Audiobook Review: Splendors & Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz, narrated by Davina Porter

My thoughts after listening to this book: Wonderfully written (and very excellently narrated by Davina Porter), but way too long, especially given the nature of the book, and its unrelenting gloom. I have come to the conclusion that this is not a children's book: it is a book about children. The writing is beautiful and descriptive, but it took forever to get to the point (for a children's book.) This book seems to be more of an atmospheric character study, rather than plot-driven, which isn't bad for a book, but doesn't seem like a great idea for it's intended audience, 8-12 year olds. My two older daughters (ages 11 and 13) read it (or tried to, in the case of the 11 year old) before I did and were not impressed with the book.

Don't let my impressions stop you from reading it, or, better yet, listening to it. It may be right up your alley.

On the narrator, Davina Porter: I was so impressed with her narration. She did a superlative job with the characterizations, accents, everything. I will seek out more of her work.

Book Review: Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr; illustrated by Ronald Himler

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is a short book that packs an emotional wallop through it's simple narrative. It is the true story of Sadako Sasaki, who was only two years old when the atom bomb fell on her city of Hiroshima, Japan. Now it is nine years later, and she discovers that she has the "atom bomb disease" (leukemia).

The book doesn't focus on any political message, nor does it focus on the war. It is simply the story of a young girl dealing with her own sickness and death, as a result of an event she herself doesn't remember. Nevertheless, this is a tough book for kids and one that sparks discussions about a myriad of topics: war, war on civilians, atomic bombs, cancer, family support during sickness, whether children are trusted with information about their own illness, hope or lack of hope, myths and legends on which people pin their hopes, death, fear of death. And yes, one comes away with a very anti-war feeling of one's own.

I borrowed Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes from the library to read aloud as part of our world history study. Olivia took it off the stack and read it herself before I had the chance to read it aloud. She soon came back with lots of questions. That sparked Karina's curiosity in the book, so she took it off to read. Much, much discussion ensued on all the topics mentioned previously. (Our copy was the original hardcover, pictured to the right, which contains a brief prologue and epilogue. I understand that later versions also contain discussion points. I wish we'd had that version, but we sure managed tons of discussion that sprang naturally from reading the story, even without a guide.)

I suspect this is a story my girls will forever remember.

Karina's response to my query about her reaction to the book was simple, but she takes longer to process thoughts than Olivia. She said: I thought it was really sad, but really good.

Olivia said:

This is a really sad book, but really worth reading. Until I read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, I didn't even know America had dropped bombs on Japan during World War Two. It made me sad to think of so many people being killed or infected because of it. The story is good. I loved it. I loved that it was about a real girl. And the pictures helped me to understand some things about the story. I liked the legend of the thousand paper cranes, even though they didn't help Sadako. In the end they did help her since the sight of them moving gently on the breeze gave her comfort as she died. I kept hoping she'd get better, but I realized pretty soon that she just wasn't. I'd definitely recommend it. It's one I'd read again. I think this is a book teachers should read to their students. Warning: reading this book will make you cry, especially the end, so read it with a tissue handy. Don't be afraid of crying; you won't regret reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.

Published in 1977 by G.P. Putnam's Sons
Review copy borrowed from the library.

Book Review: The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt

I beg your indulgence as I set up this review a little, so you can understand the frame of mind I came to The Eyes of the Amaryllis with. My family moved to The Gambia the summer after I turned nine, and there for the first time I met the mystery and power of the sea. It was such a new experience that we glutted ourselves with beach-going several times a week. When my parents wouldn't take us, my older brother and I would cycle to the beach off of the Sunwing Hotel to hunt in tide pools and estuaries at low tide. I loved the ocean - the moods, the sounds, the smells; but I learned to fear it too.  A few months after we moved to The Gambia, our next door neighbor's son, a big, strapping, friendly lad of fourteen, drowned in the ocean. It was shocking and horrifying, the suddenness and manner of his death.

In July after I turned eleven I had my own near-drowning experience. I went swimming off the beach at the American Ambassador's residence during a Fourth of July community picnic, and got caught in the undertow. I got carried a long way out, and couldn't get back in because of the force of the undertow. There were some young Peace Corps Volunteers swimming nearby, but I didn't even have the energy to call to them for help. I faced the terrifying reality that I was probably going to die because there was no way I could muster the energy to try swimming again. I alternated treading water and floating on my back, contemplating death and thinking that I didn't want to die like my poor neighbor friend. I hated the thought of what it would do to my family. Fortunately for me, one of those Peace Corps volunteers could apparently tell I was in trouble, even though I hadn't spoken. "Getting tired?" he asked quietly as he swam up to me. I nodded my head and he put his hand under my armpit. "The undertow's bad today. I'm going to show you how to beat it. Let's swim this way." Swimming by my side, we swam parallel with the beach for a little way, and then he lead us in at an angle. That man saved my life. I was too tired to do more than whisper a thank you when we made the beach. He went off with a little wave and a "You'll be alright now", as I lay heaving on the sand, and I didn't see him again that day, even though I looked for him. I never even learned his name, but I'm alive today because he came along. (I didn't tell my parents of my near-death for years, out of fear that they'd ban me from ocean-swimming. In college I became a lifeguard, and then a life guard instructor and first aid and CPR instructor in an attempt to "pass it on.")

It was a year or so later, when I was twelve I think, that I first encountered The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt in the Banjul American Embassy School's library. Written in 1977, it was the first book I read by Natalie Babbitt. There were a couple of her other books on the shelf, but this one sounded the most intriguing, so I read it first. I was instantly captivated by the atmospheric, mysterious story that seemed to capture the hypnotic pull of the sea. It struck me powerfully at the time, I think because of my cumulative experiences with the ocean, and because I, like Jenny in the story, had grandmothers I didn't know very well.

The story takes place in 1880, when eleven year old Jenny (whose real name is Geneva) is being taken to stay with her paternal grandmother, the first Geneva, who has broken her foot and needs help until it mends. Jenny's Gran lives on a bluff in a bay on the Atlantic coast, in the same house she came to fifty years before as a bride.

