Remembering the “Ring of Fire”

Across the country on May 20, stadiums and backyards filled with lunar enthusiasts of all ages who gathered to see the moon move between the sun and earth at the right distance to look as if the moon wore a fiery crown, giving it the dramatic name, “Ring of Fire.”  

The difference between a ring of fire and a solar eclipse is the distance of the moon from the earth when the moon is between the earth and the sun. For many people, this is exciting, entertaining maybe, but not something their lives revolve around, pardon the pun. But what if it did?

EVERY SOUL A STAR by Wendy Mass, Little Brown and Company, 2008

As this perfect for summer reading odyssey begins, thousands have gathered at a remote campground named Moon Shadow to catch a glimpse of a rare sight: a total eclipse of the sun. This brings together three teens who would never have become friends in any other setting. They tell their stories in alternating points of view.

Ally has grown up at Moon Shadow. It’s her home. She can’t imagine life being anything else but  stargazing and comet hunting. This is her orbit, but it’s all about to change.   

Bree is a future beauty queen and this is not just her own opinion. However, the reader can’t help but wonder if Bree is in eclipse. When will the real Bree peek out?

Jack is overweight and awkward. He likes his own company as well as one can when he is pretty limited in the company of others. He gets a chance to break free of this involuntary comfort zone and when he does, he surprises himself.

All of this is revealed against the background of the coming eclipse as the three characters wear different hats and experience different roles with other age groups, from frightened children to senior citizens. This book is all about broadening horizons, coming of age, stretching, and growing a little in preparation for growing a lot.

Author Wendy Mass understands the plight of those who struggle to find their own individual places in the universe. Both boys and girls will find this multi-layered story as insightful as it is interesting.

Brave Little Book

Proving one can’t judge a book by its thickness, here is a brave little book, slight in pages, but powerful in how and what it exposes. The message is a challenge to us today to confront fear and stand up to bullies, at the core of every dictator’s hold on his people. 

BREAKING STALIN’S NOSE by Eugene Velchin, Henry Holt and Company, 2011

This moving story takes place over two days, during the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, but it offers the breadth and depth of a lifetime. As events unfold, ten year old Sasha’s devotion to his father, a Communist, and Stalin, their leader, remains steadfast no matter what he is told. Sasha’s closeness to his father is established with warm, quiet scenes but this ends abruptly when the police, “State Security,” barge in during the night and haul his father away.

In a country suffering from a regime where everyone is watching everybody else, no one is really safe from being “reported.” Sasha’s father was reported by another man living in their communal apartment house. That man and his family move into the disgraced father’s apartment before Sasha can rub the sleep from his eyes, ejecting Sasha into the hallway and leaving him homeless. Seems Sasha and his father enjoyed a little more space in their apartment than others. Communists may believe that everyone should share equally, but woe unto those who seem to have even a little more. Envy causes grief.  

Sasha’s lonely experiences peel away his innocence in layers a child can understand. Life settles upon his shoulders like a blanket that is too heavy. Even so, the book ends on a note of hope. Good people still exist.

The author, who left the Soviet Union when he was 27, has written and illustrated several children’s books. He dedicated this book to his father who “survived the Great Terror.”

In his author’s note, Eugene Velchin relates that during Stalin’s reign, 1923-1953, over 20 million people were executed, imprisoned, or exiled. Many crimes were fictitious and punishment was carried out in secret. This secrecy continued after Stalin’s death. Fear was handed down from generation to generation. Older generations still do not want to talk about this.

This book could be a launching pad for discussion no matter the age of the readers living in your house. Courageous people in parts of our world today face persecution and death for making choices about what they believe to be right.  How fortunate we are that we can talk about anything.

For more, see the author’s website: www.eugeneyelchinbooks.com/breakingstalinsnose

Can’t Get Enough Dystopia?

If you or your teen is hungering for more novels set in the future, here’s one for all those appetites awakened by Suzanne Collins’ bestselling book and blockbuster movie,  The Hunger Games.

BLOOD RED ROAD, by Moira Young, Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2011

Women and girls of the future will definitely be strong willed warriors. Get ready!

18 year old Saba and her twin brother Lugh live in Silverlake, arid wasteland visited far too often by dust storms. One of those dust storms deposits a sinister band of villains that kidnaps Lugh and sets Saba and her younger sister, 9 year old Emmi, off on a quest that will keep readers postponing whatever it was they planned to do.  

