THE NAMELESS CITY by Faith Erin Hicks

Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for underdog stories. Or because I'm a sucker for stories with strong female characters (though the main character is a dude). Or because I really dig stories set in China. Or because I really like stories involving the martial arts.

Regardless, this story has it all. And then some. And I find myself wanting to rave about it, as I've wanted to do from the moment it arrived in my house in January, along with a note saying "please hold your review until April". AGONY!!!

The Nameless City is at least partially about a city in China. The city is located at a key geographical spot, and has been conquered and re-conquered by a variety of tribes, clans, and empires. Each one names the city as it sees fit, but the people who are native to the city, who have lived there for ages, consider it the "nameless city", and they themselves are the nameless.

The main character of the book is Kaidu, a child of the Dao tribe who has come to the city to spend time with his father (a general, who loves the city and has the slightly offbeat idea that the city residents should have some say in their governance) and to train to be a soldier. He has left his mother back home in their village, where she is the tribal leader. Kaidu is naturally fast, but otherwise needs training. Here he is, running after the other important character in the book, a girl called Rat:

The book manages to discuss colonialism/post-colonialism, prejudice and bias/racism, gender expectations, issues of social class and poverty and education, and more, all while not actually discussing ANY of those things, but instead telling a riveting, rip-snorting story involving unlikely friendships that manage to save the day in more than one way,

Seriously, even after saying all that, I worry that I haven't conveyed the half of what this graphic novel touches on. You should probably read it for yourself.

The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

Small towns lend themselves to a particular kind of desperation, a feral desire among some of the young to move elsewhere and become their true selves, away from the naysayers and the predestined future born of a certain surname. Teaching most of my career in schools where everybody knew this was nowhere, I’ve shared with some of these students that, wherever you go, there you are. But for others, the only leavening was in the leaving. Dillard (Dill) Early, Jr., the main character of Jeff Zentner’s superb The Serpent King, is one such young man:

HOUSE ARREST by K.A. Holt

Stealing the credit card was a spur of the moment impulse for twelve year old Timothy.  Now he is on probation, and to avoid a stint in juvie, he is under house arrest for one year.

Timothy didn't steal the credit card for himself.  He stole it so he could use it to pay for his brother's medications.  That card made it easy to get a month's worth of life-saving meds for Levi.  Timothy was only hoping to make things easier for his mother and better for his little brother.


Baby Levi was born with subglottic stenosis which causes a constricted airway requiring a trach tube so he can breathe.  Taking care of Levi is expensive and requires full-time assistance.  Since their mother has to work, much of Levi's care falls to Timothy.  Even with lots of overtime, it is hard for her to scrape together enough money to pay for in home care, medications, and the frequent hospital stays involved with Levi's condition.

After the credit card incident, Timothy spends time with James, his court-ordered probation officer, and Mrs. B, a court-ordered therapist.  The judge orders Timothy to write in a journal and share it weekly.  James wants him to write about how he promises not to steal anything ever again, and Mrs. B. wants him to write about his feelings.  Timothy reluctantly begins, but over time, he finds the writing provides a great way to vent. 

Author K.A. Holt tells Timothy's story through his journal entries over the course of one year.  In straight forward free verse, Holt is able to capture Timothy's frustrations, humor, and tremendous love for the little brother who has changed everyone's life.  Holt's own experience with a critically ill child gives HOUSE ARREST an authenticity that will grab readers and keep them thinking about Timothy and Levi long after the last page is turned.

Previously posted at Reading Junky's Reading Roost.

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle is a captivating collection that will elicit a passionate response from young activists and historians. It is also a great recommendation for kids who don't like long stories, since the poems are very brief and are related by various narrators.

Cuba's three wars for independence raged on as Rosa la Bayamesa, a nurse, tended to the sick and the injured. Using medicine made from plants, she helped the fallen soldiers, the children, even those who fought for the other side. This verse novel is based on actual events and people, and it follows the main character's life from 1850 to 1899. Even when they were pursued by her enemies, Rosa and her husband Jose never stopped helping others. Jose and a few other supporting characters, such as a little girl named Silvia, step in from time to time to share a poem. Rosa is the driving force behind the story. We could all learn something from her selflessness and determination.

The Surrender Tree was named a 2009 Newbery Honor Book and a Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, is listed among the ALA Best Books for Young Adults, and also won the Pura Belpre Medal for Narrative and the Bank Street Claudia Lewis Award.

This book is available in multiple fashions - in English, in Spanish, and the audio book has multiple narrators, one for each of the main characters. Give it a read, give it a listen, recite it, share it!

Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey

Just look at the superhero movies playing now or in the near future -- from Deadpool and Suicide Squad to the darker storylines of Batman v. Superman, Captain America: Civil War, and pretty much the entire Wolverine franchise, and it's clear that this is the Age of the Antihero.

Viewers are burned out on the simple, heroic straight arrow. These are more complicated times, after all. We don't want Boy Scouts; we want vigilantes. We don't want Harry Potter -- we want Sandman Slim.

