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Monday Review: FORGE and ASHES by Laurie Halse Anderson

Synopsis : Forge and Ashes are the 2nd and 3rd books in the Seeds of America trilogy by Laurie Halse Anderson. Way, WAY back in 2009, I reviewed the first book, Chains, and was so glad to know there was a sequel in the works: it was an absorbing tale of the difficulties of life as a slave in colonial America. Well, the sequel came out in 2012, and it took me so long to get to reading it that I am sorry to admit I forgot a lot about what happened. As it turns out, though, there is a change of narrator in Book 2, and some time has passed, so my sieve-like memory was not an obstacle to my enjoyment of the story.

Book 1 was told from the point of view of the young woman Isabel, who was freed along with her sister when their master died, but then forced by his nephew back into slavery for an unkind Loyalist family. Book 2, Forge, takes place after the events of Chains, but follows the story of Isabel's friend Curzon, a runaway slave with forged papers who ends up joining up with the Patriot Army at Valley Forge. He finds meaning in his fight for freedom, he finds friendship in his fellow patriots (some of them), and, of course, he finds Isabel in his life again. She's trapped in a bad situation, and Curzon's avoiding his own past, which seems to insist on chasing after him…

Book 3, Ashes, returns to Isabel's viewpoint. Having fled Valley Forge, she and Curzon are headed to the South to find Isabel's intellectually disabled younger sister, Ruth, from whom she has been separated for a handful of long years. After rescuing Ruth from a plantation, along with her friend Aberdeen, the four make their way back north. To Isabel, the hardships encompass much more than just the journey; for one thing, Ruth is angry at her sister and doesn't want to accept her back into her life. For another, Curzon seems obsessed with his newfound ideas of freedom after serving with the Patriots. But it seems that the struggle for freedom is where their destiny indeed lies, and they all make their way to the front lines at Yorktown…

Observations : I ended those synopses with ellipses (hee) because I don't want to give away too much of the adventure of these two books—part of the enjoyment is following these determined, brave, honorable protagonists as they overcome obstacle after obstacle, all for the sake of the type of personal freedom we as contemporary readers take for granted, and the security of their loved ones. Their stories are also gripping because of the fascinating and important window they provide into colonial America, and what it was like to navigate society as a slave, a former slave, a servant, a free worker, a soldier, a woman on the battlefield. These are less-commonly told stories that give us a much fuller picture of what life during the era was actually like, and they are interwoven with the stories of real-life people who are included in the bigger-picture story, as well as interesting snippets from historical documents. These two books, incidentally, skew a little older than the first one, as the characters themselves age.

Beyond the value of these books as historical portrayals or as gripping tales of personal struggle, they also have amazing depth in terms of theme. The idea of freedom, of course, pervades this trilogy: what people are willing to do and to suffer for the sake of freedom; how much they are willing to fight for it; and who they are willing to trust to help them achieve it. The bonds of family, friendship, and love, both within and across color lines, are forged (there's that word again) and tested by the ravages of time and war—and prove themselves to be strongest.

Conclusion : By the time I finished reading this trilogy, I felt newly awed and inspired by the incredible stories of those unsung individuals from colonial America who were nevertheless such a huge part of our past history. The author tells their stories with sensitivity and honesty.

I received my copy of this book courtesy of my library's ebook collection. You can find FORGE and ASHES by Laurie Halse Anderson at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Thursday Review: CUCKOO SONG by Frances Hardinge

This scary cover almost made me not want to read it. Synopsis : I’m a huge fan of Frances Hardinge’s Fly By Night books, so I was eager to check out this one—another middle grade fantasy. It’s hard to talk about this one without giving away too much (or at least without minor spoilers), so if that is the sort of thing you mind, I’d stay stop reading now.

Okay. For those of you who remain, I’ll now note that if you are familiar with the habits of the cuckoo, then you’ll be able to guess pretty quickly that this is a changeling story. The era is shortly after WWI, in England. The narrator is thirteen-year-old Triss, who has recently woken from illness, after an accident when she fell into a sort of mill pond. She’s gradually feeling better, and her world is starting to fall back into place, except that her family is…treating her strangely. Her younger sister Pen acts scared of her, and insists she just isn’t herself—but then, Pen always hated her. Even Triss’s parents, though, are acting weird, whispering and lying to her.

