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To follow on from my review of Penny & Jelly: The School Show last Friday, I am very happy to have the author, Maria Gianferrari on the blog today to share about the inspiration for her debut picture book and offer … Continue reading →

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Title: Safekeeping Author: Karen Hesse Publisher: Feiwel & Friends Publication Date: September 18, 2012 ISBN-13: 978-1250011343 304 pp. ARC provided via publisher Safekeeping by Karen Hesse is a bit of an odd duck. It's a quiet book, an interior journey as much as it is a physical one. It's the story of Radley, a young woman who was volunteering at an orphanage in Haiti when America

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As part of my First Fall Giveaway - I hope there will be a Second Fall Giveaway - I am giving away my ARE of Safekeeping by Newbery Award winner, Karen Hesse. 

Hesse's writing is so smooth, reading this book was effortless.  And I don't mean that I didn't think about this book.  I mean the description of what the main character sees and hears unfold in a seamless way.  To me, this is the best way to write fiction.  When the reader notices the writer's words and craft, I find it detracts from the story.  But, this is a discussion for a day when I have nothing better to type about.

Radley, our protagonist, returns home from volunteering in Haiti when an assassination has thrown America into a panic.  Radley's parents have not answered their phones since she insisted on leaving Haiti.  But Radley expects them to be there when she gets off her plane, even though she has been routed through Philadelphia.  They are not.

In the airport, panic and paranoia reign.  People are dragged off by armed military.  Radley has to walk from the airport in Philadelphia to her home in New Hampshire - a trip made perilous since her money is in her checked backpack in another airport and her cell phone is dead.  And when she finally gets home, her house is empty.  And the police are looking for Radley.

Set in a not-so-distant future, in a not-so-implausible America, Radley's story brings to the foreground just what fear can do to a society.  When Radley and a stranger travel together to Canada and hide out there, fear is gradually replaced with grudging trust as the two struggle to survive.

Safekeeping stands out from the crowd of dystopian novels that crowd the YA shelves, because it is believable.  We experience similar, though not as drastic, security measures when we travel.  Stories of people behaving badly when faced with trauma flood the news.  There is a touch too much of NOW in this book.  The ending, however, is suffused with hope.  It buoyed me up.

So, comment on this post - or on yesterday's post - if you want to win my copy of Safekeeping.  Or pick a copy up at your local bookstore or library.  You will not be sorry.

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A team of authors have joined Book Wish Foundation‘s What You Wish For: A Book For Darfur project. Book sale profits will be donated to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), an organization building libraries in Darfur refugee camps in Chad.

Penguin Group’s G.P. Putnam’s Sons imprint will release the collection in September. If you make a donation of $20 or more before April 30th and your name (and your child’s) will be included in the book’s acknowledgment section.

Actress Mia Farrow, who serves as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, has written the forward. The participating authors include: Cornelia Funke, Meg Cabot, R. L. Stine, John Green, Ann M. Martin, Alexander McCall Smith, Cynthia Voigt, Karen Hesse, Joyce Carol Oates, Nikki Giovanni, Jane Yolen, Nate Powell, Gary Soto, Jeanne DuPrau, Francisco X. Stork, Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Sofia Quintero.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Nine months later...no, not a baby. A post! I am currently taking a valuing diversity in children's literature class. Part of our assignment is to critique eight books from various "ethnic groupings." Here is my first one regarding the American Indian experience in children's literature.

I can’t believe I’ve discovered Karen Hesse so late in life, but am glad she’s part of my favorites now. I really enjoyed her Depression-era novel Out of the Dust and Aleutian Sparrow holds a similar charm.

Set in the months and years after the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor this story follows Vera, an Aleut, and her people as they are evacuated from the Aleutian Islands to southeast Alaska. Vera’s account is told in prose informing us of how she and her people used to live and how they now struggle to survive in the government camps. The U.S. relocates all five villages of Aleut to Ketchikan hundreds of miles away in southeast Alaska. While the Aleut are comfortable in high winds, high seas and high spirits, Ketchikan and their camp at Ward Lake feels landlocked; they cannot see water anywhere through their rainforest home. The government makes them build their own sparse cabins, launder using four faucets and use an open trough for a latrine. Vera observes that a nearby German POW camp is better off than they are. Yet they are required to stay there and find their own subsistence for the next three years.

