Courage Has No Color by Tanya Lee Stone

The Triple Nickles were the first Black paratroopers in America. While they did not see combat in World War II, they were instrumental in showing that Black soldiers were equal to White soldiers and, along with a farsighted General, began the process of integrating the U.S. Armed Forces.

Tanya Lee Stone’s latest book, Courage Has No Color, The True Story of the Triple Nickles: America’s First Black Paratroopers is an immensely readable and enjoyable history of the Triple Nickles, from their humble beginnings (training themselves by performing the same exercies as the White paratrooper soldiers) to becoming a formal unit in the military to being decorated as heroes decades after the war was over.

Unsure what to do with this highly trained group, the Triple Nickles were sent to the Western United States as firejumpers, those firefighters who parachute directly into fires to combat them. This was in response to the Japanese sending balloons laden with bombs across the Pacific with the intent of bombing the U. S. on its own turf. Some did actually land and start forest fires. Firejumping was a new profession in the mid-1940s and the Triple NIckles performed this function with honor. Although it was not fighting Hitler, it was still serving their country.

Courage Has No Color was an eye-opener to me because I never realized the segregation and bigotry that existed in the Armed Forces during W.W. II. Stone’s writing style brings the action and people to life. The extent of her research is obvious in the writing and footnotes. In my mind, Stone, along with Susan Campbell Bartoletti are the two major forces in readable Young Adult non-fiction.

For another eye-opener, read Stone’s previous book, Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream. I couldn’t put either book down. You won’t be disappointed.

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Courage Has No Color by Tanya Lee Stone

Talk about a book you can’t put down. Courage Has No Color, The True Story of the Triple Nickles: America’s First Black Paratroopers by Tanya Lee Stone is one such book. Was seriously considering taking some personal time today so I can finish it. It is a wonderful blend of prose and photos, facts and quotes. This is coming from someone who’s not a non-fiction guy.

Read it. That’s all I can say.

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Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz

Are you in the mood for just the right amount of magic and puppetry and suspense and thievery? If that’s the case, then you’re in the mood for Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz, whose previous book, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village was a Newbery Award winner. Splendors and Gloooms is no slouch either, being a 2013 Newbery Honor Book.

Since I’m having trouble these days describing books, I’ll take the description off of the Association for Library Services to Children website: “Lizzie Rose, Parsefall and Clara are caught in the clutches of a wicked puppeteer and a powerful witch in this deliciously dark and complex tale set in Dickensian England, where adventure and suspense are interwoven into nuanced explorations of good versus evil.” It is deliciously dark and scary. You can feel the London fog wherever Lizzie Rose and Parsefall travel.

Parsefall is the perfect Dickensian ragamuffin and Lizzie Rose is his prim and proper, although poor, partner in crime, both dominated by greasy, master puppeteer Grisini–a perfect name for him. When these three perform at Clara’s twelfth birthday party and she  disappears soon thereafter, the plot thickens. How the bigger than life Cassandra, the powerful witch in her remote castle, enters into the story is for readers to find out. Even Ruby the spaniel is adorable.

Readers will feel like they are living through an 1860s London winter.They’ll certainly feel like they are part of the story, not merely reading it. They might find themselves shouting out loud, “No Parsefall, don’t do that!” or “Watch out. Grisini’s hiding there!” Even I was afraid of Grisini.

My daughter recommended this book to me, before it was voted an honor book, indicating her good taste in books. For some reason, Splendors and Glooms, to me, was a middle school version of Night Circus because they had that same foggy aura (although their subjects are somewhat different).

So, my 2013 has started off with a bang. I’ve finished Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool and now Splendors and Glooms. Next up is Courage Has No Color, The True Story of the Triple Nickles: America’s First Black Paratroopers by Tanya Lee Stone which is getting great reviews and The Spindlers by Lauren Oliver which has gotten great reviews. And then coming down the pike soon is Beth Kephart’s Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent, a prequel to Dangerous Neighbors. I know, also, that Susan Campbel Bartoletti’s new book, Down the Rabbit Hole: The Diary of Pringle Rose, is due out in March.  If my reading keeps up at this pace, 2013 is going to be a banner year.

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Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool

We are all on a quest. It is 1945, Early Auden is searching for his brother, thought to have been killed in France in World War II. John (Jackie) Baker III, uprooted from his land-locked Kansas home and relocated to coastal Maine soon after his mother died of cancer, is searching for redemption because he wasn’t at home when she died and he was supposed to take care of her in his father’s absence.

