Book Review: May B. by Caroline Starr Rose (Schwartz and Wade, 2012)

Author Caroline Starr Rose describes her striking debut novel in verse for middle grade readers as "part Hatchet, part Little House on the Prairie, part Out of the Dust.  It's a story of courage and hope."

Set on the Kansas frontier, this novel tells the story of May, who's just twelve years old when her pa pulls her out of school and hires her out to a couple who've recently moved out to the endless Kansas prairies.  "I won't go," is the book's poignant first line, but of course she has no real choice, in the way of all children in that era.  She'll bring in some extra money for her family, and it will just be until Christmas, her ma promises her.

May hopes to be a schoolteacher one day, a surprising goal given that she has trouble learning at school.  "What sort of teacher can't read out lessons?" she wonders.  Yet she perseveres, bringing a book and her slate with her.  When the couple she's sent to live with leave her alone in their sod house, at first she's sure they'll be returning.  But when the days pass, she realizes she's been left to fend for herself, miles from any other settlers and with no help in sight.  With the harsh Kansas winter coming, she must find food and fuel if she's to survive, summoning every bit of her courage and knowledge to make it through alive.

I particularly enjoyed the author's use of free verse in this short novel, which is accessible to even reluctant readers.  The author's poetry is particularly evocative in describing the vastness of the Kansas prairies:  "grass/always grass,/in different shades and textures/like the braids in a rag rug."

This novel deals with several different themes; on the one hand it is an exciting survival/adventure story, much in the spirit of books like Hatchet, in which May must survive on her own, with no adults to help her.  The author also portrays the harsh realities of life on the prairie for settlers, a less warm and fuzzy environment than what we'd encounter in classics such as the Little House series.  Moreover, May B. is also a poignant story of a child trying to overcome a disability; in this case dyslexia.  Of course no one understood dyslexia at that time, and often children with this disability were simply seen as stupid or not trying hard enough.  We see one teacher, Miss Sanders, who's sympathetic to May and doesn't force her to read aloud, and another, simply known as "Teacher," who humiliates her by seating her with the youngest children.

May B. received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus.  It's an excellent historical fiction choice for upper elementary and middle school students.

A study guide for May B. is available here.

Book Review: Behind the Masks: The Diary of Angeline Reddy, Bodie, California, 1880 (Dear America), by Susan Patron (Scholastic, 2012)

Recommended for ages 8-12.

Newbery-award winner Susan Patron turns to the Wild West in the newest entry in the re-launch of Scholastic's popular Dear America series.  Set in the frontier town of Bodie, California, at the height of its  Gold Rush boom, this novel introduces us to plucky fourteen-year-old Angeline, who doesn't believe that her father, the town's criminal lawyer, has been murdered. In fact, she's willing to sneak into the town's funeral home to take a peek in the casket just to prove it's not him.  When her hunch proves right, she's the one who has to investigate the mystery this book revolves around:  just where is her Papa?

But it's not easy to get to the truth in this practically lawless gold rush town; Angeline is just plain "weary of the recklessness and danger of Bodie," a settlement filled with Chinese immigrants, saloons, brothels, miners, vigilantes, and a troupe of actors known as the "Horribles."   In order to find her father, she get some help from several friends, Ellie and Ling Loi, an American-born Chinese girl, Ling Loi, who's been raised in a brothel by the proverbial prostitutes with a heart of gold.  There's a hint of romance, too, between Angeline and an attractive bank-clerk-detective-actor, and even a ghost story revolving around a long-dead child.  The story is written in the first-person diary format of the other books in this series, but differs from other Dear America novels that I have read in that I would call it more of a mystery than traditional historical fiction.  The author provides plenty of colorful historical details of life in a frontier town, from the awful realities of a trip to the dentist to the petty small-town prejudices and gossip.  It's an action-packed, rip-roaring tale that should appeal to girls as well as boys and makes a good addition to school and/or public libraries.