I was interested to read a “Native American” story that wasn’t set in the lower 48. Especially living in the south schools get inundated with Cherokee and Algonquian Thanksgiving stories. I still found some interesting stereotypes, however. A doctor from the Outside comes to provide check ups and is surprised at their dress. He asks, “Where are your reindeer skins?” The nearby village doesn’t like the Aleut being “forced” on them. They Aleut find themselves being arrested and jailed constantly for unknown reasons. When they finally return to their village in 1945 they find it ransacked, not by the Japanese but by bored and depressed American soldiers, “even the seal-gut pants. What does a soldier from Arkansas want with seal-gut pants?” Probably the novelty of something “exotic” from a culture he doesn’t even realize possess U.S. citizenship.

What struck me was how effective Hesse is at eliciting sympathy and rage without melodrama. The non-rhyming prose is beautiful and captivating. There is a love story but it’s secondary. There is quite a lot of death but it’s not manipulated to pull at your heart strings. What it is is a story of identity – “We never thought who we were was so dependent on where we were” – and retaining that identity after betrayal – “Worldwide our government spends large sums of money to piece lives back together. No money is spent here.”

I also found a few surprises. The villages were quite religious, and not in the way I would have expected. They practiced a version Russian Orthodoxy! This makes sense being so close to Russia, and added (or removed) an interesting layer to all the assumptions a reader could be making while enjoying this story. I appreciated how this story doesn’t attempt to tell you everything you wanted to know about the Aleut. This is one part of their more contemporary history. We are reminded that they have dealt with years of similar heavy-handedness – “How many times can a people lose their way before they are lost forever?” – but they are referring to first the Russians, then the Americans and now the Japanese, not just the proverbial White Man. This adds a thoughtful perspective not present (or able to be present) in other Native American struggles.

I highly recommend this book for 4th – 9th graders. A big range, I know. It’s an easy read and would provide historic food for thought for younger readers, while older readers will be able to relate to the aging main character and explore identity more in-depth.

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I've read some wonderful books of late and would like to share them with you.

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Schools are usually closed on Martin Luther King, Jr. day. February is Black History Month but many kids are off for a whole week. Luckily there are some well-written books and related resources to take up the slack. One book can easily lead to another; read about the people who took a stand, scan the photos and artwork to get a feel for what it was like to be there and try to understand the culture of the time.

To more fully understand the Civil Rights movement, it helps to know your rights.

There are an overwhelming number of books on MLK,Jr. Where to start? A handful do a terrific job of giving an overview of the significance and impact of his his life.

Recognize his strength of character as a regular person who relied on a strong set of beliefs and those he admired to guide him in his philosophy of nonviolence.

He was not a lone voice. There were many who came before him
who had fought against discrimination and in support of equal rights for black Americans. And there were many, many others who fought along with him. People you might have heard of, like Rosa Parks, and others whose stories are still being told. Among those who did their part to fight for equality were singers, postmen, baseball players, schoolteachers and future Supreme Court Justices.


Dr. King's path was not an easy one to follow. Those who later practiced nonviolence on Freedom Rides got beaten and bloodied for their efforts.

The struggle was taken up on many fronts, including in the public schools. Read some first person accounts and histories of what it was like for kids who dreamed of freedom and fought to be allowed to go to a decent school.

Part of the difficulty came in simply making their voices heard. Most Americans were just living their ordinary lives. The culture of the 1950s and 60s was alive with people writing books, painting and a new kind of music called rock and roll.

Read the books, look at the art, and listen to the music of the time period. They are an important part of history.


Hear the beauty of Dr. King's oratory and the power of his words.

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