I have not read tomorrow's contestants in The Battle of the Kids' Books. They are Endangered! by Eliot Schrefer and Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage. The judge is Kathi Appelt.
Unfortunately for me, the two largest public libraries close to me do not own Endangered! Yeah! I know! It's a National Book Award Finalist, for golly sakes! They both own Three Times Lucky, but obviously the word is out that this is an awesome book because it is on hold at my hometown library and out at the "other" library.
(And, with huge apologies to all the booksellers out there who do such awesome work keeping literature alive, I only buy books that I have learned to love. It's a cheapster thing.)
So I have read a few reviews and I have investigated the judge. And, even though I am totally unqualified to make a prediction, I will! I predict that the small-town girl will beat out the orphaned chimpanzee.
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| Who can resist a message in a bottle? |
I predict that tomorrow,
Three Times Lucky will move on to the next round. I predict this for three reasons.
Reason 1: Kathi Appelt's own work leans toward small-town and rural characters.
Reason 2: Sassy orphans beat out orphaned animals most of the time.
Reason 3: The American South is more appealing than the Congo, especially now.
But the
New York Times review of Endangered! gives me pause.
There just might be a surfeit of small-town mysteries in children's books right now. The suspense and tension of Sophie's attempt to save her small bonobo friend may tip the scales in
Endangerd!'s favor.
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| He looks so frightened. I want to save him, myself. |
I wish I had a chance to read just one of these books!!!
I have nothing to lose! I stand by my prediction.
Three Times Lucky will win tomorrow. (
maybe)
Goblin Secrets, by William Alexander,
Margaret K. McElderry Books, $16.99, ages 8 and up, 240 pages. Orphan Rownie escapes a witch's home for stray children to look for his missing brother and falls in with a theatrical troupe of goblins that teaches him the craft of masking.
The Peculiar, by Stefan Bachmann,
Greenwillow, $16.99, ages 9 and up, 384 pages. Bartholmew Biddle joins forces with a bumbling member of Parliament to recover his kidnapped sister and stop a creepy lord from kidnapping changelings from the slums of Bath.
The Mighty Miss Malone, by Christopher Paul Curtis,
Wendy Lamb Books, $15.99, ages 9 and up, 320 pages. A spunky, courageous 12-year-old named Deza refuses to give up on her family's motto -- "We are a family on a journey to a place called Wonderful" -- in Depression-era Hooverville.
The Great Unexpected, by Sharon Creech,
HarperCollins, $16.99, ages 8 and up, 240 pages. Two orphan girls, Naomi and best friend Lizzie, think they know all the peculiar people in Blackbird Tree until one day a boy drops out of a tree and the Dingle Dangle man appears.
Starry River of the Sky, by Grace Lin,
Little Brown, $17.99, ages 8-12, 304 pages. In this magical companion to
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, runaway Rendi is left stranded in a remote Village of Clear Sky where the sky moans in pain and a mysterious storyteller helps Rendi work through his past.
Endangered, by Eliot Schrefer,
Scholastic, $17.99, ages 12 and up, 272 pages. When violent rebels attack her mother's wildlife sanctuary in the Congo, 14-year-old Sophie flees with orphan bonobo Otto and sacrifices everything to protect her endangered apes.
The Last Dragonslayer, by Jasper Fforde,
Harcourt, $16.99, ages 10 and up, 256 pages. Sixteen-year-old foundling Jennifer is left in charge of Kazam, a temp agency for wizards, and tries to save the last dragon from being killed in an alternate United Kingdom.
Wonder, by R.J. Palacio,
Knopf, $15.99, ages 8 and up, 320 pages. Born with a facial deformity, 10-year-old August longs to be treated as an ordinary kid, but as he enters mainstream school for the first time, his classmates can't look beyond his extraordinary face.
Shadows on the Moon, by Zoe Marriott,
Candlewick, $17.99, ages 14 and up, 464 pages. When soldiers massacre her father and cousin, 16-year-old Suzume survives by making herself invisible through the magic of shadow weaving, then sets off to seek revenge.
Three Times Lucky, by Sheila Turnage,
Dial, $16.99, ages 10 and up, 256 pages. Orphan Mo Lo Beau tries to solve the biggest crime to come to Tupelo Landing while she searches to solve her own mystery: how she came to be washed ashore in a hurricane when she was a baby.
Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein,
Hyperion, $16.99, ages 14 and up, 352 pages. When her plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France, young British spy Verity is arrested by the Gestapo and faces a harrowing decision: to reveal her mission or face execution.
The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate, illustrated by Patricia Castelao,
HarperCollins, $16.99, ages 8 and up, 320 pages. A gorilla living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade meets a baby elephant who transforms his sad and solitary world.
Liar & Spy, by Rebecca Stead,
Wendy Lamb, $15.99, ages 9 and up, 192 pages. Seventh-grader Georges is recruited by his 12-year-old neighbor Safer to track a mysterious man in an upstairs apartment, but as Safer becomes more demanding Georges wonders what is a lie and what is a game.
Splendors and Glooms, by Laura Amy Schlitz,
Candlewick, $17.99, ages 9 and up, 400 pages. Three children fall prey to a ruthless magician and must break free of a witch's paralyzing hold in order to find the happiness that's eluded in them.
Every Day, by David Levithan,
Alfred A. Knopf, $17.99. Body jumping is a way of life for 16-year-old A -- every day he wakes up in a different body, in a different person's life. But then one day he assumes the body of Justin and forms an attachment he can't shake.
Rootless, by Chris Howard,
Scholastic, $17.99, ages 14 and up, 336 pages. In a brutal post-Apocalypic world, 17-year-old tree builder Banyan meets a woman with a strange tattoo and sets off across a wasteland in search of his missing father and the last living trees.
The Secret Tree, by Natalie Standiford,
Scholastic, $16.99, ages 8 and up, 256 pages. When Minty sees a flash in the woods, she chases after it and discovers a tree with a hollow trunk that contains the secrets of everyone in her neighborhood.
Iron Hearted Violet, by Kelly Barnhill, illustrated by Iacopo Bruno,
Little Brown, $16.99, 432 pages. When a cheeky princess named Violet and her kind-hearted friend Demetrius stumble upon a hidden room, they discover a forbidden book that threatens their mirrored world.
The Spindlers, by Lauren Oliver, illustrated by Iacopo Bruno,
HarperCollins, $16.99, ages 8 and up, 256 pages. When spiderlike creatures steal her brother's soul, Liza ventures into an underground world of talking rats, greedy trologods and an evil queen to rescue him.
Sometimes book juries convene and read and talk and get things right, and this year the National Book Award judges cited three books that I loved for special recognition.
I am eager to read all the books on all the lists this year. But for now I want to celebrate the honoring of Patricia McCormick for her smart, powerful, daring
Never Fall Down (my interview with Patty will soon run on
Publishing Perspectives) and Eliot Schrefer for his important
Endangered. In nonfiction, the remarkable
House of Stone by Anthony Shadid is a most-deserving nominee. I have highlighted (in this entry) my own thoughts about these books, from posts produced earlier this year.
$17.99, ages 12 and up, 272 pages
Sophie's decision to rescue a baby bonobo from the black market leads her to a dark truth as she journeys across war-torn Congo to bring him to safety.
Along the way, the Congolese-American girl realizes that she would doing anything -- even risk her life to steal him back from militia -- just to protect the endangered ape.
In this powerful, beautifully written novel, Shrefer tells of 17-year-old Sophie who, in the midst of a coup, carries a bonobo named Otto across a jungle to a remote animal release site.
As the story opens, Sophie has just flown into the Congo from Florida and is in a car heading to her mother's bonobo sanctuary, when she sees a man selling a baby bonobo.
Though her driver insists she ignore the trader, Sophie sees how frail and terrified the little ape is and goes against all that her mother has taught her and pays off the man to save him.
"I lifted him easily and he hugged himself to me, his fragile arms as light as a necklace," she says. "I could make out his individual ribs under my fingers, could feel his heart flutter against my throat. He pressed his lips against my cheek...only then did I hear his faint cries."
Little does Sophie know, this emotion-driven act will put the lives of other infant bonobos at risk and will lead her to make choices that put her in the cross hairs of a revolution.
Sophie hasn't seen her mother since last summer. When she was 8, her mother and father separated, and Sophie left the Congo to live with her father in Florida. Now, as they reunite, she dreads what her mother will say when she see's Otto.
