The Mystery of the Sequel

Truly Devious by Maureen JohnsonNew York, NY : Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2018.
420 p. : ill., map ; 21 cm..

This well written, well-plotted mystery got plenty of good reviews - and it is interesting and fun to read - but I just didn't love it.  Okay, confession, I'm not a huge mystery fan to begin with so that has to figure into the mix.  However, I think there is more to it than that.  I just didn't feel like there was much "at stake" in this boarding school for elite thinkers mystery.

The story involves students who are at an elite, all-expenses paid boarding school founded by an extremely wealthy man in the 1930s who, not long after opening the school, lost his wife and daughter to kidnappers.  Additionally, a student at the school was also killed around that time.

Some students come to the school to write novels, direct plays, create art, or just be brilliant and eccentric, but one student is there with her project being to solve the kidnapping/murder case which has never been solved.  In the course of the novel, we get to know this modern sleuth, Stevie Bell, and witness new and terrible mysteries evolve in real time.

So what's wrong with that?  Well, nothing really.  I just found that I didn't care all that much, and never really had that reader's bond with a character which (for me) is one of the joys of reading - even escapist reading.

I think I would have been satisfied if instead of this character bond, I had at least had the satisfaction of a plot ingeniously and surprisingly tied up.  But that is precisely what does not happen, and my cynical guess is because Johnson's publishers insisted that a trilogy (yes that dreaded rainmaker of YA lit) was necessary.  So hold your breath, and wait for book 2 and book 3 of the "Truly Devious" mysteries to have all your questions answered.  Or if you have other reads on your shelf demanding attention, just shrug and say, "Whatever happens eventually, is a mystery to me."

Varnished Unvarnish

Same but Different: Teen Life on the Autism Express by Holly Robinson Peete, Ryan Elizabeth Peete, & RJ Peete.
New York : Scholastic Press, 2016.
183 p. ; 22 cm.

A teacher assistant stopped in recently to ask about a biography dealing with autism.  We ended up finding this family biography written mainly by two high school twins - the boy "Charlie" has autism and the girl "Callie" does not.

The book is written in alternating chapters where each sibling talks about the experiences of life being a teen and about life dealing with autism. 

The book can be really blunt and honest - the girl talking about frustrations and embarrassing situations, and the boy talking about being frustrated and misunderstood.  What brings the book together is the familial love that binds these young people and the that undergirds their whole family.

I think this is a great, easy to read, and interesting introduction to autism.  I would definitely recommend it.

Love Documented

The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
New York : Delacorte Press, [2016]
348 p. ; 22 cm.

This book was a delight.  Two high school seniors - who couldn't be much more different - start the day total strangers, and end up by the evening deeply in love.  They have to overcome a world of differences to get there: Natasha is an undocumented Jamaican immigrant facing immediate deportation, and Daniel is as first generation Korean American who is up against his parents' plans for him to get into Yale, be a doctor, and partner up with a "good Korean girl." 

Daniel aspires to be a poet, and lives by the values of idealism, hopes, and dreams.  Natasha is a lover of science and rational decisions.  Their paths cross one morning in NYC as Daniel heads for a crucial Yale entrance interview and Natasha pursues legal aid to stave off her deportation.

It seems almost silly to describe the plot, but it really works.  In spite of a few improbable plot devices (reminded me a little of Thomas Hardy's narrative tricks!) the development of the relationship between the characters is believable and very sweet.  By the end of the book the reader can't help but be rooting for these two fine human beings.

As I read The Sun is Also a Star, I thought of a lovely, romantic movie that has a similar one day of falling in love and a similar feel - Before Sunrise., which is interesting in that The Sun is Also a Star was apparently made into a movie, but one which did not share the critical acclaim of Before Sunrise.   Don't let that keep you away from this lovely little jewel of a book.

Reconstruction Redux

Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
New York : Scholastic Focus, [2019]
 225 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

I'm pleased that Reconstruction is being written about more lately.  It strikes me that it is one of the most important periods in American history, a period where the promises of democracy and racial justice had a brief and shining moment and then were crushed under a wave of white supremacist violence and terror that still infects the body politic of the US.  Reconstruction helps one understand the latest rise of white nationalism that has essentially taken over the modern Republican Party.