Like all the Dear America books, this novel includes an epilogue of what happened to the characters and a section with historical notes about the town of Bodie in 1880, historical photos and maps. Back matter also includes a section on how to make a 19th century style mask from strips of muslin.  An author's note from Patron explains how she became interested in the history of Bodie after visiting the town, located near Yosemite.  The "ghost town," which at the height of its boom in the 1880's had 10,000 residents, is now a National Historic Site and a California State Historic Park.

Disclosure:  review copy provided by publisher.

Book Review: The Crossing, by Donna Jo Napoli (Atheneum Books, 2011)

Recommended for ages 5-10.


This stunning new picture book, written by Donna Jo Napoli and majestically illustrated by Jim Madsen, tells the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition from the point of view of its youngest participant, baby Jean Baptiste, son of Sacagawea.  Strapped onto his mother's back in a cradle board, the baby comments on the various sights and sounds of the expedition.  The narrative is written in free verse. Here is an example from the book's opening:

"Rolled in rabbit hide/I am tucked snug/in a cradle pack/in the whipping cold/of new spring./Roar, roar!  Grizzlies stand tall in my dreams."

The vibrantly colored two page illustrations effectively capture the grandeur of the American wilderness that is all around the expedition's participants.  Jean Baptiste observes eagles, cougars, grizzlies, salmon, elk, birds, and other wildlife that were abundant at the time, as the group makes its way to the Pacific and then back to their home.

An author's note provides some historical context on the journey tiny Jean Baptiste and Sacagawea embarked upon from Fort Mandan, North Dakota to the Pacific and back again.  While this book does not give young readers a complete picture of the Lewis and Clark expedition, it would make an excellent class read-aloud or supplement for home schoolers studying Lewis and Clark, allowing students to imagine the journey from an unusual point of view.  The illustrations are also wonderfully evocative of another time and place in American history, a time when the frontier was vast and the country ripe for exploration.

For another point of view on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, elementary students might try my favorite book about the expedition, New Found Land by Allan Wolf (Candlewick, 2004), which tells then story from the point of view of 13 different participants, including Lewis' dog, Seaman.  Other historical novels worth consideration are The Captain's Dog:  My Journey with the Lewis & Clark Tribe, by Roland Smith (Sandpiper, 2008); Kathryn Lasky's The Journal of Augustus Pelletier:  The Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804 (My Name is America) (Scholastic, 2000),

Book Review: The Revenant, by Sonia Gensler (Alfred A. Knopf Books, 2011)

Recommended for ages 12 and up.

With The Revenant, which hits bookstores this week, debut author Sonia Gensler has crafted a historical fiction/paranormal romance page turner perfect for summer reading. Our heroine is seventeen year old Willie--a self-described liar and a cheat. Desperate to avoid having to return home to help her mother take care of her half-brothers, she fakes educational credentials to get hired as an English teacher at the Cherokee Female Seminary in Indian Territory.

It’s 1896, and Willie doesn’t know what to expect from her new position, but she certainly doesn’t expect to find a her pupils are mostly mixed-race, upper-class young Cherokee ladies who are much more sophisticated and privileged than she is. Nor does she expect the school to be shrouded in mystery--one of their students had supposedly drowned and now her classmates believe that the young girl’s spirit haunts Willie’s room. Willie doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she can’t explain the peculiar noises and the strange events happening at school. Could it be a revenant--one who returns from the dead?

She also doesn’t know what to make of her attraction to a handsome, charming young man, Eli Sevenstar, who’s a student at the nearby Cherokee academy for boys. Romance between an instructor and a student is surely prohibited, not to mention a romance with a native. But in the meantime Willie has to figure out how to grade all the English assignments she has given out, organize the students in a Shakespeare play, and solve a murder mystery--a hefty load for any proper young lady. Can she survive long enough to figure out her own destiny?

This book offers plenty of suspense and entertainment for fans of ghost stories, mysteries and the paranormal, with a good dose of history in the mix as well. My favorite element of the book was definitely the detailed historical setting. While I was familiar with the outlines of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, when the tribe was forced to move from Georgia to what is now Oklahoma, I was unfamiliar with the existence of a small group of wealthy Cherokees who signed a treaty with the Jackson administration and moved voluntarily to what was then Indian territory. An author’s note describes Gensler’s extensive research with primary sources at the Oklahoma Historical Society and Northeastern State University’s archives. This research provided accurate historical background, including depicting the tension on campus between Cherokee students of different economic classes. The main characters are highly appealing, and teens will enjoy the bit of forbidden romance as well.

