Review: The Wonder of Charlie Anne, by Kimberly Newton Fusco (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

Recommended for ages 8-12.

Kimberly Newton Fusco's new novel, her second book for young people, introduces us to the spirited Charlie Anne, who narrates this unforgettable story of family, friendship, prejudice, courage, and vinegar pie set in a small town during the Depression.  An interview with Kimberly will appear in my blog tomorrow.

Charlie Anne's mama has just died in childbirth when the story begins.  Her "new mama," come to take care of her and her four siblings, is her cousin Mirabel, who showed up with all her suitcases and her no-nonsense manner to take charge of her Papa and her whole family.  Charlie Anne is saddled with all the domestic chores, from doing the wash to making vinegar pie, and only can escape when she visits the nearby river, where her mother is buried.  At the river, Charlie Anne tells her mother all her news.  Times are hard, with luxuries like lemon drops so precious that the kids take a lick and put the candy back in their pocket for later.  But when Charlie Anne's beloved Papa tells her he has to take a job up north building roads, taking her brother Thomas along, she is so angry at his separating her family she won't even let him hug her goodbye.

Charlie Anne's town  is small, so small that there's not even a school teacher--their school has been boarded up for over a year.  Charlie Anne doesn't mind, because the letters dance around and make no sense to her, and the old teacher made her stand in a trash bucket because she couldn't read properly.  But life changes for her when Old Mr. Jolly, her neighbor, who isn't really so old, gets a new wife, Rosalyn, who dresses in pants and arrives with an African-American girl, Phoebe, about Charlie Anne's age.  Charlie Anne "never saw a colored girl up close before," and she's not sure "if Mirabel will let me play with a colored girl or not." And can Mr. Jolly really take care of a wife when he can't even take care of his cow, Belle, wonders Charlie Anne.

Mirabel wants Charlie Anne to stay away from Phoebe, instead making Charlie Anne listen to The Charm of Fine Manners, a book designed to teach Charlie Anne to be a proper young lady and succeed in life.  With the arrival of Phoebe into town, prejudice rears its ugly head, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  Hardly anyone will even eat the "glorious" chocolate cupcakes Phoebe and Rosalyn bring to the weekly after-church picnics.  And when Rosalyn suggests during church services that, as an experienced teacher, she would like to re-open the town school, using Phoebe as her assistant to help with the younger students, the townspeople gasp in shock.  No colored girl will be teaching in their town, they whisper.  Pretty soon, things are "all riled up," with racial hatred turning things ugly.  Can the school succeed?  Can Rosalyn help Charlie Anne make sense of the dancing letters on a page...and what will happen to Charlie Anne and Phoebe's friendship?  Will her family be reunited?

Charlie Anne's personality is so alive it pops off the page.  I particularly liked her many moods, including her "mad-as-a-yellow-jacket face."  Charlie Anne's unique relationship with family cow Anna May and her daughter Belle adds both humor and pathos to the story, as Charlie Anne translates for the reader what the cows are saying and feeling.  "Their eyes fill with cow-sorrow," and "cow-worry," and "the two of them tell me how very sorry they are that I am having enough troubles to fill a wheelbarrow."   Charlie Anne's charismatic voice narrates not only scenes of every day drama, such as bee stings, falls off swings, peeling potatoes, harvesting tomatoes, Christmas pageants, and kittens born in the barn, but also more profound problems, such as broken families and racism.

This is a book that made me laugh and made me cry, with a main character you won't soon forget.  Highly recommended for school and public libraries, it would make a great selection as well for book clubs for young people since there is wealth of material for discussion.

An excerpt from the novel is available here:

Check out an excerpt from the audiobook version as well.

Release date:  August 10, 2010

The Boys of Summer #4: No Easy Way: The Story of Ted Williams and the last .400 season, by Fred Bowen and Charles S. Pyle (Dutton, 2010)

Recommended for ages 5-10.


No matter who does the ranking, no baseball fan would argue about Ted Williams being one of the greatest baseball players of all time.  Yet there are not a lot of books for young people about him, perhaps because in addition to being a great player, he was also known for being temperamental, demanding, and having an adversarial relationship with the press and sometimes with fans.  I was therefore eager to read Fred Bowen's new picture book about this baseball icon.  Bowen, as a sports columnist and a writer of sports fiction for kids, seems particularly well qualified to tackle this subject.

