homeless

Sometimes Brave

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by Trista Wilson
First sentence: “It’s‌ ‌super‌ ‌duper‌ ‌helpful‌ ‌to‌ ‌have‌ ‌a‌ ‌good‌ ‌imagination‌ ‌when‌ ‌you’re‌ ‌homeless.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the author, who also happens to be one of my co-workers.
Content: There’s some talk of crushes. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Hazel is going into 5th grade, but her life has been upended: her dad, who is a government employee, is not getting paid due to a government shutdown. Because of this, money is tight enough that Hazel and her parents are evicted from their apartment and now are living in their car, trying to make that work. It’s a difficult thing, and Hazel feels isolated and alone. Until she makes a friend at school who is in a similar situation. That, and starting to volunteer at an animal shelter, reading to dogs, helps Hazel get the courage to face her family’s situation head-on.

i thoroughly enjoyed this little book. It’s a great look into something most of us don’t think about: homeless kids. And, the nice thing (okay, there’s nothing nice about homelessness) about this is that there didn’t have to be a tragic event to make it happen. (Which is probably more realistic.) The family was doing fine until 1) medical bills in the past probably made things tight and then 2) a lost income pushed them over the edge. The parents weren’t dead or sick (mom had cancer but had recovered years before), there wasn’t a storm or a war. It was just Something That Happened. But it was a Big Deal to Hazel and I appreciated that Trista (I feel weird writing Wilson, like I do with other authors) focused on the mundane reasons for becoming homeless.

She also focused on the stigma that’s attached to it: Hazel was embarrassed to tell people that she was sleeping in her car, and showering infrequently. And that it was hard to get homework done because of her living situation. This book goes a long way to showing kids that being homeless is not a failure of theirs (or their parents!), but rather something that happens and that there are ways to help.

I also really enjoyed Trista’s voice in the book. I think she captures a 5th grader quite well, from their early crushes to making and losing friends. It was a delight to read.

Surviving the City

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by Tasha Spillett and Natasha Donovan
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is tough content about indigenous women who have disappeared. It’s in the graphic novel section of the bookstore.

Miikwan and Dez are best friends. They’ve done everything together from their hanging out after school to their traditional and important Berry Fast. And ever since Miikwan’s mother disappeared, she has needed Dez in her life. But, Dez’s kokum is not doing well, heath-wise, and the state has threatened to put Dez into a group home. Which she doesn’t want, and so she leaves. Which sends Miikwan into a spiral: she can’t lose another woman in her life.

On the one hand, this is an important book: it’s picturing the lives of Native peoples in the city, not on the reservations, showing them balancing the traditional with the contemporary. It highlights the injustices by the government — why should Dez go into a group home because her grandmother’s health is failing? Would that happen if she were white? Or less poor? — and the grave harms done to indigenous women — the book is populated with ghosts of the women murdered and who have disappeared. It’s definitely an important story to tell.

Which is kind of why I wish it were actually told better. Maybe it’s because I am white, but I didn’t feel like the characters were fully developed — Miikwan’s main character trait was that she missed her mother and Dez’s was that she didn’t want to go into a group home. I wanted to know more about their Berry Fast: what was it, why is it important to them? I just wanted more from these characters to balance out the importance of the story they were telling. I also wanted to know more about the ghosts. Could MIikwan see them? Sometimes I felt like she could. I get why they were around, but what was their connection to our characters? And Dez — I just wanted more from her, other than the fact that she was worried about her kokum. What are her interests? She got in trouble in the beginning, was she the one who was always picked on by the teacher? Does she see the school counselor often (I got that impression, but wasn’t sure). There were just so many holes.

That said, I am glad this exists in the world.

The Sword of Summer

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swordofsummerby Rick Riordan
First sentence: “Yeah, I know.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s really nothing objectionable. Some violence (lots of death, mostly) and some more serious underlying issues. I’d give it to a 4/5th grader. I’m undecided about where it should go. It’s currently in middle grade (grades 3-5) with the Percy Jackson series, but I’m thinking about moving it to YA (grades 6-8).

Magnus Chase is a 16-year-old homeless kid (he’s been homeless for the past two years since his mom was murdered) when he discovers that he’s not who he thought he was. He is, in fact, the son of the Norse god, Frey, and he’s been targeted by all of Frey’s enemies. In fact, he loses his first battle and ends up dead, in Valhalla. From there he realizes that he can’t let something as insignificant as death stop him: he needs to find the sword of summer and stop the evil forces from rising. The question is, though, can he do it?

First off, plot and everything else aside, I am SO happy the sassy chapter titles are back! Seriously, I have missed those.

In fact, Magnus’s voice is eerily similar to that of Percy in the first series. No, it’s not as good as PJ and the Olympians, but it’s the closest thing to it since Riordan wrote The Last Olympian. It’s sprawling and meandering and I think that Riordan’s cramming way too much in there (but then again, doesn’t he always?). But the characters are fascinating and aside from the “deaf and dumb” moniker (which Abby called him out on) for one of the characters who was deaf, it was wonderfully, naturally diverse. Sam, the Muslim Valkyrie, is one of my favorite characters. It’s nice to see Riordan being inclusive.

Oh, and Annabeth is in it! (Yes, that Annabeth.) You don’t have to read any of Riordan’s other books to enjoy this one, but there’s always some nice asides (like how a pen turning into a sword is lame) for those of us who have.