Gensler’s website provides links to further information on the real Cherokee Female Seminary, which was staffed by graduates of Mount Holyoke and other Eastern colleges.




Disclosure: ARC provided by publisher.

Book Review: Forgiven by Janet Fox (Speak, 2011)

Recommended for ages 12 and up.

In her second novel, Janet Fox returns to one of the secondary characters from her debut novel, Faithful, to craft an equally absorbing saga about a strong young girl at the turn of the 20th century.  Kula Baker has been raised by her outlaw father in the rough American West around Yellowstone, but now that she's seventeen and "of age," he sends her off to live in more civilized Bozeman.  Kula takes a position as a servant to Mrs. Gale, a photographer and a woman of independent means.  Just as she's getting used to her new life, her pa shows up, frantically telling Kula she must travel to San Francisco to retrieve a mysterious box from the unknown Ty Wong.  Before she knows it, her pa's been arrested, and will surely hang unless she can clear his name. 

Soon she's in San Francisco, where the streets were a "bedlam of willy-nilly confusion," filled with horseless carriages, fashionable women, boys running wild, lots of horses, and most amazing of all, trolleys!  Through the good graces of Mrs. Gale's sister-in-law, Kula finds herself in a world of luxury, glamour, and artists.  In her quest to recover her pa's box, she also finds herself  not knowing who she should trust--the kind David Wong, who seems to always be in the right place to rescue Kula from trouble, or the handsome and dapper Will Henderson, whose family is part of the San Francisco elite and who seems like the perfect catch. Will either one of them be the man of Kula's dreams?

But things are not as they seem in glamorous San Francisco--Kula discovers an area of Chinatown where men traffic in little girls, who are cruelly kept as sex slaves. Kula is determined to save any of these girls she can from their miserable life.  Little does she know that San Francisco is about to collapse--in a huge earthquake, followed by fires throughout the city.  Will all of San Francisco burn, and can Kula still save her father, her friends--and herself?

In Kula, Fox has created another strong and memorable character who will draw teenage girls into her story, a page-turner of a tale filled with mystery, romance, and danger.  The character evolves throughout the novel, beginning as a girl with a chip on her shoulder, and ending by opening her heart to love, rebirth and hope.  Fox also recreates the San Francisco of before and after the earthquake in a compelling way, encompassing both the glamorous and the sordid sides of the West Coast's biggest city.  Girls who are looking for romantic historical fiction will surely enjoy this new release. 

Please note:  Sadly, trafficking and exploitation of children is still an international scandal.  

In conjunction with her book's release, Janet Fox will donate a portion of the proceeds from FORGIVEN to The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. To learn more about what you can do to help agencies that actively fight the exploitation and trafficking of children, visit the following websites:

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

Unicef

Stop Child Trafficking

Tween Tuesday Book Review: The Trouble with May Amelia, by Jennifer Holm (Atheneum Books, 2011)

Recommended for ages 8-12. 


Jennifer Holm's 1999 novel Our Only May Amelia (which received a Newbery Honor in 2000) is one of my all-time favorite historical novels for kids, and I was eager to read the sequel which has just been released this spring.  If you haven't read the first book, May Amelia is the only girl in a large family of Finn immigrants living in a remote area of Washington State around 1900.  Amelia fits into the tradition of feisty tomboy frontier girls like Laura Ingalls, and her first story both made me laugh and made me sob (no spoilers, for those who haven't read it).

While the sequel doesn't quite pack the emotional wallop of the first book, I greatly enjoyed this book as well.  In fact, I felt like I was visiting an old friend whom I hadn't seen in quite some time, one I was glad to catch up with.  How to describe 12-year old May Amelia?  Holm opens the book with the following description:  "My brother Wilbert tells me I'm like the grain of sand in an oyster.  Someday I will be a Pearl, but I will nag and irritate the poor oyster and everyone else until then."  Her Pappa tells her "he would rather have one boy than a dozen May Amelias because Girls Are Useless."  She lives in the middle of nowhere with no girls to keep her company, and she's always being teased by her seven older brothers.  Her father not only runs the family farm but also works at a nearby logging camp for extra cash. 