Rather than write a conventional biography of Williams, Bowen chose to concentrate on Williams' 1941 season with the Red Sox, the year he hit .406, a feat no other baseball player has come close to equalling in the following 60 or so years.  We learn a bit about Williams' background growing up in San Diego in the 1930's, during the Depression.  Right away Williams' enormous ambition is highlighted:

From the time he was young, he knew exactly what he wanted to be.  "My dream was to walk down the street and have people say, 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.'"

Bowen emphasizes Williams' dedication to the sport, and the hours he spent practicing, before and after school, until blisters grew into hard, ugly calluses on his hands.  Why spend so much time practicing?  Because Ted "knew there was no easy way to become the greatest hitter who ever lived.  No easy way to do the single most difficult thing in sports:  to hit a round ball with a round bat." No other player, Bowen tells us, practiced more than Ted, even when he made the major leagues, not only swinging the bat over and over but also squeezing rubber balls to make his wrists and forearms strong.

All this practice pays off in the extraordinary 1941 season, when not only was Joe DiMaggio hitting in a record-breaking 56 straight game streak, Ted Williams was hitting consistently all over American ballparks--could he hit the magic .400 batting average?  By the end of the season, his average had dropped to .39955 with only two games to play.  He could sit out those last games, and stick with his average, which would have been rounded up to .400, according to baseball rules.  Even his manager thought he should sit out the last two games.  But that would be taking the "easy way out," and that wasn't Williams' style.  Although we know the results in advance, Bowen's exciting narrative builds a suspenseful mood as Williams takes his at-bats during the last two games, a double-header against the Philadelphia Athletics.  And the Athletics weren't going to make it easy for him....we almost hold our breath as Bowen describes how Williams, with his stupendous performance in this double-header, raised his average to a stellar .406.

This book is a great addition to baseball collections, and could be enjoyed by baseball fans young and old.  I particularly appreciated the way Bowen emphasized Williams' work ethic and his commitment to practicing.  An afterword with additional biographical information on Williams' life would have been a nice addition.  I also want to give special praise to Charles Pyle's old-fashioned illustrations, which brought to mind classic American illustrators such as Norman Rockwell; they complement the text perfectly, capturing Williams' speed and power but also the innocence of an earlier baseball era, with scenes of Williams eating an ice-cream cone and young boys selling newspapers from canvas bags.

For more on Ted Williams, see his official website, and visit a slew of interesting articles on the Red Sox website.  A new documentary about Ted Williams and his career aired on HBO last summer, although it doesn't appear to be available for purchase.

Also, baseball fans will want to watch for an upcoming picture book entitled The Unforgettable Season: Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and the Record-Setting Summer of 1941, written by Phil Bildner and illustrated by S. D. Schindler, a Putnam Juvenile title due to be released in March of 2011.  

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Book Review: Take Me With You, by Carolyn Marsden (Candlewick Press, 2010)

Recommended for ages 8-12.
 
Carolyn Marsden  is well known for her middle-grade novels set in other countries or focusing on multi-cultural themes.  In her newest novel, she takes us to Naples, Italy, a few years after the end of World War II, where Pina and Susanna are best friends who have lived together since they were babies in a Catholic orphanage.  Both girls believe they are orphans, and hope with all their heart to be adopted.  A nice family is sure to adopt the beautiful Pina, with her golden hair and creamy skin.  But who will want Susanna, a mulatta, or mixed-race child, whose father must have been a black American soldier.  Perhaps La Befana, an angel who hides presents on Three Kings' Day, will grant her wish for parents to adopt her.

Imagine Susanna's surprise when Sister Anna calls her into her office one day and tells her that she's received a letter from a man who may be her father.  An American sailor, he is on a "tour of duty."  Will he come soon? Pina, too, is in for a surprise, when she discovers that her mother is indeed alive, and living right there in Naples.  Whose parent will show up?  Will the two friends have to abandon one another?

Finally, a very dark man in a blue sailor's uniform visits the orphanage.  Susanna's big moment has arrived, but instead of throwing herself at him, "she wanted to cover her face with her hands."  But he soon leaves, promising to return.  Pina, on the other hand, is desperate to find her mother, and together with Susanna, discovers her address and goes off to find her in Naples.  But for both girls, their fantasies about their families do not work out exactly as planned. Will both girls get the loving families they deserve?