"To be away from home--to stay with Gran and help her while her ankle mended--this seemed a very grownup thing to do, and Jenny had boasted about it to her friends. But in truth she was a little alarmed about that part, though her grandmother, whom she had seen before only for two weeks of the yearly Christmas season, had long been a figure of romance to her. Gran was not like other grandmothers, smelling of starch or mothballs, depending on the time of the year, and spending their time watering their plants. Gran stood straight and proud. Her face and arms were sunburned. And though she talked and listened, there always seemed to be something else on her mind, something far more absorbing than Christmas conversation.
But Jenny did not care for household chores, and was not at all sure that somewhere in her lay hidden the makings of a bedside nurse. So it wasn't that part of her adventure that excited her. No, the real enticement was the ocean. But this she could not admit. She was the only one of her friends who had never been to the shore. Preposterous, when it was only thirty miles from Springfield! But her father had never let her come, had always refused to discuss it."

Jenny quickly bonds with her unusual Gran, and learns that Gran has been waiting for years for a gift from the sea, a gift from her dead husband. (Thirty years before, Gran's sea captain husband drowned when his ship, the Amaryllis, sank just off the coast of home in a storm, as his wife and child watched from the bluff in helpless horror.) Ever since, Gran has searched the beaches every day at high tide, no matter the time or weather for some memento. (That is, in fact, how she broke her foot.) Now Gran needs Jenny to be her eyes and legs on the beach, and continue the search. But there is another searcher, a mysterious man named Seward, who could not let such a gift be taken from the sea.

I won't tell you anymore. It's the perfect book to read this time of year, if you want a little spookiness.

Twelve year old me loved this book, and because I loved it, I went on to read Tuck Everlasting, which I also loved. I was loath to re-read it as an adult, lest it lose the magic. I'm happy to report, however, that it holds up to adult reading very well, and I caught nuances of the relationship between Gran and her son (Jenny's father) that I didn't fully understand at the time of my first reading, and understand Gran's obsession a little better now, too.


Published in 1977 by Farrar, Straus and Girouux.

Book Review: Sophia's War: A Tale of the Revolution by Avi

Doesn't that gorgeous cover by Edel Rodriguez make you long to read this? It's the perfect cover for this story. (I have a "thing" for silhouettes on book covers. I don't know why, but I feel compelled to buy a book with silhouettes on the cover.)

If you have never read one of Avi's books, you really need to. He writes intelligent historical fiction for young people. He never dumbs down his books, and obviously works hard to be historically accurate.

In this complex, smart story Avi again tackles an aspect of the American Revolution. (He did it once before in The Fighting Ground, where the reader is swept along in thirteen-year-old Jonathon's passion to be part of the fighting, and then his rude awakening to the realities of being a soldier.) But this story isn't just a feminine version of The Fighting Ground. It's a completely different aspect of the war, written in a different kind of narrative.

 The story is broken up into two different time frames. Roughly the first half takes place in 1776 when Sophia Calderwood is twelve years old. Sophia and her parents fled their home in New York City when the British invaded. Sophia's adored older brother William joined the American troops fighting to keep the British out of the city. As the book opens in September of 1776, Sophia and her mother are returning on foot to New York to try to reclaim what they can of their lives. (For safety, Mr. Calderwood must return in secret later.) In an apple orchard on the outskirts of New York, they witness a young man of "dignified bearing" being led by British soldiers to a rope hanging from an apple tree, and Sophia watches in horror as the ladder is kicked away and the young man (who she later learns was Nathan Hale) is hanged.

Still reeling from that shock, they return to their home to find it looted of all their most costly possessions. As they begin the clean-up process, a small troop of British soldiers appears on their doorstep, looking for Mr. Calderwood and informing them they will be required to billet a British Officer. What follows is a tense time of eking out a living while boarding a British officer and pretending to be Loyalists. Sophia develops a reluctant crush on John Andre (oh curse Blogger's lack of language accents!) the British officer boarding in their home, even as she firmly believes in the American cause. When she learns that her brother is a prisoner of the British and housed under appalling conditions, she pleads with Andre to help. What happens next firmly sets her on the course for later events.

The second half of the book takes place three years later, in 1780, when Sophia is fifteen years old. Through her work with her father's publisher friend, she meets a man who recruits her as a spy in the household of General Sir Henry Clinton. As a housemaid, she would have access to information vital to the war effort. She stumbles on to what appears to be a clandestine operation possibly involving the collaboration of the British and an American of high military rank, a man Sophia and other Americans idolized, a man who played a huge part in early American victories against the British. The implications are so shocking and suddenly Sophia is alone in her quest to bring this information to light.

In the author's note at the end of the book, Avi writes that the two story threads based on historical facts "are as historically accurate as I could write them." He goes on to say that "Sophia is as true an individual as I could hope to create, and her actions provide an explanation as to what really happened in 1780."

And can I tell you how much I appreciated his striving for historical accuracy, even down to the language used. So often you read historical fiction, and get jerked out of the story by an author's use of modern words and terminology. In fact, there is a very helpful glossary in the back of the book to look up those unfamiliar words you come across. (A couple of years ago I read a Middle Grade novel by an author who shall remain nameless, about the Civil War era and the main character talks about being "gaga" for a certain boy! Yes, that word was actually used. Having already overlooked other words that were very obviously not historically accurate, I threw the book down in disgust and never went back to it. So I really appreciated Avi's obviously meticulous research on this book.)

Sophia provides the modern reader with an emotional barometer of the life of an average citizen during that time of conflict in American history. Avi shows Sophia's -I think natural- human conflictions that come with living in a war-torn country: how morals and actions change or become ambiguous based on circumstances.

Sophia, as a narrator, is very Self conscious: she narrates her story as someone aware of her audience and how they may be judging her. Her narrative never loses that awareness. There is a "buttoned up" quality to it: like she is recalling this period of time and reacting almost unwillingly to remembered emotions, and doesn't want to come across as too emotional. She tries her best to be fair and balanced in her narrative, not defending her actions and emotions so much as explaining them. And yet, despite the distancing approach to the narrative, the reader is quickly caught up in her experiences.


Book published in September 2012 by Beach Lane Books.

I nominated this book for the CYBILS 2012 in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Also linking up with Armchair CYBILS and The Children's Bookshelf.

Olivia (Age 9) Reviews Her Recent Reads

By Olivia Neal (nine years old)

Stolen Children by Peg Kehret. 

Fourteen-year-old Amy is babysitting a three-year-old girl while the little girl's grandmother is in the hospital and her mom has to be gone a lot helping the grandmother. While the three-year-old is taking a nap, Amy falls asleep too. When Amy wakes up, the little girl is gone. After looking everywhere but not finding her, Amy tries to call the police, but two bad guys burst in and kidnap Amy, too. They take Amy and the little girl to a cabin in the woods. Amy has to figure out a way to get herself and the little girl away from the kidnappers. This is the first Peg Kehret book I read, and it was so scary and thrilling. I loved it. 

