Snowboarding Suspense

The White Gates, by Bonnie Ramthun--Torin Sinclair moves from California to the snow-covered mountains of Colorado as his doctor mom starts a new job. The very first night, his mom is called to her clinic to treat a member of the high school snowboarding team. Other members of the team are there, and they make reference to a "curse" as they stare hatefully at Tor and his mom. They walk out without telling him what they mean. As Tor goes through his first days in town, he is met with unexplained hostility and pity in equal measure. When he goes to pick out snowboarding equipment, he finally makes some friends who reveal to him the tale of a long-gone Ute Indian determined to keep her land safe. With the help of Drake and Raine, Tor navigates the uncertainties of a new school, a new sport, and an old curse.

A fast-moving mystery story, The White Gates is interspersed with lessons on snowboarding technique and Ute history. These bits are handled deftly and with a light touch so that the reader is not distracted or made to feel as if he or she is sitting in a classroom. I was really impressed with Ms. Ramthun's ability to draw her characters to make them more than stereotypes. Drake and Raine are in some ways more fully fleshed-out than Tor, which is unusual in secondary characters. Which is not to say we don't come to know Tor. The author is exceedingly good at showing us the heart of her characters without using an excess of words to do it. I really enjoyed my trip through The White Gates, and I highly recommend it.

Non-Fiction: Colonial

Colonial Voices: Hear Them Speak, by Kay Winters, illustrated by Larry Day--The near universal opinion in my household (or at any rate, the independent readers therein) was that this is a beautiful book about the Boston Tea Party. Beautiful and boring. The illustrations by Larry Day are very nice, but the text assumes too much knowledge on the part of the reader, and is too spare. Generally speaking, I appreciate authors who use as few words as possible to get their points across, especially in children's books. In this case, however, Kay Winters was downright miserly in her use of language. The text is set in irregular columns, as though it is trying to look like poetry. But it doesn't read like poetry. Ms. Winters uses a different character point of view on each two-page spread and focuses mostly on how the characters are feeling as opposed to why. The whole book--text and illustration alike--fails to convey the urgent energy which must have accompanied the build up to this cathartic event in Colonial America. For a historical non-fiction book, remarkably little history is imparted.

Paralyzed by fear

The Leanin' Dog, by K. A. Nuzum--Dessa Dean is eleven years old. She and her father live in the woods, trapping, hunting, and fishing for their food. As the book opens, Dessa Dean is trying to work up the courage to step off the porch, into the snow. Fear holds her back. We learn that a while back her mother, a diabetic, fell into a coma and froze in the snowy woods while Dessa Dean looked on helplessly. Her own ear-tips were deadened by frost-bite by the time her father discovered her sitting by Josie's body. Since he brought her home, Dessa Dean has been unable to leave the house, not even to go to the outhouse. She stays inside, cooking, cleaning, and doing all the things her mother used to do, in addition to her schoolwork. One day, while her father is out hunting and checking his traps, there comes a scratching at the cabin door.

Dessa Dean opens the door to discover a dog, a beautiful fudge-colored dog, favoring one leg as she runs off the porch and back to the woods. The book chronicles Dessa Dean's efforts to befriend the dog and the dog's efforts to protect Dessa Dean. It is beautifully written, although I think younger readers will be a bit put off by the lengthy descriptions of Dessa Dean's meal preparations. These things are important, though, as they show us how little Dessa Dean and her father have and how hard they have to work for everything they do have. When disaster strikes, we have a deeper understanding of the devastation. This book is on the Children's list, but older children and teens will have a better appreciation for the details and themes.

Suspense cycle

Shift, by Jennifer Bradbury--Have you ever had a friendship that seemed so close and so important, you knew it would last forever? And then you slowly realized it had faded away? Or, maybe you could pinpoint the exact moment of falling-out: a major argument, a long-distance move. What if your friend simply disappeared?

Chris Collins and Win Coggans have been best friends since grade school. After graduating high school, they bicycle across the country from West Virginia to the state of Washington. They plan to spend a day or two with Win's uncle in Seattle before catching a bus back home to get ready for college. Only, a day before they reach Seattle, Win keeps going while Chris stops to change a flat tire. He vanishes, leaving Chris to finish the journey to an unfamiliar city and without the name of Win's uncle. Circumstances during the trip have been such that Chris does not tell either family that Win left him. When he gets back home, he tells the families what happened and answers a bunch of questions. He believes Win abandoned him deliberately and is by turns hurt, angry, and worried.

Shortly after Chris begins college classes, an off-duty FBI agent comes to see him. Win's father has hired him to investigate Win's disappearance. Mr. Ward tells Chris there is no uncle in Seattle, and the mystery really takes off.