This bittersweet tale of two Italian orphans will capture the hearts of middle-grade readers, particularly girls who are drawn to orphan stories.  Marsden captures for young readers the atmosphere of the Italian orphanage, with its (mostly) kindly black-garbed nuns who drag the girls around Naples to sing for funerals and teach them to crochet blankets, which are sold to support the orphanage.  Life is not all drudgery, however, with outings to the movies and to the beach also described. 

At 160 pages, this slender novel is a good choice for students in grades 3 through 5 who are ready to graduate from beginning chapter books to slightly more complex stories. 

Take Me With You was selected as one of Booklist's Top 10 Historical Novels of 2010, and I would recommend this book for both school and public libraries.

Book Review: The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall, by Mary Downing Hahn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010)

Recommended for ages 8-12.
Mary Downing Hahn, best known for her scary  ghost stories for young people, will be sure to please her many fans with her newest creepy tale, The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall, which will be released in September.  


In this new novel, set in 19th century England, we meet ten-year old Florence Crutchfield, who has been living in a London orphanage since her parents died when she was five and no relatives came forward to claim her.  But, surprise!  After five years a great uncle surfaces, who invites her to live with him, his unmarried sister, Eugenie, and her cousin James.  In classic gothic tale fashion, Eugenie arrives at Crutchfield Hall after being soaked by a violent rainstorm.  Eugenie's first impression of the house is not a positive one:

Below me was a gloomy stone house, grim and unwelcoming, its windows dark and lifeless...a writer like Miss Emily Bronte would have been entranced by its Gothic appearance, but I hung back again, suddenly apprehensive of what might await me behind those towering walls.

Although her uncle is kind to her, her aunt takes an immediate dislike to Florence, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to her cousin Sophia, who died in a mysterious accident some time before.   With a nod and a wink to The Secret Garden, we learn that Florence's cousin James is so sickly that he never leaves his room, and Florence is forbidden to visit him.  


All is not well in Crutchfield Hall, and before Florence is even there for a day, she has a strange sensation that someone is watching her.  "A chill raced up and down my spine, and my scalp prickled."  Although her uncle insists that ghosts do not exist, Florence becomes more and more convinced that Crutchfield Hall haunted by the ghost of her cousin Sophia. And what does the ghost want from Florence?  


Florence soon discovers that Sophia is not the ideal child her aunt recreates, but rather an evil spirit who wants someone else to die in her place!  Can she bend Florence to her will, and force her to help her in her devious plans?


It is easy to see after reading this story why Mary Downing Hahn's books have sold over 2 million copies and have received more than forty child-voted state awards.  She manages to create a spine-tingling atmosphere without the novel becoming too frightening for the 8-12 year old crowd.  And you have to love the deliciously macabre cover, of a photograph of two young children (James and Sophia, we assume) in Victorian garb, with Sophia's face obscured by a splash of blood.  While ghost stories are not personally a favorite genre of mine, scary stories are perennially popular with kids, and this quick read is perfect for reluctant readers as well as fans of ghost stories.  


Release date:  September 2010

Nonfiction Monday Book Review: Sparky: The Life and Art of Charles Schulz, by Beverly Gherman (Chronicle Books, 2010)

Recommended for age 8 through adult.

Like so many millions around the world, I grew up reading Peanuts, perhaps the most beloved comic strip ever. So I was excited to learn from Betsy Bird at Fuse #8 of a new biography of this comic book icon for young people. Beverly Gherman's book is sure to find a place on library shelves everywhere, and is a must-have for Peanuts fans as well.

Gherman's book, at 125 pages, provides enough biographical information to be useful for school reports, but the striking layout and graphic design, along with the abundant illustrations, make it a relatively quick book to read, even for the youngest comic fans. Personally, I learned many interesting facts about Schulz from this book. Born in 1922, he was nicknamed Sparky before he was a week old, a suitable nickname as it turned out since Sparky was a character (a "sad-eyed horse") from the then-popular comic strip Barney Google.

Sparky never wanted to be anything but a cartoonist from early childhood, and always had a pencil or paper handy for a quick sketch. Gherman intersperses the text with Peanuts cartoons that match the topic; for example, while talking about Sparky's father's barber shop, we read on the opposite page a strip about Peppermint Patty visiting a barber shop. The book also features many personal photographs from the archives of the Charles M. Schulz Museum. We meet people and see interests in Schulz's life who later will appear in his comics, such as Sparky's best friend Shermy, and his mother, a classical pianist, Sparky's great love of baseball, or his failed romance with a redhead who later will appear as "the little red-haired girl."

