2000-01 Authors and Titles

Author Marty Crisp offers readers quite an unlikely quartet of travelers in her Civil War novel, Private Captain: A Story of Gettysburg. Young Ben Reynolds, who had thought he was alone, becomes the unwilling, but competent, leader of a group including his younger cousin, a cow, and the family dog, Captain. The foursome travels an uncertain route from Lancaster to the site of the next battle in search of Ben’s brother, an officer in the Union army. The youth believes that he can lure his brother from the fray to return to save the family business threatened by the death of their father due to a measles outbreak in a different encampment. As the two inexorable forces of Union and Confederate troops maneuver toward a small Pennsylvania crossroad, Ben and his brigade attempt to locate Captain Rueben Reynolds before the conflagration begins.

Crisp does not succumb to the temptation of allowing her protagonist to play some pivotal, but contrived, role in the battle, so there are no dramatic meetings between Ben and General Lee, or Ben and General Meade. Rather, there is the more believable plot placing Ben in the town and not in the fields during the bitter three-day fight. After the cessation of hostilities, Ben joins others from the town at the scene in the massive effort to deal with the bodies of fallen men and animals. It is in this task that the young volunteer becomes an apprentice to one of the war’s photographers. Crisp uses this subplot to suggest that some grim shots of Gettysburg’s carnage may have been posed for dramatic effect not historical accuracy.   

Middle school readers who are just learning about the war will learn many details to enhance the lessons of history class. However, more advanced readers will appreciate the nuances of Crisp’s authorship: Ben only indirectly achieves his goal, and he displays internal fortitude, not bravado.

—Rick Williams, Hubbard High School, Youngstown, OH

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This unique story is about three girls coming together as friends.  They are all different from one another but the one they call Bluish is the most mysterious of all.  She arrives in school in a wheelchair, she always wears knitted hats and her skin is a pale moonlight bluish color.  Some of the children in her class taunt her, which often makes her feel uncomfortable.  A girl named Dreenie that is in her class is very fascinated with Bluish.  She is very curious about her and wants to be her friend.  One day the teacher assigns a group project for the students.  Tuli, Dreenie, and Natalie were all in the same group.  After the project Natalie (Bluish), Tuli, and Dreenie became the best of friends.  I think this was a good story because it revealed to me that it doesn’t matter how you look, you can still have good friends.

—Lakeisha York, 9th grade, Woodrow Wilson High School, Youngstown, OH

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Asphalt Angels is a realistic look at life on the streets of Rio de Janeiro.  The book is told through the eyes of 13 year-old Alex, who ran away.  After his foster mother's death, Alex's abusive stepfather kicked him out of the house.  That's when he finds refuge in a gang that calls themselves "Asphalt Angels."  This book is a depiction of Alex's terrifying initiation into street life.  Like all groups there are leaders. Well, the gang leaders here are Roy (19) and his girlfriend Duda (16).  Alex looks to this street gang for protection.  The streets are scary and he doesn't want to sleep alone because then he would be vulnerable to the danger of rapists, murderers, and sadists who try to cook these kids alive.  Alex's only hope is for "a bed and a mother."  The real terror comes at the end of the story where you find that "Alex" is just a fictional name for a real person who is living this life every day in Brazil.  This book is a good eye-opener, and any child wishing to leave home could really learn from this.

—Melissa Johnson, 12th grade, Woodrow Wilson High School, Youngstown, OH

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World War II taught us that ordinary people can be monsters—and that ordinary people can be heroes.  Ellen Levine’s Darkness Over Denmark shows us ordinary heroes, the Danes who resisted Germany’s boot and who saved their fellow citizens—ordinary Danes who happened to be Jewish—by hiding them and later helping them escape to Sweden.  The Danes’ stories are at once horrifying and heartening, moving and full of suspense.  By showing us the complexity of the story, Levine doesn’t allow it to become sugarcoated or mawkish.  A variety of Jewish groups lived in Denmark in the 1930’s, and they didn’t all agree on how to react to the Nazis.  Nor were all Danes good.  Levine includes the Danish Nazis, the informers, the attacks on Danish synagogues, and the deaths of Danish Jews and resistance fighters in concentration camps.  She balances the brutality of the German troops who dragged the inhabitants of an old-age home from their beds to transport them to Theresienstadt concentration camp, and the unspeakable horror of life and death within the camps, with the humanity of Inger, a young Danish mother who hid Jews in her home despite the fear of endangering her two babies, and the courage of the Churchill Club, a group of teenaged saboteurs who were eventually arrested by the Germans.

