National Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month Kid Konnection – Review of “The Firekeeper’s Son” by Linda Sue Park

This is a story set in the early 1800s in Korea about a young boy, Sang-hee, and the lesson he learns about growing up. Sang-hee’s father plays a critical role in their Korean village near the sea; he is a Firekeeper. Each night, he climbs a mountain and lights a flame to let the next Firekeeper in the chain know there is no danger (such as enemy forces) coming in from the sea. The chain of bonfires eventually reaches the King’s palace. If the King sees the fires, he knows all is well, whereas if there is only darkness, he knows he must send soldiers out.

One night the fire goes unlit and Sang-hee’s father never arrives home. Sang-hee knows something is wrong and runs up the mountain to find his father, who has broken his ankle. He charges his son with the important obligation of lighting the flame. Sang-hee wants to see the King’s soldiers very badly, but must make the responsible choice.

This interesting story has much to teach children, not only about trust and duty, but even how communication used to take place before the days of radio, television, and the internet.

The watercolor-and-pastel double-page pictures by Julia Downing lend a magical quality to the night scenes.

Rating: 3/5

Published by Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004

Product Details
Reading level: Ages 5 and up
Hardcover: 40 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0618133372
ISBN-13: 978-0618133376

For more multicultural picture books, check out all the resources at The Birthday Party Pledge, a new website dedicated to promoting gifts of multicultural books to the children in our lives.

***

For more reviews of books for children and teens, go to Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection, posted on Saturdays. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, leave a comment as well as a link on her site.

Review of “Learning From the Octopus” by Rafe Sagarin

Rafe Sagarin, a marine ecologist, suggests that we can use the lessons of nature to help prepare for natural disasters as well as to manage conflict among groups. Millions of species on Earth have learned how to survive and thrive in a risky, variable, and uncertain world – why not learn from natural organisms how they do it?

Through numerous very entertaining examples of behavior of biological organisms, the author finds that the most important property of surviving in response to selective pressures is adaptability. As he points out, “Fish don’t try to turn sharks into vegetarians.” Instead, they learn how to live with the risk and survive in spite of it. He describes, for example, how limpets withstand the pressures of waves, how starfish manage to feed on mussels, why beetles are so successful and how octopi avoid predators.

He also gives many examples of failures in human societies that could have been avoided by using the main lessons from organism survival that enhance adaptability: decentralization (maximizing benefits of on-site ability to react to changes in the environment); the use of redundancy; learning from success instead of just learning from failure (which is, at best, a solution to a one-time problem that has already occurred); and the use of symbiosis – i.e., working together so that each party benefits. Working together can also result in large networks of independent, redundant parts, or it can result in emergent organizations that take on new properties from the combination of its constituents.

One barrier to using the nature model to increase societal adaptability is the top-down organization of many institutions in our society. Small elites get insulated and ossified, and resist sharing power. When change does take place it is often too late. On the other hand, allowing small networks within organizations to have the freedom and resources to innovate in response to problems that arise, and/or soliciting help for identified problems by issuing challenges, would emulate the natural adaptive organization of nature. This is already happening, he asserts, on an informal basis. Organizations that act more like networks, with units capable of reacting semi-autonomously to threats, can respond faster and more effectively. Compare, he proposes, the human immune system, and how well it works.

The lessons of nature, Sagarin notes, are “free for the taking”:

It’s time to feel the cactus spine, listen to the marmot’s shrill call, and stare deep into the eye of an octopus.”

Evaluation: While there are those who resist attempts by academicians to reach beyond the narrow confines of their disciplines, I for one applaud their eclecticism, and think there is much to be learned from the practice. But even aside from Sagarin’s arguments for recognition of the value of biological understanding for human organizations, the stories he tells about organisms, particularly those found in tide-pools, are fascinating and worthwhile on their own. It also turns out that many of Sagarin’s ideas about connecting nature and society were inspired by Ed Ricketts, the very same “Doc” from John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. I found out interesting facts in every chapter. I really enjoyed reading this book! My one complaint is that the index is not very helpful.

Rating: 4/5

Published by Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2012

Marine Ecologist Rafe Sagarin

Review of “Bitterblue” by Kristin Cashore

Note: This review necessarily contains spoilers for Graceling, but not for Bitterblue.

It is eight years after the events in Graceling, and Bitterblue is now age 18 and Queen of Monsea. Both of her parents are dead. A political novice, she still uses the advisors of her hated father, the former king, and struggles to understand what is going on in her kingdom. But it is difficult; she is overwhelmed by paperwork, and is only escorted out of the castle once a year.

Deciding to take matters into her own hands, Bitterblue begins sneaking out at night, disguised as a commoner. She meets a couple of thieves, Saf and Teddy, who seem nice in spite of their avocation, and they help serve as her guides to the “real world” of life in Monsea.