Schulz was particularly proud of his military service in World War II, where he was honored for excellence in combat. When he returned from the war, his comics were rejected by many publishers, but he finally found work lettering comic strips for a company that produced Catholic teaching aids. At this time he developed his first comics featuring kids, which he finally sold to the St. Paul Pioneer Press as a weekly comic, Li'l Folks. But his career really took off in 1950 when United Feature Syndicate offered him a five-year contract to develop a comic strip, which they renamed Peanuts. Sparky didn't like the new name, but he had little power to do anything about it.

Gherman describes how innovative Peanuts was at the time, with its spare drawing style and its focus on kids dealing with their daily concerns. Peanuts quickly caught on with readers; by 1956, Sparky had not only become financially successful but was honored by his fellow cartoonists with the Reuben Award as cartoonist of the year.

In the book, we also learn about Sparky as a devoted father and family man. His first marriage, however, ended in divorce in 1972 (this is discussed very briefly in the book). Although this was a difficult period for Sparky, he persevered, and later said he had drawn some of his best comics during this time.

Gherman does not neglect to talk about how Schulz worked as a cartoonist. She writes:

Sparky prided himself on always drawing and writing his own strips. He was the only cartoonist who managed to do that for fifty years. He tried to keep his drawings simple and "pleasant to look at." And always funny. He once told an interviewer that he wanted to be remembered for making people happy.

Not only did Schulz make millions of people happy with his beloved Peanuts characters, he continues to do so even after his death, since Peanuts Classics are still published in many newspapers. Gherman, too, will make many people happy with her delightful biography of this king of comic book artists.

The extraordinary design of this book, done by Jennifer Bostic of Paper Plane Studio,deserves special mention. No boring white pages for this book--every color in the rainbow seems to be used for the page backgrounds, with different contrasting colors chosen for the text. In fact, each time the reader turns the page, the page color and text color changes. While some of the combinations (i.e. white text on a bright green background) are a bit difficult to read for older eyes, the energy and vitality that these bright and ever-changing colors lend to the book make the reader eager to turn to the next page.

Here is a excerpt from the book that allows you to see the unique design:

Sparky: The Life and Art of Charles Schulz

The book includes a bibliography of books, magazine articles, interviews, and television programs about Schulz.

I can't resist sharing my own personal Schulz anecdote...as a little girl in the 1960's, I sent Schulz a copy of my "book" Misery is, inspired by his book Happiness is a Warm Puppy.  He sent me a personal letter back--I remember being particularly impressed by his special Snoopy stationery, something that wasn't commercially available in those days.  I still have the letter in my house somewhere, if I could only find it  in all my clutter!

Peanuts fans should plan a visit to the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa (I haven't had a chance to get there yet, alas, but on my next visit to Northern California...)

Got Books contest winner!

Congratulations to Ashley at Books from Bleh to Basically Amazing who has won my beautiful, brand-new from Amazon (with cool graphic novel-style cover) Penguin Classics edition of The Three Musketeers. I only wish I could afford to send a copy to all the 43 people who entered the contest! Fortunately, this is a book that's fairly easy to find at the library--I highly recommend reading it before next summer's new 3-D movie of this classic comes out. It would be a great book to read aloud with your kids, although it would take a while!  and although they're not as well-known, Dumas wrote four sequels to this classic (a long series from the pre-Harry Potter era).  If you're an e-book sort of person, you can also read it on-line or on your e-book reader for free, although not in this newest, very well-reviewed English translation, courtesy of Google Books.

I'm a big fan of the Michael York-Richard Chamberlain movie from 1973 but I'm always open to something new and am looking forward to seeing D'Artagnan and his musketeer buddies in all their 3-D swashbuckling splendor. According to Wikipedia, there have been 22 feature films made of this classic, starting with silent films, with the most recent English version being The Musketeer (2001), apparently a very loose adaptation, in a style imitating Asian action movies! I have to say I missed that one, although I've seen the 1993 Charlie Sheen/Disney film and the really old (1948) Gene Kelly/MGM version.  There have also been TV series, animated movies (including Tom & Jerry), a Russian musical (!) and more! Check out the link below for up-to-date information on the upcoming film. 