Reconstruction offers hope and not just despair, though.  It shows that with vigorous federal power and protections for all citizens, there could be a society where power is shared by all people and not just a privileged few. It also shows how powerful the appeal of dignity and freedom is for people who have been deprived of it - and how that appeal can motivate them to strive for great achievements. 

This book has a some of the feel of the Indigenous People's History of the United States for Young People that I read this summer.  Gates wrote the book with upper middle and high school age students in mind.  That keeps it from being overly heavy and keeps the reader from getting lost in too much information.  It is a book I would recommend for both young adults and regular old adults - like me!

Brilliant Fade

Tesla: Inventor of the Modern by Richard Munson
New York : W.W. Norton & Co., [2018]   
306 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

I've wanted to read about Nikolai Tesla for a while now.  Someone told me how Tesla had developed plans for harnessing and distributing low-cost (if not free) energy - and so had his career quashed by powerful oil/gas interests and even had his papers seized by the government after he died.  Given Tesla's revolutionary inventions and discoveries, I had to wonder if there was something to this.

This biography does a great job of conveying just how brilliant and visionary Tesla was in both his thinking and his development of applied science.  He is the towering figure behind the modern use of electricity in industry and in its wide distribution.  By figuring out how to harness and use alternating current (AC) through generators and AC motors, he triumphed over the Edison devotees of direct current.

However, much of his life was spent pursuing fruitless dreams of using high-frequency electric current to send and receive wireless energy and signals through the earth.  In spite losing himself in the pursuit of these earthbound visions, he also developed the airborne transmission of signals and has been credited with the invention of radio - though Marconi became its most famous developer and inventor.

This biography led me to believe that there is not a lot of substance to the belief that special interests shut down Tesla's potential.  Instead his own visionary brilliance seems to have trumped a more practical approach that would have greatly benefited Tesla.  He was terrible with money and contracts and did not reap the fabulous riches that his work should have earned for him.  Nevertheless, he did have years of great fame and huge financial backing, but was unable to develop that into a lifelong success with research and income.

All in all, it is a fascinating biography that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in late 19th century science and technology - especially electricity and wireless communication.
   

A Terrible History

The African Slave Trade by Basil Davidson
Boston : Little, Brown, c1980.
A rev. and expanded ed.
304 p. : ill., maps ; 22 cm.   

I've seen this book on the shelves many times.  Often when weeding, it comes up as one of our collection's oldest and "outdated" items.  However, the book is often cited as belonging to any non-fiction "Core Collection," and so I have kept it and finally decided to read it.

In many ways it is a really old book. It was first published in 1961 and then this revised version came out in 1980.  I looked for reviews critiquing it as out of date, or recommending a newer treatment of the subject, but did not find anything.

The book is powerful and apparently was a real ground-shifter when it came out.  It provides a very interesting treatment of the European relationships with African states and governments and notes how many of the initial trade relationships were established as between equals, but that the major European states maintained heavy-weapons advantages and eventually assumed a supremacy/colonial attitude toward the African states.  Also the trade in enslaved peoples was initially only part of other trade, but quickly assumed an exclusionary status.  States that resisted had little chance of survival and would face decimation and enslavement if they persisted.

The author emphasizes that the trade relationships brought nothing of real value to the African states while enriching and empowering the European states that shipped and sold the African captives.

Ahead of the Curve

The Famished Road by Ben Okri
New York : Anchor Books, 1993.
500 p. ; 24 cm.   

There have been some great YA books recently by authors that have used the rich well of Nigerian history and culture to create their fictional worlds.  I'm thinking of the incredibly talented Nnedi Okorafor (reviewed here) and the highly successful Tomi Ayedemi.  But I had no idea that Ben Okri was setting wildly fantastic fiction in Nigeria (his homeland) back in the early 1990s. 

I had simply wanted to read some of the African fiction that we have in our collection and I liked the title (!) and the fact that The Famished Road had won the prestigious Booker Prize back in 1991. When I started reading it, I had no idea it was such a romp through the strange and surreal.  The novel follows the harsh life of a boy born to poor parents in Nigeria as the country transitions from the depredations of colonialism to the depredations of corrupt and predatory capitalism with its violence of political upheaval. 

