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On the Wings of Heroes by Richard Peck. Dial Books (a member of Penguin Group, Inc.). $16.99.

Yeah, well. What kind of review site would this be without a little Richard Peck once in a while anyway?

Richard Peck is such an old-fashioned guy. Go through his books and look what you find. Nasty bullies getting their due. Pranks. Upright citizens. Heroes. Work that makes a boy strong. And wise old people who dole out necessary advice and make the rest of us look weak in comparison. It takes a couple heaping helpfuls of nostalgia to write a Richard Peck book, and as far as I can figure it, nostalgia falls into two distinct categories: Good Nostalgia and Bad Nostalgia. Bad Nostalgia bores the socks off its readers. It wallows too deeply in the idea of how great things used to be and would rather eat its own shoes than allow that there might be some pretty great things going on right now. Good Nostalgia’s a different beast entirely. It conjures up the past, transplanting its readers to another time. A time where there was good and there was bad, but most of all there was just a world that wasn't too unlike our own. “On the Wings of Heroes” is rife with Good Nostalgia. It bears the flaws of its genre without apology, but is a pretty good book in the end anyway.

Everyone has to have a hero. For Davy it’s his older brother Bill. It’s World War II and Bill’s off to fight in a handsome B-17, carrying with him his small town’s good wishes. Life before and during the war couldn’t be more different. Before the war Davy spent a lot of time with his best friend Scooter, trying out their new bikes, enjoying Halloween, and playing in the warm summer nights. During is different. Now the kids are doing regular collections for the war effort. Bill's been sent off to fight and Davy's avoiding the malevolent (not to say violent) Beverly C. while dealing with family worries to boot. With a great cast of kooky characters and superb writing, a book that could have been yet another dull historical novel distinguishes itself. A great slice from the past.

A co-worker of mine is a gigantic Richard Peck fan. She’s read his books cover to cover and then back again. As such, she’s probably his biggest critic. After going through “Heroes”, she found she was not entirely impressed. Richard Peck lite, she called it. She even pointed out certain elements to me. The dirty bully girl in the book? Wasn’t she in a couple of his stories before? Ditto the ancient teacher idea, the pranks, and even the Midwestern setting. To her eyes, he’s done it all before and he’s done it better. Be that as it may, I am not a fan of her caliber. I read “A Long Way From Chicago” and “A Year Down Yonder” and enjoyed them just fine. Then I read “The Teacher’s Funeral” and “Here Lies the Librarian” and was disappointed. So for me, “On the Wings of Heroes” represents a return to form. Sure Peck is reusing some old tropes and techniques. Still, if you take the book in and of itself and don’t compare it to his past or future work, I think it stands rather nicely all on its own. It may not garner the biggest awards out there, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’ll have its fans.

Peck’s writing makes the whole enterprise well worth a peek anyway. First of all, he's funny, which is of vast unrecognized importance. Like any kid assigned this in school, I actually wasn't too keen on reading, "On the Wings of Heroes." Historical fiction is fine and all but I shy away from it when I can. So it's nice to get sucked into novel, especially if it's against your will. The individual sentences get all evocative and suggestions are made of future events. For example, whenever Davy’s father hears of an injustice or a wrong, we hear that, “something coiled in him again.” That “something” never uncoils in this book, but I suspect that it probably happens long after this particular story is over.

Of course, Peck writes of a white white world. If you’re looking for a little diversity, he’s not your man. It doesn’t usually occur to me when I read him, but this book in particular shows just how pale as newly fallen snow Peck’s universe is. He doesn’t deal with racism or social injustice much at all. So when the DAR gets a mention, it sticks out more for me than it might if there was a single African-American character living in this Midwestern American town. Those of you who would prefer to read a book with a little more racial complexity would do well to look to another novel.

Will kids read it? Not if you don’t sell it to them. Look, if a kid is standing in front of a row of books and one book has the title, “Alcatraz and the Evil Librarians” and the other book reads, “On the Wings of Heroes” which book is the kid going to pick up first? I mean some will read this book and love it, no question. It sounds odd to say, but the book this reminded me the most of was Ray Bradbury’s, “Dandelion Wine”. Know me and know my love of “Dandelion Wine” and you’ll see how grand a compliment this really is. It doesn’t have Bradbury’s dark surreal undercurrents, of course, but there’s a lot of joy here and a lot of familiar ideas. Plus, other books crop up in the old memory as well, like the moment when the root beer brewing in the basement explodes like a fourteen gun salute. It reminded me of nothing so much as the brewing that goes on in that great 30s novel, “Cheaper by the Dozen”. Though it shouldn't be confused with an accurate representation of the past in all respects, there's a lot in Peck's novel to enjoy. It has the ability to make children nostalgic for a time they will never know. Recommended.

Notes on the Cover: Okay. Dial, I know what you were going for here and I can’t blame you. And this jacket image is entirely faithful to the book, no question. You’re going for a nice 40s look, and who can blame you? So I’m giving you a pass on this one. Personally, I think this kind of image draws a very specific kind of reader. But let’s be honest here. Peck has written a very specific kind of book, so the packaging is faithful to product. Plus, this was done by Chuck Pyle? That wouldn’t happen to be the grandson of Howard Pyle, would it? Well his bio ain’t saying but it wouldn’t be a completely peculiar assumption to make. I wouldn't have commissioned it, but I can see why you did.

First Lines: "Before the War the evenings lingered longer, and it was always summer when it wasn't Halloween, or Christmas."

Previously Reviewed By: BookMoot, the Books for Kids Blog, Emily Reads and the BCCLS Mock Awards.

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Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz. Illustrated by Robert Byrd. Candlewick Press. $19.99.