The story moves along at a good clip, although the alternating past/present of the chapters was a tad frustrating sometimes. I developed a lot of sympathy for Chris and, against my better judgment, Win. He seems to be all jerk, but there are moments when he really comes through for Chris and for them as a team. Solving his disappearance becomes critical, and in the end, conscience-searing.

A Taste of the Middle East

Beneath My Mother's Feet, by Amjed Qamar--Set in Pakistan and told through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Nazia, this story explores the relationships between parents and children, especially mothers and daughters. Nazia attends school and awaits the day when she will be married to her cousin, Salman. When her father is injured and unable to work, her mother, Naseem, must go outside the home to find employment. She takes Nazia out of school to care for her two younger siblings. They all go along with Naseem on her housekeeping jobs, and Nazia helps her mother in addition to watching her brother and sister.

As time goes on, Nazia realizes she has dreams beyond marriage, beyond what is expected of her. Her struggle to come to terms with her dreams and her reality bring her into conflict with her mother, her father, her siblings, even her mother's employers. I was hard pressed not to yell out loud at Nazia's family (especially her father) as they continuously crushed her emotionally and mentally. Their own hopelessness made them blind to her possibilities. She is so smart and so determined, that you can't help cheering for her as she strives to make her place in the world fit her instead of the other way around.

Warning: Audio Book Ahead!

A Dog on His Own, by Mary Jane Auch--I downloaded this book from the library's website (www.lex.lib.sc.us). It's not very long, and I listened to it over the course of three hours in the car today. The narrator is lively without being annoying, and it was a very pleasant accompaniment to my errands.

K-10 (so named by his mother, who believed he was "a step above other dogs") is a stray who likes to think he enjoys being on his own. His life experiences have led him to believe that humans cannot be trusted, they will always leave you in one way or another. The action kicks off as he is being brought to yet another shelter from which he hopes to either escape or be adopted so he can then escape from the new family. As he waits to be noticed by adoptive families, he coaches another dog on how to get attention, and that dog is placed. K-10 finds that for the first time in his life, he is spending a second night in a shelter. The next day, he meets Pearl and Peppy. The new friends plot their escape.

Once out in the open, K-10 slowly comes to realize that he has never been entirely on his own for any real length of time, and he is unsure how to proceed. Through the help of Pearl and even tiny Peppy, he figures out his place in the world.

The story is very engaging, but do be prepared for a certain amount of gore. There are descriptions of roadkill and a pair of dog bullies take down a rabbit and eat it. Otherwise, it is appropriate (and even of interest) to elementary and younger middle-school students.

Non-Fiction: Triumphant

When the Wolves Returned: Restoring Nature's Balance in Yellowstone, by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, photographs by Dan Hartman and Cassie Hartman--This beautiful photo-essay depicts Yellowstone National Park, past and present, as its caretakers struggle to keep the park healthy and appealing to tourists. In the early days, the few tourists had free rein of the park. Before the mass-production of automobiles, Yellowstone was difficult to get to, so the effect of people hunting bears and feeding the wildlife was slight. People enjoyed interacting with the elk and deer, so park officials hired hunters to get rid of the wolves which also liked to, ahem, interact with the elk and deer.

The author does a marvelous job explaining the effects the elimination of the wolves caused. The elk and deer populations grew larger and larger, but bad winters caused many to starve to death. The pronghorn population fell as more coyotes moved in and killed pronghorn fawns. Foxes and other small predators lost ground to the coyotes. Trees and shrubs were endangered by the growing elk and deer populations. Losing trees caused the beavers to fail. Since the beavers were no longer building dams to create small ponds, animals who relied on the ponds for their homes were displaced and began struggling to survive.

After sudying this startling chain of events, scientists decided to bring the wolves back to Yellowstone. In 1995 and 1996, wolves were brought in from Canada. They were released in seven groups, which have now increased to about twelve. Nature's balance seems to be restoring itself as the elks have stabilized, the coyotes have been reduced to a manageable level, and the trees and shrubs are growing again. Hooray for the wolves!

Non-Fiction: Incredible

Chasing Lincoln's Killer, by James L. Swanson--This young adult book is a distillation of Swanson's adult non-fiction book, Manhunt: The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. Liberally illustrated with newspaper clippings, woodcuts, and photographs, Chasing Lincoln's Killer is a wild ride through twelve days in history. I learned more about Lincoln's assassination in the two or three hours it took me to read this book than I recall ever learning in all my school years.

John Wilkes Booth and three others plotted to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. His aim? The restoration of the Confederate States of America. He was convinced that, with Lincoln gone, the South could regroup and defeat the North.