Wait... Who?

Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Epic! There really is no other word to describe the vast scope of this fantastic story. A tale told directly from the one that lived the events. An orphan boy, a street rat, a musician and a magician all in the same person. Kvothe started life in a troupe of travelling performers where he learned the art of entertaining a crowd through acting and music. His whole troupe is killed one day and this event shapes the focus of young Kvothe. No longer does he wish to be a simple trouper, he wants revenge. He wants to go to the University to learn where the killers come from, who they really are, and the magic he needs to know in order to destroy those that killed his whole family.

Fans of the Harry Potter, Eragon, Ranger's Apprentice, and Lord of the Rings series will love this amazing first installment in Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles. 

Redshirts by John Scalzi

There's something wrong with the spaceship Intrepid.

New space fleet member Andrew Dahl and other new recruits, called "ensigns" start to realize that one the dreaded "away" missions, mission where teams are sent out to explore distant planets, at least one the new recruit dies.

They spend their time trying to work it out, is it simply luck? Is there some hidden formula to surviving an ice shark attack? Or the dreaded "death by door malfunction?"

Turns out there is something fishy going on, I'll do my best not to spoil it in the next section.

In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse by Joseph Marshall

I picked this book up because of its title and appealing cover image. While I would not have been disappointed if the story dealt with an American kid from the suburbs taking a trip out West, this book exceeded my expectations because it features Native American protagonists engaged in thoughtful introspection.

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

In Tommy Wallach’s pre-apocalyptic novel We All Looked Up, the fault is not in our stars but in one particular star. An asteroid, more accurately, one whose path threatens a collision with our own planet. Nicknamed “Ardor,” the interstellar visitor drifts inexorably toward Earth, its inescapable doom wicks away inhibitions, and the worlds of four Seattle high school students intersect as society crumbles around them.

Like The Breakfast Club, Wallach’s novel brings together high school students from disparate social groups: Andy, the skateboarding slacker who is also a musician; Anita, the overscheduled overachiever living her parents’ dream; Peter, the basketball star who has already started to question the future drawn out for him; and Eliza, the artistic beauty with the besmirched reputation. Only this club faces not Saturday detention but world destruction—teenagers often think small things are the end of the world, so how might they respond when it really is the end of the world?

What truly matters when not only you but also possibly all of humanity has a specific expiration date? How do our reputations matter if we can count our final days on a calendar page? What are we left with when what we’ve based our lives on is no more? Amid the couplings and uncouplings (I am tempted to say that the novel could also be called We All Hooked Up—not as a criticism, mind you), the family issues and the violence, Wallach drives us to consider the fundamental philosophical questions of what it means to be human. And the connections between us all, connections we shouldn’t need imminent catastrophe to recognize.

Stripped of its macro level of pre-apocalyptic doom, We All Looked Up is the story of four teens struggling to become who they are, the same struggle we all face in our non-apocalyptic lives. As the main characters all look inward, We All Looked Up shows us the complexity behind the teen clique stereotypes, making it (like The Breakfast Club) a story of unexpected depth.

As a reading teacher, I think Wallach’s novel makes an excellent ladder with Vonnegut (explicitly referenced in We All Looked Up) and the pre-apocalyptic The Last Policeman series by Ben Winters. All three authors help us see that whether the world is ending or it only feels like it (and maybe it always feels like it), the end of the world doesn’t have to mean the end of being human.

Winning Chess

I learned to beat my father at chess years ago when I read Fred Reinfeld's Chess in a Nutshell, a nice introduction to the game. Winning Chess: How to Perfect Your Attacking Play is a reprint of Chernev and Reinfeld's 1948 Winning Chess, which was then subtitled How to See Three Moves Ahead.

Chess nerds know that the way games are recorded (chess notation) changed in the 1970s from "descriptive" to "algebraic." Well, I learned the old way, and am reading an older copy of Winning Chess. I sort of feel like I should adapt to the more commonly used algebraic notation, but it's just so easy for me to read what I learned way back when...

Fortunately, this new edition is updated with algebraic notation. Most readers these days will appreciate that, I'm sure. The book includes twenty chapters of instruction on tactics. Each chapter has a series of scenarios to illustrate how to do a pin, a fork, a double attack, discovered check, double check, etc. You learn how to identify your opponents "overworked pieces," self defense, "design for checkmate," and so on. There are quiz problems at the end of each chapter to encourage the reader (I find them encouraging, anyway.). I have not yet looked at the final chapter of six illustrative games, but I expect they will be helpful, too.

I can't really give an excerpt from the book. Each scenario has two diagrams of the chess board. The first view sets the scene, and you can try to figure a good sequence of moves. The authors then show their preferred moves, and the second view of the board is worth studying too, because there are various possible outcomes to consider.

I host a Chess program at the library every week and Winning Chess has improved my game. I recommend this and any other of Fred Reinfeld's chess books. He writes well (Not always the case in chess books) so the instruction is easy to understand.