Allow me to make something perfectly clear. There are, living amongst you, one or two sad souls for whom the name “Laura Amy Schlitz” does not mean anything. This is a state of affairs that does none of us any good. You see, Ms. Schlitz is an author whose time has come. In 2006 she managed to simultaneously produce an epic gothic/realistic/historical/faux-ghost story in the tradition of “The Secret Garden” or “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase”, while also churning out a truly amusing and interesting bit of non-fiction on the side. You have an assignment. If you have not read A Drowned Maiden’s Hair or The Hero Schliemann do so. You'll be better for it. That done, you may turn your sights onto a book that combines the two things Schlitz does so very well: Research and historical fiction.

Maybe once a month a parent will walk up to my reference desk and ask me where they can find a nice selection of plays for children. Usually I’ll direct them to Plays the periodical or wave them towards the 800s, but by and large there’s not a lot of quality drama material for kids out there. Nothing that would give them all some great parts, that is. Schlitz acknowledges this fact right from the start in her book. Says the Foreward, “It really isn’t possible to write a play with seventeen equally important characters in it. If you read Shakespeare, you’ll notice that he never managed it – there are always a few characters that have little to say or do.” So what was Schlitz to do when a group of students at the school (where she tends the library) all let her know in no uncertain terms that they wanted big starring roles? She just had to write them a book. In “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!,” Schlitz gives us a whopping twenty-three parts, each one the monologue of a kid who would have lived in a Medieval village. There’s Edgar the falconer’s son plotting to keep his bird out of the grasp of its real owner, Simon the knight’s son. There’s Taggot who moons over the lord’s nephew, Constance the pilgrim, and Nelly the sniggler. Any book with a sniggler is bound to be good. Each part tells its story in the first person so that by the end you have seen twenty-three lives perfectly realized for the child audience and actor.

I expected to learn something from this book. What I didn’t expect was to be touched. What you need to remember here, even as your eye falls on footnotes giving the definition of “Prime” or the importance of dying “unshriven”, is that Schlitz is a masterful writer. These monologues aren’t rote lists of facts for kids to memorize. They’re powerful stories, and none of them have easy answers. Maybe the characters' lives will end well. Many times they will not. What is important is that Schlitz is at least giving these people a chance to be heard. And as a child takes on a character, they’ll start to think about what happened to them in the future. What’ll happen to Jack, the boy everyone assumes is a half-wit? Or Barbary the mudslinger’s mom? What are we to make of that brief moment of grace between a Jew and a Christian merchant’s daughter? It's like parsing the words of twenty-three narrators, some of whom you could easily categorize as "unreliable".

Aside from the innate drama here, Schlitz also gets in some lovely writing. For example, Mogg, the villein’s daughter, talks of how her mother fools the lord and finds a way for the family to keep their cow, Paradise. The lord comes and Schlitz writes, “So. He took the best of the pigs – I’d have chosen the same, in his place. We curtsied. Mother kissed his hand, and we watched him ride off, and waited till dark, to take back Paradise.” Well played, that. Parts of this book are touching one moment and funny the next. As always, the application of humor to any title, when done successfully, ups the value of the book. Here Schlitz brings a wry, almost gallows humor to a time that was harsh and cruel with the rare snatches of great beauty here and there. Even the footnotes, bane of the easily bored, are of interest. For example, there’s a moment when we learn of the peculiar fact that the patron saint of tanners was Saint Bartholomew, because he was flayed. “The logic of this is macabre, but not unique,” says the author. She gives a couple examples of similar cases closing with, “We won’t even talk about what happened to Saint Erasmus – it’s too disgusting.” Saint literature is about to go way up in circulation, I suspect.

I don't pretend to know why illustrator Robert Byrd chose the style that he did. It's possible, and really I'm just spitballing here, that he was drawing inspiration from the illustrated Bibles created by monks during this time period. No stranger to illustrating Schlitz's words (as he did for the aforementioned Schliemann), each section Byrd creates is accompanied by an image of the speaker of the monologue in the uppermost part of the page. Using delicate pen-and-inks, Byrd works in details in minutia, coming across as a kind of cohesive dot-free Peter Sis. Most amusing is the map he has drawn at the beginning of the book. It displays "A Medieval Manor" in 1255 England. Every character appears here, according to where they would have lived on a typical manor during that time. The map really clarifies beautifully how people lived during that era and, in addition to its accuracy, is fun in terms of figuring out where all the characters are located ala "Where's Waldo?".

Getting people excited about this book is going to be difficult. The hard part is going to consist of promoting it properly to the right people. "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!," doesn’t fall neatly into a single category. It’s historical, but it’s also a drama. There are facts galore but they are couched between a series of fictional monologues. Footnotes explain the odd phrases and out-of-date terms. Non-fiction two page spreads break up the monologues and offer a little factual background on things like “The Crusades” or the status of Jews during Medieval England. A lot of hand-selling is going to have to go down here, so it's best to start now. Read it. Love it. Talk it up like mad.

As one librarian I briefly allowed to see this book (I’m very protective) said to me, “It really sucks you in!” It does at that. When you hit Pask’s section and the first line is “I don’t know when I ran away,” it’s hard not to read on. With the dual practical purpose of serving as an accompaniment to those children learning about Medieval life AND providing those hungry for the limelight for a chance to shine in the sun, this title stands unique. But wait! How fare the facts? Well the Bibliography is not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR pages long. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I’m no Medieval scholar but nothing I read struck me as false here. The writing is good, the facts even better, and the whole kerschmozzle a necessary purchase (to say the least). I may not know how to catalog this puppy in my library, but I do know that if breaking new ground in non-fiction ever deserved attention, it was now. A title to buy from an author to watch.

