MMGM-- Books, and some Blather

It's Marvelous Middle Grade Monday at Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe and What Are You Reading? day at Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers. 

An update on a few personal matters; feel free to skip:

Back from London. We went to the Warner Brothers studio where Harry Potter was filmed, and she cried while standing in front of the scale model of Hogwarts. We saw just about everything else we wanted to see, and had a great working knowledge of the Tube by the time we left. 

My podiatrist didn't understand that "normal activity" for me is walking 10-15 miles a day. After the first week of walking about London (one day was 17 miles!), my foot started to ache. Couldn't very well NOT walk, so I'm back in my boot for a month. 

I mean, the spy mission went well, and I managed to nab the double agent, but my wall scaling skills need work, and falling from the top of the Shard is not a good idea!

Hope everyone else's summer has had fewer complications! On to the reviews!

Spradlin, Michael. The Enemy Above
June 28th 2016 by Scholastic Press
ARC from Young Adult Books Central

Anton's life in the Ukraine has been difficult. His mother died when he was young, and his father went off to fight in WWII and has not been heard from for a very long time. He has a supportive uncle, however, as well as his grandmother, Bubbe. When his village is overrun by the Nazis, a small group of people manage to escape, but they are found by Major Von Duesen, who is taking his directive to make the area free of Jews very seriously. Bubbe is angry and lets Von Duesen know, which gives Anton time to escape, although Bubbe is taken into custody so she can be questioned later, and two neighbors are shot to death. Anton is bound and determined to get Bubbe back, since she is all he has left. He manages to sabotage the truck she is on and free her, and they make their way to a cave where they set up a community and try to survive by stealing food from local farms. Von Duesen is angry that his career was ruined by Bubbe's group, and vows to find them and bring them to justice, especially since the war is not going well for the Nazis. How will Anton and his friends and family be able to survive until the Americans come and the Nazis retreat? 

There are never enough books about the Jewish experience in the Holocaust, and this is an interesting change from books where people are sent to camps. The details of escaping, living in the cave, and foraging for food are all vivid and helpful in understanding another facet of the Jewish experience. That this book is set in the Ukraine was also interesting, especially since Bubbe knew some German since the Ukraine had been so unsettled for so many years. 

Anton is motivated by survival, and also by helping to keep his family alive, and his efforts to do this are well described. It is Von Duesen, however, who is an interesting character study. While there had to have been many Germans who treated the Jews in horrific ways, there were probably a larger number who did what they were told to do lest they suffer themselves. Von Duesen is between these two types of people-- he's irritated by the Jews enough to commit atrocities, but the core of his motivation seems to be his own success. Therefore, when the Jews escape, he is more concerned that it will look bad for him with his superior officers than with the fact that there are Jews who escaped. I hadn't really thought about people who lingered in that area of self-absorbed cruelty. Kathryn Lasky's portrayal of Leni Riefenstahl in The Extra would be the closest book I can think of that has such a character. 

Fans of Dan Smith's WWII books, Will Osborne's Hitler's Secret, or even Hoose's nonfiction book, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club will find the portrayal of Anton's struggle against the Nazis to be an excellent addition to the body of books about the Holocaust.


Steinmetz, Katy. Awesome America
May 31st 2016 by Time For Kids 
Copy provided by Blue Slip Media

Unfortunately, this came in the mail right before I left for England, and it's the sort of book that I have trouble reviewing. It's not connected narrative; it's sort of like a geographical and historical Guinness Book of World Records. Highly browsable and the sort of book that children love to flip through to look for pictures that amuse them. In that regard, it's sort of like a whole week pasta version of Guinness. 

A variety of topics, ranging from presidents to states to little known historical facts are covered in well-illustrated, beautifully designed pages. I can see this being used by classroom teachers to instruct students about elements of the page such as side bars, bold print, etc. 

This will get a lot of heavy use in middle school and elementary libraries, so it does concern me that the paper over board binding is already showing small tears. With a list price of $24.95, this will probably get its money worth in use, but might not see out an entire year.