Runaway Twin by Peg Kehret.

 Sunny has a twin sister, Starr, but they were separated when they were three years old. Sunny set out to find Starr. So a lot of the story is about her journey to Starr, and then what happen when she does. Sunny's journey was really exciting. I liked the idea of the story, that it was about sisters who didn't really know each other.  It's kind of like me: I have a half sister that I've never met, and I thought about what would it be like if she showed up on my doorstep. Will I like her? Will she like me?

Abduction!  by Peg Kehret.
I just finished reading this one. A little boy is kidnapped from his kindergarten class by his father, who's a crook. And then his older half-sister also gets kidnapped. It's a tense and nail-biting book. I don't really know how to describe it without ruining the story for you, just read the book. You'll like it!

Wilma Tenderfoot: The Case of the Frozen Hearts by Emma Kennedy.
Wilma's a ten-year-old orphan who was abandoned when she was a baby, outside a children's orphanage. She's a bit of a troublemaker, not in a mean way, but out of curiosity. She drives the matron crazy. She wants to be a detective so she can find her parents. Her favorite detective is Theodore P. Goodman and she aspires to be like him. When the matron forces her to go live with a mean lady, Mrs. Waldock, she discovers that Mr. Goodman lives next door. She wants to be his apprentice, but he refuses. So behind his back she tries to help him solve his current case.  I like Wilma because she just so curious and funny (and she has a dog named Pickle). The inspector's pretty funny too. And the case they are trying to solve is interesting and very mysterious.
I have the next book in the series, but it didn't start as interesting as this one. My mom says I have to give it more of a chance.

The Puzzle of the Paper Daughter by Kathryn Reiss.
When Julie finds a note in an old jacket, she and her best friend, Ivy try to find what the note means. When Ivy's Chinese Grandmother deciphers the note (which is in Chinese), she tells them the note is from the grandmother's mother that she gave the grandmother when she was fifteen and immigrating from China. Then Julie and Ivy's dolls get stolen, and 'though the dolls are worthless, they try to discover why someone would want to steal them and what it has to do with the note, if anything.
It was an interesting story, history-wise. I liked the immigration aspect, and I like that it was about dolls, 'cause I like dolls. I just discovered the American Girl mysteries at our library and I think I'll look into more of them.

Recent Reads

Scarlet by A. C. Gaughen (2012). What bookish girl doesn't fall in love with Robin Hood at a fairly young age? I've been fascinated by the legend of Robin Hood since I first read Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of his exploits when I was eleven or so. I loved that book and reread it often. Years later when my parents took us to England for vacation the summer after I turned fifteen, we decided we had to go to Sherwood Forest. It was there that I learned, to my supreme disappointment, that Robin Hood was just a legend. (I wonder why I thought he was real?) This book is a reworking of the Robin Hood legend from the standpoint of a knife-wielding, female "Will" Scarlet, disguised as a boy. I'm not sure how I feel about this book. For sheer entertainment value, it did pretty well. With a few exceptions, I stayed interested in seeing what was going to happen. I mostly liked the characterizations, although I personally don't think the strength of Robin's character features very clearly. Little John features a little too much. I didn't care for him. The story has good action, but the plot is a little lacking, and had too many repeats of the same incident (Scarlet sneaking into somewhere to snoop or free people and getting beat up/wounded in the process), just tweaked a little. I also didn't like the love triangle going on. I think it was relied on too heavily as a plot device, and the many jealousy scenes got old. (I get so tired of love triangles in YA fiction.) But for all my little peeves, it was a very decent read.

My cousin Suey of It's All About Books brought this one to my attention. (Clicking on the website link will take you to her enthusiastic review.)

For a better retelling, read Robin McKinley's The Outlaws of Sherwood. Apart from the Pyle book, it's probably my favorite. It's suitable for readers as young as eight.

Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax (2005). I read this one on the recommendation of a speaker at the last homeschool convention I attended. The book discusses the differences in the male and female brains and the author draws some conclusions about the ramifications of those differences. I'm not sure what I feel about it. I think that the common trend for gender-sameness in public schools is problematic, especially for boys. (By "gender-sameness" I mean the idea that there are no physiological or chemical differences -besides the obvious glandular and hormonal ones- in boys and girls and how they learn best.) I'm not sure I would draw the same conclusions he does in some instances regarding what to do about those gender differences, especially in regard to those children he terms "anomalous." But the book makes for fascinating reading.

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. (Unabdridged Audiobook, read by Esther Benson) I had only a vague recollection of this book, centering exclusively around Pippi herself, her little monkey Mr. Nilsson, and the horse on the porch. I do remember one of my elementary school teachers reading it aloud, but I couldn't for the life of me remember anything of plots or stories. Since it's a childhood classic, I have long been toying with the idea of reading it aloud to my girls, but other, more interesting books have always gotten in the way. We found the audiobook at the library and decided to get it to listen to during our about-town errands. Esther Benson does a good job with the narration, but I have to confess that I'm not a fan of the story. It's like nails on a chalkboard. And I know why I remember almost nothing about it. There's not much there to remember. My feelings can be summed up by my seven-year-old Karina's comment, "For all her travels, she's not very smart, is she?" For all her wildness and shenanigans, she's also not that interesting. I can only attribute the book's lasting impact being due to the wildly outrageous, non-conformist main character, because everything else about it, including the "adventures," is boring. And why, for being as old as she is, does she never learn from her social gaffes? Her wide-eyed, quasi-innocent, "isn't-this-jolly" preciousness (as my grandmother would have said) is nauseating and irritating. Her wildly braggadocio lies aren't even very interesting. This is one book I won't be adding to our personal library. If my children end up loving it down the road ('though they don't seem very keen on it at present) they can buy it with their own money. So there.

Books Read in January

Linked to my reviews.

Books with asterisks (*) are re-reads.