On shelves July 10th.

Notes on the Cover: As I said before, the book is going to be hard to market and maybe the actual title title here is to blame. I’m all for the “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!,” bit, but why couldn’t they have changed “Voices From a Medieval Village” to “Monologues From a Medieval Village”? Are they hoping to lure in the non-fiction crowd rather than the people seeking plays? I don’t know if that’s a great idea. Non-fiction seekers doing units on Medieval life will take a glance at the contents and perhaps pass it by, thinking that it’s fiction. Let us see what it is that we can do to avoid this. I like the picture here, but the subtitle could have used a guiding hand.

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The Baptism by Sheila P. Moses. A Margaret K. McElderry Book (imprint of Simon & Schuster). $15.99.

I have a love/hate relationship with the books of Sheila Moses. No. Wait. Let me correct that. More of a love/severe dislike relationship. Which is to say that when she wrote, “The Legend of Buddy Bush,” I loved it. Anachronistic yellow telephone and all. But then she followed it up with “The Return of Buddy Bush,” and I didn’t like where she’d taken the novel. In both of those books a Ms. Pattie Mae is the protagonist, telling the tale of her Uncle Buddy’s trials (both literal and figurative). By the end of “Return”, though, I found I seriously didn’t like my narrator anymore. She did not appeal. But remembering how much I liked “Legend”, when I picked up the third in Moses’s series, I had high hopes. Hopes that were never disappointed. In “The Baptism” we have ourselves an entirely new narrator, a new set of circumstances, and a great little story that deserves a lot more serious attention than it has so far received.

“I figure I have six days to sin all I want to. Luke got six days too, if he will go along with the plan.” Twin Leon knows the drill. You turn twelve and suddenly you’re expected to give up all the fun stuff that goes along with being a kid. Part of that? Getting baptized and sinning no more. Well he knows the deal and he knows he doesn’t want any part of it. Sure, it’s his Ma’s intention to get him on the “morning bench” where he’ll be accepted and baptized, but that doesn’t fit in with Leon’s plans. Plus he has a lot to deal with these days. His older brother (who he’s dubbed “Joe Nasty”) is a sneak who doesn’t do any work. His stepfather (“Filthy Frank”) is a no good cheat and gambler. His twin brother Luke (“Twin Luke”) is some kind of Mr. Perfect. And his mom is constantly on his case about being good this week and not sinning. In the course of eight days, Leon will get into trouble, fight the elements, escape from work, get pulled away from fun, and witness the breaking apart and coming together of his remarkably strong family. Set in rural North Carolina during the 1940s, this novel explores big themes with a small intricate little novel.

If there’s one thing Sheila Moses does well it’s write characters with minds entirely of their own. The kids in her books are so headstrong and smart that it’s a wonder that even their author is able to wrangle them into place from scene to scene. In Twin Leon you have such a great kid. Anyone who can say right at the start that if baptizing means not sinning then they just won’t get baptized is going to be fun to watch. But when Leon catalogs his sins you can see that they aren’t all lighthearted Dennis-the-Menace-type romps. He lies, and steals extra cookies, and beats up kids cause they’re white, and calls his older brother Joe Nasty because he doesn’t bathe regularly. Moses slips in the serious with the silly so skillfully you might miss it if you blinked. At the same time, she asks big questions couched in the mind of a twelve-year-old boy.

Leon’s slow change over the course of a week from unapologetic sinner to baptismal hopeful happens over a brief span of time but never feels false or hurried. Really, it’s amazing that Moses is able to pack in as much as she does. There’s Leon’s story regarding the baptism, and his various pranks and problems. Then there’s the story of Buddy Bush on the side. There’s also the story of Leon’s mom and her husband Filthy Frank and how she has to stand up to her abusive new husband. And THEN there’s a story in there regarding the family and how they’re not too distantly related to a local white family because of their long dead patriarch’s philandering during slave times. All this and the story is fast-paced, punchy, and consistently engaging.

It’s a shorter book than its predecessors. Standing at a mere slip of 144 pages, it’s amazing that Moses is able to pack in as much thoughtful commentary as she has. It’s an exercise in watching an author get right to the heart of a concept without extra frills and furbelows. That isn’t to say that she doesn’t punch up the language in all the right parts. Twin Luke, the kiss-up, sometimes agrees with his mom, “like he was going to eat the shoes right off her feet.” The sun coming out behind the rain is what happens when “the devil is beating his wife.” Older brother Joe Nasty hearing about the crimes of his stepfather gets angry and, “All the man in Joe Nasty just rise up like the water down in the river right after a big rain.” And Twin Leon is prone to saying things that just sound good when you read them aloud. “She know that God know I don’t want to get baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and nobody else. I just want to go home and shoot marbles.”

Now Ms. Moses hasn’t entirely grasped the concept of the stand alone novel yet. As such, she’s placed this book in a kind of award jeopardy by including an ending that, not to give anything away, places undue importance on the books that preceded “The Baptism”. This book does hearken back to the other “Buddy Bush” books she’s written, but for the most part you really don’t need to have read them to enjoy this story. Unfortunately, the last moment in the book falls a bit flat. It doesn’t ruin the story or anything, but it’s a distracting coda in an otherwise forthright novel.

Altogether, this is a keeper. Some people might try to convince you that due to some of the serious themes that come up, this is a young adult novel. Personally, I do not agree. It’s got all the kid-appeal and excitement an eight to twelve-year-old would want, but is also packed full of thoughts and ideas that make it perfect for book discussion. A great addition and quite possibly Moses’s best work yet.

