What I Did Last Summer by A.R. Gurney

It's interesting to read What I Did Last Summer by A.R. Gurney now, more than 30 years after it was published, and consider that this play was set in a time almost 40 years prior to its publication.

In the summer of 1945, 14-year-old Charlie, his older sister Elsie, and their mother are vacationing in Lake Erie while Charlie's father is fighting in World War II. Eager to earn money (like his best friend Ted, who has his own lawn-mowing business), Charlie responds to artist Anna Trumbull's ad seeking a handyman and ends up becoming her student, even though he has little to no artistic ability. As the summer progresses, Charlie's mother and sister begin to realize how much Charlie is taken by Anna: he begins to share her ideologies and rattles off things about society and life at the dinner table that he never would have considered a few months earlier. Meanwhile, Charlie's pals Ted and Bonny are (kind of) seeing each other while (kind of) keeping an eye on Charlie.

Sometimes, when Charlie speaks directly to the audience, he has the air of an adult musing on his mischievous youth, but when he is engaged in dialogue with the other characters, he is clearly an kid. Once he sets Anna on a pedestal, that's it: her opinion trumps that of his mother or his friends, and he'd rather spend time with her than with anyone else. Those who have seen or experienced hero worship firsthand know how stubborn people can be in that situation, and how difficult it can be to reason with them.

Modern readers might find the piece a little too brief, but they might discover something refreshing about a coming-of-age story that's fairly simple rather than lurid, from a time when life moved a little slower than it does on today's information superhighway.
 
Bonus: Read a review of the 1983 production. The cast included Christine Estabrook as Elsie, who you may recognize Christine from any number of film, TV, and theatre roles, including Mad Men, Spring Awakening, The Usual Suspects, and American Horror Story.

The Cavalier Mr. Thompson, by Rich Tommaso

I've recently been reading various collections from the golden age of comic strips: Hal Foster's brilliant work on Prince Valiant, Alex Raymond's gorgeous high-wire act that was Flash Gordon, Chester Gould's brutal, elongated tales of crime in Dick Tracy-- and they all have a similar approach to storytelling, a kind of loping, stretched, and suspended sense of narrative, where each storyline follows many threads and multiple characters, all brought together by chance and all with their own stories to tell. Reading these strips brought to mind Rich Tommaso's graphic novel The Cavalier Mr. Thompson, a crime comic on the surface, but so much more once you delve into its pages.

Book Review: Escape from Sobibor by Richard Rashke

Escape from Sobi­bor by Richard Rashke is a non-fiction book which details the biggest escape from a Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp in Poland dur­ing World War II.  The book was first pub­lished in 1982 and won acclaim world wide.Escape from Sobibor by Richard Rashke is an excit­ing his­tory book, told as a novel. The book is divided into three sec­tions which intro­duce the peo­ple, tell about the escape from a top secret Nazi death camp, and the after war years. 

Mr. Rashke knows that the strength of any book, non-fiction or oth­er­wise, is the per­sonal sto­ries which make up the big pic­ture, and does a great job intro­duc­ing us to them. The peo­ple which the author chose to focus on were non-military Jews and a Russ­ian offi­cer, some were pulled out of the lines for the gas cham­bers due to spe­cial skills and some just by pure luck.

The author engages the reader from the start with per­sonal pre-war sto­ries. This is not just a his­tory book about the escape itself, but about peo­ple we care about and the heart wrench­ing deci­sion they had to make in order to survive.

The cru­elty and bar­bar­ity of the Nazis is also talked about, con­trasted by the strength of char­ac­ter of the pris­on­ers, as well as their men­tal anguish. Unfor­tu­nately, many of the Nazi crim­i­nals were never pun­ished for the their actions and brutality.

Once the pris­on­ers escaped, the author details their strug­gle to sur­vive in a hos­tile envi­ron­ment, either hid­ing from the Nazis, being take advan­tage of by the local pop­u­la­tion or the par­ti­sans. Some of the escapees hap­pened upon brave peo­ple who helped them, some were not so lucky.

Some of the sur­vivors were still liv­ing at the time the book was pub­lished, a few even took up arms and went back to fight the Nazis. This book has many themes about sur­vival, free­dom and more.

