teach your children well

Hap & Hazard and the End of the World by Diane DeSanders
Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Review: Hap and Hazard don't really have anything much to do with this story.  They're the family dogs.  The end of the world seem to factor into it much either.  This is the story of an unnamed girl, eldest of three daughters, as she tries to navigate being eight (give or take).  No-one will answer her questions about anything important, and she lives in a world of unexplained things (her father's short temper, her grandparents' various idiosyncrasies, whether there really is a Santa Claus, is there actually something wrong with her, and on and on).  While realistic perhaps, the method of relating a child's experience of the world around her with no explanations about what is really going on is predictably challenging and unfortunately, not very rewarding.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

not subtle, but not preachy

The Leavers by Lisa Ko
Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: When he is 11 years old, Deming's mother goes to work one day, and never returns.  Deming is soon put into foster care and then adopted.  We meet Deming again 10 years later, and struggling with an identity crisis.  Does he want to try to be the academic his academic adoptive parents want him to be, or does he want to follow his own love of music and try to make it as a musician?  Ko is more than a little heavy-handed in making the reader understand that this is something of a stand-in for his mixed feelings about being an American-born Chinese who spent half of his life in a lily-white upstate New York college town.

This character-driven story will appeal both to readers who enjoy books about immigrants, as well as those about characters searching for their own personal identity.  Told through the point of view of Deming (in the third person) and his mother (in the first person), the full story of what happened to Deming's mother, both how she came to America and what happened the day she disappeared, is gradually revealed.  This is a grim, but ultimately hopeful and redemptive novel that lays out the difficulties of immigration and assimilation without being overly preachy.

breadth not depth

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review:  In 1969, the four Gold siblings visit a supposedly mystical woman who can tell the date on which someone will die.  The oldest sibling, Varya, is 13 when they receive the prophecy, and learns that she will live to 88.  Simon, the youngest sibling at 7, learns that he will die at 20.

Benjamin chooses to tell the siblings' stories consecutively, in order of their death, which took a lot of the suspense out of the question of whether the prophecies were ultimately true, leading me to understand that the driving questions of this book is actually, "Does knowing the date of your death become a self-fulfilling prophecy?"  Benjamin seems to take it for granted that we can accept the legitimacy of the prophecy but is so heavy-handed in answering the question of self-fulfillment that the stories of what happen to the siblings seems very shallow.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

old friends

Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: I spent the first 2/3 or so of this book just hoping that when the big reveal(s) came I wouldn't be too disappointed.  It becomes clear early on that something, probably something tragic, happened to Kit at some point, and that something shady is going on with Sunny's family, but for quite some time there really aren't any clues as to what.  In Kit's case, I wasn't disappointed at all.  What happened to her is sufficiently dramatic to make her current circumstances realistic, but not overblown.  Not only that, but the course of learning her backstory side-by-side with her ongoing story made her a more sympathetic character.

Sunny's story isn't as well done, unfortunately.  After being half revealed, the mystery is left to lie fallow until nearly the end of book, at which point it is hastily revealed and even more hastily resolved.  In Sunny's case, though, the mystery has more to do with her parents, and it's really her journey of learning who her parents really are and figuring out how to deal with that knowledge that makes for compelling reading.

None of the characters in this book are particularly three-dimensional, but Halpern writes so well about how they fit together, that it almost doesn't matter.  Every time I opened this book a felt like I was walking into the grand old library in washed-up Riverton, NH, about to meet my own good friends.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

tastes like cardboard

Rosie Colored Glasses by Brianna Wolfson
Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review:  Willow's parents are complete opposites.  Rosie is a free-spirit who believes in the power of colors, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and not keeping to a schedule, and seems to exist solely on Pixie Stix, cream soda, and pizza.  Rex is firm and regimented and believes in balanced dinners and to-do lists.  Opposites may attract, but they can also explode.  And what happens to the kids when the attraction ends?  Willow can tell you, but it's not pretty.

This book had the potential to be an interesting exploration of a child's experience of navigating divorced parents. Unfortunately, Rex and Rosie are both such complete caricatures of their types that it felt like reading about cardboard cut-outs.  They are almost exclusively written to type, except when they do something so wholly out of character that it's nearly inexplicable.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

something for everyone

Your Maryland: Little-Known Histories from the Shores of the Chesapeake to the Foothills of the Allegheny Mountains by Ric Cottom
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Genre: non-fiction, history
Review: I grew up in Maryland, and had Maryland history in 4th grade, so a few of these stories, such as Frederick Douglass's early life and the battle that prompted Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner, were already familiar to me.  But Cottom really delves deeply into Maryland history to justify the "little-known" part of his title.  For example, who knew that John Wilkes Booth was present at John Brown's execution?  Or the story behind the grant for the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins?  Who's ever even heard of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, or knew that the very last man to die in battle in WWI was from Maryland?  Or, my personal favorite, who knew that Cab Calloway and Thurgood Marshall went to high school together?

Well, obviously somebody knew, and I'm glad that Ric Cottom put so many little gems together in this volume.  With tales ranging in time from the exploration of the New World though the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, these stories cover a wide variety of topics, from battles to baseball.  Although originally written for radio, these pieces have been well-adapted for print, and if some are too short for your taste, there's plenty of source material given for further reading.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this e-book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

couldn't care less

The Feed by Nick Clark Windo
Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)
Genre: science fiction
Review: Imagine that we have allowed the Internet to literally take over our brains, so that we don't even need to think about wanting information or remembering anything.  Everything we could ever want to know or remember is simply available with the hint of a thought question.  But what happens when "the Feed" collapses?  Supposedly, that's the question behind this book, but the real story takes place 6 years after "the Collapse" and we only see glimpses of the immediate aftermath.  We're to understand, though, that many people were so completely undone by the lack of the Feed that they couldn't function and died.  This premise is believable, since the Feed stored everyone's memories of everything and had even supplanted most verbal language.  So fine, population decimated, cities ruined, everyone left majorly traumatized, ok.  But Tom and Kate have found a haven, though a tenuous one, with a few other survivors.  That's all background.

The story really begins, or at least I think it's supposed to really begin when Tom and Kate's daughter is kidnapped and they go off in search of her.  Except that all that really happens is that they walk.  A lot.  Don't get me wrong, things do happen, some of them fairly dramatic, except the drama feels like mere blips in a boring landscape, and is so disconnected from everything else that I couldn't bring myself to care much about what was going on.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.