Early and Jackie meet at the Morton Hill Academy boarding school. Jackie’s first sight of Early is on the beach as Early is filling sandbags and piling them up. Early being a loner and Jackie being new to the school, it is an interesting fit.

When Jackie’s Naval father can’t make it to school to pick him up for Fall break, Jackie decides to accompany Early on a real quest, rather than be alone at school for a week. Interspersed with the journey is Early’s fascination with Pi and the thought that numbers in this equation might disappear, thus introducing the possibility that it is a finite vs. infinite number. Early sees Pi as more than merely numbers. It has color and shape and texture and he has created a story based on his vision, much of which plays out on their journey.

Although I’m not a fan of the phrase ‘coming of age’, Clare Vanderpool has written a fascinating story about two boys and many other characters that learn the truth about themselves and their worlds. There’s the ancient Mrs. Johannsen, waiting 50 years for her son to come home from the woods and the pirate MacScott carrying around his own burden. There is Gunnar, the woodsman, who has lost his way and his love because of one act. There is Jackie’s father who has divorced himself from memories of his wife. And there is Early and Jackie, two of the most likeable characters you’re likely to meet in a very long time.

Ms. Vanderpool’s Ackowledgement explains the ‘story behind the story’ and is worth reading.

The words. The story. The characters. I wouldn’t change a word of Clare Vanderpool’s Navigating Early. It is certainly in contention for one of the 10 Best Books of 2013..and it’s ‘early’ in the year…pun intended.

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Edgar Awards – YA Nominees

As many of you know, I’m not a big Awards person. I’ve seen too many great books go unnoticed and too many mediocre books get nominated. And so it is this year as well with the YA Edgar nominations. Until finishing my current book, I had read two of them…both Edgar-worthy: Amelia Ann is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfeld and Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein.

However, my third read was not in this league. It is by a well known adult mystery author, whose books I’ve never read but I love the TV series based on her books (except for the last season which got a bit weird). However, her foray into YA literature, in my opinion, produced a ho-hum, overly long, hint of telepath non-mystery, with a totally anti-climactic ending. Particularly annoying, I found, was her use of “c’n” when a character wanted to say the word “can”. I don’t know how they speak on the west coast, but here in the east we CAN say the word “CAN” in its entirety. So, I wonder how books are nominated or make it into the final 5, or were they just paying homage to a known writer, because in this particular case, one isn’t like the others.

So, rather than dwell on the negative, I’ll say based on my reading of part of the nominee list, if Code Name Verity or Amelia Ann wins, they truly deserve it. I heartily suggest you read them both.

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Best of 2012 — Better Late Than Never

I’m not one of those people who keeps track of the number of books I read. To me, it’s not a contest. And many times, by year’s end, I forget the books I read at the beginning of the year and wonder whether I’ll have to scramble to come up with 10 books. So it was a nice surprise that I had 9 books which I gave the top rating of 5 in Librarything. What was even nicer, was that there were even more 4s, so 2012 was a darn good reading year from my perspective.

Reading’s a personal thing, as you know and there are a myriad of factors that go into enjoying a book: your mood when you read it, your favorite author, impeccable wording, an engrossing plot, believable characters. These top 10 books have it all: I was in the right mood, it was my favorite author (or singer, in one instance), the plots ranged from family, to heroism, to illness and the characters were pretty much all people I would like to meet. So, here goes:

Although the top 5 are all magnificent books, I’ll always put a Beth Kephart book on the top of the list. She’s an incredible author whose words, many times, are poetic and lyrical and she outdid herself in Small Damages about a young pregnant girl who finds out that the true meaning of family isn’t always biological. If you read one of Beth’s books, you’ll find you have to read them all.

John Green’s Fault in Our Stars takes us through the harrowing ordeal of cancer but the love and friendship and perseverence that its characters exhibit is incomparable. It might just make you shed a tear. I described it as a book of strength, of philosophy, of humor and determination. It is all of those and more.

At the end of Wonder by R. J. Palacio, Mr. Tushman, Director of Beecher Prep School, addresses the 5th grade/6th grade classes with a quote from J. M. Barrie’s The Little White Bird: “Shall we make a new rule of life…always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.” That is the theme of this gem of a book. It is the realistic story of a boy born with a serious facial deformity, overcoming the odds by mainstreaming into the local school. Told from various points of view, once you start it, you won’t put it down.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein comes in at number 4. It is a touching story about two young girls during World War II, one a pilot and the other a spy behind enemy lines in France, if you will. Their heroism and their friendship, while to them small, is huge. It is not like any other war story you’ve read. It is captivating (no pun intended) from the beginning.