Notes on the Cover: All right. So normally I don’t like it when someone sepia-tones a cover image just for the sake of sepia. But Debra Sfetsios did a really stand-up job with this puppy. First of all, it isn’t really sepia. Not really. More golden than brown, the image has all the faux fading/wear and tear of a photograph, but with a kind of interior light. The church on the left and the people being baptized on the right frame an image of Leon. He himself is the source of the picture’s glow and just LOOK at this kid. You could not have picked a better Leon. He’s the right age, he’s handsome, and the expression his face is absolutely pitch-perfect. I’m going to nominate this book for a potential Best Cover of the Year Award, because it manages to balance the publishing industry’s current yen for photographic jackets with something faithful to the text that ALSO happens to be beautiful.

Also Reviewed By: Brooke of The Brookeshelf. It's a good micro-review and it offers an alternate take on the book's accessibility.

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Celeste's Harlem Renaissance by Eleanora Tate. Little Brown & Company. $15.99.

The thick children’s historical novel faces a challenge that the thick adult or YA novel doesn’t have to deal with. Adults and, to some extent, teens are put off by the number of pages in their books less often than kids. A kid might breeze through a 500 page book of dragons, sure, but realistic novels will often give them pause. That isn’t to say that the thick historical novel for middle grades shouldn’t exist. It’s just that the author and editor must always bear in mind their audience when they take monumental pagination into account. If a book can justify its size, it shouldn’t have any problems. “Celeste’s Harlem Renaissance,” is a remarkable story of loyalty, choice, and forgiveness. It cannot, however, justify its 270+ pages, and this is truly heartbreaking. I love what author Eleanora Tate came close to doing here. I only wish it could have succeeded in the end.

For Celeste, it’s practically the end of the world. Her father’s come down ill and rather than be allowed to stay in her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, she’s being shipped off to live with her Aunt Valentina in up-and-coming twenties Harlem. For shy, uncertain, perpetually afraid Celeste, this is a tragedy. Then again, everyone says that Valentina lives a life of luxury amongst the elite of Harlem society. How bad could it be? As it turns out, pretty bad. Fired from her cushy job as an opera singer’s attendant, Valentina’s been reduced to scrubbing the floors of the theaters she longs to perform on someday. Celeste is soon helping out, and it looks like her nasty Aunt Society back in Raleigh was right when she said Valentina would work her to death. Slowly, however, the jobs lessen and Celeste comes to learn about, and appreciate, all the wonders of the Harlem Renaissance. She makes friends. She impresses people with her violin playing. But just as she starts settling in, word comes of a tragedy back home. Now Celeste needs to figure out where her heart, her loyalty, and her future lies. Fortunately, she has a new found strength to see her through her troubles.

Now I have a particular distaste for children’s books where a child travels to somewhere famous, say Harlem during the 1920s, and immediately runs into a couple big names while he or she is there. This was one of the many unfortunate crimes of “The Return of Buddy Bush,” and so it was with infinite relief that I saw Eleanora Tate was one smart cookie. It’s not that Celeste doesn’t have the briefest brushes with celebrity. She does meet James Weldon Johnson in a café, but that’s after she’s been in town a while and it’s loads better than the standard meeting-Langston-Hughes-on-your-first-day-on-a-street-corner version other authors would (and have) indulged themselves in. If the entire world of Harlem is there for you to write about, it’s difficult to pluck out the choicest people, places, and situations that will best serve your story. Tate, however, selects such moment with aplomb. You get a hint of the flavor of Harlem in this book without the text ever betraying the setting or the characters.

Speaking of characters, Celeste is a great heroine. Her growth is gradual but understandable and you root for her every step of the way. The problem is that Celeste is also uncharacteristically forgiving far and beyond past the point of believability. And when you get to the point where your protagonist isn’t understandable anymore, you’re in some kind of trouble. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me multiple times in the course of a 279 page novel, shame on the author for thinking we’d believe all of that. At some point Celeste is able to figure out that her aunt is jealous of her talents. “No matter what Aunti said, she was jealous of me, and jealousy was a terrible, dangerous thing. Like Aunt Society said, forgive, but don’t forget.” Unfortunately, Celeste seems incapable of heeding her own advice. Over and over and over, to the point where the readers finds themselves exhausted by their incredulity, Celeste keeps forgiving her aunt and forgetting her flaws. She’s convinced she can get Valentina to move back “home” to the South, and all a reader can wonder is why? Why would Celeste want this horrible horrible woman near her? It reaches a kind of crescendo of ridiculousness near the end when Valentina disappoints Celeste and her friends on their home turf of Raleigh. And even then Celeste is trying to get her to move to Raleigh again. It’s a broken record moment, and one that puts a sour taste in your mouth.

On the other hand, there were wonderful little real moments spotted throughout the text. Aunt Valentina’s jealousy of any praise that might get cast her niece’s way is as ridiculous as it is realistic. A kid might think it weird that an adult would get jealous of a child, but personal insecurities are rarely logical. Also, the slow conversion of Aunt Society from intolerant prune to difficult but understandable woman is so well done. So perfect. Tate’s characters have all three of their dimensions firmly in place. Even Valentina, busting with egotism and self-regard, has her good moments here and there.

The writing is lovely too. There are delicious sentences like, “Seemed like anything I tried to do to get back home was like grabbing fog with my fingers.” Or when Celeste returns to Raleigh again she’s told, “you’ve come back full of fire and sass, hair growing, filling out, speaking up. New York was good for you.” Tate knows how to keep a book moving, even if it means sloughing through unnecessary scenes and pages.