And then there’s the fact that Triss doesn’t quite FEEL like herself. For one thing, she is ravenously hungry. She can eat and eat and eat and not feel satisfied. But when she checks her diaries to see what might have happened and why she might be this way, all the pages have been mysteriously ripped out. One day, she follows her sister into town to try to get to the bottom of things, and finds out that not only is she NOT who she thought she was, but the Architect who made her that way may soon be threatening her entire family, her entire town, and her very existence.

Observations : I love the unexpected twist here on the changeling story: we get the viewpoint of the usurper, who has so completely been plunged into the life of the original Triss that she thinks she IS Triss, at first. By the time she finds out she isn’t, Not-Triss already cares for her family, even her sister—because she has Triss’s memories, too. And she feels no allegiance towards those who created her and forced her into this situation. The changeling in this story, as it turns out, is NOT the one to be worried about...

In certain ways, this reminds me of stories like The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, wherein the adults are either flawed or evil, and the kids have to band together. And in Cuckoo Song, boy is there plenty of flawed-ness and evil to go around. The parents are selfish and desperate, and allow their grief over their son (lost in WWI) to drive their decisions. Meanwhile, the adults who are fey or fey-involved are downright malicious and scary. It was a huge relief when a trustworthy adult eventually did come along to be an ally for Not-Triss and Pen—and ultimately, that resulted in a satisfying ending, with the sisters saving the day and their ally taking enough of a role that it was believable.

Conclusion : I won’t lie: this book was SUPER CREEPY. And that doll’s head on the cover almost made me not want to read it, but fortunately the actual dolls were not a huge part of the book. But, as always with Hardinge’s books, the writing was exquisite, and the story was an unputdownable adventure as well as a story about sisterhood and friendship.

I bought my copy of this book on Amazon. You can find CUCKOO SONG by Frances Hardinge at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Elsewhere Around the Kidlitosphere...

I haven't been producing a lot of new content (or stringing together coherent sentences) over the past week, so instead of a regular blog post I thought I'd do a quick roundup of other online stuff I've been doing:
I donated to the Sierra Club (trying to pay it forward with positivity helped me feel better);I did some light redesign on the Guys Lit Wire site (more exciting developments to come in the near future); and, last but definitely not least because it was really fun to do,I posted a bunch of cool reviews on the Cybils blog! Here are some MG and YA books which I really want to go check out:The Princess in Black and the Hungry Bunny Horde by Shannon HaleSalt to the Sea by Ruta SepetysDark Energy by Robison Wells (thanks, T!)Ms. Bixby's Last Day by John David AndersonThe Bronze Key by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare The Cybils blog is always such a great resource for finding new reading material (NOT that I ever have trouble finding new reading material), and I love having a mandated opportunity to go around and read a ton of different kidlit blogs and check out books in categories that aren't my usual go-tos.

Welp, that's about all I can manage for today. I leave you with this bit of humor I found on Twitter:

Sounds about right! What do you think, @WoodingsJane? pic.twitter.com/QEvR9ljQtw— Dane Cobain (@danecobain) November 14, 2016

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Middle Grade Monday: MOON OVER MANIFEST by Clare Vanderpool

Synopsis : Yes, look, I'm participating in a Thing, and that thing is Middle Grade Monday! When am I ever organized enough to do that? Today, evidently. Anyway, I recently read Newbery Award winner Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool, who was one of the keynote speakers at this year's KidLitCon in Wichita. While I don't read as much MG as I do YA, this one shares many similarities with my favorite MG books from over the years: a main character who isn't sure who she is or where she fits in, thrown into a new situation like a fish out of water, and forced to rely on her natural pluckiness, wit, and kindheartedness; a young girl exploring her family's past and a town's secrets, and finding out she has a family-of-the-heart just as true blue as her own father.

When twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker gets to Manifest, where her father has sent her to live for the summer with his old friend Shady Howard, it's 1936, and a lot has changed in the town of her father's boyhood. It doesn’t match any of the stories of mischief and colorful townspeople from her father's stories, or the gossip from the newspaper columns she's been scouring from the 1917 edition of the Manifest Herald. The town Abilene shows up in is dusty, old, and dying. But it's got a history, and she's determined to root it out and discover what her father's connection is to this place.

Told in alternating storylines, past (1917) and present (1936), the reader learns along with Abilene the story of two young men, Jinx and Ned, who take very different paths in life, and a town made up of a fascinating array of immigrants, all of whom arrived in Manifest hoping for new lives and honest work at the nearby mine. By the time Abilene arrives in 1936, the mining operation is dead—but the stories aren't. They're there for her to find, and she goes on finding them, even when a mysterious note warns her to leave the town's secrets alone. In the process, she finds new friends, too—and a new adoptive family that has a heart and soul the size of a town.