Picture Books

• The Sorely Trying Day (Russell and Lillian Hoban) -  A chain of events leads members of a family to behave badly, causing a ripple effect of bad behavior down the line. Funny and still apropos, despite the somewhat archaic language form used at times. My girls laughed ruefully as they recognized their own behavior.
• Fannie in the Kitchen (Deborah Hopkinson; illus. by Nancy Carpenter) - Takes place in the late 1880's in Boston, Mass. Marcia's mother appreciates Marcia's "helpfulness" but hires Fannie Farmer as a mother's helper, mostly for her cooking. Marcia's ire soon turns to intrigue as Fannie teaches her how to cook. Marcia in turn inspires Fannie to set down her recipes on paper. The pictures are an intriguing combination of images and styles: Victorian lithograph-type for the background, parents and baby; warmer, rounder drawings, in color, of Fannie and Marcia. The idea, obviously, is draw the eye to these two central characters. The hilarious little details in the period-inspired drawings keeps them from pretension; one page shows Marcia's mother licking her plate. The chapter divisions are in keeping with the theme. Each one is a meal "Course," with a little Fannie Farmer hint box on most full page spreads.
• Apple Tree Christmas (Trinka Hakes Noble) - A terrible blizzard near Christmas ruins a girl's favorite apple tree. Will her personal sorrow ruin Christmas? A very good family Christmas story, non-religious, without Santa Claus.
• Birdie's Lighthouse (Deborah Hopkinson; illus. by Kimberly Bulcken Root)  - Birdie's journaling of how her family becomes the lighthouse keepers on a small, bare, rocky and lonely island. Then when her father gets sick, she has to take over as lightkeeper. Although fictitious, Birdie is based on real women who were lightkeepers. There is a wonderful "Afterward" by the author that gives the history of real women/girl lightkeepers.
• When Jessie Came Across the Sea (Amy Hest; illus. by P.J. Lynch) - A young Eastern European Jewish girl receives a boat ticket to America from her Rabbi. Leaving her beloved grandmother behind, she uses her sewing skills -taught to her by her grandmother- to earn money in America, saving it in order to bring her grandmother across the sea as well. A lovely story, beautifully told and illustrated, of devotion and love.
• Uncle Vova's Tree (Patricia Polacco) - A story about a family's Epiphany traditions and the continuation of them even after their beloved uncle, who was the "keeper" of the traditions, dies. I liked it up until the mystical end, which made it lose its power as a family story, to me.
• The Orange Shoes (Trinka Hakes Noble; illus. by Doris Ettlinger) My girls loved this story of a poor country girl who uses her art skills to turn an ugly incident into a work of art, and the family who loves and supports her through it all. Olivia was the one who found this book and read it first, and then came to me and said, "Mom, you have to read this! It's so good!"
• *Tikki Tikki Tembo (Arlene Mosel; illus. by Blair Lent) - This classic brings a giggle every time we read it.
• Grandmother Winter (Phyllis Root; illus. by Beth Krommes) - My girls were confused by this story until I explained the concept of Grandmother Winter. Then we read it again and they could enjoy it. Gorgeous illustrations. 
• Blue Willow (Pam Conrad; illus. by S. Seilig Gallagher) - The "fable" of how the design on Blue Willow china came to be. Well written but sad story. 
• Morris the Artist (Lore Segal; illus. by Boris Kulikov) Morris, who loves to paint, buys a birthday gift for another child that he wants, and when he gets to the party, won't hand over.
• Uncle Blubbafink's Seriously Ridiculous Stories (Keith Graves) -  "Seriously ridiculous", yes. I think it takes a different kind of personality than mine to appreciate this book. Didn't appeal to me at all. I couldn't bring myself to read it aloud to my kids.
• *The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit (Beatrix Potter) - I read this periodically to my children, but they never get excited about them. 
• *Frog and Toad All Year (Arnold Lobel) - My girls are huge fans of Frog and Toad.
• *Days With Frog and Toad (Arnold Lobel) Reading about Frog and Toad never gets old, although some volumes (like this one) are better than others.
• *My First Counting Book (Lilian Moore; illus. Garth Williams) - Linked to my review. 
• Al Pha's Bet (Amy Krouse Rosenthal; illus. by Delphine Durand) 
• This Plus That (Amy Krouse Rosenthal; illus. by Jen Corace) 
• Little Pea (Amy Krouse Rosenthal; illus. by Jen Corace) 
• Little Oink (Amy Krouse Rosenthal; illus. by Jen Corace) 
• Little Hoot (Amy Krouse Rosenthal; illus. by Jen Corace) 
• Spoon (Amy Krouse Rosenthal; illus. by Scott Magoon)
• *Blackout (John Rocco) - A young child wants to play a board game with someone, but all the family members are "MUCH TOO BUSY."  When the lights suddenly go out, there is nothing but time for family togetherness. My girls love this book and keep picking it up to read or look at the pictures. The pictures do most of the storytelling; the text is pretty spare. (As an aside, I love that the family is multi-racial, that the youngest family member could be a boy or a girl, and the dad is cooking.)
• *Grandpa Green (Lane Smith) A little boy tells the life history of his great-grandfather, who is forgetting things. But the topiaries he creates do the remembering for him. A beautiful book, full of clever topiaries to help tell the tale. I appreciated it more than my girls did.
• *Are You My Mother (P.D. Eastman) Always a favorite with my littles.
• *A Bargain For Frances (Russell and Lillian Hoban) - Frances gets tricked by her friend into buying her friend's tea set. When Frances finds out about her friend's trickery, she figures turn-about is fair play. I was never that smart as a child.
• *Bread and Jam For Frances (Russell and Lillian Hoban) - My personal favorite of the Frances books. Deals with the meal battles that parents face with picky eaters. If only they were resolved as easily (and amusingly) as they are in this book.
• *Owl Babies (Martin Waddell; illus. by Patrick Benson) - Linked to my review.
• *Chrysanthemum (Kevin Henkes) - A little mouse girl is made fun of because of her name, until a wise music teacher intervenes. My girls love this book.

Children's Non-Fiction

• Swirl By Swirl (Joyce Sidman; illus. by Beth Krommes) - A lovely, lyrical book about spirals and the many places/ways they occur in nature. Gorgeous illustrations.
• A Fraction's Goal - Parts of a Whole (Brian P. Cleary; illus. by Brian Gable) - Excellent for gaining an overall understanding of fractions. My only reservation was with the pages showing the baking measurements, as the drawings made it unclear to my daughters what the "whole" was. But I can understand how that would be hard to capture in a drawing. We followed up with some hands-on kitchen fractions.
• So You Want to Be An Inventor? (Judith St. George; illus. by David Small) A big hit with my girls, this fun book that talks about the qualities necessary to be an inventor and highlights actual inventors throughout history and the inventions they created as a result of those personality qualities. Superb illustrations.
• Just a Second (Steve Jenkins) A fun trivia book of happenings in the natural world based on time as the unit of measurement, i.e. things that happen in a second, a minute, an hour, etc. Fascinating stuff. Amazing collaged pictures.
• What To Do About Alice? (Barbara Kerley; illus. by Edwin Fotheringham) - An amusing picturebook biography about Alice Roosevelt (daughter of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt) who wanted to "eat up the world." The illustrations are great.

