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.