Meanwhile, her royal relatives from around the Seven Kingdoms arrive to use Bitterblue’s castle for meetings of The Council, the undercover association dedicated to remove the world’s worst kings from power. Katsa and Po, Giddon, Prince Raffin and Bann all agree to help Bitterblue as well, so she can be the kind of queen she wants to be.

Buttressed by these two groups of friends – Saf and Teddy, and Bitterblue’s royal relatives, Bitterblue begins to discover things about her kingdom she never knew, including the true nature of her father’s crimes. She also finds out the extent of her own strengths, and what she can hope for as she faces the future.

Discussion: Cashore makes strong and admirable female characters and yet they are not immune to love. But love doesn’t take precedence over other aspects of the characters’ lives. She also makes a point of including gay characters who she shows in a supportive light having loving relationships. And all the characters are nuanced in interesting and touching ways – even Leck, Bitterblue’s psychopathic father.

Another thing I admire about Cashore is that she manages to construct a complicated universe that is no struggle at all to assimilate. When reading books with such extensively developed fantasy worlds I am often apt to struggle and my mind wanders, but I never had that problem with this book.

Finally, as straightforward as the prose is, the author still manages to delight with the images she creates. At one point, Saf and Bitterblue are sitting outside at night, on a rooftop:

He looked up from the pages into her face. His eyes were black and full of stars.”

And this, when Bitterblue is thinking about Saf:

How loyal and gentle Saf had been with her, and without her asking it of him. As quick to love as he was to anger, as quick to warmth as to foolishness, and he had a tenderness she wouldn’t have expected from him. She wondered if you could love someone you didn’t understand.”

Evaluation: This is a wonderful story. You do not have to have read the preceding book in the series, Graceling, in order to read this one, but Graceling is very good as well (see my review, here) and will ease your acclimation into the world of Bitterblue. This one, however, is even better, in my opinion. I was quite sad when it was over, both at the bittersweet ending, and at the possibility that it would be the last in the series. (As of this date, Cashore has not yet decided if she will write a continuation.)

Rating: 4.5/5

Published by Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 2012

Review of “Tribes of Eden” by William H. Thomas

This book begins in 2014 with a general breakdown of the economic infrastructure in the U.S. followed by the inevitable social unrest and violence. A young family, Kianna and John Wallace and their two 13-year-old twins, Val and Eron, try to escape from Chicago – which is rapidly disintegrating – to John’s parents’ house in New Hampshire. On the way, they are robbed, John is killed, and only after Kianna and the kids are almost dead themselves are they rescued and taken in by a remarkable group of people who call themselves The Tribes of Eden.

The story basically takes off from there, describing life both in the “shire” of the Tribes of Eden and in the “GRID” of the remaining population in the former United States.

Discussion: Part of the author’s agenda is to incorporate into his story his personal passion for helping to change the life experience of people from one of greed, acquisition, and violence into one of sharing and caring. He does indeed make this point with Tribes of Eden and I think it’s a good cause. But a novel is perhaps not the best way for him to proceed. The prose is leaden, characterized by stock epithets (e.g., “Dawn’s rosy fingers”), inappropriate metaphors (Venus as “a dusky jewel” which really doesn’t make sense unless you happen to be listening to The Doors sing “Hello I Love You” as you’re looking up at the sky), cardboard characters (both good and evil), political improbabilities, and an episode towards the end of the book of NanoSecondLove that makes most Instalove fixations look like long-term courtships.

So let’s not talk about the book, but rather the real life project that inspired the book, “The Eden Alternative.” Here’s what the website says:

Eliminating the Plagues of Loneliness, Helpless and Boredom
The core concept of The Eden Alternative is strikingly simple. Dr. William Thomas, his wife Judy, the Eden home office staff, 50 Eden Educators, 60 mentors and more than 15,000 associates teach that where elders live must be habitats for human beings, not sterile medical institutions. They are dedicated to eliminating the plagues of loneliness, helplessness, and boredom that make life intolerable in most of today’s long-term care facilities.

Creating Homes Where Life is Worth Living
The Eden Alternative shows how companionship, the opportunity to give meaningful care to other living things, and the variety and spontaneity that mark an enlivened environment, can succeed where pills and therapies often fail. Places that have adopted the Eden Alternative typically are filled with plants, animals, and are regularly visited by children.”

Evaluation: If your reading time is limited, I’d be in favor of skipping the book and using the time to take a look around at the author’s website and learning about The Eden Alternative. It sounds like a very worthwhile program!