There is a lot to admire in the novel: a rich surrealism and dreamy realism that weaves back and forth through the novel, and some moments that are painfully relevant, e.g. battles between the Rich People's party and the Poor People's party.  I think the weakness of the book is that it is long and rambling and would have had a lot more emotional power if had been edited by about 30%.  That being said, I think it would make an interesting pairing with Achebe's Things Fall Apart, or with Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude. Also it's a wildly original novel.

I don't think it's a book I'd highly recommend to students unless someone was asking about African fiction or magical realism.

Roads of Power

The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
New York : Vintage Books, 2017.
xix, 647 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : colored illustrations ; 24 cm.

This is a well-written enjoyable read that sets out to re-establish the historical roots of civilization further east than is common in the "western" canon.  Instead of placing the thread of history as Greece, Rome, Europe, and US-Europe, Frankopan adjusts the narrative to give prominence that part of the world between the eastern Mediterranean and China/India.

In telling the story he conveys how much vibrant politics, culture and trade was occurring in Central Asia both before Greece and Rome came on the scene and during the so called "Dark Ages" too.  There were some interesting parts of the history that I was not familiar with, especially the in roads into Central Asia made by the Vikings as they brought both pillage and trade down the Volga and trafficked heavily in slaves.

The narrative comes fully into the present with the vital role in recent politics that countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India have played and continue to play and the powerful role that the Silk Roads area has played in the era of oil and gas beginning just before WWII and continuing to this day.

The book is a bit of a doorstop for high school readers, but I would recommend it to students needing source material for reports and to any avid history buffs.

Touching on Painful

I Am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina
New York : Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books Inc., [2017]
167 p. : chiefly ill. ; 23 cm.

I'm not sure what I expected when I picked this up to read it, but it really hit me emotionally.  It's the story of a promising young high school student who is murdered by a department store security guard.  The guard is a police officer, too, and the student is African American - and so the story jumps right into the sad, terrible and ongoing narrative of law enforcement killing unarmed Black people.

I think the emotional power comes from the way this powerful graphic novel introduces us to the victim, first as a lively, smart sensitive young man who is an engaged student, a working bike messenger and an amateur historian of Harlem.  After he is killed while shopping for a suit we travel along with his ghost that joins up with other victims of police violence. He travels a ghost train with these victims as they revisit the past and as he visits people he loves in the present.

It takes a little getting used to the ghostly shifts, but once you do the story really hits home.  One of the most powerful and unexpected aspects of this story is the sharp light it throws on government and complicit media as they work to smear the reputation of the victim and burnish the reputation of the perpetrator. 

This graphic novel succeeds as a tale of injustice and as a history lesson of previous police violence cases. The ending of the book features a helpful list of the names, ages and locations of previous victims and short biographies of the victims featured in the book.

Little They Them

A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson
Portland, OR : Limerence Press, Inc., 2018.
1 v. (unpaged) : chiefly ill. ; 18 cm.

This is a helpful little (about 60 pages) graphic novel guide to using non-binary pronouns.  It's especially aimed at the good natured cis folks like me, who want to convey openness, support and respect for non-binary gendered folks, especially those who want to be referred to as the singular "they" or "them." The book also touches on the pronoun "ze" and some of its cases when it's "hir" or "hirself."  But that's getting a bit into details....

The book really is a gentle easing into the use of non-gendered pronouns for people who aren't around those pronouns a lot and may get confused or flustered.  It's also just a book to encourage the frustrated or confused (but supportive) to not worry about mistakes - and instead to open up to the attitude of living and learning.

A Kirkus review did mention that the book has its limits of mainly a white person's view, but it is still a good book to have on hand when someone wants to quickly get up to speed on the basics of the new non-gendered pronouns.  Get it!

     

Like Horses at Rush Hour

Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri
Somerville, Mass. : Candlewick Press, 2011.
218 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.    

I really got a kick out of this book.  The plot seems so ludicrous that I at first thought, this Neri has one crazy imagination.  I mean a wayward Detroit African-American kid sent by his mom to Philadelphia so he can straighten up with the father he has never known - who just happens to be a skilled horseman/cowboy living in the run down, inner city of Philly.  The thing is, it's based on real-life African-American, urban cowboys who have carried on this city tradition for nearly 100 years.