Swanson leaves no room for the squeamish as he details the gruesome happenings of the night of April 14, 1865. From the doctors' probing of the bullet wound in Lincoln's skull to the knife attack on William H. Seward and his family, readers are treated to a complete, but not sensational, recounting of the atrocities.

Very well done.

Battle to the death

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins--I must admit I was not prepared for the level of violence in this book. Ms. Collins does not stint on the graphic descriptions of how her characters meet their various ends in this post-apocalyptic dystopia. In short, the Hunger Games are a way for the government country of Panem to control the residents of its twelve districts. There used to be thirteen, but after an uprising by the districts:

Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.

 The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

  Yes. It says "fight to the death." Girls and boys, ages twelve to eighteen, are randomly selected--or, in some cases, volunteer--to kill each other. The games, a lethal form of "Survivor", are televised to the entire country, and everyone must watch. The winner gets riches and recognition, both of which are untold luxuries in most of the districts, where hunger is the everyday norm.

Enter sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen. When her sister, Prim, is called to participate in the Games at age twelve, Katniss rushes to take her place. She knows that her hunter's skills, illicitly perfected in the wilds just beyond the District Twelve fence, will give her a chance to survive. Gentle Prim, a healer, has no such advantage.

The dangers Katniss faces are not just external. In addition to the other tributes and the conniving Gamemakers, she must re-evaluate her own view of who she is. Because this is the first book of a trilogy, we only see the beginning of Katniss's self-discovery. We do see how she wins the Games (which is never in doubt, or it would be a very short trilogy), but are left hanging in the aftermath. Katniss is a believable character, and we care how she will handle life after the Games.

This book is on both the Junior and the Young Adult lists, a singular distinction.

I don't think I'm gonna make it.

I just realized I have 20 books to read to finish everything on the middle school reading lists (Children's and Junior) and 18 books on the Young Adult list (which is applicable to nothing, except readers' advisory). And there are only 23 days until school is out for the summer. I have been so slack. Now I am so embarrassed.

Non-Fiction: Eye-Opening

Farmer George Plants a Nation, by Peggy Thomas, paintings by Layne Johnson--What comes to mind when you think of George Washington? Dollar bills? First president of the United States? Statue of a big guy on a big horse? Commander in Chief of the Continental Army in the American Revolution? He is most famous for these things but, as Peggy Thomas states, "...he was a general only for eight and a half years and held the office of president for eight years." That accounts for sixteen and a half years. But he died at the age of 67. What was he doing the rest of the time?

He was a farmer. And not just your run-of-the-mill, eking-out-a-living, farmer. He was successful. More than that, he was curious. What made which crops grow best? How could one increase the efficiency of one's farm operation? He experimented with crop rotation and with building machines. His home plantation, Mount Vernon thrived under his care, and over the years he increased its acreage from two thousand to more than eight thousand. Even as general and president, "No matter where he was, George's thoughts were never far from home. ...General George found time to write lengthy letters to his farm managers back home. The longest was sixteen pages!"

Peggy Thomas uses quotes from many of Washington's letters and farm records to supplement her own text. The quotes are well-chosen to highlight the beautiful paintings of Layne Johnson. All in all, a wonderful book.

Non-Fiction: Breathtaking

Breakfast in the Rainforest: A Visit With Mountain Gorillas, by Richard Sobol, is a beautiful photo-essay of a journey through Uganda. Mr. Sobol starts in Kampala, Uganda's capital, and makes his way southwest to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. His photographs of the people and the land are stunning. His text shows a real respect and appreciation for the Ugandan people who are the sole defense of the extremely endangered mountain gorilla population. Rangers estimate there are only about 650 mountain gorillas left in the forests of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These three countries in eastern Africa converge at the edge of Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, only about 30 miles from the Bwindi Park. There are two different tribes of gorillas, one in each park. The story of Mr. Sobol's excursion to visit the gorilla's is told in the first person, present tense, lending a sense of immediacy and intimacy to the book. I recommend students to pick this one up and read it carefully and study the photos, as the world they portray is far enough from our own as to seem completely alien.

Courage and confusion

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie--The first thing you have to know when you read this book is that the author, Sherman Alexie, really is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian from the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington State. If you don't know that, the novel might seem absolutely incredible instead of absolutely true. As a matter of fact, many of the afflictions Sherman Alexie suffered as a child are used as the basis for Junior, the novel's main character. Born hydrocephalic (having "water on the brain") he undergoes surgery, which it is not certain he will survive. If he does survive, he is expected to be little more than a vegetable, given the potential brain damage.