When a quick-talking stranger comes to town, May Amelia finally proves useful to interpret for her father from English to Finnish.  The stranger's looking for investors to develop the land around the Nasel river, and assures Pappa he has powerful supporters.  Pappa would have to mortgage the farm, but is this a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring the family out of poverty and into prosperity?  And will May Amelia finally demonstrate to her father that she has "sisu", or guts? 

This story is based on the author's own family history, in particular that of her great-grandfather, who settled on the Nasel River in 1871.  But it is young May Amelia who's the star of this funny but also moving tale of the Western frontier.  She's one of those characters who stays with you long after you've finished her story.  I'd love to see Jennifer Holm continue with more stories about May Amelia as she grows up.  But I hope we won't have to wait twelve years for the next installment!

For more great books for tweens, check out Green Bean Teen Queen's weekly meme, Tween Tuesday.

Book Review: The Year We Were Famous, by Carole Estby Dagg (Clarion Books, 2011)

Release date:  April 4, 2011


Recommended for ages 12 and up.


Debut novelist Carole Estby Dagg was inspired by her own family history to write the delightful new young adult historical novel, The Year We Were Famous.  Based on the true story of the author's great-aunt and great-grandmother, this adventure-filled novel set at the time of the suffragist movement tells the tale of 17-year old Clara Estby and her mother, Helga, who decide to walk clear across the United States from the small Norwegian-American farming community of Mica Creek, Washington to New York City--some 4,000 miles--to save their family farm from foreclosure.  Helga, a dedicated suffragist, also wanted to prove that women deserved the vote, because a woman was resourceful enough to make it across the country on her own, without a man's help.  All this, in an era when most women never went more than a few miles from their home.

The story, told in the first person by Clara, opens with Clara, the eldest of eight children, having returned from high school in Spokane to her family's farm in Mica Creek.  While brainstorming about ways to raise money to save their farm, her mother comes up with her idea of walking across the country, and begins seeking sponsors. At her pa's suggestion, Clara agrees to go along on an adventure that she can't begin to imagine: "This would be my year abroad, my year to turn the old Clara into someone bold, someone with newfound talents, strengths, and purpose in life."  And when a New York publisher offers them $10,000 if they complete the trip by November 30, 1896, they are on their way, equipped with calling cards, a letter from the mayor of Spokane attesting to their moral character, work boots, canteens, oil-skin ponchos, tooth powder and toothbrushes, two journals and six pencils, a second-hand satchel, and a compass given to Clara by Erick, the boy who's sweet on her--but no change of clothes!

Needless to say, Clara and her mother have no shortage of adventures on the way, as they follow the train tracks East, including encounters with Native Americans, outlaws, handsome journalists, and even the President-Elect and First Lady of the United States, not to mention blizzards, flash flood, lava fields, heat, thirst, and a sprained ankle.  Will they make it to New York on time to collect their prize and save the farm?  You'll have to read this to find out.  I, for one, had a hard time putting this book down. 

Author Dagg does an outstanding job bringing the voices of her intrepid ancestors to life; she extensively researched the lives of Victorian women in order to "get inside Great-Aunt Clara's head."  Teens are likely to identify with Clara's personality clashes with her mother, as well as her dreams of a life more exciting than being a farmer's wife in rural Mica Creek and her struggle between family obligations and becoming independent.

An excellent website for the book  offers more information on historical context and discussion themes; this would be a particularly appropriate title for a mother-daughter book club, and although the protagonist is seventeen, the book would be perfectly appropriate for readers as young as ten. 

And for those interested in reading more about this adventure, you can check out
Linda Lawrence Hunt's 2005 release for adult readers, Bold Spirit:  Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America.  

