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The Penderwicks at Point Mouette
By Jeanne Birdsall
Knopf (an imprint of Random House)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-375-85851-2
Ages 7-12
On shelves May 10th

When Jeanne Birdsall’s first middle grade novel The Penderwicks was published in 2005 it committed a crime. A crime shared, I might add, by books written by authors like Dr. Seuss, J.K. Rowling, and even Jeff Kinney. They say no good deed goes unpunished. Well, the creation of The Penderwicks was a good deed to children across the world in need of great fiction that’s homey and familiar without being cloying. Books that are touching a meaningful but never saccharine. In creating such a book Ms. Birdsall followed in her predecessors’ footsteps and did something unforgiveable: she made it look easy. Nothing could be worse. Imitators weren’t immediate, but as time has gone by they’ve cropped up like so many unwanted dandelions. Now librarians must wade through the lot of them in the desperate hope that maybe one or two will be worth recommending. It’s no good to say a book is “the next Penderwicks” or “Penderwicks meets [blank]”. Nothing quite compares to the original and that stands true with this, the third Penderwick chapter. The Penderwicks at Point Mouette takes readers slightly out of their comfort range but not so far that they feel adrift. Everything you expect out of a Penderwick novel is here. It just happens to be done better by this author than any other you might name.

“The Penderwick family was being torn apart.” Nuff said. Maybe torn apart is a bit of an exaggeration. You see, with the recent marriage of their father to that perfectly nice Iantha, the family suddenly finds itself going in three different directions. The parental Penderwicks are going to England on a honeymoon for two weeks while Rosalind goes to New Jersey during that time with a friend. That leaves the remaining three girls to join their Aunt Claire at Point Mouette, in a lovely little coastal cottage. Their pleasure at the thought is daunted somewhat by the discovery that their best honorary brother Jeffrey will not be joining them. More shocking still, with Rosalind out of the picture, Skye is automatically the OAP (Oldest Available Penderwick) and she is not pleased with the responsibility that entails. Fortunately there are enough dog related mishaps, skateboarding cool guys, musicians, golf balls, moose, and more to distract the remaining Penderwicks from their problems. Particularly when a friend needs their help.

Part of the lure of the Penderwick books is the fact that when you dive into one of them you are verily engulfed in a kind of instantaneous flood of words that feel (forgive me but there’s no other way of saying this) classic. You could read a Penderwick novel after a book by Elizabeth Enright, say, or Maud Hart Lovelace and the sole blip on your radar might be to notice that the language in the Penderwick book sounds less outdated than in the others. There is no effective way of replicating this feel in a novel. Lord knows it’s been attempted before and the results are almost always lamentable (the acoustical equivalent of celebrities trying to write picture books that sound like Dr. Seuss). Ms. Birdsall pulls it off without ever sounding forced or precious. And yet you never feel like the bo

Inside Out and Back Again
By Thanhha Lai
Harper Collins
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-196278-3
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

Thinking about the most memorable of children’s novels, one trait in all of them has to ring true in order for them to click with their readers. The books must contain some kind of “meaning”. Even the frothiest Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-type offering isn’t going to remain long in the public’s brain if there isn’t at least a little “meaning” slipped in there. Now when I use the term “meaning” I’m being purposefully vague because it’s not the kind of thing you can easily define. What is meaningful to one person might strike another as trite or overdone. I personally believe that adult novels contain this saccharine faux-meaning a lot more often than their juvenile contemporaries, and why not? Adult books can get away with it while children’s books are read by the harshest of all possible critics: children. As a librarian and a reviewer, I’m pretty tough too. I get mighty suspicious of prose that gets a little too lyrical or characters that spout the book’s thinly disguised premise on every other page. All this is leading up to the fact that when I turned my jaded suspicion-filled toxic eyeballs on Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again I found nothing to displease me. Lai’s debut novel speaks with a natural voice that’s able to make salient points and emotional scenes without descending into overly sentimental goo. This author makes a point to draw from her own life. The result is a novel that works in every conceivable way.