A must read for any his­tory buff or World War II enthu­si­ast. This mov­ing book might be grim, it is also inspir­ing and vividly recounts an event which most of the world has never known before it was published.

Originally published as  Book Review: Escape from Sobibor by Richard Rashke on ManOfLaBook.com

Templar by Jordan Mechner. Illustrated by LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland

"Much nonsense has been written about the Knights Templar over the years," writes Jordan Mechner, creator of the awesome graphic novel, "Templar." He's right, there has been a lot of nonsense written about them. One of my favourites is that they stole un-published works of Shakespeare and hid them on Oak Island, Nova Scotia. Then there's the myth that they were all arrested on a Friday the 13th, forever marking it as an unlucky day, a day that would spawn countless terrible campfire stories and movies. I'm looking at you, Jason Takes Manhattan.

There's no nonsense in Mechner's Templar. He uses actual speeches from the Templar's leaders, members and detractors. Mechner re-creates 14th century Paris as meticulously as he can. We see both sides of the human experience, the gold-lined palaces, the poor wretches living in their own filth and the people who are just trying their best to survive.

 

This is probably what I loved the most from this book, Mechner doesn't gloss over anything, but he doesn't exaggerate either. Don't get me wrong, the book gets pretty dark at times, especially when depicting the Siege of Acre and the resulting massacre of the prisoners.

Mummies: The Newest, Coolest & Creepiest from Around the World

I picked up Shelley Tanaka's Mummies: The Newest, Coolest & Creepiest from Around the World because it was featured on a "spooky book" shelf and because it looked like a fun, quick read. I wasn't expecting to get completely wrapped up (ha ha) in it, much less to be murmuring "Wow!" every time I turned a page.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Many women wanted to do what they could to help out the war effort during World War II. Despite the fact that women were not allowed to fly planes in combat, they were allowed to fly them over friendly territory through the Air Transport Auxiliary. Maddie and Julie come from different backgrounds, but manage to become fast friends. Each woman gets to tell her part of the tale and neither one knows what is happening to the other, despite the fact that they are in the same French town. One in hiding with the French Resistance, and the other as a captured spy subjected to interrogation from the Nazis. Wein has written an intelligent and captivating novel. The two main characters draw you into their world, demanding that you keep reading to see where the story goes, if both women make it out alive, to determine what is the truth and to connect all of the pieces from one woman's story to the other. Fans of historical fiction, spies and World War II will love this book.

A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson

Five years ago, a remarkable book came into this world. A Wreath for Emmett Till, by Marilyn Nelson, illustrated by Philippe Lardy, is *a heroic crown of sonnets* relating the story and details of the murder of a fourteen-year old boy in Mississippi in 1955. He was lynched by a group of white men for (allegedly) whistling at a white woman, although it turns out that may not even have happened. Determined to make the world aware of not only her son's murder, but the racial inequities in the South at that time, his mother insisted on an open casket for her poor boy. Dead too soon, and yet he helped to spark the civil rights movement in the United States because so many folks, no matter what their color, were outraged by his death.

*A heroic crown of sonnets* is a series of 15 poems using the sonnet form. The last line of the first sonnet becomes the first line of the second, and so on, until the end of the 14th sonnet. The 15th sonnet is composed of the first line of each of the 14 that came before it. It makes perfect sense, and, to highlight Nelson's further brilliance, includes an epitaph in an acrostic down the left-hand side of the final page.

Here is the poem attributed to the tree from which Emmett Till was hanged:

Pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood,

my heartwood has been scarred for fifty years

by what I heard, with hundreds of green ears.

That jackal laughter. Two hundred years I stood

listening to small struggles to find food,

to the songs of creature life, which disappears

and comes again, to the music of the spheres.

Two hundred years of deaths I understood.

Then slaughter axed one quiet summer night,

shivering the deep silence of the stars.

A running boy, five men in close pursuit.

One dark, five pale faces in the moonlight.

Noise, silence, back-slaps. One match, five cigars.

Emmett Till's name still catches in the throat.

