by Rita Williams-Garcia
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Good thing the plane had seat belts and we’d been strapped in tight before takeoff.”
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This book is many things. It’s a picture of Oakland in 1968, though it’s not as turbulent as I expected it to be. It’s a picture of an independent girl who looks after her younger sisters thrust into a new environment. It’s a picture of a neglectful artist mom (why are all the neglectful moms artists? Are all artists naturally flaky?) learning to accept and love her children again? It’s a picture of the clash between southern African-American mannerisms (pre-civil rights, of course) and more progressive, more earthy west coast sentiments.

It’s all of these things, and which you would think would overwhelm a 215 page book. But, through Williams-Garcia’s writing and plotting, she makes it all work. Delphine, our eleven-year-old main character, has it all together: she keeps an eye on her sisters, Vonetta and Fern; she’s responsible, dependable, if a bit plain. And so when her Pa decides to send them clear across the country to Oakland to see their mother who left when Fern was a baby, she figures it’s more of the same. And, for a while it is. Their mother isn’t terribly happy to see them — though she did pick them up at the airport, which must count for something — and sends them off every morning to a summer camp run by the Black Panthers. It’s there that Delphine — and Vonetta and Fern, to a smaller extent — learn about the horrid things that have been happening to their people, and about how the traditions that Big Ma (who’s from Alabama) have been teaching them, are keeping them from reaching their full potential.

It’s a good, solid book, for the most part. There are some interesting questions raised about place and race and belonging. But I didn’t absolutely love the book. Perhaps it has something to do with my bias against crazy/neglectful mothers (though I didn’t mind the mother in Rocky Road; perhaps that has something to do with her medical diagnosis?). Perhaps it was that I didn’t think there was enough growth portrayed to justify the hopeful ending. That may just be me wanting more from a middle grade book. Or it may be the opposite: there wasn’t enough of a happy ending to suit me; it almost felt like they were spinning in the same place all summer. The growth that does occur is very, very subtle. I sit and think about it, and the pieces fall together… and yet there seems something a bit off. Nothing earth-shattering: it’s definitely a good book,and there’s definitely lots to talk and think about.

It’s just not as great as I was hoping it would be.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Christina Diaz Gonzalez
ages: 11+
First sentence: “I watched as a white heron circled the beach and then headed north toward the open waters of the tropics.”
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Lucia’s life isn’t all that bad. Sure, her mother is a bit overprotective, not letting her wear makeup or cut her hair short like the fashionable girls. Ans sure, her little brother Frankie is annoying. But, she has her best friend to giggle over boys with, her father has a good job, and Castro’s revolution hasn’t reached her home town of Puerto Mejares, Cuba.

Then one day, it does, and Lucia’s world turns upside down. Her father is resistant to participating in the revolution, and Lucia inadvertently sees things she shouldn’t have. After a couple of show-downs with the soldiers, Lucia’s parents do the unthinkable: they choose to send Lucia and Frankie to the U.S. for asylum, by themselves. They can only hope that their parents will be able to join them later.

The first half of the book deals with the situation in Cuba, and it’s a dire one. It reminded me of the books I’ve read about the Iranian revolution: controlling, threatening, and very scary, especially for an American, because we’ve never experienced anything like it. There’s a couple of instances, near brushes with rape and death, that made me wonder if this really is a middle grade book. But it’s all very tasteful — barely brushing the surface — and it adds to the tension in the book.

The second half is about Lucia and Frankie in America — specifically Grand Island, Nebraska. They struggle to fit in at first, but the couple they are placed with, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter, are kind and well-meaning, and eventually they find a place. The struggle then becomes with being in American and keeping themselves Cuba. And for Lucia, desperately missing home and her parents. It’s tough, but they do find a way to balance everything.

