Versatile Blogger Award!

Thanks so much to JL at An Avid Reader's Musings for presenting me with my first blog award!

Here's how this award works:
1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (In no particular order...)
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

Here are 7 interesting things about myself:

1) I learned to read on my own before school from a Dr. Seuss dictionary, according to my mother.
2) I love all kinds of movies and once went to a movie marathon where we watched movies for 24 hours straight.
3) My miniature poodle is my best-behaved child.
4) I read the first Harry Potter and Twilight books when they first came out, before most people had heard of them.
5) My bucket list includes going on a photo safari somewhere in Africa.
6) I once went to the Queen of England's public birthday celebration in London.
7) The bonobo is my new favorite animal.

Some blogs that I enjoy (in no particular order):

1) Abby the Librarian
2) Afterthoughts
3) Rebecca's Book Blog
4) The Book Maven's Haven
5) The Book Nosher
6) There's a Book
7) YA Bookmark
8) What We Read and What We Think
9) The Almost Librarian
10) Reading the Past
11) Bees Knees Reads
12) Books are a Girl's Best Friend
13) Alison Can Read
14) Bookie Woogie
15) The Heart of Dreams

Book Review: Young Samurai: The Way of the Sword (Hyperion, 2010)

Recommended for ages 9-14.

British author Chris Bradford continues his action-packed saga of samurai and ninja in the second installment of The Young Samurai series: The Way of the Sword. Jack Fletcher, shipwrecked, orphaned by ninja pirates, and then adopted by a samurai in 17th century Japan, has completed his first year of samurai school. His problems are not over, however; his classmates still taunt him as a "gaijin" (barbarian foreigner), anti-Christian sentiment is spreading, and worse yet, the evil ninja Dragon Eye is still after Jack and his father's rutter, which contains the secret routes to navigate the world's oceans.

Once every three years, the samurai students have a chance to compete in the ancient ritual of the Circle of Three, testing their mind, body, and spirit. Those who pass this test will be allowed to learn Two Heavens, a secret martial art technique. Selection trials are held, and only the top five students progress to the Circle. Readers will not be surprised that Jack is among this elite group, as is his female friend, Akiko, and Kazuki, his arch-enemy at school. But will Jack be able to survive the competition?

Once again, Bradford peppers his action-adventure story with many details of Japanese life and culture, including four hour tea ceremonies, zen gardens, origami cranes, and more. I would not advise reading these books out of order; readers might be confused without the background from the first book in the series. One observation: the Circle of Three competition reminded me more than a little of the Tri-wizard tournament in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, moved to Japan, with its all-but impossible tasks to complete. Perhaps Harry fights the samurai could be a good topic for a fan-fiction writer!

As in the prior volume, the author includes a useful Japanese glossary, complete with a guide to pronouncing Japanese words. Much of the vocabulary is likely to be familiar to anime and manga fans, however.

You can read an excerpt from this book here.

Four volumes of this series have been published to date in the U.K.; the next volume, The Way of the Dragon, will be published in the U.S. in 2011.

Book Review: Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood, by Jame Richards (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

Recommended for ages 12 and up.

Debut novelist Jame Richards has written a mesmerizing novel in verse set against the shocking backdrop of the Johnstown Flood of 1889, a disaster that could perhaps be compared to Hurricane Katrina in our time. According to the National Park Service website, there was no larger news story in the latter nineteenth century after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The story of the Johnstown Flood has plenty of juicy ingredients to make a compelling novel: an exclusive resort, where the wealthiest of Pittsburgh society vacationed, an intense storm, the failure of a dam, perhaps due to negligence, the destruction of a working class city, and an enormous national and even international relief effort, which included Clara Barton and the Red Cross.

The story, told in free verse by multiple narrators, begins the summer before the flood, giving us ample time to get to know the characters before disaster hits. We first meet Celestia, daughter of a wealthy Pittsburgh businessman, who comes with her older sister, Estrella, and her parents to spend the summer at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, far from "the filth and crowds of the city." The club is at South Fork Reservoir, created by a seventy-foot earthen dam and better known to the owners of the club as Lake Conemaugh. Celestia soon begins a forbidden romance with one of the laborers at the club, Peter, who is from nearby Johnstown. Peter is a boy "not of her rank," and their secret courtship is described in very romantic verse:

No artifice,/no pretending to faint/or slipping so he could catch me./Just our locked gaze/tightening the space between us/until our voices/need only whisper,/lips to ear,/then lips upon lips.