“No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama.” Ha has known both in her life, actually. Born in Vietnam during the war, Ha lives with her mother and three older brothers. Her father disappeared years ago on a navy mission when Ha was just one. Today the family doesn’t even know if he’s alive, but when the chance comes to flee Saigon and make a new life in America, Ha’s mother doesn’t hesitate. Once they’re settled in Alabama, Ha has a whole new set of problems ahead of her. She’s homesick, mad that she’s no longer the smartest girl in class, and tormented after school by some of the boys. Yet the solution, it seems, is not to become someone different but to take what she is already and find a way to make her new life work.

In a way Inside Out and Back Again kind of marks the second coming of the verse novel. A couple years ago this style of writing for children was hugely popular, helped in no small part by Newbery Award winning books like Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust. For some it represented the perfect way to get to the heart of a story without unnecessary clutter. Unfortunately, others regarded it as a quick and easy way to write a novel with a word count only slightly higher than your average picture book. The market was saturated and finally verse novels began to peter out. It finally got to the point where I became convinced that the only way a verse novel wo

Okay for Now
By Gary D. Schmidt
Clarion Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-547-15260-8
Ages 10-14
On shelves April 18^th

There are three kinds of literary sequels for kids out there. First, you have the sequel that is so intricately tied into the plot of the first book that not a page goes by that you don’t feel you’re missing something if you skipped Book #1. The second kind of sequel nods to the first book and brings up continual facts from it, but is a coherant story in its own right. The third kind of sequel makes mention of facts and/or people in the first book but if you read the story on your own you might not even be aware that there was previous book in the first place. Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt would be the third type of sequel, I think. Ostensibly a sequel to his Newbery Honor winning title The Wednesday Wars, the hero of Okay for Now, Doug Swieteck, was a bit part character in the first book, and now has come entirely into his own in the second. For fans of the first, you will enjoy the second. And for people who begin with the second, you won’t miss a thing really if you haven’t read the first. All you’ll know is that you have a great book on your hands. A great great book.

“You’re not always going to get everything you want, you know. That’s not what life is like.” It’s not like the librarian Mrs. Merriam needs to tell Doug that. If any kid is aware that life is not a bed of roses, it’s Doug. Stuck in a family with a dad that prefers talking with his fists to his mouth, a sweet but put upon mom, a brother in Vietnam, and another one at home making his little brother’s life a misery, it’s not like Doug’s ever had all that much that’s good in his life. When he and his family move to Marysville, New York (herein usually referred to as “stupid Marysville”) things start to change a little. Doug notices the amazing paintings of birds in an Audubon book on display in the public library. The boy is captivated by the birds, but soon it becomes clear that to raise money, the town has been selling off different pages in the book to collectors. Between wanting to preserve the book, learning to draw, solving some problems at school, the return of his brother from Vietnam, and maybe even falling in love, Doug’s life in “stupid” Marysville takes a turn. Whether it’s a turn for the better or a turn for the worse is up to him.

It’s such a relief sometimes to read a great writer for kids. Not a merely good writer, but a great writer. Mr. Schmidt is one of the few. You haven’t gotten even two pages into the story of this book before Doug tells you about his brother hitting him. He writes that he, “Pummeled me in places where the bruises wouldn’t show. A strategy that my . . . is none of your business.” Beautiful. Right there we know that not only is our narrator telling us his story, but he’s also hiding secrets along the way. In fact, throughout the book Doug will repeat ideas or thoughts or phrases that he’s been ruminating over, seemingly unaware that he’s working those same thoughts into the narrative. Doug isn’t so much an unreliable narrator to us as he is an unreliable narrator to himself.