Each of the poems is equally powerful. This is a book that packs a wallop.

Read this one for the subject-matter, which is important. Read it to remember, and to experience the power poetry has to move you and transform you and to make you consider the many angles--the sonnets are told from varying perspectives, including the tree on which young Emmett was hanged, his poor mother, and the hypothetical life he could have led.

And if you are a poet, read it for the craft. The form itself is beautiful enough to make you weep.

CALL ME BY MY NAME by John Ed Bradley

Football in Louisana is almost a religion, and it wasn't any different in the 1970's.  Something was different in the 70's though.  As a southern state, Louisana still wasn't fully on board with desegregation.  Rodney Boulet and his twin sister Angie grew up in a small town where mixing blacks and whites still wasn't an accepted idea.

Rodney met Tater Henry on the baseball field when the two played Little League.  When Tater, a young black player, boldly stepped on the field, not everyone was thrilled.  Tater had solid skills though and earned the reluctant respect of both coaches and players. 

As the years passed, Tater and Rodney became true friends.  When they weren't playing baseball, they were perfecting their skills at other sports, even swimming when Rodney and Angie could sneak Tater into the city pool where blacks were still not allowed to swim.  When it came time to start high school, blacks were beginning to attend the local public high school.  Although, many white families sent their children to private schools to avoid desegregation, Rodney and Angie's parents weren't able to afford the necessary tuition.  But, Rodney was excited to start high school with his now best friend Tater by his side.  He knew their athletic talents would score them sure spots on the football team. 

As expected, the team's coaches and players didn't give Tater a warm welcome, but once his speed and quick thinking became evident, he became a valuable member on the field.  Rodney didn't really notice Tater's skin color anymore, and the two began a great partnership on the football field.

One thing did change as time passed.  Rodney's sister Angie was falling in love.  It was one thing to have someone black as his best friend, but Rodney wasn't sure how he felt about his sister having a black boyfriend.  He knew for sure that their father wasn't happy about it, and others frequently made their feelings clear as well.

Author John Ed Bradley brings the football action alive and at the same time clearly reveals the racial tension in the South in the early 1970's.  Both teen and adult readers will appreciate the struggles of the main characters to form lasting friendships and at the same time deal with the conflicting emotions brought on by the times.


Also posted at http://readingjunky.blogspot.com

The Nazi Hunters by Neal Bascomb

Adolf Eichmann was one of the most despised men in the world, with good reason. As the man tasked with carrying out "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question," which resulted in the death of approximately 6 million Jews in Europe during World War II, people had every reason to hate him. Bascomb does a great job pulling together the story of how Eichmann was found - mostly through pure luck - and then captured and whisked away to Israel for trial. The most amazing part of this story, to me, is the determination and composure of those that sought to capture Eichmann and get him to trial. Many of the team members were either survivors of Nazi concentration camps or had lost family members as a direct result of the orders Adolf Eichmann gave to remove Jews from Europe. Knowing this about the team members, one would think that it would have been almost impossible to be in such close proximity with the person directly responsible for so much pain and suffering in their lives and NOT exact revenge. This mission was really important to these Jews, members of a new nation who knew that the Germans were not going to prosecute any more Nazi leaders. If they wanted the story of the Holocaust to be told they needed to do it on their terms, on their soil and in front of the world media outlets. The way this story plays out is as good as any spy story written - and its real!

The Port Chicago 50 by Steve Sheinkin

We talk so much about nonfiction these days.  What does common core mean for nonfiction?  What can we do to make nonfiction and common core mesh with our larger readers’ advisory goals?  Where is nonfiction headed, especially the relatively new subgenre of nonfiction for young adults? How can we connect nonfiction with the right readers?  And even more than that: how can we encourage more readers to discover they may just be the right readers for nonfiction even if they don’t know it?

These are great and important questions to ask.  But I don’t want us to lose sight of the heart of nonfiction.  A great true story, told well and with passion and attention to craft, can change and challenge readers in the same way any fictional tale can.  Steve Sheinkin’s latest book, The Port Chicago 50, is that kind of true story and that kind of nonfiction.