It's so frustrating that I liked this book. I liked it so much. I thought the story of Celeste was fascinating and that the arc of the story said some wonderful things. But there were at least 75 pages that could and should have been taken out right from the start. I finished this book roughly a month ago and gave it the old Did It Stay With Me test. And the thing about Tate’s writing is how memorable it is. I picked up the novel again and everything came flooding back to me. Not every author has that ability. What I would like to see is a paring down her writing in the future. Cut out the excess. Grasp those characters and those plots and those situations and put them out there without all the excess fat. This book reads like a sophisticated version of “Understood Betsy,” by Dorothy Canfield Fisher and shows many of the talents of the author. I urge you then to watch for Eleanora Tate in the future. This may only be her beginning.

Notes on the Cover: I'm actually rather fond of this. It took me a while to notice, but you can see that Celeste is, in a kind of skewed perspective, looking up at the image of her floozy aunt in the window. I like artist Suling Wang's clean lines and I appreciate that the publisher isn't trying disguise this book as contemporary (since I STILL haven't forgiven Scholastic for the crimes committed via A Friendship for Today). I may not fall into the majority on this one, but I like this cover.

First Lines: "Scoot your big bucket over, Cece, and let me have more room," Evalina yelled.

Other Blog Reviews: Middle & Intermediate Book Talk

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The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt. Clarion Books (a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint). $16.00.

Praise, like profanity, has to be doled out carefully. If a reviewer is a particularly enthusiastic sort (ahem!) and prefers to lavish cuddles and kisses on every book that crosses their plate then what exactly are they supposed to do when something truly extraordinary appears before them? Use up all your good stuff too early in the season and you’ve nothing left. Fortunately for me, I took precautions. I’ve been on permanent Newbery Lookout this year. Anything and everything that might be a contender, I’ve snatched up mighty quick in the hopes of getting some early buzz going. And while it’s been a nice year, I think everyone will agree that the Spring 2007 season has turned out to be fairly so-so. Nobody is talking about any books with any real passion quite yet. That is, until whispers started to surround “The Wednesday Wars” by Gary Schmidt. Whispers. Murmurs. Over-exaggerated winks accompanied by sharp elbow pokes to the ribcage. So when I finally managed to get my sticky little hands on a copy I had to do the standard Reviewer Cleansing of the Mind. I had to tell myself soothing things before I began along the lines of, “It’s okay if you don’t like it. Forget all the people who’ve already loved it. Clear your mind. Expand your soul. Breathe.” Then I picked it up and forgot all of that. Good? Brother, you don’t know the meaning of the word till you read this puppy. For those of you out there who think Gary D. Schmidt was done robbed ROBBED of a Newbery for his, “Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy,” I think we’ve found ourselves something new to root for.

Mrs. Baker hates Holling Hoodhood. There’s no two ways about it, as far as he can tell. From the minute he entered her classroom she had it in for him and he's trying not to become paranoid. Now because half the kids in his class are Jewish and half Catholic, every Wednesday Holling (a Protestant through and through) is stuck alone with Mrs. Baker while the other kids go to Hebrew School or Catechism for the afternoon. And what has this evil genius dreamt up for our poor young hero? Shakespeare. He has to read it and get tested on it regularly with the intention (Holling is sure) of boring him to death. The thing is, Holling kind of gets to like the stuff. Meanwhile, though, he has to deal with wearing yellow tights butt-gracing feathers, avoiding killer rats and his older sister, and deciding what to do about Meryl Lee Kowalski, “who has been in love with me since she first laid eyes on me in the third grade,” amongst other things. Set during the school year of 1967-68 against a backdrop of Vietnam and political strife, Holling finds that figuring out who you are goes above and beyond what people want you to become.

Oh sure. I liked it. I’m also 28 with an MLIS degree and an apartment in Manhattan. I am not your average child reader. And when a lot of people think of children’s books they think of quality literature that bored the socks off of them when they were kids. So the real question you have to consider here is, is this a book for kids or adults? Well, I’m no kid, but I tell you plain that I would have loved “Wednesday Wars” when I was twelve. Not that it would have been an obvious choice. First of all, it’s a boy book. Boy protagonist. Boy topics like pranks and escaped rodentia and baseball. But like all great literature (oh yeah, I said it) everyone who reads this thing will find themselves simultaneously challenged and engrossed. First of all, Schmidt exhibits a sense of humor here that was downplayed in “Lizzie Bright”. It’s not fair to compare these two books, of course. I mean, suburban kid living on Long Island verses 1912 racially segregated Maine. Which is going to be more of a laugh riot? But funny is what gets kids reading and funny is what this book is. The clever author always knows when to downplay the humor and work in the more serious elements, but when you ask yourself why a kid would choose one title over another, nine times out of ten the kid is going to grab the book that will make them laugh AND think over the one that’ll just make ‘em think (and snore).

And I love so many of the concepts here. The community in which this book takes place is equally divided between Catholics and Jews, with Holling Hoodhood the odd Presbyterian out. Certainly not everything is sunshine and roses here, but it’s a pretty good situation and the kids make do the best they can. Of course, due to the nature of different religions and churches, the only time these kids can get together for a good baseball game is Sunday afternoon. Schmidt’s attention to details like this half make you wonder what percentage of the book was based on fact and how much of it was made up. After all, it takes place on Long Island and Mr. Schmidt grew up there during this era. Surely he also knew someone who had a list of the 410 ways to get a teacher to hate you. Or maybe someone close to him in the seventh grade could beat all the eighth graders on the Varsity track team. Still, wherever he’s getting the material, I hope he never runs out. This stuff is pure gold.