Middle-Grades Fiction

• The Little Bookroom (Eleanor Farjeon) - A compilation of fantastical little stories; some better than others.
• The Middle Moffat (Eleanor Estes) - I read this aloud to Olivia and Karina. Linked to my review.
• The Children of Green Knowe (L.M. Boston) - Linked to my review. 
• Ballet Shoes (Noel Streatfeild) - Linked to my review. 
• Rufus M. (Eleanor Estes) - I read this aloud to Olivia and Karina. They liked this one better than The Middle Moffat. The episodes are more amusing.
• Breaking Stalin's Nose (Eugene Yelchin) - Linked to my review. 
• Anna's Blizzard (Alison Hart)

Young Adult Fiction

• The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Rae Carson) - I liked it.
• Divergent (Veronica Roth) - I read this for book club. Meh.
• The Wild Orchid: A Retelling of "The Ballad of Mulan" (Cameron Dokey)  Well written, likable characters, great storyline, but for the length of story it was (not long), there was too much build-up. When it came to the actual getting to the battle and what made her a hero, it felt rushed and hurried. This is my complaint of all Cameron Dokey's novels in this series: too much build-up, rushed climax and ending.
• *Wildwood Dancing (Juliet Marillier) - This intriguing story is a wonderful blend of several fairy tales (12 Dancing Princesses, The Frog Prince, etc.) and Eastern European legends.

Adult Fiction

• Gap Creek (Robert Morgan) - Just didn't do it for me.
• The Hum and the Shiver (Alex Bledsoe) - Interesting modern Appalachian spin on Celtic legends. Just not sure how I feel about it.
• The Informationist (Taylor Stevens) - Linked to my review.
• *Sacred Hearts (Sarah Dunant) - Linked to my review.

Adult Non-Fiction

• Reading For the Love of It: Best Books for Young Readers (Michele Landsberg) - I love her insightful look at so many aspects and issues within children's literature, and I agree with her on so much. So worth the read despite it's age (published in 1986.)
• The World of Downton Abbey (Jessica Fellowes) - I loved this behind-the-scenes look at the world of BBC's Downton Abbey. A fun peek at history, too. Gorgeous photos and back story, in-depth look at the filming of the show. I'm so enjoying watching it right now.
• HTML Manual of Style (Larry Aronson) - Marginally helpful. It would have been more helpful if I understood it better; I think I need a "dummy's" version.
• The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) - So interesting. He has many valid points, and makes his points very logically and sensibly, but I can see how religious people would be offended by some of what he says. But it's also true that religious people tend to see atheists as amoral at best and immoral at worst, which is just a completely false picture.
• Things I Learned About My Dad (In Therapy) (essays compiled by Heather Armstrong) - Some interesting essays on fathers; some not so interesting.

2012 Newbery Honor Winner: Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin

This book flew invisibly past my radar. I hadn't heard of it or even seen it until I read that it won the Newbery Honor. Obviously, I had to rectify that, so when my latest batch of books came from the library yesterday, full of this year's award winners, I wanted to read this one first.

Synopsis: Ten-year-old Sasha is a fervently loyal Stalinist, who is excited to become a part of the Young Pioneers (Stalin's youth organization) and extremely proud of his father, who works for the State Security (secret police). They live with 46 other people in a communal flat/apartment, happy -from Sasha's perspective- that they are the living epitome of Stalin's ideals. Then, in the middle of the night, the secret police come and roughly haul away his father. What follows is a quick succession of events that has Sasha questioning his loyalty and the validity of the system.

The action of this fairly quick and completely gripping story takes place over the course of only one evening and the following day. It's a book that contains important issues such as freedom (or the lack of it), paranoia, propaganda, idealism vs. reality, standing for right (or not).


Here are some thoughts I had as I read:

• I think Yelchin does a very admirable job of tackling his subject from a naive ten-year-old's perspective. It's a genius approach, reminiscent of Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, where the limits of the young protagonist's understanding and maturity throws a spotlight on the horrors going on around them. What Yelchin seems to steer away from are Sasha's emotions. Deliberate devise or not, I think it's genius to downplay them, because again, it throws the spotlight onto the world in which he lives. The buildup of paranoia and hysteria that exists in the book -created by living in such a system- engulfs the reader in their own emotions. I think it would be completely overwhelming if we had to deal with both sets of emotions at once, especially for the targeted reading age group.
• In the beginning, Sasha is the perfect little Communist, just as he's been trained from baby-hood. Even as people are betraying his family, he doesn't feel a sense of betrayal, rather he admires their patriotism. There are also a few instances where Sasha has to choose to take a stand for right, and you can't help having empathy for his choices. (You will have to read the book to understand this in context.) I think it's a credit to Yelchin's writing ability that he can make us empathize with a boy with whom we have ostensibly very little in common.
• It's interesting to me how the author subtly shows the disconnect between child and adult. Here is Sasha's father, who has trained him to be a good little Communist from birth, and yet somehow expects him to know where the inconsistencies lie between the dogma and reality. It's a mistake we parents frequently make: assuming that our young children can see and understand those subtleties and inconsistencies.
• Yelchin, through young Sasha, gets to the heart of why this period of Russian history is known as The Great Terror: what happens to society as a whole and the individuals within it when every infraction is treated like it's the very worst possible crime? What happens when people are kept in such a state of terror and propaganda that they don't even realize they are the victims?
• The illustrations are dark, and have an exaggerated quality that perfectly accompanies the exaggerated paranoia. (There's an ironic one on pages 106-107 depicting the principal as Hitler.) The illustrations are reminiscent of Communist propaganda posters from the era. The other interesting thing to note is that we only see Sasha from the back or side -always turned away from the viewer- throughout the book, until we finally see his face for the first time on p. 137, just before the end.
• This book would make an excellent accompaniment to history lessons about that era for children age 10 and up. I'd have high schoolers read it as part of a Russian history unit. I think it would also make excellent book club reading.