Soldier's Heart: A Novel of the Civil War

Gary Paulsen based Soldier's Heart on the war-time experiences of Charley Goddard, who enlisted in the First Minnesota Volunteers when he was 15, lying about his age. He fought through almost the entire war. His letters home left a record that Paulsen put to good use,in this, what Paulsen calls "partly a work of fiction."

After one battle...

"You're hit." A corporal stood in front of Charley.
"No. I'm all right."
"You're hit there, in the shoulder."
Charley looked down. He was covered in blood, his arm and chest and pants wet with it...
"The surgeon's tent is back there a half mile..."

(Charley slogs over to the tent.)

If I Ever Get Out Of Here by Eric Gansworth

     Bros. Bro-tank. Brah. Brotastic. Bromance. Brohemia. The rise of “bro” culture saddens me, not least because so much of the “bro” persona is a thinly veiled attempt to hide the awkwardness of male friendship, particularly among young men. One of the strongest qualities of Eric Gansworth’s If I Ever Get Out of Here is that it so evocatively presents that very awkwardness, as the narrator Lewis Blake and the newly arrived George Haddonfield bond over music, girls, bullies, family, and Wacky Packages (yes, the book is set in the 1970s, and I had forgotten all about Wacky Packages until reading If I Ever Get Out of Here).

A Night to Remember

A Night to Remember is the definitive tale of the sinking of the Titanic. Walter Lord interviewed more than sixty survivors. And he wrote this minute-by-minute account of the collision with the iceberg, and

the experiences of passengers and crew.



In 1898 a struggling author named Morgan Robertson concocted a novel about a fabulous Atlantic liner, far larger than any that had ever been built. Robertson loaded his ship with rich and complacent people and then wrecked it one cold April night on an iceberg. This somehow showed the futility of everything, and in fact, the book was called Futility when it appeared that year...

Fourteen years later a British shipping Company named the White Star Line built a steamer remarkaby like the one in Robertson's novel. The new liner was 66,000 tons displacement; Robertson's was 70,000. The real ship was 882.5 feet long; the fictional one was 800 feet. Both vessels were triple screw and could make 24-25 knots. Both could carry about 3,000 people, and both had enough lifeboats for only a fraction of this number, But, then, this didn't seem to matter because both were labeled "unsinkable."

On April 10, 1912, the real ship left Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York. Her cargo included a priceless copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam and a list of passengers collectively worth two hundred fifty million dollars. On her way over she too struck an iceberg and went down on a cold April night.

Robertson called his ship the Titan. the White Star Line called its ship the Titanic.

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

It's 1968. Things aren't great on Long Island for Doug Sweiteck, but he has a couple friends, and he has just met the great Joe Pepitone, who gave him, Doug Sweiteck, the hat from right of his head. But then Doug's brother swipes the hat, and his father loses his job and packs the whole family up and moves them to stupid Marysville, way up in the Catskills. Now Doug must navigate the perils of a new school, where everyone thinks he's just a thug like his brother, an abusive father and a host of other problems. He finds unlikely allies, like Lil Spicer, the daughter of the deli owner for whom Doug works as a delivery boy, and Mr. Powell, one of the town's librarians. And while the Doug's story is one heck of an emotional roller coaster, it ends on a note of hope, just as the Apollo 11 mission launches to the moon.

If I were a proper reviewer, I'd write something like, "Okay for Now is a book that is by turns heart-rending and life-affirming, and it will have you rooting for Doug Sweiteck all the way." But let me tell you what this book did to me as a reader. My dog Jack had this stuffed squirrel called Jeffrey. When Jack would play with Jeffrey, he'd shakeshakeshake until Jeffrey's neck snapped, then he'd put Jeffrey down and gently lick his fur and fluff him up til he was ready to play again (unlike the real squirrel he once caught, but that's another story). This is what Schmidt did to my heart. That moment when you find out why Doug won't take his shirt of in front of people? shakeshakeshakeshake When Doug and Lil get parts in a Broadway adaptation of Jane Eyre that Doug inadvertently inspired? It's okay Reader-Buddy! This is gonna be fun! It's gonna be good! And when Doug's brother Lucas comes home from Vietnam? Good, right? But then you learn that he's lost his legs and might be blind? shakeshakeshakeshake And when Lil gets sick opening night and you think it's stage fright, but then you learn the real reason? SHAKESHAKESHAKESHAKE YOUR HEART WILL NEVER REALLY BE WHOLE AGAIN Just kidding, Reader-Buddy! Everything will work out! You'll see! Keep reading! Trust me!

