voting Rights Law in 1965, this collection of true stories about the people who contributed to the passing of the Voting Right Law, people both famous and not famous, is at once moving and motivating. These are stories of uncommon courage. People like Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper who stood up against threats, gunshots, and losing her job to register to vote in Mississippi. People like Diane Nash, who took classes from James Lawson on how to withstand violence so college students could sit in a "whites-only" section at a department store restaurant and be nonviolent. People like Mose Wright, who testified in court to identify the men he had seen abduct Emmett Till from his home. These are the stories and the songs which are important in a testimony to the courage of Americans who stood up for their rights.

The author brings these stories to life in short vignettes. It is the illustrator who creates indelible visual connections to the people in the story. Shawn W. Evans has created outstanding paintings that depict courage, determination, sorrow, violence, and triumph.

Gripping stories will draw in reluctant readers. The songs have lyrics and music so they can be sung by individuals or classmates. A timeline of important dates in the Civil Rights movement, source notes, a bibliography, and a "what ever happened to ..." section are valuable resources.

—Vicki Palmquist

Freedom Walkers
written by Russell Freedman
Holiday House, July 2006
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2031-5

Knowing generally about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isn't enough. There is a magnificent testimony to determination, purpose, strength, and wise decisions in this book by Russell Freedman, a master at telling the story of history in a way that makes it at once grand and personal. It is essential to know this episode of our history, in which a large group of people joined together for over a year, facing many hardships, changing laws in a non-violent manner. Freedom Walkers is a source of inspiration to those who say we are powerless against government and laws. Freedman is very good at writing history in the best storyteller's manner, with tension, breath-catching paragraphs, and vignettes that focus on the people who bring the past close to us. Freedom Walkers is a must-read book, suitable for grades four through adult.

— Vicki Palmquist