Shakespeare works as an ideal transition between the different adventures going on in Holling’s life. Unfortunately, since I know my Shakespeare, I can’t say whether or not a kid who’s never heard of MacBeth or The Tempest is going to understand Holling’s allusions and mentions. Then again, Shakespeare is so beloved because his works may be interpreted on multiple levels. Maybe the connections don't require knowledge of the original material. Schmidt makes the integration of Shakespeare and historical middle grade fiction a kind of seamless alliance. He doesn’t push it. How easy it would have been to assign each month in this book a play and then wrap the storyline around Shakespeare’s already existing dramas. Instead, plays do pop up almost every month, but they complement rather than direct the action. Schmidt doesn’t go for obvious choices either. He doesn’t end with “The Tempest”. He practically begins with it. And when he does end with “Much Ado About Nothing,” what you remember best is the figure of Don Pedro standing all alone while everyone dances happily into the sunset.

There is also a healthy heaping of redemption in this book. Where abused frightened teachers come back as conquering school board members, ready to take down enormous scary rats if required to do so. Where villains like Doug Swieteck’s brother (that’s all the name we ever get for that boy) will pull a horrendous prank on you one day, then turn it all around to anonymously praise you in a similar fashion the next. Not everyone is redeemed. Holling’s father remains as stiff and intransigent as ever by the story’s close. You can see how he may easily lose everyone he loves through the force of his inflexibility, but if he's going to undergo a change it may have to happen in the sequel (*hint*, Mr. Schmidt, *hint*).

Vietnam never really stopped as a subject of children’s literature, but with the Iraq War (as of this review) still in full swing, we’re seeing a distinct upsurge in titles focused on that area of the world. There is, for example (actual title), “Cracker: The Best Dog in Vietnam” by Cynthia Kadohata, amongst others. And that’s all well and good, but even if you want someone to, a good author doesn’t preach. They don’t get all didactic for the sake of bandying about their own opinion on one topic or another. The Vietnam we see in this book affects everyone in this story, even if it's just tangentially. Schmidt doesn't overplay his hand, though he comes close with the character of Mai Thi, a Vietnamese kid brought over by the Catholic Relief Agency. Since this isn't Mai Thi's story, we can only see brief instances where she suffers abuse because of her ethnicity, and her happy ending seems a bit forced.

And on some level, critics are going to find themselves torn over the multiple happy endings in this book. Nothing is perfect all the time, but more often than not Schmidt wraps up loose ends and rewards his heroes in a deeply satisfying manner. Holling could easily have fallen into the trap of being one of those perpetually put upon schlubs that never get the girl, never learn, and never grow. But Holling does grow. He grows and he changes and he becomes the man his father may never be. And if there is happiness in this book, it would take a pretty sorry soul to begrudge Holling his much deserved kudos. Maybe it’s fantastical to believe that a kid who can act Shakespeare and rescue his sister would also be a great track runner and a generally fabulous human being, but that’s the way the story goes, folks. Like it or lump it.

Writing is one thing. One-liners another entirely. I’m just going to put these before you for your consideration, out of context, but still funny.

• “To ask your big sister to be your ally is like asking Nova Scotia to go into battle with you.”

• “Mr. [Principal] Guareschi’s long ambition had been to become dictator of a small country. Danny Hupfer said that he had been waiting for the CIA to get rid of Fidel Castro and then send him down to Cuba, which Mr. Guareschi would then rename Guareschiland. Meryl Lee said that he was probably holding out for something in Eastern Europe.”

• “The rest of that afternoon, we both held our feet up off the floor and took turns reading parts from ‘The Merchant of Venice’ – even though the print was made for tiny insects with multiple eyes and all the pictures in the book were ridiculous.”

• “She then raised her hands and waved them grandly, and we began a medley from ‘The Sound of Music’ – which is the vocal equivalent of eating too much chocolate.”

Few books that I read make me want to then immediately find the audiobook as well, but “Wednesday Wars” is one of the few. It looks as if Scholastic Audio Books was the smartie who got the bid on this pup. My congratulations go out to them. I will be locating a copy of your work the minute it becomes available because if there is anything more delicious than reading a book of this nature it’s hearing it read aloud. If you happen to be a fifth, sixth, or even seventh or eighth grade teacher and you’re allowed a little readaloud time, please consider giving this book a shot. The only thing better than hearing this book on CD would be to watch your own teacher giving voice to Mrs. Baker’s sarcasm and heart.

What can kids do to face a scary future where so much is unknown and frightening? Mrs. Baker gives Holling a piece of advice in the book that should be treasured and remembered. “Learn everything you can – everything. And then use all that you have learned to be a wise and good man.” Kids today, reading this book, can take heart in Holling’s struggle and growth, while just happening to get a laugh out of this pup along the way. Emotions come honestly when you’re in this author’s hands. Chrysanthemum, Mr. Schmidt.

Notes on the Cover: This is one of those clever little cover switcheroos they sometimes pull on you. The original wasn’t all that different from what they’re presenting now. As you can see, the outline of a startled seventh grade boy is staring in abject horror at the outline of Shakespeare. This is a bit of an improvement over the original image which showed a pointy-bearded, barely ruffled, long-haired (and banged) Shakespeare on the right. The new Will is much better. One of those cases where the editorial changes are more “godsend” than “horrific mistake”. One flaw, though. I love this cover and everything, but where exactly are they hoping to put all the medals this book is sure to win? They’re gonna have to cluster them all in the upper left-hand corner on top of one another. This is what we call poor foresight. Come on, guys. When you read this book you should have told the artist to leave a big old blank space at the bottom. Seriously.

Dedications: If I’ve any praise to spare from my almost exhausted supply, let me just say that I haven’t seen an author of this caliber salute an independent children’s bookstore in a dedication for quite some time. Schmidt writes, “For Sally Bulthuis and Camille De Boer, and for all the gentle souls of Pooh’s Corner, who, with grace and wisdom and love, bring children and books together.”