Observations : This book is set up in a way that is so much fun and so clever. There's the story-within-a-story, which naturally unfolds as Abilene gets to know the mysterious diviner Miss Sadie, a slightly unnerving recluse who lives alone behind a gate marked Perdition. And then there are the bits of ephemera that illuminate the world of Manifest's past—newspaper columns from Hattie Mae's News Auxiliary and fictitious ads for hilarious old-timey-sounding products like "Velma T.'s Vitamin Revitalizer." In this way, the past is brought to life using bits and pieces that are cleverly put together to tell a story—to tell parallel stories, really.

I loved the intriguing cast of characters in this one, too. Immigrants from Germany, Hungary, Poland, Scotland, Italy, and more are thrown together in a small Kansas mining town, and it's such a wonderful microcosm of the history of early-20th-century America. Well, not always wonderful—because the KKK is there, too. This story doesn't pull many punches about the darker side of our history, and something that isn't always written about is the many immigrant groups who were viewed as somehow lesser. In this instance, in 1917, the Germans are the prime scapegoats, under suspicion as wartime spies. And it turns out there are a LOT of people in Manifest who are hiding things…

But, of course, one big takeaway from this story is that few people are what they seem to be on the outside, and we all have hidden histories to tell. Abilene finds her father's history, and in the end, realizes that it's hers, too—and, much like the town, it isn't dead but is very much alive, and just needs a bit of spark…

Conclusion : The word "heartwarming" is overused but suffice it to say that by the time I finished this book, I wanted to hug it.

I purchased my copy of this book from the fantabulous Watermark Books in Wichita, home of the Kidlitosphere's own Book Nut. You can find MOON OVER MANIFEST by Clare Vanderpool at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Halloween Review Roundup: Scary (ish) Stories and Books that Bite

Yeah, so the irony about me doing a post about scary books for Halloween is that I am a wimp who tends to avoid anything scary. But I do like suspense, and sometimes I can handle a good dark fantasy. And, of course, I've had to read more than a few books for the Cybils that are scarier than I would normally pick up on my own. So here's a roundup of a few of my favorites, with links to reviews. Enjoy!
Zombies Rot & Ruin , Dust & Decay, and Flesh & Bone by Jonathan Maberry
I'm not a huge fan of zombie books, but this series is great--the author created a cast of memorable and diverse characters, made the logistical rules of zombie-hood believable, and above all, retained a sense of humor throughout. Plus there's tons of edge-of-your-seat action.
General Scary Tales Through the Woods by Emily Carroll
This one's got the added bonus of being a graphic novel--a wonderfully spookily illustrated graphic novel. It's a series of dark fairy-tale-like stories that will bring to mind the scariest parts of the stories you know--the big bad wolves and the Bluebeards and the creatures under the bed. It was a Cybils finalist a couple of years ago. Don't read it at night...

Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Death and Dementia illus. by Gris Grimly
A graphic novel featuring several of the classic tales by Edgar Allan Poe. Definitely de rigeur Halloween fare. This one was a Cybils finalist, too. 

Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan
*Shudder* Dark and scary short stories. And this is not her only book of such tales. They are SO GOOD, though. 
Vampires Well, whaddya know? Tanita and I put together a roundup of fun vampire books some* (*many) years ago. Neither of us is what you would call a vampire enthusiast, but we've got a handful that come highly recommended. My favorite is always going to be Sunshine by Robin McKinley. But we wrote the the roundup so long ago that it doesn't include a few later fun ones, like Sarah Beth Durst's Drink Slay Love and Kimberly Pauley's Sucks to Be Me .
GhostsThere are way too many good ghost stories to list them all here, so I'm just going to focus on a couple of SERIES that I really enjoyed, the better for you to binge-read in bed until you've missed Halloween and then you get up and realize it's December. Just kidding.

Shades of London by Maureen Johnson
The first two books are
Gilda Joyce by Jennifer Allison
This is an incredibly fun mystery series suitable for younger readers, full of humor and strange happenings, and headed up by the irrepressible Gilda Joyce, psychic investigator extraordinaire.
Witches Texas Gothic and Spirit and Dust by Rosemary Clement-Moore
These are so, so good--funny and scary both. (Sensing a theme in my picks?) If you like the Southern Gothic genre, you'll want to pick these up. I didn't even know I might like the genre, but if Rosemary Clement-Moore keeps writing them, I'll keep reading them. The books relate the intricate and supernatural adventures of the Goodnight clan, in which witches and ghosts and ne'er-do-wells abound.