I gave up an evening of grading to finish the book, and the next day, I told my students this book left me totally gutted and they needed to read it immediately. I read the first chapter to my creative writing students, because Schmidt is a master of creating believable and interesting characters, and the voice those characters have is incredible.

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, this book is one of the nominees for the 2014 Young Readers Choice Awards. It is also the companion novel to the equally wonderful book The Wednesday Wars. 

This is cross posted over at (Library Lass) Adventures in Reading.

Boxers & Saints

When Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese was published back in 2006 it received a lot of high praise and a whole slew of awards, not the least of which was the 2007 Printz Award for a teen book, the first graphic novel to win coveted American Library Association recognition. While ABC was widely embraced and helped firmly establish graphic novels as "legitimate" literature for children and young adults. It almost seemed like from that moment on people were looking for the next graphic novel to achieve that same level of recognition, and on some level it must have put some pressure of Yang himself to know how high a bar was set for him by his own work.

I'll be honest, The Eternal Smile (2010), Prime Baby and Level Up (both 2011), were good but they didn't really strike me the same way ABC did. However Yang's latest, Boxers & Saints, an ambitious two-book story covering the Boxer Rebellion in China, may end up overshadowing his earlier work, and the fact that it just landed on the National Book Award shortlist is partial proof of this achievement.

Which is all a highfalutin way of saying Boxer & Saints is a pretty awesome piece of storytelling, graphic or otherwise.  

BLUFFTON by Matt Phelan

BLUFFTON by Matt Phelan is an interesting sort of tale. It's fiction, but it's exceptionally real. Named after a place, it's about a fictional boy named Henry, who lives in Muskegon, Michigan, and visits the nearby community of Bluffton, located near the shores of Lake Michigan. Except in a lot of ways, it's about a different boy -- a real boy known as Buster Keaton, who grew to be one of the greatest directors (and actor/directors) in history. Only truly, in the end, it's about what life was like in Bluffton during three consecutive summers (1908-1910), when the vaudevillians came to stay.

You see, once upon a time, before there were movies, there was vaudeville, described by "Ed Gray, Noted Monologuist" in the book as follows:

Vaudeville is variety.

A veritable cavalcade of comedians, jugglers, dancers, magicians, acrobats, musicians, and dramatic actors . . . . all for short, precise acts of the highest entertainment value!

A day in the theater promises twelve to fifteen acts to amuse, inspire, electrify, edify, and enlighten (for one small price).

And along with Harry Houdini, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and others, Buster Keaton was one of the biggest stars of the vaudeville circuit as part of a family act called "The Three Keatons". Their style of act was known as a "knockabout act", in which Buster got kicked, thrown, and dragged around, all while keeping a deadpan expression on his face.

This book is and is not all about Buster Keaton, but it does give you a good impression of what his life and childhood were like, and how it differed from the lives of "normal" children, who grew up in one place, went to school, and had to help out at home or in their father's shops. The book also makes clear why it was that in later years he always said that the happiest days of his life were the summers he spent in Bluffton.

The early 20th century and the people of Muskegon and Bluffton are brought wonderfully back into life, allowing the reader to experience what it must have been like for local kids to mix with the vaudevillians (and a little bit of the vice versa experience). Real - and realistic - in a way that a straight-up biography would not have been, for some readers this book will be a gateway to further research into Buster Keaton and/or vaudeville or Keaton's movies. And that can only be a good thing.

