Action Covers! Run!

Wright, Barbara. Crow.
Moses has a good life in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. His father is an alderman and a reporter for the African American newspaper, his mother does cleaning work to earn extra money for the family, and his grandmother, Boo Nanny, takes good care of him. He has friends, and enjoys his life of freedom, knowing that his mother was born into slavery but freed when she was very young. When the newspaper publishes an op ed piece stating that if it is okay for white men to father children with black women, it should be okay for black men to have white wives, the community is in an uproar. Wilmington had a large community of middle class black citizens, with representation in the local government, but an all white board of citizens decides that this should end and try to pressure Moses’ father to step down from his office and also try to shut down the newspaper. When the men refuse to give in, the newspaper first loses its offices, and then is torched by an angry mob. Things get worse and worse until there is widespread violence and destruction in the town, and Moses finds that while it is important to stick by one’s principles, it can be very hard to do so.
Strengths: Based on a historical event, this was a very vivid picture of what life was like during that time. I was drawn in my Moses’ concerns and attitudes toward his life and his father. The family dynamic was very interesting, and there was enough action that many readers will enjoy this.
Weaknesses: It might be hard to get readers to pick this one up, but I will definitely try.



Prineas, Sarah. Winterling.
Fer (short for Jennifer) is being raised her grandmother because her parents have both died. Grand-Jane is a homeopathic healer with a still room who is constantly afraid for Fer, who feels restless at the overseeing and just wants to be outside. One night, however, she is involved in a wolf attack and brings the boy who is attacked home to get help. Grand-Jane is very displeased, because the boy is really a puck, and the story of why Fer's parents were killed, and why Fer herself is a halfling is revealed. She tries to stay away, but Fer is drawn into the Way, and eventually leaves her grandmother to try to deal with the Lady of the Land, who is causing spring not to come... in both worlds. The lady has done something evil and has the creatures under her spell. Fer finds out that her mother was the true Lady, and feels it is up to her to find out what the Lady has done and restore both worlds to their proper states while figuring out where her own place is.
Strengths: Facile middle grade fantasy with enough adventure, a nice twist on the Ice Queen legend, present but not overbearing grandmother, competent world building.
Weaknesses: Seems to be rockin' everyone else's socks more than mine. I think it was Fer. Because she is a halfling, she didn't fit in, but my first impression of her was that she was kind of whiny. I finished the book quickly and enjoyed it, but didn't love Fer. Maybe the name bothered me, although it shouldn't, because my son calls himself Vid! (Short for David.)

Notes on Weeding: It went much better yesterday after I filled up a rounder I that I usually stock with Accelerated Reader recommendations with AR books I was considering pulling. This rounder is my most frequent stop, and as I looked at it again and again, and pulled books off it to show students, the number of nose wrinkles I got was enough to make me think "These are just past their prime."

The books I pulled weren't anything fabulous-- they were okay. But the also had appallingly bad cover art, they were dull and dusty, and very, very few students picked them up. When they did, they brought them back later in the day.

It's like the beautiful gray wool Talbot's slacks I paid an entire $5 for that were really comfortable and made me look slim(mer). They also were side buttoned and had very short, narrow ankles. Every time I pulled them out of the closet I put them back, and if I did wear them to school, I felt funny in them. Some things just don't work any longer. I'm not doing my students any favors if I keep books that aren't working for anyone cluttering up the shelves.

*Sigh*

Weeding, or things that make me very sad

One of my parent volunteers was in yesterday and asked what she should do. I said "It's that time of year again. We need to look at weeding." "No, we don't," she scoffed. "There can't possibly be anything LEFT. I've been weeding here for six years!"

I turned and pulled a suspiciously faded book on Hinduism off the shelf. 1979. Is there anything that was published in 1979 that is still current?

Well, except for Cross Country Runner (1975). And My Robot Buddy (1977), which I just bought a copy of on Half.com because our library copy is always out and quickly being reduced to glue and tape.

The point being is that I am absolutely not opposed to old titles. Some old titles I adore. They circulate all the time. Students love them. That Cross Country Runner still has reserves on it.

What I had to look at yesterday was books that have NOT been circulating. Books that are taking up valuable room on the shelves. That are dusty. That smell. Yes, since we had a sculptor in the library (more later) and it was a weirdly busy-then-not-busy day, I spent a lot of the day SMELLING BOOKS. The ones that appear at the top of this post? Ponging. Or, as one of my students said "Not a bad smell exactly, just like my grandmother's house."

I love Up a Road Slowly, but no one has checked it out since 1997. Not only that, but the back cover is barely attached. It just looks sad. I tried to get children to check them out, but the only luck I had was with Alias Madame Doubtfire and the saddest copy of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang you have ever seen. I only got someone to check that out because I told them the book was older than I am!