In addition, a novel aimed at adult readers about Helga and Clara has also been released this spring:  The Daughter's Walk, by Jane Kirkpatrick (WaterBrook Press, 2011).






Here is the book trailer for The Year We Were Famous:



Other blog reviews:
The Ninja Librarian
Unshelved

Disclosure:  Review copy provided by publisher.

Check in tomorrow for a special guest post from author Carole Estby Dagg!

Women's History Month Book Review: When Molly was a Harvey Girl, by Frances M. Wood (Kane Miller, 2010)

Recommended for ages 8-12.  


I was excited to pick up an autographed copy of this delightful historical fiction book for children at ALA-Midwinter in San Diego, since it had been on my radar for a while but I hadn't managed to get a hold of the book.   I was not disappointed in this fall 2010 release set in the Wild West in the 1890's that's a perfect choice for Women's History month.

When young Molly and her older sister Colleen are left penniless after their father's death, Colleen decides to answer an advertisement for the following:  "Young women of good character, attractive and intelligent, eighteen to thirty, to work in Harvey Eating Houses."  Although Molly's only thirteen, with her hair up and dressed to look older, she and Colleen are hired and sent from Illinois to far-off Raton, New Mexico--the ends of the earth as far as Molly is concerned, and to an area she is convinced is full of Western desperadoes with evocative names such as Rattlesnake Sam and Cockeyed Frank!

Because trains at the time didn't offer meal service, Frank Harvey had founded a chain of restaurants along the Santa Fe lines, offering good food and a hot meal at a reasonable price.  The educated, respectable young women hired from all over the country were a key part of the "brand," and made waitressing into a respectable profession.  Girls were paid a salary, provided with room and board, and subject to strict rules about behavior with the largely male customers, curfews, and uniforms.  Most came for adventure--and to find a husband, too.

Harvey girls at work

When Molly first sees the highly efficient Harvey girls at work, she's exhausted just by watching the waitress's "Herculean efforts."  Molly muses that the young woman "accomplished more in a half hour than Molly had ever accomplished in a day."  But soon both Molly and her sister are more than adequate as waitresses.  Molly, though, still hopes to get back to Illinois, and develops a scheme to get her sister married to one of their customers, Mr. Latterly, a traveling salesman who admires her attractive sister.  In the meantime, Molly develops a friendship with the magnificent French cook, Gaston, who teaches her about cooking, and his helpers, Josiah, who's part Indian, and Susana, who introduces Molly to Mexican culture.  And let's not forget Genius Jim--a notorious outlaw, who also weaves in and out of the story, providing an amusing surprise ending.

Will Molly's schemes work to get her back to her old life in Illinois, or will she stay out West with her new-found friends?

I found this book to be thoroughly charming; the protagonist, Molly, is a character girls will identify with, as she struggles to act like an "adult" even though she is only thirteen.  It's a great story to explore a little-known aspect of women's history; the Harvey restaurants provided a career opportunity for respectable girls in an era when there were very few options.  In addition, as a secondary story, we see the racism and prejudice that existed in the West between different ethnic groups, who were not supposed to mix socially, through Molly's friendship with Josiah and Susana.

Author Frances Wood used her own family history as the basis for this story, since as she reveals in an author's note, her great-grandmother, Jennie, became a Harvey Girl in 1887.  Although her ancestor left no diaries or letters about her Harvey Girl days, the author used other books on the Harvey Girls in her research, and a brief bibliography is provided.

Several other books for young readers have been published on the Harvey Girls.  For another novel for middle grade readers, you can check out Harvey Girl, by Sheila Wood Foard (Texas Tech University Press, 2006).  There is also a charming paper doll book (I see a great gift combo--paper dolls and this novel):  Far From Home:  West by Rail with the Harvey Girls Paper Dolls by Lesley Poling-Kempes.

Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls

And of course, while on the subject of the Harvey Girls, we can't forget the famous Judy Garland MGM musical The Harvey Girls, with the celebrated song and dance number, "On the Atchison, Topeka, & the Santa Fe," which won the Oscar for Best Song in 1946.

For more about the Harvey Houses on the web, including photos of surviving restaurants, click here.