Otto is skiddish and scabbed and desperately needs care -- like many orphans who arrive at the preserve -- and Sophie knows that her mother will take him in, yet she will not be happy that he comes from a poacher.
There is a heavy cost to saving an orphan this way, her mother later scolds, because it shows poachers that there are people who will reward them for hurting animals.
When trappers capture baby bonobos, they first shoot their mothers, then rip the babies from their arms. Then they drag them to the city to be sold. Sometimes, as was Ottos fate, the trappers cut off some of the baby's fingers to sell as charms.
It is a ruthless, heartless business and now Sophie, so innocently, has become a small part of it, though it isn't until the same trapper comes to the preserve to sell her two more orphaned apes that she realizes the gravity of what she's done.
"Otto had been simple before, representing only himself," she said after the visit. "Now whenever I looked at him I'd see the image of those two little bonobos in the cage. His life stood for those other two lives. And it stood for my own guilt."
Yet there is nothing that Sophie can do to erase the damage, and even now, as she cradles Otto in her arms, she cannot regret having saved him from harm.
Over the next weeks, Otto needs constant holding and Sophie remains close. Slowly, with medicine and care, he gets stronger and soon it nears the time when Sophie must return to Florida and school. Though she will have to leave him behind, she's knows he'll be safe at the reserve.
Then one day Sophie's mother leaves for a remote jungle so that she can release some of the bonobos from captivity. The trip is earlier than she had planned, but she promises Sophie that reserve workers will get her safely to the airport.
Only that day never comes. Shortly after her mother's departure, an armed militia takes over the capitol and violence ricochets out to the countryside. Soon rebels have descended on the sanctuary and are killing every worker they see.
Sophie tears across the compound with Otto clutched to her chest and slips into a paddock. There, the rebels can't get to her, they don't know the combination to turn off the electrical fence that encloses it. But she and Otto are not out of danger.
The paddock contains female bonobos who before now only her mother could approach, and now Sophie, who hasn't nearly the finesse with animals that her mother has, must win the creatures' trust and earn a place in their hierarchy.
At first, the alpha of the group, Anastasia, charges at Sophie intimidatingly, then gradually, as Sophie acts submissively, she and the other adult females, known as The Pink Ladies, accept her presence.
Sophie knows that bonobos are the least aggressive apes, and while they may swat at each other to establish dominance, they rarely attack to kill -- though trappers have certainly given them cause to.
She also knows that Anastasia, like many of the bonobos in the enclosure, arrived at the sanctuary after being tortured and, the violence has scarred her and made her wary. What must she think of the killing outside the paddock?
Sophie wishes she could explain that she is not the same as the rebels, but bonobos only see behavior and not reason.
As days slip by, Sophie focuses on keeping her and Otto alive, and tries not to look at the slain workers now littering the grounds outside and the terrible smell of burning bodies that follows.
The two of them shadow the other bonobos, eating leaves and what fruit they can find, and wait for the rebels to leave the sanctuary.
Then one day, the electricity that protects them in the enclosure goes out, and Sophie and the apes must flee. As bullets rain down around them and one of the bonobos falls to its death, Sophie realizes these creatures have become family.
But how can she survive a revolution with a group of bonobos? And how much is she willing to sacrifice to protect Otto?
In this searing story, Sophie discovers that saving endangered animals is as complex as war itself, as she confronts the consequences of her actions and risks her life to bring Otto to freedom.
As I read this book, I was changed by it. Sophie's journey felt like my own and her mistakes felt like they could have been mine as well -- naive, well-intended, acts of the heart not logic.
It took me two nights to read it, but even as I put the story down to come back to it later, it felt like I was never fully away from it. I felt the urgency and dangers of Sophie's journey, and it felt as if no pause in my reading could ease it.
During times when I wasn't reading, the Congo remained in the background of my thoughts. At times I was looking through Sophie's eyes as she ran through the trees or blew raspberries onto Otto's foot to distract him from worry.
Sophie's presence of mind captivated me. How did she carry on so bravely in spite of the hunger, the leeches and bugs, and the violence that always seemed to be creeping up from behind her?
A country in complete chaos, rebels with machetes everywhere, and here is a teenager leading captive bonobos to safety -- deliberating on how to reach her mother and always, it seems, putting Otto first.