It’s an interesting novel, and addresses something I’d not heard of before in the exile of Cuban children during the revolution. Well-written and well-developed, it’s an excellent book.

by Cynthia Lord
ages: 9+
First sentence: “‘The ferry’s coming!'”
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This is on my pile for Cybils reading, but Jen’s recent review prompted me to pull it off the pile sooner rather than later. And I’m so glad I did.

Tess lives in Bethsaida, a small fishing island off the coast of Maine. It’s so small, that they only have a one-room school, where her mother is the teacher. And because lobstering is no longer what it used to be, people keep moving off, and the state of Maine is threatening to close the school, which means Tess and her family would have to move.

That is, until Reverend Beal comes up with the idea to take on foster children. If they add as many children as those that have moved out, maybe they could save the school. Tess’s family is one of those who take on a foster child, a 13-year-old boy named Aaron. She hopes, and wishes, that this will be exactly what her family and the island (and maybe even Aaron) needs. But then, sometimes, everything you wish for doesn’t always turn out the way you’ve planned.

It’s a quiet book, one where the characters and setting are forefront, and shine like they should. Lord’s writing captured the quiet homeyness of island living — both the positive and the negative; there were some wonderfully nosy characters. She also captured the idea of finding a place; Aaron is a wonderfully complex character, someone who wants and needs a home, but is reluctant, because of his past, to dive in headfirst and give everything over to Tess and her family. It’s a slow process, one with bumps and hiccups, but because you care about the characters, you want it to succeed.

And with some luck, it will.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Deborah Wiles
ages: 10+
First sentence: “I am eleven years old and I am invisible.”
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It’s the fall of 1962, and there’s tension in the air. Fifth-grader Franny Chapman is not quite sure what’s going on with her best friend; her Uncle Otts seems to be not quite there anymore, instead spending more and more time fighting an old war in his head. Her mother is distracted, her father is gone, her older sister is choosing to spend time with her college friends and leaving Franny behind. Even her teacher has skipped her every single time when it’s her turn to read aloud in school.

On top of all that, the president — John F. Kennedy, for those of us who didn’t do well in history — has just informed the country that the Soviet Union is sending missiles to Cuba that have the potential to blow the entire country up. Franny only wants to be worried about going to her first boy-girl party, not whether or not she’s going to live to see tomorrow.

This book is billed as a “documentary novel”; the narrative is interspersed with pictures and quotes and clippings (there’s a Fallout Shelter Instruction Manual!), presumably to give the reader (who, we assume, didn’t do well in history either) some frame of reference. And taken separately, both the non-fiction parts and the fiction parts were interesting. I kind of liked Franny, and her struggles. I wanted to smack her mom, and I kind of felt that Wiles was playing up an early-60s mom stereotype: the bridge-playing, cigarette-smoking, mostly absent mom who was a very strict disciplinarian when she was around, and yet somehow had a soft heart for her children, though her son saw it more. (We’ve come a long way, baby.) And I liked the non-fiction parts as well. The quotes, the bios of notable people, the pictures were all fascinating to look at.

I just think this book tried to do too much in combining both. The narrative felt interrupted to me, and I didn’t get the sense of foreboding about the Cuban Missile Crisis that I think the author wanted us to get. In some ways, I think this would have worked better as a straight-up non-fiction book, like Marching for Freedom or Claudette Colvin. Combined with quotes and interviews, this could have been a compelling book. (I’d love to see one done from a Cuban perspective, personally.) But as it is, the book fell short in many ways for me. It tried to do too much (there’s even a faint subplot about the race issues in the country at the time, but it was never developed enough to do much with), and because of that, it didn’t do enough.