Rounding out the top 5 is Natalie Merchant’s Leave Your Sleep. A five year labor of love, Merchant put to music children’s poetry written from the late 1800s to the mid 1900s and released a wonderful CD of the same name. She then, with illustrator Barbara McClintock, published a book with some of the poetry and beautiful illustrations. I’ve heard Merchant sing these poems several times in concert and have the CD, and as she said ““Poetry speaks of so much: longing and sadness, joy and beauty, hope and disillusionment…But poetry on the page can be difficult to penetrate; sometimes it needs to be heard.” But once heard, reading it and seeing the colorful illustrations adds a whole new perspective.

Since this is getting long, I’ll briefly mention the next 5:

The Bully Book by Eric Kahn Gale: if you’re the “grunt” who gets picked on, you want to find the Bully Book and destroy it. Bullying seems to be an epidemic and Gale tries to reverse the tide in this excellent book.

Period 8 by Chris Crutcher: Crutcher seems to have found his stride again in this honest book about honesty and relationship. Not as ‘in your face’ as Whale Talk or Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (my two favorites), it’s still up there with his best.

Stay With Me by Paul Griffin: Violence is a fact of life to some people. Some people are good and some aren’t and what happens to them doesn’t always make sense. Stay With Me had me rivited and, it indeed, did bring on a tear or two.

No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson: A marvelous picture book and more about Nelson’s great-uncle Lewis Michaux, a driving force for educating Blacks in Harlem. Michaux started out with nothing and built a tremendous bookstore in Harlem that attracted the likes of Malcolm X.

Almost Home by Joan Bauer: Bauer is one of the foremost writers for middle school readers and her stories are uplifting. In Almost Home Sugar Mae Cole survives her mother’s depression and a foster home by spouting the words of her grandfather, King Cole. A must read–plus the dog on the cover is adorable.

And the last of them are:

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by emily m. danforth

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith

Ask the Passenger by A. S. King

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

I read so many more great books in 2012, but this is the best of the best, to me. I hope you enjoy some of them.

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Period 8 by Chris Crutcher

Start the New Year right…with a Chris Crutcher book-Period 8. (Actually, the book’s not due out until April.)

I’m a big fan of Chris Crutcher, having read all his books and heard him speak. But, truth be told, his last two, Sledding Hill and Deadline, were not amongst my favorites. Well, Period 8, although abandoning his anger management themes, has brought him back to the forefront. It is a chilling book in many ways, while dealing with a vareity of issues, including honesty in relationships, overly protective parents, religion to name a few.

There’s too much going on in the book to really give you a synopsis, so I’ll give you snippets.

Paulie is a swimmer and thus built like one. He’s a catch. He cheated on his girlfriend, Hannah, who adores him and who he adores. In the interest of truth in a relationship, he tells Hannah about his infidelity (his father is a philanderer) and she immediately dumps his sorry ass, without even hearing his explanation.

Meanwhile, Mary Wells, called virgin Mary because of her shy, withdrawn demeanor has gone missing, an unusal thing for this straight A student, who has not missed a session of Period 8 since she was a high school freshman.

There’s Arney, junior class president, who has a hand in everything. What’s up with him?

And finally there’s Period 8, a period which we probably all wish we had. It’s lunch period and a group of kids gets together in Mr. Langdon’s classroom to discuss anything and everything. The one condition…what’s said in the room, stays in the room.

Period 8 is their story. There are some authors who write poetically. There are some who insert hidden meanings in their words. And then there’s Chris Crutcher, the consummate story teller, who unfolds a gripping tale with wonderful characters, an engrossing plot and a satisfying ending. You will love Paulie and Hannah, separately and together. Mr. Langdon is a character in all of Crutcher’s books…the teacher who guides students, doesn’t give them the answer, let’s them think it out themselves. What these kids are into, both good and bad, will make you smile and frown, respectively.

Period 8 is gripping and thought provoking. Do yourself a favor and read it. I couldn’t put it down.

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Ask the Passengers by A. S. King

It’s difficult to live in a small town when you’ve grown up in the big city. It’s difficult to live in a small town when your mother hides away in her home office and your dad’s a secret stoner. It’s difficult to live in a small town when you’re gay or questioning. So, life for Astrid Jones is difficult.

In addition, her mother doesn’t talk to her, preferring Astrid’s year younger ‘pefect’ sister, and her father’s either not around physically or too stoned to carry on a decent conversation. So, Astrid spends time looking up at the sky, sending her love to passengers on the planes flying overhead.

When Astrid’s catering co-worker, Dee, expresses interest and Astrid’s gay friends, Justin and Kristina, illicitly spirit her away to a gay bar on a Satuday night (under the guise of Astrid’s date with a guy), she is faced with a dilemma. What is she? Does she fit into a box?