Schmidt’s dialogue is also always on point and interesting, but of pa

Season of Secrets
By Sally Nicholls
Arthur A. Levine (an imprint of Scholastic)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-545-21825-2
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

Sally Nicholls is not a household name here in America. She is possibly not even a name that most children’s librarians, booksellers, and teachers would recognize right off the bat. This, in spite of the fact that her previous book Ways To Live Forever was a stunning success. Folks became quite fond of that story about a boy with a terminal disease, and I suppose they expected Ms. Nicholls to do more of the same. That’s the trouble with starting off your career with realism. Move into fantasy and you’ll find that the fantasy fans don’t really know who you are and the realism fans are disgusted that you haven’t produced more of the same. Separate Season of Secrets from its predecessor, however, and what you have is a hearty little novel about a girl learning about the cruel war between the seasons, in the midst of her family’s own personal tribulations.

Since Molly and Hannah’s mother died they’ve been handling it as best they could. Their father, however, has not been handling it well. Not a jot. So distraught is he by the loss of his wife, in fact, that he sends his two daughters off to live with their grandparents in the country. One night Molly is witness to a frightening vision of a man run down by a pack of dogs and a horned man on a horse. In the ensuing days she tries to tell others, to no avail, then discovers the man in a nearby shed. She cannot nurse or help him, but she can learn as much as she can about him and what exactly he is. As she does, her father is drawn more and more into her life with her sister, though it takes him many tries and many mistakes before any progress can be made. The return of her father and the eventual destruction of the man come together in such a way as to give rise to winter, and the ensuing, beautiful, spring.

I’ve been reading so many books lately that don’t give a fig for beautiful language. Coming across Ms. Nicholls felt like a gulp of cool water then. I wasn’t two pages in when Molly let loose with the descriptive, “Hannah is one and half years older than me, yet she takes up about one and a half million times more space.” And later, “My dad’s shirts are always stiff and clean and white; you button him up all the way to his throat and there he is, locked up safe and going nowhere.” I love a book that gives everyday descriptions real personality and flair. It’s the signature style of Ms. Nicholls. It’s something you can count on in every book she writes.

And then there was an element to this title that I found simultaneously clever and frustrating. Age. Here we have a tale of two sisters, one older, one younger, and there’s not a moment in this story when we’ve a clear sense of how old they are. This is frustrating to a reviewer like myself since you judge how believable you find a character based, in large part, on whether or not they accurately act their age. I would have thought that Molly was acting a bit young for her age at quite a few points in the story, except that for all I know Molly could be seven or she could be ten. My suspicion is that Ms. Nicholls gave Molly a younger age, but then realized something. If you write a middle grade novel for 9-12 year-olds and you make yo

Words in the Dust
By Trend Reedy
Arthur A. Levine Books (an imprint of Scholastic)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-545-26125-8
Ages 11 and up.
On shelves now.

A children’s book, written by a soldier about an Afghani girl, set in the recent past. That’s a toughie. There are a lot of easier books out there to review too. Why aren’t I writing one about the adorable little girl who wants to be Little Miss Apple Pie or the one about the cute dog that wants to find its home? Well, sometimes you have to step out of your comfort zone, which I suspect is what author Trent Reedy wanted to do here. With an Introduction by Katherine Paterson and enough backmatter to sink a small dinghy, Reedy takes a chance on confronting the state of the people of Afghanistan without coming off as imperialist, judgmental, or a know-it-all. For the most part he succeeds, and the result is a book that carries a lot more complexity in its 272 pages than the first 120 or so would initially suggest. Bear with it then. There’s a lot to chew on here.

Zulaikha would stand out in any crowd. It’s not her fault, but born with jutting teeth and a cleft upper lip she finds herself on the receiving end of the taunts of the local boys, and sometimes even her own little brother. Then everything in her life seems to happen at once. She’s spotted by an American soldier, who with his fellows manages to convince their captain to have Zulaikha flown to a hospital for free surgery. At the same time she makes the acquaintance of a friend of her dead mother, a former professor who begins to teach her girl how to read. Top it all off with the upcoming surprise marriage of Zeynab, Zulaikha’s older sister, and things seem to be going well. Unfortunately, hopes have a way of becoming dashed, and in the midst of all this is a girl who must determine what it is she wants and what it is the people she cares about need.