I reviewed an ARC of the book, which was (woefully) in black and white, but came with a fold-out card showing what some of the full-cover spreads are going to look like - and they are spectacular. Below is a photo I took of one of the spreads on the card, although I'm sorry to say that it doesn't do the work full justice. Still, it gives you a feeling for the aesthetic of the book, which is due out on July 23, 2013:

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

“So it is.” This brief phrase, a refrain reminiscent of “So it goes” from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, echoes throughout Marcus Sedgwick’s Midwinterblood. It echoes across decades and centuries, across the seasons of the sun and moon, across the waters from the mystical island of Blessed. Midwinterblood contains multitudes, seven stories for seven lives. Or, rather, seven stories for two lives. Confused? You may be early on in Sedgwick's latest inventive tale, but as he moves us from the future through the past, we see the sacrifices that link these stories, and these lives.

Around the World by Matt Phelan

Ever see or read Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days? It tells the story of a gentleman named Phileas Fogg who accepts a wager requiring him to circumnavigate the earth in 80 days' time or forfeit quite a lot of money (£20,000, which, accounting for inflation and all, would be a bit more than $1 million dollars (US) these days). It's a great story, and one I highly recommend for its character development, adventure, and derring-do. But that is not precisely what I'm here to talk about today.

Today, I'm talking about three real-life people who were inspired by Jules Verne's story to travel around the world themselves: Thomas Stevens, who made the trip by bicycle, Nellie Bly, one of the first American reporters to become a celebrity, and Joshua Slocum, a retired sea captain who sailed solo around the world. Specifically, I'm talking about Matt Phelan's remarkable graphic novel about those three individuals, each of whom had their own reasons for their journeys.

Thomas Stevens, 1884


Thomas Stevens decided to leave his job in the mines to seek fame and (hopefully) fortune by riding first across the U.S., then around the world. After traveling from San Francisco to Boston, Stevens secured a sort of sponsorship from the Pope Manufacturing Company. The owner of the company didn't believe that cyclists ought to be paid professionals (hear that, Lance Armstrong?), but he agreed to pay Stevens for his written accounts of his journey.

In Darkness by Nick Lake

"When you keep hurting someone, you do one of three things. Either you fill them up with hate, and they destroy everything around them. Or you fill them up with sadness, and they destroy themselves. Or you fill them up with justice, and they try to destroy everything that's bad and cruel in this world" (87). 

Nick Lake’s In Darkness begins, well, in darkness. The literal darkness one finds when trapped beneath the rubble of the massive earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010. The figurative darkness of the young “chimére” (gangster) Shorty, who has grown up in Site Soléy, one of the poorest and most dangerous places in the world, a place where the sociopathic gang lord is also the person who has done the most good. And the moral darkness of a benighted government, whose constant corruption enslaves most of its citizens to a bleak future.

It was not supposed to be this way for Haiti, not after Toussaint L’Ouverture led the slave rebellion in the late 18^th century, overthrowing the French colonizers. Haiti was to be a light for all the enslaved people in the world, a beacon for freedom. Using the ceremonies and belief system of “vodou,” Lake directly connects the lives of a contemporary teenage Haitian gangster and the (slightly re-imagined) historical figure of L’Ouverture: one a character filled with hate and bent on destruction, and the other yearning for justice, and bent on seeing it happen for his people and his nation.

 In Darkness is by no means an easy experience. Shorty’s world is violent (as is L’Ouverture’s), and the grim reality of life in Site Soléy retains the ability to shock even the most jaded reader. To his credit, Lake presents Site Soléy in all of its moral and spiritual complexities. And though L’Ouverture’s life ends in the darkness of a French prison cell, Shorty’s story ultimately gives us a ray of light. In Darkness was the recipient of the 2013 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

Snowmobile by Jules Older - some fascinating mechanical history

One the most ubiquitous things about life in Alaska is the number of snowmachines*. Everybody has one or access to one and during the winter (until it gets too cold), you are just as likely to see people run an errand on a snowmachine as in a car. As far as recreation, they truly are everywhere and if you have ever been on one you would understand why. They go incredibly fast, as are pretty easy to control and just a blast run around on. As popular as they are in many northern climates however, few people likely know about Joseph-Armand Bombardier and his decades-long goal to invent a vehicle that could move on snow. That's where this very basic, short history Snowmobile: Bombardier's Dream Machine by Jules Older comes in handy.