Enjoy a safe and spooky Halloween!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Toon Thursday: Writer Nightmares Redux

I've been sitting on this idea for a while (too busy to 'toon--very sad) but here's the second installment of Writer Nightmares. More to come!

This one is loosely based on reality--my own and others'. I know many a writer who has lost a critical file to computer catastrophe...and on one memorable occasion, though I didn't lose any files, I ACTUALLY HAD SMOKE COMING OUT OF MY HARD DRIVE. So. Here it is.

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Monday Review: GEMINI by Sonya Mukherjee

This is one of the most gorgeous and effective
covers I've seen. I love it. Synopsis : Clara and Hailey are twin sisters, and like a lot of sisters, they are closer than close one moment, but in the next, they get on each other's last nerve. Hailey is the artistic one, Clara is an astronomy geek, and they couldn't be more different in terms of what they want out of life. Pretty classic sister stuff. But there's something big about this book that makes it much more than your average sister story: Clara and Hailey are conjoined twins, fused back to back at the base of the spinal cord. They have separate heads, bodies, and limbs, but their nervous systems are entwined from the waist down—so if Clara, say, steps on Hailey's foot, she feels it in her own foot.

The twins are seventeen, and have spent their entire lives in a small California mountain town where everyone knows and accepts them. But things are about to get a whole lot more complicated. For one thing, Hailey really wants to leave home to go to college—she wants to see the world, and she wants more out of life than their tiny community offers. Clara, meanwhile, wants to stay and attend the nearby college where their parents teach, sharing a house with their best friend Juanita and enjoying what she has. These are, needless to say, incompatible aims when you're physically inseparable from one another.

The other big wrench in the machinery is the new boy, Max. He's cute, he's mysterious, and he loves astronomy as much as Clara does. But, she wonders, how could he possibly want to have a romantic relationship with her? How could anyone from the outside world consider them as anything but freaks? Hailey's fearlessness counterbalances Clara's fears, but deep down, the future scares them both—and their parents are even more afraid. As both girls begin to tentatively explore their own dreams and goals for their lives, a possibly dangerous idea occurs to both of them: separation surgery. And the mere mention of the topic is enough to throw their home life completely out of balance.

Observations : There are a lot of interesting twists and turns in this story, and I found it intriguing (and wonderful) that both sisters are still able to surprise and confound one another—an amazing feat considering they have no choice about being present in one another's lives. The experience of being conjoined was handled with sensitivity, candor, and humor, which was admirable. Writing characters with disabilities, as an author who does not share that same experience, is a challenge, and I think it can be tempting to be tentative and shy away from the harsh realities of that experience. And yet ignoring the very real potential difficulties does readers a disservice.

I thought this was a wonderful example of a book that does not reduce characters to their disabilities, but creates distinct characters that are fully rounded who are striving for lives that are complete and fulfilling—as all of us do. This idea shone throughout the story, echoed by the subplots with various side characters who, also, are facing their own struggles in their own ways.

Conclusion : I'm kind of in awe of the author for tackling this unusual topic. The alternating perspectives were well done, and it was a story with a lot of heart.

I received my copy of this book courtesy of the Stanislaus County Library. You can find GEMINI by Sonya Mukherjee at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Postcard from Kidlitcon 2016

My goal is eventually to put together a few curated tweets from the con--seems appropriate since Sheila and I talked about that during our session on social media. But I haven't quite recovered, so for the time being I present you with a few pretty pictures. Oh, and we missed you. :)


Here's this year's organizing crew: Paula Willey and me in the back, and Sheila Ruth, Charlotte Taylor, Melissa Fox, and Pam Margolis in the front. We are thrilled that this year went so well, even with a smaller group this time--it felt like those who came got a lot out of it (I know I did) and it is always, always wonderful to hang with fellow kidlit peeps. Some amazing discussions on gatekeeping (this year's theme) and censorship happened, and Kristi Bernard gave a great presentation on diversity, tying back into last year's theme. We also had awesome keynotes from Clare Vanderpool (whose Powerpoint skills I am in awe of) and A.S. King. Speaking of which, here's me with A FAMOUS AUTHOR:

We also had a chance to wander around downtown Wichita after the conference ended, and found this very cool chalk mural thingy on a wall, posing the question "What positive changes have you seen in Wichita?" We were highly entertained by some of the feedback people decided to put up.