If only for hygienic reasons, these books need to go. But it's hard. It's like ripping little bits off of my soul. I can weed nonfiction fairly easily, but fiction requires the help of understanding volunteers to hold my hand... after they have ripped books from it. It helps if they then hand me a tissue.

Do I need to get out more, or is this a fairly common reaction to weeding?

Quilting

Latham, Irene. Leaving Gee’s Bend.
Gee’s Bend, Alabama was an impoverished place in 1932. When Ludelphia’s mother has a premature baby and becomes ill with pneumonia afterwards, there is not much to be done, especially since the family refuses the help of a neighbor, Etta Mae, because they fear she is a witch. Ludelphia decides that she will go to Camden, forty miles away, and get a doctor for her mother. She sets off, runs into trouble with the ferry, and is found in the barn of Mrs. Cobb, whose husband ran a general store and helped many of the black citizens. Unfortunately, Mrs. Cobb is a bit undone by her husband’s recent death, and has a grudge against the people of Gee’s Bend. When she finds out that Ludelphia’s family owed her husband money, she vows to go to their house and take everything of value. Ludelphia manages to get to the local doctor, and his wife is somewhat helpful, but tells her that the only cure for her mother is rest and good food. Mrs. Cobb’s raid on Gee’s Bend is awful, but luckily Ludelphia had written to the Red Cross, and supplies soon come to help out the community.
Strengths: Ludelphia is a spunky character who takes her fate into her own hands and does her best to help everyone around her despite her own disability. This is a vivid portrait of a community under stress.
Weaknesses: I love quilting, but didn’t feel that Ludelphia’s sewing fit in with the story.

Nolen, Jerdine. Eliza’s Freedom Road.
Eliza’s master in 1854 has some money problems, and ends up selling Eliza’s mother. When the mistress becomes very sick, she goes from Virginia to Maryland to stay with her sister, and takes several slaves, including Eliza, along. Eliza knows how to read, and tells a lot of stories using the quilt that her mother left her, but dreams of her freedom. When a group of slaves at the Maryland estate find out about Harriet Tubman’s plans to go north to freedom on the Underground Railroad, Eliza also makes her own plans. When the mistress dies, she runs away and manages to make her way to Canada.
Strengths: This would be a good book to read with an elementary class covering this topic. The inclusion of various stories of importance in African American slave culture, as well as explanations of them in the back of the book, are a nice touch.
Weaknesses: Other than the stories, this is not that much different from similar stories that I have read.

Mysteries!

Bond, Victoria and T.R.Simon. Zora and Me.
Zora and her friends Carrie and Teddy get into all sorts of trouble in their small Florida community in the early 1900s. Zora has a flair for the dramatic and is always making up one story or another. After a local man is mauled to death trying to wrestle an alligator, Zora comes up with two stories-- one about Mr. Pendir having the snout of an alligator, and one about what might have happened to a man found murdered beside the railroad tracks. Her stories make it hard for anyone to believe her, but Zora is convinced that she knows what happened to the murdered man, and tries to make her parents believe her to make sure that justice is done.
Strengths: Many students would not know who Zora Neale Hurston is, and this is a good introduction to the author combined with a mystery.
Weaknesses: This is a small book with a somewhat cartoonish cover, but the contents are not necessarily for very young children. There is a lot of heavy duty coverage of prejudice and discrimination, as well as romantic intrigue. The language is also very rich, especially when Zora is spinning her yarns.

Margolis, Leslie. Vanishing Acts. (Maggie Brooklyn #2)

Maggie is still walking dogs, and this time the problem is that someone is hiding in the park and throwing eggs at the dogs. Not only that, but when Maggie spends some time being an extra in a film, she meets the star, Seth Ryan. He then goes missing, and Maggie thinks she can find out what happened to him. Maggie's friends and neighbors play a big part in this plot, as does the neighborhood itself. Maggie learns that stardom isn't all it seems to be, and in the end, solves both mysteries.

Strengths: While light on plot, the characters in this series are so fun that the book is very engaging. The small size and appealing cover art by Tuesday Mourning (as well as the inclusion of dogs!) will make this a bit hit with girls in 3rd through 7th grade.

Weaknesses: Again, light on plot, and somewhat transparent mystery.

Thanks for Erik over at This Kid Reviews Books for awarding me a Liebster Award. If you want book reviews from an actual middle grade boy, head over and check out his great blog. Since I posted the answers to all the questions back in the fall, I won't bore people again-- instead, spend your time visiting Erik!