The outside world is ugly, lawless, and filled with unscrupulous and greedy me-first characters. The good news is that there are well-intentioned courageous people, too. Saba, who has always had Lugh to guide her, is relentless in her drive to rescue her twin, but along the way she must learn how to trust others and work as part of a team.

Isolated from “real world” most of her life, Saba’s manners (what manners?) need work and it isn’t always easy to follow the dialogue which is written without quotation marks. Who cares about speech credits anyhow when Saba and her companions are busy aiming lighted torches at eyeholes and avoiding the claws of hellwurms? We’ll figure out who said what later. The 459 pages fly by, thanks to the division into short, spare blocks of text. It’s as if the divisions are there to help the reader remember to breathe.

Nancy Farmer, a favorite writer of mine, (A Girl Named Disaster, The House of the Scorpion, and many others) is quoted on the cover, “The pace never lets up. No situation is so bad that it can’t get worse in the next couple of pages.” See if you don’t agree with us.

Saba and Emmi grow from self-centeredness to solid responsibility that is both gritty and bitter-sweet. Other developing characters help move this story forward and show potential to set off on new adventures, perhaps with Saba, perhaps not.

Billed as “Dustlands, Book One,” this debut novel is evidently the first of several to come. I won’t be the only reader eager to find out, “what happens next?”

LOL! It’s Spring!

What could be better than the sound of four and five year olds doubled over in a good-old-fashioned belly laugh?

BETTY BUNNY LOVES CHOCOLATE CAKE by Michael B. Kaplan, illustrated by Stephane Jorisch, Dial BFYR, 2011

I’m a chocoholic, so when Betty Bunny says she loves chocolate cake so much  that when she grows up, she’s going to marry it, I smile. I get it. So do young readers. Betty can’t wait for her next taste of this delicious dessert. I get that, too.  Her strategies to short cut the much too long wait don’t turn out as she hopes however, and by the last page turn, the giggles have run away with the reader.

The author is a TV writer who has written for Rosanne and Frasier and now co-creates and executive produces I’m in the Band for Disney XD. Illustrator Jorisch includes New Year at the Pier by April Halprin Wayland among his picture book credits.

I wonder how much chocolate cake this talented duo consumed while bringing Betty Bunny to life. Neither will gain weight.  Laughter is great exercise.

Wanted: Food Taster for Royal Family

Food tasters didn’t last very long in Cleopatra’s day. Food tasters were slaves. They didn’t apply or volunteer for the job. Sibling rivalry and family feuds added to the need for food tasters and a high turnover among them. Someone stirring soup in the kitchen or a servant bearing a tray of goblets, or even a guest at the banquet table was always trying out a new poison in order to take over a country or an empire. It’s a wonder Cleopatra’s children ever enjoyed dessert. That makes the life of Selene, Cleopatra’s only daughter, all the more remarkable.

CLEOPATRA’S MOON by Vicky Alvear Shecter, Arthur A. Levine Books, 2011

Thirteen year old Selene is the daughter of Cleopatra and Marc Antony. In this history enriched first novel, Selene relates how she survived them all, parents, brothers, and a cast of rivals, anyone who didn’t like her or considered her a threat to their power. That seemed to be almost everyone since Selene’s ambition was to be a great and powerful queen, just like her deceased mom. Friend or foe? Hard to tell. Selene had to do some fast thinking.

The author credits a friend and bookseller for insisting she write this story about Cleopatra’s only daughter and only surviving child. Readers will be glad she listened.

Shecter brings these ancient characters to life and makes them feel contemporary with enough romance and adventure to keep all readers turning pages and enough history to amaze us at how much we enjoy classical times. Just when the reader begins to wonder what time it is, the author thoughtfully grounds her with a chapter or section heading noting the year of Cleopatra’s reign and the age of the narrator, the voice of Selene telling us what time it is, and what time it would be if her mother still reigned. A character list (oh, thank you!), author’s note, and a factual explanation make fascinating reading.  

Author Shecter delights in what she has discovered from this period and shares it enthusiastically as a museum docent, author in schools, and writer. She has also written two nonfiction books, Alexander the Great Rocks the World and Cleopatra Rules! The Amazing Life of the Original Teen Queen.

Be prepared. Your approach to mealtime is going to change. You’ll thank your lucky stars you won’t need a food taster.