Ghosts and Ballet and Mini Reviews, Oh My! (Some read-alouds for the 7-12 age range)

The Children of Green Knowe (L.M. Boston). The story of young Tolly who goes to live with his kindly Great-Grandmother OldKnowe whom he has never met, in an old manor in the English countryside and finds it benevolently haunted by the spirits of three children (Tolly's ancestors) who died during the Plague in the 1600's. Lonely Tolly loves exploring the grounds with their whimsical topiaries, and learning about the history of the house and his ancestors and the three children, Toby, Alexander and Linnet.

Originally published in 1955, this book has a gentle, old-fashioned feel, with a delicious bit of shiver to it. It somewhat reminds me, writing-wise, of Frances Hodgson Burnett's books.
It's suitable for good readers from ages seven and up, it would also make a good read aloud (if your children are okay with the idea of ghosts. Mine are not, even though the ghosts in the story are benevolent.) It is the first of a series.

Ballet Shoes (Noel Streatfeild). Great Uncle Matthew is passionate about collecting fossils and other natural items, and fills his large house with the things he's collected on his travels, including the three abandoned baby girls -each under different circumstances- he brings/sends home on three separate occasions to his niece, Sylvia. When GUM (Great Uncle Matthew) disappears and money gets tight, Sylvia takes in a motley assortment of boarders who all teach the girls something, which allows the three very different but devoted "sisters" to come into their own. 
Written in 1936, it was really quite a progressive book for it's time, when you think about it, in terms of its treatment of women and careers. I like that it shows, in a rather vague way, that every person has something to teach us.
I'm remembering the scene in the movie You've Got Mail, where Meg Ryan's character kind of gushes over this book and the other "Shoe" books by Noel Streatfeild. I'm sorry to say I can't gush, but it was a good story, with solid writing and interesting characters. It just didn't grab me. Maybe because the problems the family faces are easily and conveniently solved with no real character growth on anyone's part. Although it's not one I'm personally anxious to read aloud to my girls, it would make an good read aloud, especially if you have little dancers in your family.
This is the first time I've read this children's classic, and I wonder how I'd have reacted if I'd read it at the right age. Maybe then I would have gushed, but I doubt it. Even then I liked a little more dramatic tension in my stories. (I wish the publisher had put in more pictures by Diane Goode in this version I read. It was too slim on the illustrations.)

Family Stories: The Ingalls Family

Little House in the Big Woods (by Laura Ingalls Wilder) was the first book I read aloud to my girls. Olivia was three and a half years old, Karina was two and Susanna was in utero. We had already read the My First Little House Books, which I had come across at our small local library, and Olivia kept wanting more stories about Laura. But there weren't any more of those books, so I decided to feed her desire by reading her the original book Little House in the Big Woods. It had the added advantage of being about a girl that was close to Olivia's age (Laura is four in that first book) and her family life in the big woods of Wisconsin.

I took it slow, reading only about half the chapter every day. I knew she had an excellent attention span and comprehension for someone her age (a result of being read aloud to almost from birth combined with no television viewing) but some of those chapters have long descriptive passages that were beyond her knowledge base and so could easily lose the attention of one so young. Olivia loved it. It delighted her to encounter the expanded episodes she was familiar with from the My First Little House Books. (I think the pace we took was perfect for her.)  To this day she remembers the story of Ma slapping the bear (thinking it was Sukey the cow), and cousin Charley's version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, where his trouble-making lands him in a yellowjackets' nest, and he has to wrapped in mud and linens to bring down the swelling.

Coincidentally (or maybe not) this is the first novel I remember being read aloud to me, and it made a big impression on my young mind, too.

For those of you unfamiliar with this book -is there anyone unfamiliar with this book?- it tells the story of a family living in the woods of Wisconsin in 1872. Pa is a tall hard-working brown-haired, brown-bearded man with twinkling blue eyes, adored by his little girls. Ma is quiet, gentle, and determined to teach her girls about manners, hard work, and self-sufficiency. Mary is the oldest daughter who, even at five years old, is always obedient and industrious. Laura is four years old, small in size but large in spirit, which frequently gets her into trouble in this and the subsequent books. Baby Carrie is the youngest. This is the story of their life in those big woods.

I remembered the books with such fond nostalgia from my childhood, but reading them as an adult gave me a whole new appreciation for them. What strikes me in reading these books is the background story that's taking place: the hardship the family experiences may be mainly from Laura's point of view, but the tension and thread under the surface is about these two adults who are trying to scrabble out a living while protecting their children as much as possible. Life was very hard for those pioneers and homesteaders. The mere act of living for pioneering people meant working from sunup to sundown just to make sure they had what they needed to see themselves through the cold winters. These are wonderful history books about the pioneering movement and spirit. The fact that Laura gives so many wonderful descriptions of what living that life entailed, means that we get a fascinating glimpse into the early settlement west. Despite what some critics of the books have said, Laura doesn't romanticize the life. She tells the good and the bad matter-of-factly. Some of the bad things that happen in this and the other books of the series have no easy, nicely-wrapped-up resolutions. She knows that life was hard, and yet they found comfort in the little things like Pa's fiddle music, an ongoing motif throughout the series. (See my post about Pas' Fiddle Project for a fun addition to your reading of this series.)

Our family has gone on to read more of the Ingalls family adventures in:

• Little House on the Prairie where the family leaves the Big Woods because they were getting too crowded to Pa and journeys to the Kansas Territory. It tells of life on the trail in the covered wagon, the family building their log cabin and the problems of life on a flat prairie in Indian Territory (wolves, a prairie fire, etc.) (Be aware that this book contains some of the prejudiced attitudes of white settlers at the time. But I thought the scenes where Laura and her Pa discuss those issues were very poignant, since Pa recognized the problem that people like him were creating by their westward expansion -i.e. the Native Americans being booted off their land- but didn't know what to do about it. Toward the end of the book, this forced migration is something Laura witnesses.) In the end, the Ingalls family is evicted from their land by the U.S government as well.
• Farmer Boy is about Almanzo Wilder (Laura's future husband) as a boy in on a large farm in New York state.
• On the Banks of Plum Creek has the family leaving the Kansas territory and settling in a dugout on Plum Creek in Minnesota, before Pa builds a house with machine sawed lumber. In this book Laura and Mary go to a real school and church for the first time, and meet obnoxious Nellie Oleson. The family also has to contend with a plague of locusts, which forces Pa to walk to find a job three hundred miles away in order to feed his family and be able to buy grain for the next planting season. Ma and the girls has to cope with everything in his absence.
• By the Shores of Silver Lake takes place five years after the family first came to Plum Creek and finds the family just recovering from a scarlet fever epidemic. Mary has been blinded by scarlet fever. and Grace has been added to the family. The family (Baby Grace has joined the family) moves to the Dakota territory, where Pa works as the pay clerk for the railroad company. And the family becomes one of the first to settle in DeSmet. (This one was our least favorite so far.)