I had no idea what Ask the Passengers was about when I picked it up. It was recommended by an author whose opinion I value. But, I read Ask the Passengers by A.S. King way into the night, I couldn’t wait to find out what happens. Astrid’s questioning is so real and the pressure she feels as Kristina and Dee push her to come out when she’s not ready is palpable. Her family dynamics, pushy mother/benign father, is true in so many families, I’m betting.

King, every now and then, tells a story about a passenger on one of the planes Astrid sends her love to. If you believe that our thoughts may travel through space and impact some unknown person (and I do because the cosmos is an amazing place and I think things happen way beyond our imagination), then Astrid’s love sending does somehow influence the universe.

And finally, the devil/angel on Astrid’s shoulder in the form of Socrates (she’s studying the philosophers in Humanities class) just adds to the enjoyment. Some people have a knack for telling a good story. It’s evident that A.S. King, indeed, has that gift.

I will tell you that my all time favorite book on this subject is still Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters. That may never change. But, if you want a new version of this story, one that will keep you reading into the night, then Ask the Passengers will fit that bill.

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Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

I picked up Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley because Beth Kephart mentioned it in her keynote address at the Publishing Perspectives: YA What’s Next? publishing conference.  She described it as “…brilliantly odd. Because it’s fantastically germane. Because it is about a search to know and overcome in a woodpeckers-are-going-extinct-and-parents-are-losing-their-way world.” Not that I like everything Beth likes, but if it deserves her honorable mention, then it’s worth investigating.

Have you ever read a book, and somewhere around a third of the way through, you realize you don’t want to put it down? Well, that’s what happened to me and Where Things Come Back…I realized, while I was too tired to read further, I only reluctantly put it down to go to bed.

Also, have you ever read a book and found you had a hard time describing the book? That’s me again. John Corey Whaley has written two stories in one. In the first written in first person by Cullen Witter, his younger brother by a year, Gabriel, has vanished with no trace. In the second, Benson Sage has an unfulfilling missionary experience in Ethiopia, returns home to a disappointed family and ultimately jumps to his death from the bell tower of the First Baptist Church on Christmas Eve. How these two stories merge may be a little far fetched, but it is no less enjoyable or satisfying because of it.

At first I thought Cullen Witter was the next coming of Holden Caulfield because he’s calling everyone ass-hats. But that’s not where this book goes. It goes towards a small Arkansas town grasping for straws to survive and provide some excitement, even if it is in the hands of a potential charlatan searching for the last living Lazarus woodpecker. It goes towards young men grasping at straws to find meaning in their lives. It goes towards best friend, Lucas, who keeps coming back because he cares about Cullen and Gabriel. And it goes towards misguided youth in towns large and small who screw up and grow up.

Cullen is an interesting character. He sort of daydreams about things. For instance, “When one is sitting in the passenger seat of his best friend’s car as an overly enthusiastic hillbilly is ranting in the backseat about being snubbed by a cheerleader at lunch, his mind begins to wander and think about zombies…..” As you can guess, some of these daydreams are a “little odd?”

So, while I find it hard to really describe Where Things Come Back in terms better than those used by Beth Kephart, the one thing I can say is it’s a book worth reading. I’m presuming that you’ll come to a point where you won’t want to put it down either.

Oh, and great opening lines…”I was seventeen years old when I saw my first dead body.” Kind of grips you, doesn’t it?

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Tending to Grace by Kimberly Newton Fusco

I admit it. I have a thing for scratchy old farm women who are hard on the outside, soft on the inside and full of solutions to life’s problems. That’s why I like Richard Peck’s A Year Down Yonder and A Long Way to Chicago. And that’s also why I like Tending to Grace by Kimberly Newton Fusco. Grandma Dowdel and Agatha Thornhill are birds of a feather, scruffy old hags with hearts of gold.

When city-bred fifteen year old Cornelia is thrust upon her country Aunt Agatha because her mother is running off to Las Vegas with her boyfriend, C-c-c-cornelia’s world is torn apart. She is sure her mother will be coming back soon, even though the signs point elsewhere. Because of her stutter, Cornelia tries to be invisible. Agatha won’t hear of it. She’s a ‘stand up for yourself’ type of person.

Fusco’s writing is so expressive, from the beginning, comparing Cornelia’s life to a clothesline, through to the end, as both Cornelia and Agatha learn things about the other. Tending to Grace has mountains and frog races and fiddleheads and fun. It’s a feel good book, so feel good and read it.

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