Using the same technique she employed so successfully in her splendid book Freedom’s Children, about individual young people who risked their lives during the American Civil Rights movement, Levine weaves the stories of Inger and other Danes into her larger historical narrative, with the result that the book is equally full of information and taut with suspense.  Like Freedom’s Children, Darkness over Denmark gives readers examples of personal bravery, of small actions that become huge, of things real people, many of them teenagers, did to help others. Levine dispels myths that have become associated with the Danish resistance, like the tale that all Danes began wearing stars when the Jews were forced to wear them.  Yet she helps readers understand the larger truth behind such stories: that “the vast majority of the Danish people clearly rejected the rabid anti-Semitic ideas and policies of the Germans” (29).

Thorough research lies behind Levine’s book, and she includes a “Who’s Who” that lets readers know what happened later to each of the people whose stories she tells.  The book also includes source notes, a bibliography, a chronology, and an index.  Compelling photos enhance the text.  Readers already familiar with the story of the Danish Resistance through Lois Lowry’s Newbery Award-winning Number the Stars will be particularly drawn to this book, as will those who have read Anita Lobel’s autobiography, No Pretty Pictures—Anita, like the Jews in Levine’s book, finds safety in Sweden.  However, Darkness Over Denmark deserves the widest readership possible, and it should be on every school and public library shelf.

—Rebecca Barnhouse, Youngstown State University

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Dream Freedom by Sonia Levitin was an informative book in understanding what Dinkas had to encounter during harsh times, even presently.  These stories were taken from different locations throughout Sudan and a continuing story in the western United States.  They help the reader to get an intimate view of the way Dinkas have to endure life. This book is full of emotional experiences and thoughts.  I think this would be an excellent book for younger bright students.  I have read a handful of chapters to my younger brother (age 14) and in turn asked him to tell me what he thinks.  He felt sad for these people and was glad his life was nowhere near the Dinkas' lives.  It would be informative for younger kids and perhaps open their eyes to the real world.

—Nancy Crespo, 12th grade, Woodrow Wilson High School, Youngstown, OH

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This realistic piece of literature is based upon a troubled teenage girl named Alice Silvers.  Alice is a typical teenager who is antagonized through the eyes of the world; however, in Alice's case, when things couldn't get any worse, they did.  The climax of the story occurs when Alice's father's girlfriend calls her.  The irony of this is that Alice does not have a relationship with her father and to hear his title was a complete surprise.  The phone call includes talk about her father's cancer and suspicion of his death—and so the plot thickens.

The novel is closely related to the mind of any adolescent who feels like all their walls are caving in; this very aspect is what makes Hate You so appropriate for teenagers to read.  The most important details of this book deal with McNamee's insertion of the songs that Alice writes to tell her unique story, songs that will never be published. 

—Miquita Hosey, 12th grade, Woodrow Wilson High School, Youngstown, OH

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Good fantasy—contemporary or set in a never-never land—succeeds when it makes the extraordinary seem ordinary, and when writers have focused on characterization. Night Flying, the winner of the Delacorte Press Prize for a First Young Adult Novel, succeeds for just these reasons. Fifteen-year-old Georgia Hansen can fly—like all the women in her family, she’s been doing it since she was born. But what Georgia really wants is a horse—and freedom from the constricting rules her grandmother sets in place. Grandmother’s rules don’t include going to bed on time or showing up for school every day or wearing certain kinds of clothes, the kinds of rules the rest of us might struggle with. Nevertheless, readers can identify with Georgia’s chafing against a set of rules she can barely even name. Georgia is filled with the ordinary yearnings of adolescence—the chance to be herself, and not just another Hanson woman like her mother and her aunts.