That's as far as we've gotten in our reading aloud. We will probably revisit the series toward the end of this year, rereading Little House in the Big Woods for Susanna's benefit. She will be delighted to read about a girl who is her age. (She seems a little obsessed by that idea right now.) And my older girls appreciate it more at their "advanced" ages than they did at three and two.

 I would highly recommend the series for young boys. There are tons of exciting things that happen.

The books of the The Little House on the Prairie series:

• Little House in the Big Woods
• Little House on the Prairie
• Farmer Boy
• On the Banks of Plum Creek
• By the Shores of Silver Lake
• The Long Winter
• Little Town on the Prairie
• These Happy Golden Years
• The First Four Years

Family Stories: The Moffat Books by Eleanor Estes

We had a delightful time reading The Moffats aloud last year, and the girls are eager for more Moffat adventures. So I caved to their begging and pleading and am reading the second book in the Moffat series, The Middle Moffat.
If you are not familiar with The Moffats, the stories -written in the early 1940's- revolve around an American family living in Cranbury, Connecticut before and during the first World War, that includes Mama, Sylvie, Joey, Jane, and Rufus. Their father died before we meet them in the first book. Their mama supports the family with her sewing and tailoring, but it's not an easy living. There's a lot of scrimping and making do, and the children have a lot of freedom to come and go, in a manner unfamiliar to children in our day.

The first book's overarching theme is that Moffat family house, which all the young Moffats have grown up in, is only a rental, and the landlord has put a "For Sale" sign on the house. With this looming over their heads, the Moffats proceed with life.

In these somewhat autobiographical books, based on Eleanor Estes' childhood memories, each chapter of the books is a complete story about some episode in the children's lives. My girls' favorites from The Moffats were the Halloween chapter, where they make a ghost in their attic to try to scare the obnoxious neighbor boy, and the chapter about Jane losing their coal money.

The second book, The Middle Moffat (winner of the Newbery Honor), finds the family adjusting to life in a new house, neighborhood, new friends, and for Jane, a new school.

The appeal that Eleanor Estes' books have is that she is able to capture the mind set of young people, their impishness, their curiosity, how they see the world, etc., in a way that transcends the passage of time. And Louis Slobodkin's whimsical sketches helpfully highlight the story. (These books are also an interesting look at American children's lives during this time in history.)

We've enjoyed getting to know the Moffats and we're looking forward to more of their adventures.

Here are the books, in order:
The Moffats
The Middle Moffat
Rufus M.
The Moffat Museum

Karina's New Favorite Series: The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley; illustrations by Peter Ferguson

Our library has a section devoted to Middle Reader book series, and one day about a month ago, Karina spied The Sisters Grimm series on the shelf and brought one (it was Book 4) to show me. She was so excited. "Don't you think this has a spooky cover, Mom? It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz. Is this one I can read?"
I was a little nervous, because I didn't know what these books contained. And with her still being so young, (she turns seven in December) I don't want her reading things she isn't ready to handle. I also know Karina. She has, up until now, been largely a book snacker (meaning she rarely reads a whole chapter book straight through.) And although lately I have noticed her getting more into reading whole books, I doubted that she'd stick with this book.

On the other hand, they sounded right up her alley. (Combining fairy tales with sleuthing? Genius!) So I gave the go-ahead. She started with Book 4, Once Upon a Crime, because she liked the deliciously spooky cover.

She started reading it on the way home. After about 20 minutes of silence, she said, "Mom, I'm not sure I got the right one."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, I think I've started in the middle of the story. Things are happening and I don't know why. I don't think these books are separate like Nancy Drew, I think the story continues in each book. I think I need to start with Book 1." So we went back to get Book 1, The Fairy-Tale Detectives. And last week we got Book 2.  And yes, indeed she reads them avidly. And comes to share funny bits and scary bits, and I have only the vaguest notion what they're about.

She got Olivia hooked on them too.

The library only has Books 1-7. The other night I was looking at Hastings (a book store in our area that also sells used copies, which is now going out of business) and found Book 8. There was much jumping up and down and squeals when I came home with the loot. I was the hero of the hour.

And then they discovered the audio books at the library. More jumping up and down and giddiness. And I hear them upstairs, blasting (okay, I'm getting old) the audio books and chortling at the antics of the characters, and squealing when something bad starts happening. And again with the pausing and running down, both of them laughing and trying to outdo each other in relating the current happenings. And still I have no idea what's going on. (The audios are very ably narrated L.J. Ganser.)

Here's the little I know about the books:

• Read them in order!
• The main characters appear to be sisters Sabrina and Daphne, and their mischievous friend Puck, who comes to live with them, and both helps them and makes their lives fun and miserable, as only brothers can.
• Something has happened to their parents and they live with their granny, whom they only just met.
• There are loads of fairy-tale characters.
• They have awesome covers and internal illustrations.
• I'm going to have to read them myself.

The Fairy-Tale Detectives (Book 1)
The Unusual Suspects (Book 2)
The Problem Child (Book 3)
Once Upon A Crime (Book 4)
Magic and Other Misdemeanors (Book 5)
Tales From the Hood (Book 6)
The Everafter War (Book 7)
The Inside Story (Book 8)

There may be more coming??? Not sure.

Author Michael Buckley's website
Illustrator Peter Ferguson's website

Mini Book Reviews of Some of This Year's Reads

God Went to Beauty School

by Cynthia Rylant
ages 12 and up

I really enjoyed these poems. They are both fun and thought-provoking at the same time. A very intriguing image of God, although some critics may say it humanizes God too much.

The House of Dead Maids

by Clare Dunkle

ages 12 and up

I have never been able to get into Wuthering Heights, and since this book is billed as a prequel of sorts to Wuthering Heights, I'm probably missing something.  All in all, even without reading Wuthering Heights, it was a good ghost story. It definitely had the Gothic horror vibe going, if you like Gothic horror. I liked the story, and it held my interest, although the writing felt a bit choppy and incomplete at times. But maybe that's just a reflection of what the character felt. I liked the main character, Tabby, and was intrigued by how Dunkle wound her into the back story of Wuthering Heights.