Instead, Sherman not only survived, he thrived, as does Junior. I don't know if Sherman suffered the torments of his fellow Indians the way Junior does, but the same incident (in fact and fiction) catapults them off the reservation. In the novel, Junior goes to the first day of geometry class at the reservation school and is issued a textbook. When he opens the book, he sees his mother's maiden name as one of the students who has used that book. The realization that he and his fellow students are in a situation so poor that they are using thirty-year-old textbooks first crushes, then galvanizes Junior.

He transfers to the school in Reardan, the town outside the reservation. Until then, the only Indian at the school has been the mascot. Junior is received with about as much enthusiasm as he expects...none plus animosity. Events lead him to acceptance and even triumph as a student and basketball player.

Let me state for the record that there is more than a little rude and crude language, and that some subjects introduced are probably not appropriate for middle school. High schoolers, though, especially boys, will really appreciate The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

edited to add: This book is NOT on the SC Book Award Nominees list. I just like it.

Non-Fiction: Thrilling

Women Daredevils: Thrills, Chills, and Frills, by Julie Cummins and illustrated by Cheryl Harness--We've all heard of the daredevils. Those crazy, thrill-addicted people who will do anything for an adreneline rush, even at the potential cost of their own lives. Over one hundred years ago, those people were almost exclusively male. Almost. Women Daredevils introduces us to fourteen performers who didn't let long skirts and petticoats hamper their adventuresome spirits. From a human cannonball to a pair of biplane wing-walkers, these women chose risk instead of sure safety. They flew through the air, went over Niagara Falls, trained tigers, and did stunts on bicycles which would have made Evel Knievel flinch. This book uses bright illustrations, some of which seem to be painted/drawn from portrait photographs, lending a historical feeling which would not have been evident with strictly action pictures. Those action pictures are more cartoony, but with a depth of emotion which leaves the reader in no doubt about the danger these women were in. The text doesn't shy away from the danger, either, pointing out the various injuries sustained by many of the women. None of them let injury or fear stop her. As Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick said, "Ha! I don't call it pluck. I call it joy. There's no real fun except far up in the air."

Non-Fiction: Awesome

Lady Liberty: A Biography, by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Matt Tavares--The history of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor is told in ten distinct voices, from the French law professor who dreamed of giving a gift to the American people to the sculptor who created the gift; from the American newspaper man instrumental in funding the gift's construction to the workers who built it. The dream was so long in being fulfilled and took the vision and labor of so many to be realized, it is amazing the Statue of Liberty was ever completed. The French law professor was Edouard-Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, and in the summer of 1865 he first voiced his desire to gift a monument to the United States to celebrate their Centenniel. Auguste Bartholdi was the sculptor who heard Laboulaye's idea. Bartholdi was immediately captivated by the idea and worked for ten years to create a design while France waited for the rule of Napoleon III to end and for the opportunity to begin raising funds to finance the project. The Statue would not be completed and dedicated until 1886, more than twenty years after Laboulaye and Bartholdi began their quest. Laboulaye died in 1883, and so did not live to see his dream realized.

All of this, and the story of the construction, are compressed into a scant fifteen or so pages of text. The formatting is almost poetic, and the vocabulary appropriate for elementary and middle-school children alike. The illustrations are soft and clear, showing the dream of each individual associated with the production of the Statue of Liberty. I am not ashamed to admit I got teary more than once as I read Lady Liberty.

Non-Fiction: Inspiring

I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer, by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Eric Velasquez--When I was in school and learned about the discovery of the North Pole and the conflicting stories of Admiral Peary and Doctor Cook, I never once heard the name of Matthew Henson. I first heard of him two or three years ago as I pulled biographies of African-Americans for Black History Month. He was given a chapter in a book about several African-Americans who had made great achievements. Sooooo, I was overjoyed to see I, Matthew Henson on the SCBAN list.

If you are not familiar with him, Matthew Henson was a black man born in 1866. After his parents died, he ran away to sea at the age of 13 and became a cabin boy. He sailed to five continents, learned numerous languages, and many trades. When his captain died, he had trouble finding work with white crews who would treat him as an equal. He quit the sea to become a stock boy (man?) in a men's store. This is where he met Robert Peary and changed the course of his life. For the next twenty years, Henson sailed with Peary, first as Peary's personal valet, then as trusted fellow explorer. They took seven trips to the Arctic before finally reaching the North Pole.

I, Matthew Henson stops on that triumphant note. The text leading up to that moment is driving and determined, and the illustrations, while in seemingly fuzzy pastels, reflect that determination with strong lines and colors. I was positively inspired by the whole package, and will be pushing it most heartily into the hands of readers, eager and otherwise.