Tween Tuesday Book Review: Crosswire, by Dotti Enderle (Calkins Creek, 2010)

Recommended for ages 10 and up.


Release date:  November, 2011

Texas author Dotti Enderle's newest novel, set in 1883 during a grueling drought, brings the excitement of the Texas frontier to today's young people.  Thirteen year old Jesse and his family find themselves in the middle of a battle between farmers and free-range cattlemen; with water scarce, fence cutting became a common practice as cattlemen cut through farmers' barbed-wire fences in a desperate search for water for their herds.  Sometimes bandits were hired to do the dirty work, and they often left threatening messages behind and even tortured animals to get their message across. 

Jesse's family is being torn apart, between the vandalism on the farm from the fence-cutters and his brother Ethan's gambling.  When Ethan steals the family's cash reserves to settle a gambling debt, their father disowns him and Ethan is forced to leave in disgrace, breaking their mother's heart.  Jesse knows his father thinks he's a weakling;  he's unable to shoot a gun since an earlier hunting accident where he had accidentally shot and killed his own dog.  In one scene, Jesse's father comments that "this boy will never grow up." 

When a mysterious stranger rides into town, Jesse's father hires him to help out on the farm.  Jesse doesn't know what to make of Jackson Slater.  Snooping around, Jesse discovers that Slater is keeping company with some rough men, and what's worse, he's hiding a pair of wire cutters and a fancy pistol in his living quarters.  Is this mysterious stranger friend or foe, and can Jesse summon up the courage to help his family through this crisis?

This fast-paced, action-filled story, written in brief chapters, is narrated by Jesse in a colloquial tone, filled with colorful slang and expressions such as "I felt anger churning inside me like a tornado sweeping through the fields," or "dumber than a turkey."  While I imagine it will especially appeal to Texas readers, this book will be enjoyed by anyone who likes an exciting Western story, filled with adventure, danger, and even the Texas Rangers.

At a quick-paced 135 pages, this book would be a good story to recommend for reluctant readers, particularly those looking for a historical or adventure title.   The author includes an afterword with additional information on the history of the Texas Rangers, the introduction of barbed wire fencing, fence-cutters, and a brief bibliography.

Book Review: Emily's Fortune, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Delacorte Press, 2010)

Recommended for ages 7-10.  


Fans of comic Wild West adventures like Betsy Byars' Golly Sisters books should eat up this rip-roaring tale from Newbery winning author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, who has written over 135 diverse books for young readers.  Our heroine, Emily, is a very meek eight-year old who is tragically orphaned when her mother and her very wealthy employer are killed in a carriage accident.  Her only friend is a small turtle, Rufus, who lives in a box.

With her only living relative the evil Uncle Victor, Emily is sent off to live with her aunt Hilda in the far-away West.  Barely escaping from the "Catchum Child-Catching Services:  Orphans, Strays, and Roustabouts Rounded up Quickly," Emily gets on the train where she meets Jackson, a good-for-nothing trouble-making orphan who's also headed out West.  But soon there's TROUBLE!  It turns out that Emily is an heiress--$10 million worth, and the evil Uncle Victor is hot on their trail...to get his hands on her money!  Can Jackson and Emily catch the stagecoach, survive armed robbery, evade Uncle Victor and get to Aunt Hilda in Redbud before it's too late?

The charming black and white illustrations, large type, and relatively simple vocabulary,  make this very friendly to readers who are stepping up from series like Magic Treehouse.  Each chapter ends with a cliff-hanger in giant old-West style fonts; examples include "and who in creepin' creation do you suppose was in it?" or "And what in blinkin' bloomers do you think she saw?"

Naylor demonstrates a great sense of humor and adventure in this new book, which would be a very fun read-aloud either for classroom or at home, with strong appeal to both girls and boys.  It would also be a good book to recommend both to reluctant readers, who will be encouraged to read forward by the cliff-hangers at the end of each chapters and the action-driven plot, as well as avid readers.  

Book Review: The Water Seeker, by Kimberly Willis Holt (Henry Holt, 2010)

Recommended for ages 10 and up.