Rating: 1.5/5

Published by Sana Publications, 2012

National Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month Kid Konnection – Review of “Dumpling Soup“ by Jama Kim Rattigan

This mouth-watering story is told by Marisa Yang, a little Asian-American girl of mixed heritage living in Hawaii. Her family, which gets together each New Year’s Eve for dumpling soup at her Grandma’s, include Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, and Hawaiians. Her grandma calls her family “chop suey,” which means “all mixed up.”

Since Marisa is 7 now, she gets to help make the dumplings, but hers turn out “funny-looking.” She feels quite insecure about it, until members of the family declare that hers taste delicious. She muses:

I think about how much everyone liked the dumpling soup. Even my funny dumplings. Maybe it was because we ate them at Grandma’s, all of us together.”

In the course of the story, we also learn about food from the other traditions in this eclectic family. A glossary, including pronunciations, is at the front of the book, which is very helpful since most glossaries are at the back where readers may not even realize they are included.

The illustrations by Lillian Hsu-Flanders capture the lovely colors of the Hawaiian landscape and diversity of the culture.

As a special bonus, on her web site the author features the “YANG FAMILY DUMPLING SOUP RECIPE.” We also learn that the book is based on the author’s own childhood experiences of celebrating New Year’s in Hawaii, and that all the main characters are based on real people from her family.

The author with her Grandma

Product Details
Paperback: 32 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316730475
ISBN-13: 978-0316730471

Rating: 4/5

Published by Little, Brown & Company, 1998

***

For more multicultural picture books, check out all the resources at The Birthday Party Pledge, a new website dedicated to promoting gifts of multicultural books to the children in our lives.

***

For more reviews of books for children and teens, go to Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection, posted on Saturdays. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, leave a comment as well as a link on her site.

Review of “Fever” by Lauren DeStefano

Note: This is book two of the The Chemical Garden [dystopia] Trilogy. (See my review of book one, Wither, here.) There are no spoilers for either Wither or Fever in this review.

The middle book of a trilogy is a huge challenge, and not all authors meet it successfully. In my opinion, this book was a big snooze. Literally. One of the main characters was always asleep from being drugged, and as soon as that got resolved, the other main character was always asleep from being sick. The non-affected character would spend many pages mopping the brow of the sleeping one. Zzzzzz…..

However. In the last eighth of the book, everybody is awake, and we finally get some action. Just in time for readers to resolve to seek out the third volume after all!

Evaluation: For most of the book, one or both of the main characters is asleep. But thankfully there are a couple of new characters who stay awake and who are fairly interesting. I especially loved the little girl Maggie.

Rating: 2.5/5

Published by Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Divison

Review of “61 Hours” by Lee Child

Note: This review is by my husband Jim.

After thirteen previous books, Jack Reacher is still 6 feet 5 inches tall, 265 pounds, has no possessions except a travel toothbrush, and is quite capable of disarming and maiming two large biker gang members simultaneously with his bare hands.

In 61 Hours, Child writes with his usual terse, fast paced style, and the bad guys get their usual comeuppance.

From the review of 61 Hours by the UK Guardian Feb 22 2010

This book, however, falls short of expectations in an important respect. The title implies that something very momentous is about to happen at precisely 61 hours after the opening scene leaves Reacher stranded in a small South Dakota town in the middle of a very cold spell of a very cold winter. Child frequently tells the reader just how much of the 61 hours remains in an apparent attempt to create tension from the approach of H-hour. However, the effort falls a little flat because the characters (except for one bad guy) are not aware of the deadline. Moreover, for two-thirds of the book, even the reader does not know the significance of H-hour. Only when the arrival of the ultimate bad guy is less than an hour away do the characters become aware that the moment of crisis has arrived. The dénouement takes place another hour later.

Another critique I have is that I could recognize the ostensibly secret bad guy a mile away, a fact that mitigates what should be a surprise ending. That being said, the book is action-packed and moves along well enough to be a good read for a plane ride. However, if you have a connecting flight, you might want to be prepared with the next book in line, called Worth Dying For, since this is the first and only one of Child’s books so far that ends with a cliffhanger.

Rating: 2/5

Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., 2010

Review of “Partials” by Dan Wells

Eleven years after the last war and devastating “RM” virus that was released, only 40,000 people are left in the world. They live on Long Island in New York, and are governed by twenty senators who represent different segments of the population. The youngest human is 14; no baby lives, because it succumbs within 3 days to the RM virus, and humans have been unable to figure out why immunity is not transferred from the survivors to their children. Nor have they been able to come up with a cure.

Humans have other threats to their survival as well. The combat in the last war was carried out by a race of “Partials,” artificial humans created to fight, and genetically programmed to be stronger and faster. After that war was won, the Partials – who look identical to humans – evolved and rebelled. It is believed that the Partials released the RM virus to take revenge on humans. Since the virus abated (except for attacking newborns), the Partials have been in a constant state of antagonism with humans, although no new attacks have taken place. But the two groups patrol each other’s perimeters, and maintain states of fear and readiness.

