Review: Moon Over Manifest (2011 Newbery Winner)

Moon Over Manifest is the story of a girl sent to live in the town of Manifest during the Great Depression. As she searches for evidence of her father who lived there as a boy, she discovers the story of a town full of immigrants as they struggled to work together and survive during World War I.

I wasn't pulled into the story immediately, but I think it had much more to do with my mood than the book itself. Because once I got into the book, I was hooked. The characters are real people, the fictional town is a real place, and this story is a true story--as all good stories are, whether fact or fiction. It heartily deserves the Newbery Medal.

I found it interesting that two of last year's best books for young readers (this one and Turtle in Paradise) are set during the Great Depression. We are not experiencing times nearly as hard as that, but maybe in our hard times it is good to remember that people have been through worse and still survived and thrived.


Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool is the winner of this year's Newbery Award.

Review: A Long Walk to Water

After the Newbery Award winning A Single Shard, Linda Sue Park has been one of my favorite YA authors.

A Long Walk to Water was a Newbery Honor book for 2011. It is based on the real life of Salva Dut, a Lost Boy of Sudan who was driven away from his home by civil war in 1985 and spent more than a decade walking across Africa and in refugee camps before he found a home in America. Not content to rest on his eventual good fortunes, Salva now spends his time on a project to help the people of Southern Sudan have clean drinking water. Check out his foundation: Water for Sudan.

Salva's story is woven with the story of a young girl living in Southern Sudan who must walk half a day for one trip to and from a pond to bring back water for her family. Water that is dirty and often makes them sick. This helps the reader to understand the importance of Salva's work to help his country and its people.

A Long Walk to Water is a short, simple, and moving tale that for just a moment helps you to appreciate what you have. Simple things like being able to turn on the tap and have an abundance of clean water.

Review: The Silver Chair

I finished reading The Silver Chair aloud to my daughter today. I miss the Pevensie kids, but it is full of adventure, magical beasts, evil witches, and journeys through strange lands.

As I read it, I imagined how the film version might play out. I wasn't sure how many of the books of The Chronicles of Narnia would be turned into movies, but at the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there is both a hint that Eustace might be back to Narnia and a reference to Jill Pole (the girl who joins him on his journey to Narnia in The Silver Chair), so I'm fairly confident that the movie will be coming out, likely at the end of this year.

Review: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford was a heartbreaking, beautifully told story of family, loyalty, first love, and of belonging neither here nor there.

The hero, Henry, is a Chinese American in Seattle during WWII. He is too Chinese for his white American classmates, but too American to fit in with his Chinese family. He is witness to the evacuation of Japanese Americans to inland camps for their "protection" after Pearl Harbor.

Having grown up in the western states, but far from the western coast, I admit I knew little about how seriously the threat of Japanese attack was taken for the states and towns on the Pacific Coast. I have since visited forts built to protect the Northwest from the Japanese during WWII. This book made the evacuation and containment of Japanese Americans feel even more real to me because it talks about places that I have been and live not far from now.

I am often drawn to stories about mothers and daughters, but rarely to ones about fathers and sons (since I am neither). But this book is for anyone who has navigated the complicated relationships of family, and for anyone who has loved or lost.

Review: Turtle in Paradise

"Everyone thinks children are sweet as Necco Wafers, but I've lived long enough to know the truth: kids are rotten. The only difference between grown-ups and kids is that grown-ups go to jail for murder. Kids get away with it."

And so begins the story of Turtle, a girl sent to live with her aunt in Key West during the Great Depression.

I picked this book because it received a Newbery Honor this year. I haven't read the winner yet, but I think Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm easily deserved the prize as well. The characters are funny and believable (some of them based on real people who lived in Key West in the 1930s), the story is charming and heartbreaking and beautiful, the narrator is real and tough, and the ending is touching without being too sappy.

This book was so good I read it in one day--which didn't used to mean much, but with an active toddler and a house to take care of, that is a lot more significant these days. Let's just say that my house is maybe not as clean as it could be, but I read an excellent book today. I recommend it to anyone.

Sad News for Powell's Books

It's a sad sign of the times when one of the most well established independent bookstore chains in the country has to lay off some employees because sales are down. It's probably part due to the economy, but largely due to the increase in sales of e-books.

Read more about it in the Oregonian article here.

Even better support Powell's or your local independent by buying your books from them. Powell's Books has a large selection of used and sale books as well new books, and they have a great online store if you can't make it out to Portland. A couple of my other favorite Oregon independent bookstores are: Beach Books in Seaside (we always stop in when we go to the coast) and Annie Bloom's in Multnomah Village (close to my old neighborhood).

2011 Newbery

The American Library Assiciation has named the 2011 Newbery Award Winner: Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool.

I know nothing about the book or its author but I have it on hold at my library to be sent to me via books by mail as soon as a copy is available.

This goal of reading all the Newbery Award books is much more enjoyable when it requires me to read one book a year. I'm also checking out the Newbery Honor books from this year that interest me.

A Love of Books

I love books, but I love them for their words and the worlds they create, not for their physical form. I try to take good care of my books, but I don’t treat my books like precious antiques that my 20 month old daughter can’t touch.

I love that she loves books so much already. She comes to me throughout the day with a book for me to read to her. She sees me reading, and she sees her father reading. She can sometimes even point out whose book it is if she’s seen us with it a few times. I have shelves of classical literature and I let her play with them. (I do have to remind myself that they can be alphabetized again very easily, but I am not concerned for the physical book itself.) If she wants to carry around John Stuart Mill or Charles Dickens for half a day, I couldn’t be happier.

There are a couple of books that I am more careful with. I let her look at and turn the pages of my illustrated Complete Chronicles of Narnia, but I sit with her. But even that book is replaceable—these early formative years are not. I want my daughter to continue to love books and to have positive experiences with them. She may not turn into a literature nerd like me, but I’m doing everything I can to help instill a love of books in her, just as my mother did with me and all my siblings.

Top Ten Classics Redux

Penguin Classics released a 10 essential classics list last year. As any top 10 or 100 or 1000 list would, they got a lot of opinions about what was missing from their list. So they put out a call and let people vote. I couldn't help but put my two cents in, and believe me, it was hard to decide on my top ten. One of the problems is not having read all the books you could choose from.

Well they just came out with their 10 essential classics redux based on the votes of the common people (er, I mean those nerdy enough to take the time on it).

From their first list, I had read 6.5 (I've read parts of Walden, but never in its entirety). From their new list, I've read 9. So I like the second list better based on the fact that it makes me feel smarter if nothing else. The one I haven't read on the new list was also on the old: Pride and Prejudice. It's been on my to do list to read Jane Austen, and I think Pride and Prejudice just jumped up to the top of the list.
 

Review: Good Poems

"...no one

can have poetry or dances, prayers or climaxes all day;...

only Dostoevsky can be Dostoevskian at such long

long tumultuous stretches;..."

from "Moderation Is Not a Negation of Intensity; But Helps Avoid Monotony" by John Tagliabue

This book is just what the title says, good poems. They were selected by Garrison Keillor from poems heard on The Writer's Almanac. Any compilation of the best books or the best poems is going to be subjective, but what I liked about this one is that it is not claiming to be the best poems, just good poems. And most of them were. I would not have chosen them all, but I was introduced to many poems and poets that I never would have looked at otherwise.

If you like poetry, this is a good book to read. If you're afraid of poetry but have always wanted to give it a try, this is a good book to start with. It had a good mix of old and new, traditional and experimental. And it had a lot of Emily Dickinson, my own favorite poet, so you certainly can't go wrong there.