Murphy creates a warm household full of odd characters, reminiscent of the all-female house in Jean Thesman’s The Raincatchers. She wisely avoids explaining too much—how it is that Hansen women can fly, for example, or the mechanics of flight. Instead she hints at the wonderful feeling of swooping above the trees, and the fear of running into geese and power lines. The book doesn’t invite questions about how; it accepts flight as a given from the very first sentence: "The Hansen women have always flown at night, even in bad weather." Then we can get on with the story of Georgia’s upcoming solo flight on her 16^th birthday, and the upsetting arrival of her Aunt Carmen, long ago banished from the Hansen household by Grandmother.

By keeping her focus on her characters and treating their extraordinariness as normal, Murphy has created a light, delightful flight of fantasy.     

Nancy Springer’s darker fantasy of Camelot, I am Morgan le Fay, has similar strengths. She doesn’t feel the need to explain the mechanics of Morgan’s magic; instead, she focuses on characterization. In the end, however, characterization proves to be the novel’s downfall.

Like the earlier I am Mordred: A Tale from Camelot, Springer’s new novel does an admirable job of allowing readers to identify and sympathize with a character consigned by legend to villainy. Mordred was King Arthur’s killer, but in I am Mordred, Springer showed Mordred’s side, his tortured soul, his knowledge of his father’s attempt to kill him when he was a baby and the prophecy that he will commit patricide. Similarly, in I am Morgan le Fay we see the childhood tragedies that lead Morgan to an overpowering need for love and vengeance, and we sympathize with her. Her father was killed by Uther Pendragon, her mother claimed in marriage by Uther and taken from her young daughters. Morgan and her sister are raised by their nurse, who turns out to have magical powers, powers that help her to recognize the magic inherent in Morgan. Springer uses Malory’s version of the Arthurian story and skillfully weaves Celtic literature and mythology into her tale to make it convincingly her own. The love story between True Thomas and Morgan is new to me, but it’s richly reflected in the tales Morgan’s nurse tells.

But finally, the novel doesn’t succeed in the way I am Mordred does because in the last quarter of the book, we lose sympathy for the main character. Morgan turns from being a troubled, complex character into a greedy, self-absorbed one. Nevertheless, the book is suspenseful and a fascinating twist on an old theme—a book no Arthurian fan will want to miss.

—Rebecca Barnhouse, Youngstown State University

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This book is an intriguing biography about an African princess who was captured by the village that destroyed hers.  After arriving in the village and being there for a year or two she was to be sacrificed to the dead in a religious practice by that tribe.  A British naval officer rescues her by telling the king that the queen of England would look down upon him if he sacrificed the girl.  The king then gives her as a gift to the queen of England.  Walter Dean Myers, author of Somewhere In the Darkness, tells her story beautifully.  Her story alone is enough to pull you in but his style of writing keeps you reading nonstop.  This book is absolutely wonderful.  The story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta is gripping and moving, told beautifully.  I suggest this book for middle school kids and higher. 

—Yvonne Townsend, 9th grade, Woodrow Wilson High School, Youngstown, OH

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In the novel Ties That Bind, Ties That Break, author Lensey Namioka perfectly illustrates the customary life of a Chinese girl in the 1900’s. Confronted with the tradition of foot binding, young Ailin refuses to take part in the painful ceremony. By doing so, she puts her accustomed life deeply at risk. Her chosen husband can’t marry her with unbound feet, which causes her family to be ashamed of her. Her only comfort comes from her father who believes it’s time for a change in the foot-binding ritual. To show his support for his daughter her father sends her to a private school. At the time it was very unusual for a girl to receive schooling other than at home. Once her father died, so did Ailin’s support. Her plea for independence almost becomes her worst enemy. Leaving all behind she takes work as a nanny, which leads her to live in America. (Her extra years of schooling helped her master the English language.) In America she comes to live the life she’d always dreamed of. She finds a husband, and they establish a well-run restaurant in Chinatown, San Francisco, California.