Jewish Civil Rights Activists

Greenberg, David T. A Tugging String.
Based on the real-life experiences of the author, whose father was a Civil Rights attorney who worked with Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, this novel offered a different perspective to the Civil Rights movement. Duvy lives in New York City, but know that his father travels to the South to help the black citizens. When Dorothy Milton, a college educated woman living in Selma, Alabama in 1960 finds it impossible to register to vote, Jack Greenburg gets involved with the case. His life is in danger during several points in this process, and eventually the entire black community decides that something must be done, which results in a huge march from Selma to Montgomery to protest the hoops that blacks are made to jump through in order to be able to vote. There is a brief section of photographs in the middle, and plentiful footnotes describe real events and people and how the book has dealt with them for the purposes of the story.
Strengths: It was very interesting to read about David’s perceptions of his father’s work at the time, and helpful that he occasionally quotes from his father’s writing about the events. A different and intriguing perspective.
Weaknesses: This fell somewhere between fiction and nonfiction, and while at times I wanted it to be either one or the other, in the end this was probably an effective way to write the book. The title could have been a bit better-- this one is rather nondescript.


Brandeis, Gayle. My Life with the Lincolns.
Mina has a good life in Downer’s Grove, Illinois in 1966. Her parents run Honest ABE’s furniture store, and she and her two sisters attend a nice school, but Mina is convinces that her family all are members of Lincoln’s family reincarnated, and this gives her some worries. She doesn’t want to die (she’s Will), doesn’t want her mother to go crazy, and doesn’t want her father to be shot. There’s not much chance of that at the beginning, but as her father becomes more involved in the Civil Rights movement and starts attending rallies in Chicago. Things often become violent as people protest living conditions and differences in treatment. Her father, perhaps more motivated when he sees the synagogue he attended growing up converted into a Baptist church, starts to neglect the business a bit, and this causes stress in the family.
Strengths: Lots of vivid detail about life at the time-- Quisp cereal and medical encyclopedias at the grocery, family photos in prarie garb-- adds to the immediacy of the story.
Weaknesses: Could have done without Mina thinking she had angina because her breasts were growing-- she is so concerned about this that she takes someone else’s nitroglycerin tablets and ends up in the hospital! There are other descriptions that also made me uncomfortable and really didn’t add to the story.

Marvelous Middle Grade Monday is the brainchild of Shannon Whitney Messenger, who hosts it on her blog. There are always lots of good posts, so visit Shannon's post for a great list of blogs to visit today.

Nonfiction Monday-- You Need a Schoolhouse

Deutsch, Stephanie. You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South

This book definitely comes under the heading of “Who knew?” Washington and Rosenwald, a well-to-do Jewish businessman who ran Sears, Roebuck for many years, built around 5,000 schools in the rural South for black students in the rural South. Their friendship in the early part of the 1900s was unusual for the time but extremely productive. Washington frequently approached businessmen who might help him with his various projects, and Rosenwald felt that black children were not being treated fairly and kept up with the school project even after Washington’s death in 1915.
Strengths: This book is incredibly well-researched and gives minute details on so many facets of this fascinating project. Pictures are included.
Weaknesses: This is a bit too much information for middle school. I would love to see a version done with more pictures, information on the times in general done in sidebars, and not quite as much detail. This would be excellent for high school collections where research projects are done on this topic.

Nonfiction Monday is administered by Anastasia Suen and is hosted today by Capstone Connect.

These Hands

Mason, Margaret H. These Hands.
Illustrated by Floyd Cooper.
Joseph's grandfather tells him about all of the things that he can do with his hands, from shuffling cards to playing piano. One of the things his hands were not allowed to do was to touch the bread at a Wonder Bread factory. African-American workers were only allowed to do cleaning and maintenance, NOT touch the bread because then white customers wouldn't want to eat it. The book then details how people worked to change this and other rules and laws so that today Joseph's hands are allowed to do everything of which they are capable. Nicely illustrated and written, this showcases how unfair rules filter down to even the smallest tasks that children today might not consider.

Historical Picture Books

Evans, Shane. Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom.
This picture book portrays an escape from slavery with extremely simple text and rough-hewn drawings. This would be something the most beginning readers could read, but they might need to talk through the pictures to make sense of the story, and have someone read the explanations at the back of the book to them. Not being a picture book aficionado, especially if there are few or no words, I didn't care much for this personally, but I could see it being used in the elementary school as an introduction to a unit on the Underground Railroad.


De La Pena, Matt. A Nation's Hope: The Story of boxing Legend Joe Louis.
Illustrated by Kadir Nelson.
The Joe Louis-Max Schmeling rivalry in 1938 was of huge concern to the African-American community, and to the US in general. Louis's triumph meant that somehow the Nazis and Nazi ideals were inferior, and Schmeling's triumph dejected the entire country. In easy-to-understand but elegant and descriptive language, this book describes both the fights and their impact on African- Americans during a time when Civil Rights issues were starting to come to the foreground. This would be useful even in a middle school. Perhaps because I had a dear friend who was forced to fight for the Wehrmacht or be killed, even though his views were as far from sympathetic to the Nazis as could be, I am curious to read about Max Schmeling's life-- in Sharenow's The Berlin Boxing Club, he is portrayed as a somewhat sympathetic character despite his vilification in the US.