Award-winning children's author Kimberly Willis Holt offers a lyrical coming-of-age story set against the harsh reality of pioneer times and the Oregon trail in her newest novel. The central character is Amos, born in 1834, the son of a dowser, or water-seeker. His father, Jake, has the mystical gift of finding water, a gift handed down from son to son in his family. His mother, Delilah, died while giving birth to Amos but appears repeatedly in the novel as a ghost visible to those women who care for her son. Because his father is away most of the year trapping and dowsing, Amos is raised by his childless aunt and uncle at an Indian mission. Amos is an unusual child who has inherited both his mother's gift for drawing and his father's gift for dowsing.

Life on the frontier was not easy, with a smallpox epidemic killing off not only a slew of Indians but also Amos' aunt, the only mother he has known. His care is given over to neighbors, until his father comes back to town with a new wife, Blue Owl, a Shoshone Indian. Amos, who wants to stay where he is, joins his father and Blue Owl in their itinerant lifestyle, until, a few years later, his father decides to join a wagon train to the Oregon territory as a scout.

The second half of the book tells the story of the journey on the Oregon trail; almost fourteen by this time in the story, Amos' journey takes him from a boy to a man. From the trail's jumping off point in Independence, Missouri, Amos' father recruits a diverse group of people for their wagon train, characters who will populate the rest of the book. Among them are a British family with a young girl, Gwendolyn, whose face has been disfigured by her father's abusive behavior. Also joining the group is a beautiful young girl Jubilee, her deaf brother, and her parents. Amos is enchanted by Jubilee, but Blue Owl knows that she is not meant for him.

Holt brings us into the preparations for this almost unimaginable journey--the purchase of supplies, the outfitting of wagons with oxen or mules, the decisions on which route to take, even the preparations of coffins of cloth, in case the worst happens. We see the travelers' distrust of Blue Owl; many had never seen Indians up close.

The action in the book steps up as the wagon train leaves for Oregon; terrible accidents, sickness, death, buffalo hunts, and young love are among the experiences that turn young Amos from a boy to a man. At the conclusion of the book, Holt takes us to 1859, when we see Amos, now with his own family, carrying on the family tradition of dowsing, "as his father had done, as his father had done before him...the gift never failed Amos."

This is a beautifully written, poetic tale that I would categorize as literary fiction for young readers. The book starts out with a very quiet, slow pace, and I can easily imagine many children abandoning the book after the first 25 pages or so unless they are required to read it for class. The story certainly would fit well into curriculum units on Western expansion, the Oregon Trail, and other pioneer themes, but the book does not have the action-packed pace that many children are accustomed to in other books. I do not see this book as having broad child appeal, but I can imagine that it might fare well in the awards season, since its more leisurely style may appeal to many adult readers of children's books.

Also, the book does have an unusual mix of paranormal elements with historical fiction, which may appeal to some readers. Not only do we have Amos' mother, who appears throughout the book as a ghost, but also the phenomenon of dowsing in general. Since I was not familiar with the word, I did a bit of research on the Internet. Apparently Holt's husband and father-in-law are both dowsers, but other than sharing this fact in the acknowledgments, there is little background provided on the subject. From Holt's book, I didn't quite realize that dowsing, also known as water witching, is considered a form of divination. According to the Sceptic's dictionary, dowsing has been around for thousands of years and there are large societies of dowsers in America and Europe as well as other parts of the world. However, limited scientific studies have shown that the dowsers do no better than chance and no better than non-dowsers in locating water. Here is a contemporary photo of a dowser using a tool much like Amos might have used:

Book Review: Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell (Bloomsbury, 2010)

Recommended for ages 10 and up.
Eighth-grader Genevieve just wants to have a regular summer with her friends, going to the rec-center pool, to soccer camp, and hanging out and talking about cute boys. But when her mother gets the idea that the whole family should go to Camp Frontier, a "resort" in Wyoming where campers pay lots of money to faithfully re-enact the 1890's pioneer experience, Genevieve is far from thrilled. It's not just living without her I-pod, computer and lip gloss that gets her down...she also has to use an incredibly stinky outhouse, deal with killer mosquitos and attacking chickens, and horror of horrors--share a bed with her younger brother!