I really enjoyed the book a great deal. It seemed like the actual lifestyle for a girl with over-protective uncles and the whole bit. I admired Ailin for her strength. She forsook her very family to ensure her happiness. The book became more than a pastime, it actually had real history in it. I wasn’t aware that foot-binding was actually practiced. It’s a very harsh tradition. I’m glad that with time the tradition faded away.

--Vincent Edmonds, 12^th grade, Woodrow Wilson High School, Youngstown, OH

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The memoir In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer takes place in Eastern Poland in the 1930s and '40s. With the rise of Hitler in 1934 Germany, Poland became caught between the Germans and the Russians.  The Poland that young Irene Gut believed would never fall was no more.  Irene, who was always caring and giving, was raised by parents who were kind and helpful to anyone in need. At the age of 17 she began a journey that would test her strength and character. In a country where the people were proud to be Polish, Irene did not hesitate to take part in the resistance against Germany.
        

This is a very good book because the characters were real and the events that took place were real.  Middle school students would enjoy reading this book because the author is very descriptive without being too wordy.  This enables the reader to get a clear picture of what is going on.
        

The main character, Irene, is just an average girl.  We feel what she is going through because the story is told through her eyes.  The extraordinary things that she does are what sets her apart from others.  She risks her life by sneaking food to the Jewish ghetto, warning Jews of raids by the SS, and helping the Jews to escape to the forest.  She goes beyond her limits.  Irene is interesting because we see her grow as a human being.  Through all her suffering, she comes out on top.

—Telana A. Caples, 12th grade, Woodrow Wilson High School, Youngstown, OH

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This science fiction novel displays a violent future world where the people do not have a memory—except for one person named Spaz.  In this novel, Spaz goes on a dangerous journey with his friends in a fight for his right to see his younger sister, who is on her deathbed from a terrible illness and asking to see Spaz one last time.
    

Every person in this world has his or her own opinions when it comes to critiquing a book.  There are key points that I search for that cause me to be interested in a book.  For example, those key points are whether or not the plot of the story moves fast and is to the point, the measure of excitement and adventure throughout the novel, and altogether my opinion of the book and any emotions the book sparked in me.
    

The Last Book in the Universe appealed to me from the very beginning because right away the book was to the point about what was happening to the world and the people of that time period.  One of the main reasons I loved this book was because it was not too descriptive, but the author still got his intended meanings across.  Also, I mentioned that one of the things that is important to me in a book is how much excitement and adventure a book contains.  This book held so many adventures that were dangerous, but realistic, that I did not want to set the book down until I knew the outcome.  The book made me smile, made me happy and sad, and kept my interest throughout the entire novel, the key elements that make a book so good.  There was only one thing I disliked, and that was the ending.  I'm a sucker for happy endings, so I wish the outcome had been a little different.  The ending was not a tragedy, but I feel it could have been a little happier.  The Last Book in the Universe is a book I would highly recommend for others to read because it offers a lot of great wisdom throughout the plot and a person could not understand what I mean until reading the book.

—Lynn Schmidt, 12th grade, Woodrow Wilson High School, Youngstown, OH

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Torey Adams, 16, seemed to have a perfect life, being well-known in high school and the brightest in his class.  All this comes to a tragic end when he is accused of Chris Creed's murder.  Chris is the outcast of school and his community.

This has now changed Torey's life.  He feels concerned and wishes to resolve this matter.  He now looks at life from a new perspective.  Torey sees the misfits as people and treats them with respect, whereas before, he disregarded them.

Popularity isn't always everything.  What matters in life is your own personal success and treating others with the respect that you want in return.

—Michelle Wanner, 12th grade, Woodrow Wilson High School, Youngstown, OH

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