In addition, humans have enemies from within: an underground rebel group, “The Voice of the People,” objects to the methods of the Senate, and to the mandatory pregnancy rule (“The Hope Act”) dictating that all females age 18 and older must get pregnant as soon and as often as possible in the hope that a baby will be born immune to RM.

Kira Walker, age 16, is a medic-in-training, and is trying to come up with her own ideas to cure RM, especially since The Hope Act is about to be amended to lower the mandatory pregnancy age to 16. She asks a senator for permission to try to capture a Partial to see what makes them immune to the virus, but he refuses to grant it, so she rounds up some of her rebellious friends and they go off on the mission themselves.

Improbably, they succeed, and bring back Samm, a Partial about their own age. They are apprehended when they return to Long Island, and Kira is given five days to investigate Samm before the Senate executes him. But it is not long before Kira uncovers a number of stunning secrets, and finds herself in a race not only for Samm’s life but her own as she struggles to get to the bottom of what is really happening.

Discussion: Kira started out pretty darn annoying: clueless and naïve, like so many dystopia female protagonists. But she quickly learns she needs to shelve her ideals in order to survive, an adaptation which really saved this book for me. I also liked that the romance angle was very far from the forefront of the story; there were more important things to do, and the characters buckled down and did them. A couple of the major characters were killed, and while it was sad, it added verisimilitude to the story and increased my respect for the author. Finally, there is much more tension and excitement in this story than in the usual post-apocalyptic dystopias.

Evaluation: There are some great twists and red herrings in this book, as seemingly nothing ends up going in the same direction it starts out. The story does have an ending of sorts, although it is book one of a trilogy. But it was so fun to read, I won’t want to miss subsequent volumes. For post-apocalyptic and dystopia fans, be aware that this series is much closer to the category of science fiction than most, and devotes a lot more space to the understanding of the virus than to, say, which guy Kira likes best….

Rating: 4/5

Pubished by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2012

An Incredible Example of A Mother’s Love: Review of “Love Twelve Miles Long” by Glenda Armand

In 2011, Lee & Low published this amazing story based on the childhood of Frederick Douglass called Love Twelve Miles Long by Glenda Armand and illustrated by Colin Bootman. It is one of the best stories I could think of for Mother’s Day!

When Frederick was young, he and his mother were separated because of slavery. As Douglass wrote in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:

It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.

But Frederick’s mother was different. Whenever she could, after working hard in the fields all day, she trudged the twelve miles to see Frederick, and then had to walk back again that same night to be ready to work at sun-up! It was her love of her son and dreams of freedom that kept her going.

The illustrations in this book are beautiful, expertly conveying the love and warmth between mother and son.

This powerful testament to a mother’s love and a slave’s dedication to the dream of freedom is not to be missed!

Note: Lee & Low identifies the interest level for this book as “Grades 1 – 6,” but don’t let that deter you adults from reading it. My husband and I both loved it and found it truly inspirational!

***

To see exactly what Frederick’s mother had to endure, “four brave desk jockeys from LEE & LOW BOOKS set out to see what it is like to walk twelve miles through the streets of New York City.” Their journey is recorded for us on this very amusing video, here. Needless to say, they did not walk another twelve after a brief rest in order to replicate fully what Frederick’s mother did.

National Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month Kid Konnection – Review of “Uncle Peter’s Amazing Chinese Wedding” by Lenore Look

I admit I shed a few tears at the end of this award-winning book! [Yes, I not only cry at weddings, I cry over kids' books about weddings!] Jenny’s favorite uncle, Peter, is getting married, and she feels left out. She describes all the parts of the traditional Chinese wedding as she expresses her sadness over no longer being Uncle Peter’s best buddy. She also indicates what aspects of the ceremony have been modernized from what it would have been like one or two hundred years ago. In the end, her new Aunt Stella wins her over by unexpectedly making her – Jenny – the center of a beautiful part of the ceremony. “Finally,” Jenny says, “everything feels like it should – like a wonderful dream.”

The illustrations by Yumi Heo, rendered in oils, pencil, and collage, are just delightful – they are bright and colorful and whimsical. Many of the pages are framed by a “wallpaper” that captures some of the themes of the text on that page.

I highly recommend this charming story!

Rating: 4/5

Published by Atheneum books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, 2006

Product Details
Reading level: Ages 4 and up
Hardcover: 40 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0689844581
ISBN-13: 978-0689844584

For more multicultural picture books, check out all the resources at The Birthday Party Pledge, a new website dedicated to promoting gifts of multicultural books to the children in our lives.

***

For more reviews of books for children and teens, go to Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection, posted on Saturdays. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, leave a comment as well as a link on her site.