Thanks so much to everyone who entered my contest.

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Author Interview: Margi Preus, author of Heart of a Samurai

Author Margi Preus

Thanks so much to author Margi Preus for agreeing to be interviewed by me for today's blog post. Yesterday I reviewed her first novel, Heart of a Samurai. Margi (pronounced with a hard "g" like Margo!) lives in Duluth, Minnesota, where she spent 20 years directing Colder by the Lake Comedy Theatre while writing comic plays, adaptations, libretti, short fiction, and “short short fiction." She also teaches children’s literature at the College of St. Scholastica’s School of Education. She has previously published several books for children.

Q: Please tell us a little bit about how you learned about the story of Manjiro and why you decided to write a novel about him.

A: I was introduced to Manjiro by a friend, an astute elementary media specialist, while I was researching a picture book, The Peace Bell (Holt, 2008) (also based on a true story with Japan-America themes). She gave me Shipwrecked! by Rhoda Blumberg, and said "read this." Manjiro's story was compelling, and resonated with the same themes I was working with in The Peace Bell--fostering peace and friendship between antagonistic nations, which turned out to be a timely subject as we were deep into war in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time. Unfortunately, I guess it's always a timely subject. I decided to write a novel because I didn't think it was possible to cram everything about Manjiro's life into a picture book. I had no idea what that meant--writing a novel. I thought it'd take me a couple of months--ha ha!

Q: I understand you made two trips to Japan to research this story; did you rely mostly on primary or secondary sources?

A: Secondary. I have an enormous stack of books, only a few of which are about Manjiro himself. The others are about whaling or life in traditional Japan or nautical reference books. Also, of course, my constant companion, Moby Dick.

Q: As an animal lover, I found it difficult to read the fairly graphic whaling scenes in the book. How did you approach balancing a realistic portrayal of whaling practices versus writing something that would be palatable to young readers?

A: Is it palatable? I thought it was pretty gruesome. It took me days and days to work up the courage to even read about whaling, and then many more days to work up the courage to write about it. I wasn't sure I could do it. Writing those chapters felt like cleaning gravel out of a bloody knee after falling off a bike, you don't want to look at it; you don't want to do it, but you have to grit your teeth and do it, don't you?

Q: With your background in comedy theatre, have you considered writing funny books for young people?

A: I want to! I'm working up to it. Writing well for young people is hard. Writing good humor is even harder. It's harder than anything. I have great respect for good comic writers.

Q: What new projects are you currently working on?

A:I have a picture book about famous trees of the world (Celebritrees, Holt) coming out early 2011. I'm also working on a picture book length story based on the extraordinary adventures of a treehouse builder and a YA mystery--which is humorous! I hope. At least a little bit.

Q: What books do you have on your nightstand? (that is, that you are reading or plan to read)

A: I always have an enormous pile of books which occasionally topple over in the middle of the night. I just finished The Madonnas of Leningrad. Go read it right now! I've also been reading the Stieg Larsson mysteries, like everyone else in the whole world. And now I've started Hotel on The Corner of Bitter and Sweet and The Omnivore's Dilemma (which everyone else has already read). I'm also reading the YA novel Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd.  I listen to a lot of books for young people on audio books when I drive. They're short, for one thing. I positively adored The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie who also reads, or perhaps I should say shouts the whole thing, yet makes you cry and laugh and sit in the car in the driveway when you get back from your trip, listening until the car battery finally wears out.

Q: What were some of your favorite books as a child? Were you especially interested in history?

A: My favorite book was National Geographic's Indians of the Americas, especially the very colorful depictions of Mayan ritual sacrifice. Let's just say, I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to be a kids' book. But the illustrations were riveting. I don't think I was interested in history as a subject. Some junior high history teacher took care of that. Fortunately, I loved to read, so when I read Green Mansions, I spent time in a 19th century Venezuelan jungle. When I read A Tale of Two Cities, I lived through the French Revolution. Reading Kristin Lavransdatter, I breathed medieval Norway, as sure as if I had been transported there by time machine. Ever since reading Huckleberry Finn I feel as if I, myself, have drifted down the Mississippi on a raft. If you read enough, sooner or later you are going to learn to appreciate history. And everything else, for that matter. Literature gives one the privilege of living in a different time, a different place, and getting to know a host of people--wonderful and terrible--intimately.