First Lines: "Of all the kids in the seventh grade at Camillo Junior High, there was one kid that Mrs. Baker hated with heat whiter than the sun. Me."

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The Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington's Slave Finds Freedom, written and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $11.20.

When you consider the pedestal on which our Founding Fathers are placed in the world of children's literature, it's not surprising that the story of George Washington's slaves has never been adequately told for the younger set. A slave owning first president just doesn't gel with the general George-Washington-chopped-down-a-cherry-tree mythos. You want something on his wooden chompers? Read Deborah Chandra's amusing, George Washington's Teeth. You prefer a silly story involving a bunch of wacky barnyard animals? George Washington's Cows, by David Small is the book for you. But you won't find runaway slaves mentioned in "Teeth" and you'd be hard pressed to find a single black amongst any of the white servents in "Cows". Now Farrar, Straus & Giroux (who, fascinatingly enough, was the publisher of all three of these books) has published Caldecott Award winning author/illustrator Emily Arnold McCully's newest biography, "The Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington's Slave Finds Freedom". From the moment I read this subtitle I was hooked. Few people would have the guts to talk about this tie-in between the Washingtons and the girl who got away from them. Trust McCully to carry about with her a backbone made of iron and enough facts to blow away even the most skeptical of critics.

She was the daughter of a white indentured servant and a black slave mother in 1773, and right from the start Oney Judge was quick. Because of both this and her light skin she was taken on as one of Mrs. Washington's sewing circle slaves, and her skills with a needle made her invaluable to her mistress. When George Washington was to become President of the United States of America, Oney moved with the family to Philadelphia. It was there that she learned that an adult slave who lived there six months was required, by law, to be free. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that Martha Washington intended to will Oney to her granddaughter Eliza in the event of her own death. Oney, desperate to escape before the family returned to Mount Vernon, threw herself on the mercy of some freed slaves and Quakers who, in turn, helped her escape to New Hampshire. Author Emily McCully tells everything from Oney's early years to the multiple attempts the Washingtons and their friends made to lure, threaten, and trick Oney into returning back to Mount Vernon. In the end, Oney remained free and the extensive Author's Note at the back recounts how she continued to live in "proud, independent poverty for the rest of her life."

Much of this book owes its existence to Henry Wiencek's, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. It is more important than ever to teach our kids that while the Founding Fathers did many good things and created a remarkable new nation, in their personal lives they were sometimes less than stellar human beings. Martha Washington in particular comes off looking quite the self-satisfied slave owner in this title. She'd had slaves for many years, and she apparently had no intention of freeing any of them, even in the event of her own death. So McCully knows how to just give kids the facts without going out of her way to conjure up stereotypes. Martha Washington isn't pictured with evil leers and a nasty eye. She's a product of her times to some extent and yet she's also completely blind to the needs of the people around her. McCully did find it necessary to note at the end that, for George, he didn't say anything publicly against slavery but that he "made provisions in his will for the freeing of his own slaves after Martha's death." Kids can make of that what they would like.

The storytelling in this book proceeds at a swift clip. McCully's an old hand at non-fiction works, having put her skills to the test with such titles as The Pirate Queen and The Ballot Box Battle. Considering the scant amount of information there must have been out there on Oney, you have to admire the sheer number of Sources and Websites cited by the author at the end of her book. And her storytelling is consistently interesting, even if she has to rely on creating dialogue for the sake of keeping the story interesting. I was especially taken with the moments in the story where Oney, thinking herself safe, is barraged with people trying to get her to return to the Washingtons. The mere fact that Washington didn't take Oney to court is explained beautifully. "The President would have to go to court to force a slave to return. He won't do that - it would only cause a scandal in the North." And his now sterling reputation might have tarnished some as a result, I'm sure. McCully does choose to end the story in a manner so abrupt that I almost wonder if she ran out of time and didn't have a chance to create a final image of Oney living on her own alongside the sentence, "For the rest of her long life, Oney Judge had no mistress but herself." Instead we get a very hurried encapsulation of her final flight with the picture of a man helping her into a cart at night. The book is excellent on telling a story but certainly lacking in any kind of conclusion.

Those of you familiar with McCully's watercolor style will take to her images in this book. I can offer no criticism here, and not being familiar with the clothing of this time period I can't comment on how historically accurate McCully has been. Nonetheless, the book does a good job of breaking up the text around the images in the story. Nothing ever feels stilted or slapdash, since pictures are constantly jumping above, below, and around a given section of writing.

So is it historical fiction based on a true story or is it non-fiction? The Library of Congress subject headings all consider this book to be fiction, and in a way you can concede the point. After all, to make the book interesting McCully has to rely on putting words into her characters mouths that may seem plausible, but that can't be backed up with any adequate source material. That won't stop some libraries from squeezing, "Oney Judge" onto their biography shelves, but be careful to bear in mind the author's limitations.

Recently the U.S. Mint revealed that the newest dollar coin was going to feature the image of George Washington on it. I figure that if your kids are going to go about seeing this man's face everywhere, the least you can do is give them a story about one of the women he and his wife owned. Exciting and factual, "The Escape of Oney Judge" is one of those must-read titles for any child asked to do a biography of George Washington for a school project. By all means mention his triumphs in battle and acts as a President. Just remember too that one woman did all she could to escape from under his thumb.

Other Titles: If historical fiction's your bag, check out the middle reader title Taking Liberty: The Story of Oney Judge, George Washington's Runaway Slave by Ann Rinaldi (though you'll note the inaccuracy of the title).

Previous Online Reviews of This Title: Planet Esme. You can also see a Q&A with Emily McCully regarding this book at the Powell's website.