Her mother promises reluctant Genevieve her own cell phone at the end of the summer if she'll just cooperate for a few months with their little adventure. Little does her mother suspect that Genevieve has secretly hidden the cell phone and is using it to text her friends back home with laugh-out-loud updates on her pioneer experiences. Here's an example:

"Week 1 - Sunday. 2:27 pm. Help! I'm dressed up like an American Girl Doll minus the fashion sense. My sleeves are so tight I can't lift my arms above my head. Is this the new me?"

But when Genevieve meets the handsome Caleb, teenaged son of one of the other families at Camp Frontier, she wonders if the summer might be salvageable after all. Or is he already hooking up with Nora, the daughter of the couple who own the camp? And just when life at the camp seems to be getting more bearable (and Gen discovers she's actually good at milking their cow!)--her contraband cell phone is discovered. Will her family be voted off of Camp Frontier?

In her acknowledgments, author Cathleen Davitt Bell acknowledges her debt to the PBS series Frontier House, in which three modern families were sent to Montana to experience life in 1883. She also was clearly inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic Little House series. Bell writes that she was eight years old when she opened Little House for the first time--"and by my tenth birthday I was knitting blankets, sewing doll clothes, baking my own bread, and making architectural sketches of a camp that would transport visitors to the frontier. Thank you, Laura Ingalls Wilder, for providing me with years of magic."

In addition to lacing the book with plenty of humor, Bell also demonstrates in her book some of the real rigors of frontier life, where ordinary chores like laundry took an entire day, there was no sun block or screen doors to protect from mosquitos, and bears might roam the woods! While the book does not include a formal bibliography, Bell does mention some of the sources she found most useful in researching pioneer life, particularly for women, in this time period.

This book is likely to be very popular with tween and teen girls, especially those who are or were fans of the still very popular Little House books, or who have enjoyed reruns of the TV series. For extra fun, the author has set up an actual blog that replicates the blog which plays such a key role in the story.

Book Review: Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick (Roaring Brook Press, 2010)

Recommended for ages 12 and up

Originally published in London in 2009, Revolver combines two of my favorite genres: historical fiction and adventure/survival stories. Sedgwick is the author of ten previous novels for young people, most of which include gothic or paranormal elements. This psychological mystery/survival story, however, set in the forbidding world of the Arctic Circle, does not need any hints of vampires, ghosts, or witches to cast a spell on its readers. Once begun, the reader will have a hard time putting this book down.

The story alternates between Giron, an iron mining town, in 1910, and Nome in 1899, at the time of the Alaskan Gold Rush. What happened in Nome that has made 14-year old Sig's father be on the run for so many years? When Sig's father dies after a fall through the frigid ice, Sig and his sister are visited by an evil man, Gunther Wolff, who claims that he is owed half of their father's gold. They know nothing of any gold, and are terrified that this giant of a man will kill them both. An ancient Colt revolver--and ammunition--is hidden in the back of their cabin. Can Sig's resourcefulness--and the Colt revolver--possibly rescue them from this threat?

The author goes back and forth between Sig's terrifying encounter with this man whom he cannot remember and the time years before when the family lived in Nome. Sedgwick writes of Einar, the father: "He'd come for the gold, and he hadn't meant to stay. These things never lasted long, Einar knew." But when Einar is offered a job as an Assay Clerk, the government official who "does the testing and the weighing and the paying," the family settles into this harsh environment. That is, until tragedy strikes, after the arrival in Nome of the villainous miner Wolff.

There are several scenes in this book that suggest rape and murder; even though not described in graphic detail, these scenes make this book appropriate for a young adult audience but not recommended for younger children.

In the U.K. , Revolver has been short-listed for a number of prestigious prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, the Independent Booksellers Award, the UK Literacy Association Award, and the Northern Ireland Book Award, The book was also nominated for the Guardian Children's Book Prize.

This is the kind of fast-moving adventure story that would make a good recommendation for reluctant readers, particularly boys. You can read the book's first three chapters on-line using the widget below.