For my personal fave, it's a tie between "yellow brick streets," "Pie," and "I Don't Bang Herion [sic] in my eye no more!"

It was, in fact, very cool to see all the public art in the downtown, even the eerily realistic bronze sculptures of children. I am a fan of public art in general. But, as always, the best part was getting to feel like I was with my tribe. The worst part was trying to figure out how to Tetris all the books I acquired into my suitcase...

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Nominate Your Favorite 2016 Children's Book for a Cybils Award

This is for anyone and EVERYONE who has a fave book of the past year (published in U.S. or Canada between Oct. 16, 2015 - Oct. 15, 2016). You--yes, YOU!--are eligible to nominate one book per category for this year's Cybils Awards--Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards.

The categories are: Audiobooks, Easy Readers and Early Chapter Books, Elementary/Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction, Fiction Picture Books/Board Books, Graphic Novels, Middle-Grade Fiction, Middle-Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction, Juvenile/Elementary Nonfiction, Poetry, Young Adult Fiction, and Young Adult Speculative Fiction. For more information and to see what's been nominated already, read this post.

The Cybils are the first grassroots, volunteer blogger-driven children's book awards, now in its 11th year, and it costs you nothing to nominate! All eligible nominations will be read by the Round 1 panel of judges during the first reading period and winnowed down to a list of 5-7 finalists per category. So nominate, and spread the word--public nominations end on Oct. 15th. Author and publisher nominations are open from Oct. 16-25.

And if you can't think of a book to nominate, you can still support the Cybils by buying Really Cool Swag(TM) on the CafePress store. Go on. You know you want a mouse pad.

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Monday Review: SACRIFICE (Serpentine Book 2) by Cindy Pon

Synopsis : Sacrifice is the sequel to Serpentine (reviewed here), and follows the continuing quest of Skybright to save her world and the people she loves from encroaching demons. By the end of the first book (minor spoilers ahead, so you might want to stop here if you haven't read Serpentine yet) Skybright has accepted the fact that she will never have a normal life: as a half-demon, she can shape-shift at will to a serpent with human head, arms and torso, and she has preternatural abilities that humans lack.

At the same time that she came into her own as a half-demon (helped along by the powerful, magical, and brutally handsome Stone), she also came to realize how very human she was in other ways—the important ways, such as her friendship for her former mistress Zhen Ni and her love for the young monk Kai Sen. Skybright loves them so much, and her world, that she makes a profound sacrifice at the end of Book 1: she gives herself up to the underworld in Zhen Ni's place in order to close the breach that is leaking demons into the kingdom of Xia.

Now, Skybright, Kai Sen, and Stone have realized that, even after Skybright's courageous act, demons are still somehow leaking into the world, in defiance of the ages-old agreement between the monks and the immortal world. As punishment, Stone is stripped of some of his powers, making him much more human and more knowable; but at the same time that Stone is growing closer to Skybright, Kai Sen is drifting apart from her on his own path as the head abbott at the monastery. And Zhen Ni becomes completely inaccessible after she is married off to the mysterious Master Bei, who has secrets of his own. Tracking down the source of the new breach into the Underworld brings Stone and Skybright along a converging path with Kai Sen, but can they find the breach in time to save everyone? And what in the world has happened to Zhen Ni?

Observations : This is another fun foray into the intriguing world of the kingdom of Xia, with its vivid mythology and Asian-inspired fantasy feel. Tanita and I both agree that the end of Book 1 left us wanting more, and I was lucky in terms of timing, since I read Serpentine last month and only had a few weeks to wait for this one. What I really liked about both books was seeing Skybright's transformation and experiencing from her perspective the incredible inner and outer changes of her demonic half. Where the first book left me wondering what more was to come, the second book satisfyingly continued to follow her inner journey toward self-acceptance and strength.

The metaphor is clear here, applied to those of us who are fully mortal: we all have parts of ourselves that we have trouble accepting, that we might want to reject or ignore, but in order to be fully ourselves and whole, we need to know those aspects and realize they are part of us too. By seeing ourselves as we are, clearly and honestly, we can learn to grow and change.

Conclusion : This was an action-packed sequel that also didn't skimp on the interpersonal tension between characters—the strong portrayal of love and friendship gives the story its emotional heart. Cindy Pon's Asian-flavored fantasy world will also appeal to those looking for more diversely inspired stories.

I purchased my copy of this book courtesy of Amazon. You can find SACRIFICE by Cindy Pon at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.