Their love is not only taboo, but could get Celestia disowned and cut off from any contact from her family, not to mention getting Peter fired.

We also meet local resident Maura, not much older than Celestia but already with three babies, her husband Joseph, who is a train engineer and will play a key role when the tragedy hits, and Kate, a young widow who leaves the area to attend nursing school.

When Celestia's parents realize she's becoming too friendly with a young man from the wrong side of the tracks, she is whisked off to boarding school in Switzerland, where she soon learns her parents have arranged a suitable marriage for her. But Celestia has her own ideas, and when she arrives at the South Fork club the following summer for what her parents intend to be a quiet vacation before her marriage, she leaves her comfortable life behind and sets off in pursuit of Peter.

What neither she nor anyone else (except, of course, the reader) realizes is that disaster is about to strike. Richards works into the poems that the locals at Johnstown have been joking for years about the dam breaking, but the dam always seems to hold. However, the outlying communities' luck has run out. An unusually heavy rainstorm has clogged the screens put in by the club to keep the lake stocked with fish for the vacationers. With the clogged screens, there is no other outlet for the extra water, and as the people at the club watch in horror, "the better part of the dam just melts,/disappears./The water cannot get out fast enough,/far enough."

When Celestia's father realizes his daughter has run away and is likely in Johnstown, about to be hit by the flood waters, he is filled with regret, and can think only of finding her. Despite his knowledge of the imminent danger, he sets off for Johnstown in pursuit.

As the dam floods the nearby communities, the stories of our different narrators converge, as many residents escape but thousands die, washed away by the flood waters and the debris. Richards also portrays the terrible aftermath of the disaster, as morgues fill with bodies (many of whom were never identified), people look for loved ones, and struggle to survive and rebuild their lives, with the help of both neighbors and strangers alike.

According to her website, Richards was greatly inspired by Karen Hesse's Newbery-winning novel Out of the Dust, inspired by another natural disaster brought on, like this one, at least partially by human neglect.

Richards' novel has received starred reviews in School Library Journal and Kirkus. You can read more about the author's background on her website or you can follow her on her blog. Her website also features a reader's guide for this book.

For more on the Johnstown flood, the author provides a timeline of events concerning the South Fork dam, as well as a bibliography with suggestions of further reading (both fiction and nonfiction) for both young readers and adults. In addition, a great deal of information on the flood is available online: see the Johnstown Flood Museum's website and the Johnstown Flood National Park Service website for this historic site.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week

Book Blogger Appreciation Week was started by Amy Riley of My Friend Amy as a week long festival (September 13-17, 2010) celebrating the community of book bloggers and their contribution to preserving a culture of literacy through book reviews and recommendations, reading reflections, and general bookish chat. BBAW also includes an awards component. For more information on the BBAW 2010 Awards and how to participate, please visit the BBAW 2010 Awards Blog. BBAW events include daily blogging topics, blogger interview swaps, special guest posts, and so much more!

I have registered my blog for consideration in the Kidlit Book Blog category (even though I have only been blogging for 2 months I have already posted 35 reviews). Here are the links to the 5 representative posts for consideration:

Review of Alligator Bayou by Donna Jo Napoli;

Review of One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia;

Review of Is it Night or Day by Fern Schumer Chapman;

Review of A Nest for Celeste by Henry Cole;

Report on Lemony Snicket/Lisa Brown appearance at Skirball Museum.

These same posts can be used for consideration for Best Written Blog and Best New Blog categories.

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:

The Boys of Summer #3: Clemente!, by William Perdomo and Brian Collier (Henry Holt, 2010)

Recommended for ages 5-10.