Guy Friday-- Football

Barber, Ronde and Tiki. Goal Line.
Primarily written, as pointed out by Mr. Winchell in comments, by Paul Mantell, who should be allowed to write books under his own name!

Twins Ronde and Tiki are starting 8th grade and are very excited to start playing football again, but Ronde is disconcerted to find that his identical twin is 3 inches and many pounds heavier than he is. Suddenly, the team is not rooting for “the Barber twins” but just Tiki. Tiki also writes an essay for a contest and wins, forcing him to read the essay at an assembly. He is approached by the school newspaper to write an advice column, and keeping up with football, class work, and the column prove stressful. Another set of twin players from Haiti help the team, but make the Barbers worry about their worth. The Eagles have a chance to have an undefeated season with the return of Coach Wheeler, and might have a chance to go to the playoffs again, but not unless Tiki can get his priorites in order.
Strengths: I wish there were more sports series for boys. These are the perfect length and have just the right mix of sports and school problems. They do need a little more romance, though!Weaknesses: For some reason, even though these are based off the Barbers’ real lives, there’s always something I can’t quite believe. In this one, it is Tiki having to read his essay at assembly, and the sudden popularity of his advice column. Are there any middle school that even have school newspapers?


Tunis, John. All American. (Nota Bene: Published in 1942)
E ARC from Netgalley.com from Open Road Media.

Ronald is a student at a the private Academy and a star on the football team when an attempt to stop Meyer Goldman from making a touchdown results in Goldman being in the hospital with severe back injuries. Wracked by guilt, and increasingly irritated by the attitudes of the students and staff at Academy, Ronald transfers to Abraham Lincoln High School. The transition is tough-- people call him a “pretty boy” and cause him problems until he gets in a fist fight with the nasty Stacey and ends up in the hospital himself. After this, everyone is nicer and Ron plays on both the baseball and football teams. When the football team is invited to an intersectional game in the South, one of the players will not be able to go because the school does not allow Negroes to play. Ronald wants the team to refuse to go, and he has the support of his fellow players, but local businesmen who will lose money if the team does not go put pressure on his father and the fathers of the other players to encourage the team to play. In the end, the team does not bow to this pressure, but end up being uninvited in the South but invited to an intersectional in the North, so everyone is happy.
Strengths: Tunis (1889-1975) always does excellent sports descriptions, and we get football and baseball in this one. The cover alone makes the book worth buying. This is also a good historical description of the plight of African-Americans during this time period. It was fun to read about the fathers talking about the “big game of ‘16” and about Ronald’s lunch: scrambled eggs, potato chips, a piece of pie, bottle of milk and bread and butter, all for 27 cents. Probably considered well balanced, too!
Weaknesses: It was jarring to read “Negro” again and again, and I worry that this will offend readers who don’t know the historical background. Also, since this is from Open Road Media, it is only available as an E Book.

It's funny how small print is an indicator that a book is meant for older audiences. I looked at Caludia Gray's new Fateful, and just couldn't get into it because the print was too small AND it was about werewolves on the Titanic. Lots of people out there need two copies for their libraries, but I don't have the audience for this book this year. Will get this author's Balthazar, however, which comes out March 6. Another one was Hautman's What Boys Really Want, which is usually the kind of realistic fiction I adore, but again, small font (along with more mature subject matter) doomed it.

Another one I really wanted to like was House and Vaswani's Same Sun Here. From the Publisher: " A twelve-year-old Indian immigrant in New York City and a Kentucky coal miner's son become pen pals, and eventually best friends, through a series of revealing letters exploring such topics as environmental activism, immigration, and racism." Again, libraries where Naylor's Faith, Hope and Ivy June is popular will want to have this, but the letter format seemed anachronistic, and I see this being a hard sell at my library. Marjoleine Book Blog and Middle Grade Reads both adored this.

For the past week, I've been longing to reread books. Cleary's Fifteen. Edwards' Mandy. Most recently, Paige Dixon's May I Cross Your Golden River (1975). Someone mentioned it, I remember reading it, and there is not a copy to be found anywhere. This made me think about all of the books I have in my library that are rather aged-- the copy of Mandy (1974) that I have is a first edition. How long will it last? When will all of my copies of Stormbreaker fall to pieces and be irreplacable? I need to teach for 25 more years, so I will not be able to recommend the same books forever.

Second morning this week that gently sobbing seems required.