If you don't believe it, go over to G. Neri's website and brush up on your history - and get ready for a film version of the novel.

The novel is a touching coming of age story, involving the almost-teen Cole who has driven his mom to the edge with his growing misbehavior and bad attitude.  So she packs him in the car at night and takes him to Philadelphia where she literally dumps him with his father who he doesn't even know. After a rough start, the two start to bond and Cole - by working with horses - starts to figure out what the important things in life really are.  One of those values is taking a stand for tradition and culture against the greed of developers. 

There's a lot to recommend this story.  It angles a little young for high-schoolers, but I'll still recommend it, using the unreal situation of horses in the inner city as a selling point.

The Uncivil Dead

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
New York, NY : Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2018]
451 p. ; 22 cm.

This really is a humdinger of a creative novel for YAs.  It's an alternative history, a thriller, and a zombie novel all rolled into one with a great heroine and lots of subtext (racism, walls to keep outsiders out, political corruption and lies, etc.) Could be right out of today's headlines instead of a few decades after the Civil War.  Oh, and this Civil War didn't end at Appomattox with the defeat of the Confederacy - it came to an uneasy end at Gettysburg when the dead on the battlefield got up and started eating the living.

That grisly twist did end the war and ended slavery (just like the real Civil War) but not racism (just like that real war again!) African Americans instead were freed to become fighters against the shamblers, Justina Ireland's great name for the zombies. That's just part of the story.  The engine of this novel (in addition to the unending hunger of the shamblers, is the resurgent attempts by white supremacists to reassert their power and control in the devastated landscape of  the US.  They achieve this with migration west, deception, corruption, harsh religion, and brutality.  Let's just say that Jane McKeene - the heroine of this tale - isn't just going to sit still and accept this.

I'm not the only one who liked this book.  It has received a lot of critical acclaim.  I'd say it's definitely a recommended read.     

Horsepower

Grand Theft Horse by G. Neri [illus. by Corban Wilkin]
New York : Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books Inc., [2018]
220 p. : chiefly ill. ; 22 cm.

This is a beautiful story of a courageous woman who is a gifted horse trainer and takes a stand against the abusive horse racing industry in California.  The core of the story is the sacrifices she makes and the injustices she endures to uphold her commitment to the decent treatment of a horse under her care.   

The book tells the story of her life, and of how she got entangled with an absolutely horrid lawyer who helped her buy a race horse with exceptional potential, but then wanted her to exploit it for short term profits.  When she defies him, he spends years and gobs of money trying to ruin her.

This graphic novel is really a deep delve into what does it mean to have a meaningful life.  It asks the reader to really consider what is success, what is valuable, what is right and wrong. 

I liked this book a lot, but found it a little hard to get into at first.  I worry that it's beginning might discourage young adult readers, but I will definitely recommend it to those who want something more from their graphic novel than just adventure.     

Touching on Family

Far from the Tree by Robin Benway

New York, NY : HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2017]

374 p. ; 22 cm.

At first glance, it might seem surprising that Far From the Tree won the 2017 National Book Award.  In some ways it seems like a typical teen "problem novel" - one about three teens who share the same birth mother, but who have had very different lives since birth, and reconnect in various ways as they try to bond with each other and figure out what family really means.     

But the writing is strong in this novel and - in spite of myself - I found myself tearing up several times throughout the book. The emotional moves in the book are subtly developed and when they reach a climax they are quite convincing.

The novel also draws strength from having both a common thread - the three characters are all children of the same birth mother - and from having really complex dynamics: one of the sisters has just given up a baby of her own, one of the teens has an adoptive family that is experiencing a divorce, and one of the teens never got adopted at all.

Each character grows separately and in interactions with the others as the novel moves through several intense episodes and moves toward a final climax that is surprising and also satisfying.

If you have a student looking for a compelling read about family relationships, this novel is highly recommended.

Fiery Brown

A Volcano Beneath the Snow: John Brown's War Against Slavery by Albert Marrin
New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2014]
244 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.

Like many of the history non-fiction books published with the high school audience in mind, this book has an appealing layout with lots of great photos, reproductions, etc.  It makes for a readable history.  I also like that the length of these non-fiction books is long enough for a substantive treatment of the topic, but not so exhaustive as to be daunting.

