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E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
In 1943, Alex and Jack Robichaux and Ingrid and Beatrice Ahlstrom live in Sparhawk Point, Michigan, and are great friends even though their lives are rather different. The boys’ father has passed away, and their mother is struggling to keep the family’s tourist cabins open. She eventually takes a job at the fishery, and wants the boys to step up to help with the housework. Alex especially struggles with being responsible, even though he fully appreciates that when he is not, it’s harder for his mother. The girls are new to the area, and their father is the pastor of a small church. Not many people in the area go to church, and they are concerned that their father feels that he is not doing enough for the war effort and fear that he will enlist to be a chaplain. All four children love the area, and don’t want to leave. After seeing a shadowy shape along the coast, they decide that if there were a monster akin to the Loch Ness one, more people might come to the area. The tourist cabins would get rented, and more people would come to church, which could help ensure that the children can stay. The girls’ Aunt Ebba is a reporter for the local paper, and runs an article on the children’s assertions about the creature. This gets picked up and causes a lot of interest, especially since similar claims were made in 1891 by Jeremiah Burns, who still maintains that there is something in the water. Beatrice fancies herself an interior designer, and tries to freshen up the cabins and well as the church, with sometimes disastrous results. As the monster, named Martha, gets more and more interest, the children start to worry that her “presence” might have the opposite effect and turn people away. When they find out more secrets about her, they loop in their aunt, and find various ways to make life in their beloved Sparhawk Point sustainable.
Strengths: Like Johnson’s The Blossoming Summer, The Star That Always Stays, or The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry, this story has a very classic feel to it, with children having a lot of agency and getting into a number of low stakes scrapes. There’s something about the writing that is very reminiscent of Dorothy Canfield Fisher, whose Understood Betsy I still love. The Robichauxes' struggles are very true to the time period, and it was great to see that the Ahlstrom’s stepped in to help. I loved the descriptions of the area, especially the manse and the vacation cottages. There are frequent references to the Robichauxes’ Ojibwe heritage, and there is a nice Native American connection to the monster. There’s some Swedish heritage as well. This was a great gentle read that puts the homefront during World War II into perspective.
Weaknesses: While I love Johnson’s writing, few of my students request historical fiction, no matter how much I promote it. Historical books do a little better if there's lots of action and adventure, but the mystery will help this one. Also, painting brick should be a federal crime, so when Beatrice did this, it hurt my soul!
What I really think: This is a good choice for readers who enjoy classic children’s literature or more modern books like Birdsall’s The Penderwicks or Albus’ Nothing Else But Miracles.
June 2, 2026 by Heyday
Copy provided by Young Adult Books Central
Born in California in 1908, Alice belonged to the Numu (Paiute) community. Her parents were supportive of her education, so when she wanted to attend the new Big Pine School instead of the Big Pine Indian School, they promised to help her fight to attend. At the time, many Indian Schools, including Alice's focused on teaching students only what they would need to be laborers and servants. Schools were not well supplied, and were inferior to the white schools that the Native children were not allowed to attend. Alongside Alice's story, we get a lot of information about the area in which she lived and the sociopolitical climate of the time, which is helpful in understanding Alice's experiences. Alice's case went before the court, and she and several other Native students were finally allowed to attend the Big Pine School. It wasn't easy, and not everyone welcomed her, but she managed to go on to high school and have a career helping other Native children further their education.
The portions of the book that tell Alice's story are in verse, and accompanied by Thompson's vibrant illustrations that show what it was like for Alice to live in her community and fight for her rights. The nonfiction sections have photographs, reproductions of documents and newspaper articles, and helpful sidebars with important vocabulary. There are timelines threaded throughout the book as well, and those help put the events of Alice's life in context with other civil rights issues at the time.
At the end of the book, there are good resources for young activists who need guidance on how to get involved in their community so they can fight injustices in the same way that Alice did. There are also source notes, a bibliography, and a complete index.
Some of the notes include information about other children who fought to go to school, which is a great way to get readers interested in searching for other inspirational cases. Readers might want to pick up Huahn and Chan's Mamie Tape Fights to Go to School, Conkling's Sylvia and Aki, and Aguila's A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez and Kanefield's 2014 The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement. There two other books in the Fighting For Justice series (about Fred Korematsu and Biddy Mason) that are also great additions to middle grade libraries.
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