Which is just too bad.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Howard Whitehouse (Illus. by Bill Slavin)
ages: 9+
First sentence: “The July snow was blowing sideways across the frozen plain toward the village.”
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Review copy sent to me by the author

Because I am not a 10-year-old boy, nor have I ever had a 10-year-old boy (or am likely to), I have completely missed out on the whole sub-genre of 10-year-old-boy books. You know them: Captain Underpants and the like. As a result, I’m not that versed in the world of fart and poop jokes. (Probably a good thing…) This book falls into that category (though it’s pretty light on the fart and poop jokes), and much to my surprise (or not, since I’ve loved other books by Howard Whitehouse) I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We follow the (mis)adventures of one Bogbrush (the Barbarian), who’s off to become a Hero. After a quick stop at the Temple of the Great Belch in order to become a Certified Barbarian, he sets off in search of a Quest. He bumps into Diphtheria and Sneaky, who are off to see if they can remove the Great Axe from the Stone and become the true king of Scrofula. Sounds like an adventure Bogbrush — who’s not too bright — can handle. Of course, they will run into a few other obstacles before they get to the Big City, and while things don’t really turn out happily-ever-after, they don’t turn out too badly either.

But, obviously, this book isn’t about the plot. It’s about the gags, the gimmicks, and Whitehouse (with able — and ample — assistance from Slavin’s illustrations) gives us that in abundance. My personal favorite was the parenthetical comments under the chapter headings; the author uses hands and toes to count up from one to twenty (well, chapter 9 reads, “This would be both hands raised if I had lost a finger like Uncle Bob who had that unfortunate accident with the bacon slicer.”); after twenty they become insanely hilarious, counting all over the map (21 gets used a few times, an Chapter 9 makes a reappearance). I found myself looking forward to a new chapter, just so I could see what was going to happen next in the parenthetical comments.

Additionally, the author gives us an “education”, with sidebars in every chapter explaining definitions of words and customs, as well as general “things to know”. And, since this is a humor book, they are (of course) only mostly serious.

Word of the Day: invoke — to call upon a god, as in “O great God of Homework, make that which I did on the bus this morning suffice for a passing grade.”

or

Vocabulary to Learn: Brigands, outlaws, footpads, and bandits are the same thing — groups of unpleasant criminals who hide in the wilds and jump out on honest passersby. And not just to say “Boo!” either.

It’s not deep, it’s not even a particularly compelling story, and it kind of just runs out of steam at the end. But it’s 10-year-old boy funny, and that’s really all that matters.

by Ingrid Law
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Mom and Dad had known about the wedding at my uncle Autry’s ranch for months.”
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Ledger Kane — call him Ledge — has a problem. See, his savvy has hit him full force and it’s a doozy: it seems anything mechanical or man-made (from buildings to cars to watches) falls apart when he’s around. And he’s stuck out at his uncle Autry’s ranch in Wyoming until he can learn to scumble — or control — his savvy. Which, at the rate it’s going, may be never.

Of course, watching Ledge learn to scumble his savvy alone wouldn’t make that interesting of a book. Set nine years after Savvy, there’s a bunch of extended family members around to help Ledge with his issues. Rocket Beaumont’s still trying to figure out how to manage his electrical savvy and have a normal life. And Samson and Gypsy are hanging around the ranch, lending a helping hand, as is Grandpa Bomba (though he’s mostly patiently waiting to die). There’s also cousins Marisol and Mesquite, Autry’s twin daughters, and Ledge’s sister, Fedora, to round out the cousin bunch. It’s a motley crew, with personality conflicts and humor and affection. It made me wish for the throw-back days of allowing kids to wander freely, trying to figure out what to do with the day when there’s no computer or TV or scheduled events to go to. In some ways, it’s incredibly boring. But Law makes it sound like a little bit of heaven.

Life wouldn’t be complete for a 13-year-old boy if there weren’t some 13-year-old girl to give him some grief. For Legde, it’s Sarah Jane Cabot, daughter of the local business mogul. She’s an odd duck, a newspaper reporter, and always at odds with her father: she wants his attention, but she’s also afraid of him. There is, of course, a push and pull relationship between Ledge and Sarah Jane: they need each other to figure things out, but, man, does he drive her batty.

It’s another incredibly sweet, heart-warming (but without being overly smushy) book from Law. Creative, well-written, and thoroughly engaging, you can’t help but want to be a part of their family.