I read this book because I really wanted to learn more about John Brown and his passionate fight against slavery in the US and his willingness to die for the cause. 

Marrin does a good job describing the life of Brown and the back drop of slavery - especially the way in which slavers decided that they had to expand slavery in the US to keep their power.  He also illuminates the way in which Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry pushed the coming Civil War even closer.  But I think the biggest weakness is that Marrin tries to highlight the radical and "terrorist" nature of John Brown's actions (for example his execution of unarmed prisoners in Kansas) without fully illuminating the absolute horrors and terrorism of the slave labor system.  Having read The Half Has Never Been Told, I am aware that the cotton-slavery system that evolved after 1820 was an even more vicious, brutal and horrid system of torture/slavery that what already existed before 1820.  I think it is a good thing that Marrin wants students to really wrestle with the complexities of when or if illegal, violent action is acceptable.  But to do that you have to really be honest about the system that that action was targeting - and I don't think Marrin succeeded in that.

I would still recommend the book since it is a thorough treatment of Brown's life and conveys a lot of the dynamics of the time.     

Super Tiny, Super Big

Smash! : Exploring the Mysteries of the Universe with the Large Hadron Collider by Sara Latta
Minneapolis : Graphic Universe, [2017]
72 p. : chiefly ill. ; 24 cm.

This little comic book is more of an hors d'oeuvre than an entree, but there's nothing wrong with that.  Weighing in at a mere 72 pages, and managing to convey the amazing science of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) without getting bogged down in its wild complexities, Latta has managed to create a work that should whet the reader's appetite to know more.   It did mine!

Though the story-line is a bit corny (a little youngish for high school) the science is admirable.  In one part of the book, in the space of just a couple pages she manages to cover most of the basics of the standard model: the six "flavors" of quarks,  six kinds of leptons, the four fundamental forces and the bosons associated with them - and, of course, the most famous triumph of the LHC, the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

It's nice to have a brief, very accessible book to recommend to a student who is not deep into advanced science, and yet wants to know about particle physics.  If you know such a student, Smash! might be just what they need.

A Short and Wild Adventure

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
New York : A Tom Doherty Associates book, 2015.
90 p. ; 20 cm.

Yes, that is 90 p. as in only ninety pages!  But short can be sweet and this little book is captivating.  It's a wildly imaginative science fiction novella that bridges a non-industrial village tribe with an off planet university where the most brilliant  minds of the galaxy go to study.

It fuses a simple coming of age-journey (albeit to a distant planet!) with a shocking massacre and tense intergalactic diplomacy.

I enjoyed it, and it's brevity was refreshing. My hope is that a short book like this might be inviting to those students intimidated by the heftier science fiction/fantasy books that are so common.  I think once tempted, a reader will want more of the same, and with Okorafor there are many more works to sample.

Harsh Light

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Naperville, Ill. : Sourcebooks, [2018]
xviii, 477 p. : ill. ; 214 cm.

This is a fantastic book that ties several important periods of US history together - WWI, The Roaring Twenties and The Great Depression.  It also has a local interest in that half the drama of the story is in Ottawa, IL about an hour and forty-five minute drive from here in Urbana.

But it's a tough book, too.  It's the story of literally murderous corporate exploitation and dishonesty that shortened the lives of hundreds of women who worked in the factories where the luminous (and dangerously radioactive) radium was painted on wartime instrument panels and on civilian-use watch dials.  The deaths of several of the women featured in the book are slow, agonizing, and terrible to read about.  What makes the book inspiring, though, is the courage, grit and determination of the victimized women as they take on the companies that used and abused them - and eventually win significant victories.

This book has a lot of heart. The author succeeds in putting the reader into the lives of the women who worked in the radium-dial industry - capturing the initial excitement of well-paid employment for young women of the twenties and the freedom it gave them, and humanizing the gruesome and tragic illnesses that stalked these young women several years after they started the work.

The book is a great lesson about the dangers of unregulated corporate behavior, the power of unified resistance, and the importance of family, friends, community and the media in taking on powerful foes. It's a long, but very worthy read for anyone interested in US history.