The Heavenly Village

by Cynthia Rylant
Ages 10 and up

I loved this book about a picturesque village God created as a "halfway house" for souls not ready to go to Heaven. This is a book of short stories about the residents of that village. Such good stories! Categorized as juvenile fiction, this is nevertheless a book anyone can enjoy. (And adults will probably appreciate it more.)

Downright Dencey

by Caroline Dale Snedeker

ages 8 and up

Newbery Honor Book

I expected to like this one more than I did. Especially given that it's a Newbery Honor book. The writing is excellent -albeit too long and wordy at times- and I like the character development. It was also an intriguing look into Quaker life.  The main male protagonist annoyed me no end. It was okay overall, good, even great in some places, but I struggled to stay interested enough to finish.

Mini Reviews of More Books I Read In September

Children's Literature: A Reader's History From Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer. (Non-fiction)
I only got through about half of this book before it had to go back to the library. Very informative, but rather dry. I love reading about the ins and outs of children's literature, but this book is text dense, ponderous and heavy, and is not a quick read.
I feel like I should give it another chance, but not right now.

The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. (Middle Grade)

An odd little story; an allegory of peace, if you will. Despite being the inspiration of the animated movie The Iron Giant, the only resemblance between the two is the presence of a metal eating iron giant and the boy named Hogarth.

Ivy's Ever After by Dawn Lairamore. (Middle Grade)

This reminded me a little of the picture book The Paper Bag Princess. Plucky princess Ivy doesn't wait around to let life happen to her, especially when she learns that the prince who is supposed to rescue her from her dragon-guarded tower imprisonment is an evil jerk, and her word puzzle-loving dragon jailer turns out to be a real friend. Together, she and the dragon set off to find her fairy godmother to enlist her help in fighting the people plotting to take over her father's kingdom. I think this would make an excellent read-aloud for my girls, and I like that the story is about friendship, family, and resourcefulness. There is a sequel out just today called Ivy and the Meanstalk. 

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen. (Adult Fiction)

I really enjoyed this story about two women in a small Southern town, connected through their grandmothers who were once best friends, brought together in a surprising friendship as they struggle to right old wrongs and forge new paths of community, belonging and love. It's a story that combines mystery, romance, coming-of-age, and just a touch of magic.

(I liked that the main character from Garden Spells, Allen's debut novel, made an brief appearance in the book.)

Show and Tell: Exploring The Fine Art of Children's Book Illustration by Dilys Evans. (Non-Fiction)

A feast of a book for illustration enthusiasts, highlighting a few of the very talented illustrators of children's literature. The "story" behind the art of: Hilary Knight, Trina Schart Hyman, Harry Bliss, David Shannon, Bryan Collier, Paul O. Zelinsky, Brian Selznick, David Wiesner, Betsy Lewin, Denise Fleming, and Lane Smith. Interesting and well-written. My only "complaint" is that I wish there were more artists featured. (It makes me sad that many of the books by Trina Schart Hyman are no longer in print.)

Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst. (Young Adult)
Pearl (please note the irony of a creature of death named for the jewel symbolizing purity and innocence) is a young vampire from an old and distinguished vampire family. When she is stabbed through the heart by a unicorn, her whole world shifts. Suddenly she can be out in sunlight without burning up. When a diabolical plan hatched by her scheming parents lands her in high school, Pearl finds herself developing a conscience and friends. What will happen when her two worlds collide?

Blood Spirits by Sherwood Smith. (Adult/Young Adult Fiction)
I was so excited to read this sequel to Coronets And Steel, that came out the week after I finished the first book. And I wasn't disappointed. Excellent writing, same great characters, excitement, faster paced (than the first book), and a satisfying conclusion. (At least I'm guessing it's the conclusion?)

Charles and Emma: The Darwin's Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman. (Non-Fiction)
A fascinating, excellently written, and thoroughly researched, enjoyable biography about the Darwin's life together.

Overbite by Meg Cabot. (Adult Fiction)
The sequel to Insatiable. I liked it okay, although I wasn't thrilled with where Cabot chose to take the story. Oh well. The writing seemed rushed, compared to her first book.

Anyone But You by Jennifer Crusie. (Adult Fiction)
My first Jennifer Crusie book. A fun, romantic story about an older divorced woman who reluctantly falls in lust/love with her younger downstairs neighbor. I liked it a lot. I'll be back for more from this author.

Amish Women: Lives and Stories by Louise Stoltzfus. (Non-Fiction)
A loving, intimate look at a few selected Amish Women, mostly in their own words, by a former member of their order. 

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (Adult Fiction)
A poignant, powerful look at life in early American history, as a young Puritan girl struggles with her place in the world, and her Native American friend is dragged, by circumstance, out of the life he knows. My first book by Brooks. Now I want to read her others.

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance by Elna Baker. (Non-Fiction/Memoir)

Elna Baker is a Mormon living in New York City, something her mother, especially, is not comfortable with. This is Elna's frank account of her life as she struggles with her religious identity and what it means to her.

Children's Classics: The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes; illustrated by Louis Slobodkin

This is the story of Wanda, a poor immigrant girl who is left out of the games the other girls play, through her own innate shyness and their careless small cruelties.  One day, after being taunted for her differences yet again, Wanda claims to have a hundred dresses, which makes the girls turn more cruel as they know she can't possibly have them. It becomes a game: to taunt Wanda about her made-up dresses. Told in third person narrative, through the "eyes" of Maddie, one of the taunters (a girl who fears that she herself will become the taunted) this is also the story of how her experience with Wanda changes her forever.  It is a timeless story that children (and adults) can relate to today just as much as when it was written 66 years ago.

Through Estes' understated, unemotional writing, the little cruelties of the girls stand in sharp relief, and Maddie's moral dilemma is more poignant. One of the things I love about this story and what makes it so effective, is that the ending is so bitter-sweet, much like real life. Maddie learns a deep, lasting lesson, but too late to change how she treats Wanda. It is questionable how much of a lesson the other girls have learned. Again, much like real life. We, the readers, absorb the lesson, and at the same time, learn that some situations in life are not cut and dried, so to speak, but full of contradiction and nuance. We learn to be careful, because we can't always right the wrongs we do.