In honor of summer's baseball season I am continuing my series of recommendations of baseball picture book biographies for young readers. Just released this year is a vibrant new picture book on beloved baseball hero Roberto Clemente by award-winning writer Willie Perdomo, with dynamic illustrations by Caldecott-honor illustrator Bryan Collier. In the story, a little boy named in honor of the baseball star learns about his namesake. The text is written in a kind of free verse poetry, some of which rhymes and some of which doesn't. The language incorporates Spanish words as well as English. Here is an example of the very lively and rhythmic text:

Clemente!Clemente!/It's us, tu gente!/Clemente! Clemente!/Prince of the baseball diamante/Canon-arm Clemente,/Puerto Rican prince Clemente,/Hall-of-Fame Clemente.

The author presents basic biographical information on Clemente, including the anecdote that by the time he learned to walk, he was always throwing something: "a can, a tomato, a rag ball, hitting bottle caps against a wall." We learn of his many baseball records, including 4 batting titles, and 12 Golden Gloves. The author also recounts the story of Clemente's "last sacrifice fly." Sadly, he was killed in 1972 in a plane crash while on the way to Nicaragua to help victims of a massive earthquake. In the end, this is a highly inspirational story, which points out that "with faith, with hope, with belief in yourself...that anything is possible in this world." A few months after his untimely death, Clemente became the first Latino player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The illustrations in this book really enhance the text and make Clemente's story come alive. The artist explains in a note at the end of the book that he used a watercolor-and-collage technique with multiple repeated layers to express the speed, power, impact, and sound Clemente embodied when he played. There is a particularly noteworthy two-page spread where the artist uses three overlapping images of Clemente and about seven baseball bats to show the player at bat.

This book is highly recommended for public and school libraries, as well as for baseball fans of all ages.

Hear the author read this book at www.mackids.com/clemente.

The author provides a brief bibliography of other books for young people about Clemente, as well as a number of useful on-line resources, including a virtual exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution.

Book Review: The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane, by C. M. Millen, illustrated by Andrea Wisnewski (Charlesbridge, 2010)

Recommended for ages 5-10.

In the Mourne mountains of Northern Ireland, a young monk is given the task of making ink for the manuscripts that are laboriously hand-copied in the monastery. Inspired by nature, he experiments with making vibrant colors from plants and flowers in the forest, allowing the monks to cover their pages with "heavenly hues." The simple story is told in a verse style that reminded me of Ludwig Bemelmans' classic Madeline stories. The book begins as follows: "In the mountains of Mourne, up twisted old bends, past blackberry brambles and ancient wood glens, there stood a tall tower-a circle of stone-where holy men lived, wearing simple brown books, eating simple brown bread, and saying their prayers by their simple brown beds." I almost expected the next part to talk about twelve little girls in two straight lines.

The text is interspersed with lovely, brief poems by the fictional Theophane; these poems are based on works originally written by medieval monks in the Irish language and adapted by Millen. Here is an example: "No great house is finer than my home within the wood. I give thanks for all that God has given for our good." Readers can tell which poems are written by Theophane since they are set in a different typeface and appear on antique-looking scraps of paper set into the illustrations.

The author also includes a useful afterword which provides background information on monasteries in Ireland and their importance in preserving many of the great works of antiquity. She also briefly describes the process of manuscript illumination, and provides further bibliography and websites for those readers interested in further exploring the topic.

While the text of this book is well-written, it is the illustrations for this book that are truly extraordinary. The artwork looks like woodcuts but is actually first hand-drawn on vellum and then cut out from the paper. This is Wisnewski's third picture book for children. In an interview, she describes her technique as follows: "When I have tweaked the sketch to my satisfaction," she says, "the design is transferred onto a black, clay-coated paper. Most of the design's details come out in the cutting process, for which I use a #11 X-acto blade and lots and lots of patience." When a cut is complete, the design is transferred to a magnesium plate, which is then printed on a press built by the artist's own husband. Finally, the artist uses watercolors to hand-color the print. This intricate process produces exquisitely detailed artwork which reflects the style of medieval manuscript illumination.

Here is an example of a two-page spread from the book:



Highly recommended for school and public libraries, this book would also be terrific for home-schoolers since it could be a springboard for many other lessons.