I approach most realistic children’s fiction with a great deal of trepidation, particularly when it discusses topical information. The sad truth of children’s books is that they are perfect containers for didacticism, even if you did not mean for that to be the case when you begin. With that in mind I read the first 120 pages of the story warily. I wasn’t certain that I liked what I saw either. Seemed to me that this book was indeed showing an in-depth portrait of Afghanistan, beauty, warts, and all, while the Americans were these near saviors, picking a poor girl out of the crowd upon whom to bestow free surgery out of the goodness of their golden glorious hearts. Fortunately, by the time we got to page 120 we saw the flip side of the equation. Yes, the Americans are perky and western and what have you. They’re also doofuses. Sometimes. They sort of blunder about Afghanistan without any recognition of the cultural courtesies they’re supposed to engage in. They merrily serve their Muslim guests food made out of pigs, unaware of what they’re doing. At one point Zulaikha’s father grows increasingly angry with them for their distrust of common Afghan workers (watching builders at gunpoint so that none of them steal tools) as well as their conversational blunders. Don’t get me wrong. The Americans are generally seen as good blokes. But I was worried that this book was going to be one sweet love song to the American invasion, and it’s not that. It’s nuanced and folks are allowed to be both good and bad. Even the ones writing the book.

I still got nervous, though. I desperately did not want this

Eliza’s Freedom Road: An Underground Railroad Diary
By Jerdine Nolen
A Paula Wiseman Book (Simon & Schuster)
$14.99
ISBN: 978-1-4169-5814-7
Ages 7-11
On shelves now

Name me all the films you can that involve slaves escaping via The Underground Railroad. No? Okay then, I’ll make it easy on you. Name me a single film, just one, that involves slaves escaping via The Underground Railroad. No? Crazy, isn’t it? Here we have what must be one of the most heroic and harrowing real life escape stories in the history of our country, and Hollywood can’t be bothered to put a single such tale to celluloid. Now in the world of children’s literature, The Underground Railroad is a common topic to write on. Books about it abound, though interestingly enough there isn’t a single Underground Railroad novel that eclipses all the others. Maybe that’s why folks keep writing them. The latest I’ve seen recently is Eliza’s Freedom Road. It’s penned by the former picture book author Jerdine Nolen and features a very basic, very straightforward story of one girl escaping to freedom in Canada with some help. If you are looking for a good introductory novel that introduces not just the concept of slavery but also the definition of what The Underground Railroad even was, this slim little book may prove your best chance to do so. It covers familiar ground but reaches a slightly younger audience.

Twelve-year-old Eliza is on her own. No mother. No father. Her mother, you see, was recently sold away to another state, so Eliza spends her days with Abby the cook. She has her mother’s stories, sewn into patches on a special quilt, and that comforts her but it’s not enough. Eliza’s greatest fear is that she might get sent away too, a fear that is more than justified due to the nasty looks she gets from her master. Years ago her mistress taught Eliza to read and write and now relies on the girl to read to her from the newspaper and books. When the chance to accompany her mistress to Maryland comes up, Eliza leaps at the chance. Once there, she finds that there come opportunities in a person’s life to escape into the unknown. Eliza is ready to take that chance, and she has a woman by the name of Harriet Tubman to help her out. Backmatter includes an Author’s Note, Notes on the Stories, a Bibliography, and a long and detailed list of useful websites.

A couple months ago I was working in my children’s room when I got a request to host a small group of Boy Scouts on one of our late nights. The boys were learning about tall tales so I was asked to read some aloud to them. I selected a variety of tall tale picture books, amongst them Thunder Rose by Jerdine Nolen. When I gave a quickie synopsis of the books I’d chosen and asked the boys which one I should read, they unanimously requested Nolen’s book. And read it to them I did, though the book turned out to be surprisingly long. The author had packed in a lot of text and a lot of descriptions. Halfway through I couldn’t help but think that clearly her heart was on writing something longer, like a novel. So I wasn’t surprised to see Eliza’s Freedom Road come out with the selfsame author’s name on the cover not long after. What did surprise me was that she had decided to go with a diary format. This seemed like a bizarre choice. After all, this was an auth