Celebrate the Ten Year Old

Ten year olds are at a good place in life. They still think of parents and other trusted adults as being somewhat sensible and intelligent. They are open to new ideas but not so confident that they strike out on adventures sure to get them in serious trouble. This is why reading about ten year olds who dare to take on unfairness and injustice and participate in making the outcome a happy, successful one, are empowering, but safe. A ten year old can live in the character’s skin but put the book down and hurry to the table for dinner with his family. Hopefully, it’s there that he can ask the questions generated by his character’s conflicts.

 ESCAPE BY NIGHT: A Civil War Adventure, by Laurie Myers, illustrated by Amy June Bates, Henry Holt and Company, 2011

A mysterious notebook sets the events of this Civil War adventure in motion. It leads ten year old Tommy to discover a Yankee in hiding in his southern city of Augusta, Georgia.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, Tommy lives across the street from his father’s church which has been turned into a hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers. Tommy witnesses a grim wagon heaped high with wounded men rolling into town. He sees a notebook fall from the hand of a man who may or may not be dead. Tommy and his greyhound, Samson, retrieve the notebook and vow to return it to its owner whom they find inside the church turned hospital still clinging to life. 

The mysterious notebook gives a clue to what the wounded soldier is thinking and leads to Tommy’s discovery that this man is a Yankee. Horrors! He doesn’t “look” like a Yankee. The stranger treats Tommy with respect and answers him honestly even though he seems fully aware that Tommy could give him away. By the time Tommy makes several decisions centering around the Yankee and his beliefs, the reader will be ready to step in and help. But then there is Annie, the little sister who could turn all the plans into failure. What will she do?

Samson plays a major role. The author knows how important dogs are to stories. She collaborated with writers Betsy Duffey and Betsy Byars, the author’s sister and mom, to write My Dog, My Hero. It’s clear the illustrator has connected with Samson as well. The reader might not be surprised if Samson steps out of his picture and responds with a southern accent to the concerns Tommy expresses to his canine confidante.

For more about the author and illustrator, see their websites.

This is an excellent book for readers and parents to talk about. It’s not long and not daunting to reluctant readers or parents with little time who want to read it first and leave it where it’s most likely to be picked up. Escape at Night. How could anyone resist that title?

What Did the Children Think?

During early 19^th century presidential discussions, political tongues wagged about Thomas Jefferson’s rumored relationship with Sally Hemings. Sally was a slave. Was she also the mother of several of Jefferson’s children? And what about those children? What did they think? How did they feel?

JEFFERSON’S SONS: A Founding Father’s Secret Children, by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley, Dial Books For Young Readers, 2011

What did Thomas Jefferson’s secret children know? What did they think about the man whom “everyone” knew fathered them, but a man their mother strictly forbade them from calling “Papa” or any other familial name.

Authors of historical fiction don’t make up the history. They read widely and research deeply. Usually an author’s note tells the reader what is real and what is not. Author Bradley studied Jefferson, his house, his family, and visited Monticello several times, picking the brains of historians there. She invites readers to explore the Monticello kid-friendly website. Her own website ­­is also helpful.

That being said, since slaves were prohibited from reading and writing, a written account of thoughts and feelings would be rare. While we probably won’t ever know what Jefferson’s children really thought and felt, Bradley’s fictionalized characters, based on Sally’s children, surely come close. Readers will understand the deep sadness expressed by one son at the gulf between his mother’s children and their biological father. This boy, who receives better care, better clothes, even better work, with never an outward explanation for this favoritism, still wishes he were the child of the blacksmith, a slave who has a warm, loving relationship with his child. 

Sally is a very strong character, keeping her children in line and thereby keeping them safe. She has endured and survived and she is determined that her children will also endure and survive. Although Thomas Jefferson promised her that each child will be set free when he or she turns 21, Sally believes it is better to pass for white than be freed. Freed slaves must carry papers subject to loss or destruction. They always remain at risk, at the mercy of greedy, unscrupulous slave catchers.

Instead, Sally works to send Beverly and Harriet, her light skinned children, into the world with new identities, but bearing the heavy burden of keeping their past a secret. She is adamant that their own children will have a much better future because they will never know--and must never know--they were born to former slaves passing as white.

Jefferson’s Sons is told from three points of view, two boys who are sons and one who is a close
friend. All three are slaves. Their lives and their liberty or their lack of liberty give rise to the question: just what did Thomas Jefferson mean when he wrote, “all men are created equal”?

And what do your children think?