This is the kind of the book that transforms readers. In the end, Otto, along with the other bonobos, had not only claimed Sophie's heart, but now I realized, mine too.
Hold a book in your lap and it will take you some place. If you let it take you.
This morning I have sat with Eliot Schrefer's
Endangered, which is to say that I've been living in the Congo. That skittering spectrum of butterflies. That sizzle of manioc and wild garlic. Those high, rattling screams of animals, and of war.
Sophie, our guide, is a teen whose American father lives in Miami, and whose mother has stayed behind in her own country to lead a bonobo sanctuary. In the opening pages, Sophie saves an orphaned bonobo from a cruel fate by buying him from a starving pedestrian. It's not the right way to save this endangered species, but it is the only way, and soon Sophie, now at living for the summer at her mother's sanctuary, becomes this scrawny, mangled Otto's best friend.
Paradise is, however, short-lived. A coup has occurred. All madness breaks out in a part of the world whose mineral resources make it wealthy beyond compare, but whose people have learned to live with little and survive on less. Sophie will have to journey through a war-torn country to safety. She will have to earn the trust of bonobos, find a way to eat, determine what matters most, keep her Otto safe, allow Otto to protect her. She will have to understand love and its limits. Along the way Schrefer's readers come to know a part of the world and a species of animal that deserves our knowing—and attention.
Schrefer comes by his love for bonobos honestly, having spent some time in the Congo himself. (He has the photos to prove it!) He (and his book) exude, as well, great purpose—elevating readerly compassion with a determined heroine, hinting at the complexity of life in a fragile country, making it clear that survival comes, always, at great cost. It's the perfect conversation book, the perfect story for a classroom, the perfect ticket to the Congo.
Three final things:
The photographs above are not of bonobos, but they are the closest I had in my own photo library (images snapped in Berlin last summer).
I loved reading, in the acknowledgments, that my friend and former editor Jill Santopolo had a hand in shaping Eliot's book. Everything that Jill touches sparkles.
If you want to see pictures of Eliot debuting his book at Children's Book World this past Friday, go
here.
Rebecca OUP-US
Earlier today we had a post from the other side of the ocean about their new smoking ban. In keeping with the smoking theme, we have Mitch Earleywine author of Pot Politics, Mind-Altering Drugs and Understanding Marijuana writing for us today. While we don’t endorse the use of illegal substances we do think Earleywine’s point is important, that there are ways less harmful than smoking to use marijuana. Earleywine, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York has also worked for 14 years on the faculty at the University of Southern California. He is a leading researcher in psychology and addictions. To learn more keep reading.
Arguments about recreational and medical use of marijuana often turn to discussions about the health of the lungs. Inhaling particles, toxic gases, and heat is never a great idea, but people who smoke marijuana (but not cigarettes) rarely experience serious lung problems. Theoretically, however, the potential for marijuana-induced pulmonary troubles seems high. As public service announcements consistently remind Americans, the smoke from the tobacco and marijuana plants are very comparable. Some carcinogens and irritants are more concentrated in marijuana smoke than tobacco smoke. In addition, many marijuana users inhale the smoke deeply and hold their hits for long durations, giving tars and other toxins a greater chance to deposit on lung tissue (For reviews, see Earleywine, 2005; Iversen, 2000). (more…)
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I guess this might be considered 'old news' but I bought "Flow" the beginning of the year on the annual Paul Rodebaugh Book Hunt. Paul was a historian, retired history teacher, history guide, Quaker and a mad book collector who passed away about 10 years ago. He taught me to just 'buy it and read it when you get a chance' so I did!
I read mostly non-fiction and love history. Rivers are an interest and I have collected the complete 'Rivers of America' series and have read some of them. Since I live near the Schuylkill, go back and forth over it, love the history associated with it and other rivers, I was intrigued to have the river talk to me in first person!
It took me a few pages to get into it but once I did, I just couldn't put it down! You gave it a life: the boats and the canal, the crews, the waterworks and the horrible condition as it got into the 20th century. Why am I telling you; you know it as you lived and wrote about the river!
What a delightful read! I read it twice just to make sure I didn't miss what the river said! Now I have even more goodies to look at as the bibliography showed me a few items I had already read(Nolan, WPA American Guide on Phila)but now I have more!
My daughter is an elementary school librarian. I'll have to see if she has read any of your books!