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A Friendship For Today by Patricia McKissack. Scholastic Press.
$13.50

You can’t help but like Patricia McKissack. It’s part of the human experience. One glance at her books or a gander at her titles and you’re sold. She’s a remarkable author with that rare ability to switch gears between folktales, picture books, non-fiction, and novels without so much as a hitch. But as with any established author, you can’t just assume their latest book is going to be all that great. I mean, sure “A Friendship For Today” is based on a great premise. And the writing? Definitely keeps you involved and interested at all times. And I am not going to stand here and deny that McKissack seamlessly works in historical dates and facts without jarring the narrative or that the characters leap off the page with a depth characteristic of her writing.... oh fine. It’s a wonderful book. Another hit out of the park, it seems, from McKissack.

It would have been bad enough for Rosemary to have to deal with leaving her favorite segregated school for the new unsegregated one she's being forced to attend. And then there’s the fact that her parents are fighting all the time and her father has hooked up with some floozy from his job. But to top it all off Rosemary’s best friend J.J. (her boy friend NOT boyfriend) has come down with polio right before the start of school. It’s 1954 and now Rosemary Patterson is going to have to attend Robertson Elementary all by herself as the ONLY black girl in her class. The kicker? She has to sit next to nasty racist Grace Hamilton a.k.a. Grace the Tasteless. Yet as the year wears on, the two girls find that they may have more in common than they thought. It’s an unlikely friendship they share, but in a year like no other, Grace and Rosemary are going to put aside their differences and prejudices, if only for a little while.

What I primarily liked about this book (aside from the father getting his just desserts at the end) was the nature of the friendship Rosemary and Grace shared. The title is immensely significant here. What they have is a “friendship for today”. Not one that would last a hundred years or a million miles. It was born out of hardship and convenience and it’s nice and all, but at the end of the book you can see that Rosemary doesn’t set much store by it. I think this might serve as an excellent discussion point with young readers. Does Grace feel the same way about their friendship that Rosemary does? Will it last after all? Has Rosemary doomed it by calling it “for today”?

Now I’m not a huge fan of historical novels that drop famous names hither and thither without rhyme or reason. McKissack doesn’t really do this though, and for that I am grateful. There’s a brief discussion of Wilma Rudolph in this title, which I appreciated, but it feels natural. Rosemary, after all, is very proud of her own speed and J.J. suffers from polio so Wilma’s story is absolutely necessary to the story. I enjoyed too the fact that sometimes McKissack moves the focus off of Rosemary for a little while so that the book remains realistic. For example, at one point in the narrative we hear that another black child is getting some attention, this time for performing with the local orchestra. This isn't a book so unsure of itself that it has to make its heroine the focus of every big moment and plot twist every step of the way. "A Friendship For Today" is at peace with itself.

I think the reason this book stands apart from the pack really comes down to Rosemary herself. I liked her. I don’t always like heroines that speak in the first person (and in the present tense at that), but you can’t help but enjoy spending some time in Rosemary's company. She's the kind of person who says things like, “I know Grace would rather not have a colored friend. And I wouldn’t have picked her out of a catalog, either. But here we are.” You’re rooting for Rosemary from start to finish. When she walks into her new school all by herself, the only black kid there, you’re just as nervous as she is. McKissack brings her troubles home.

To some extent I think that McKissack sort of overdoes the happy ending. Not only are all conflicts resolved and all players better off than when they started, but even the villains have been redeemed. The nasty girl from school that called Rosemary the “N” word suddenly does a 360 by the and gets her father to allow her fellow student into his normally all-white restaurant. The book also begins to speed up as the end of the story grows close. One minute Rosemary decides on a whim to enter a spelling bee and the next she’s in the high school auditorium in the semi-finals. I also wish there had been a Historical Note in addition to the Author’s Note for some of the more interesting facts in the book. At one point after the schools have desegregated, a child that isn’t doing well in the new system is sent “down south where the schools are still segregated.” The understanding is that segregated schools could sometimes provide better educations than their desegregated, biased equivalents. How often did this happen? Was it common? Rare? Enquiring minds want to know.

That said, it’s a lovely little novel. Relatively short (under 200 pages) with a likable voice and a strong sense of decency, McKissack is comfortable in this genre. Her Rosemary is everything the author was herself taught to be by her parents; “... proud but not arrogant, firm but not stubborn, humble but not subservient.” This is a book that does its maker proud. Fine stuff.

Notes On the Cover: Essentially what happened here is that Scholastic took one cover and replaced it with another.

On the back cover you can see two pairs of legs wearing jeans/slacks and Airwalk sneakers. Insofar as I can tell, wearing jeans in the early 50s in the American South was not unheard of. I believe Ms. McKissack says as much in this book. Still, it certainly wasn’t common and Airwalks? Weren’t they established in 1986, or am I just making this up? Obviously someone at Scholastic freaked out when they saw how historical fictionish the original cover was and they plunked this very modern and very overly familiar image on instead. The new girls look like models. That’s supposed to be Grace on the left? How’d she get such great dental care? Her family didn’t seems the types to watch their kids' brushing all that closely. And Rosemary wasn’t allowed to wear her hair down for fear of looking too old, but she’s allowed to sport a plunging neckline like the one seen here? You guys weren’t even trying, were you? You just got the call to take a picture of a black and white girl of such n’ such an age, you picked the models, and that was it. Did anyone even read the book? The old girls had personality, spunk, and the kind of charm that made me want to look at this book in the first place. Naughty bad, Scholastic! No treat for you. Do yourself a favor and reinstate the old cover the minute you have a chance. “A Friendship For Today” just disappears with the hundreds of other covers when you fail to do anything to distinguish it.

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