The Crown of Columbus

I just finished The Crown of Columbus.  I had read it quite a few years ago (I'm sure more than 15 years ago!), and I couldn't remember more than that I had liked it a lot.  I am reading it this time as part of my ongoing quest to read all of Louise Erdrich's books.  I first started this project here, when I read Grandmother's Pigeon and then The Range Eternal.  Since then, I've been reading some of her adult novels in chronological order.  This time, I found The Crown of Columbus completely absorbing again.  I couldn't stop reading it and carrying it around.  The juxtaposition of voices in it was mesmerizing.  I liked Vivian's voice better than Roger's, but I suspect that was his personality at first too.  This is historical fiction, romance, and mystery all wrapped up in one, and it is an amazing story.  The ending is what I expected, and yet not.  I found myself caught up in the rhythms of the poetry and prose.  A great, great story, and so different from some of Erdrich's other work.

The Crown of Columbus.  Michael Dorris, Louise Erdrich.  Harper Perennial, 1991.

The Dyerville Tales

I have been waiting to share this book with you for a long time.  I read it almost three months ago - I was lucky enough to win a copy in a Walden Pond Press giveaway (side note: Walden Pond Press is a super-cool publisher with lots of other great books too!).  But I don't like to blog about books that I love until you are able to read them too - it doesn't feel fair to tempt you like that!  So now The Dyerville Tales has been out for a few weeks, and I'm ready to talk about it!

You might recognize the author's name from Juniper Berry, which I loved, here in this post.  I was surprised at how much I loved Juniper Berry and again at how much I loved The Dyerville Tales.  Both of Kozlowsky's books have a mood in common - one of building uncertainty and fear.  They also both look at the mysteries of the adult world with a steely, clear-eyed gaze.  Very few adults escape these books whole.  The building tension, combined with the look at how adults compromise themselves, is one of the things I love best about Kozlowsky.  But his books can also keep me up at night, worrying about what might happen next.

The Dyerville Tales begins with Vince Elgin.  He lives in an orphanage, because his mother died in a house fire when he was ten years old.  Vince believes that his father escaped the fire, somehow, and is still alive.  He believes this because while Vince's mother died in the hospital room next to his, after getting Vince and herself out of the house.  Vince knows that "the authorities never discovered a single trace of him in the ashes of their home.  No bones, no teeth, not even the gold ring Vince had been promised.  And for Vince, this changed everything.  This was where he found his hope." (p. 11)

Vince isn't sure exactly why there was a fire, nor is he really sure about the events leading up to the fire.  He remembers how scared his parents were the night before but has lots of questions about what actually happened.  But the younger children in the orphanage love to hear most of the tale of Vince's arrival at the orphanage, and so he retells it (and relives it) over and over again.  It is full of magic to the other children, because it has parents in it, parents who care about Vince's safety, who want to protect him from the evil that surrounds them.

When Vince goes to the orphanage, after his mother's death and his father's disappearance it's because the only relative he has left is his grandfather.  His grandfather was believed to be crazy and was living in a nursing home.  When this story begins, it is with a package that arrives from Dyerville, the town where his grandfather lived, addressed to Vince.  In the package, a letter informs Vince that his grandfather has passed away, and that the funeral will be in a week.  Enclosed in the package is a book - a collection of tales his grandfather told in his nursing home, much as Vince has told stories in the orphanage.  Vince knows he must get to the funeral.  After all, it is his father's father.  And if Vince has any chance of seeing his own father again, it will be there, at the funeral.

The director of the orphanage tells Vince that there is no possible way he can go to the funeral - the orphanage doesn't have the money or the resources to get him to Dyerville, which is a long way from the town where the orphanage is located.  Vince is determined, though.  He escapes from the orphanage with the help of a friend, Anthony.  "Vince heard the commotion but told himself not to look back.  He had to concentrate on climbing.  He thought of what would be waiting for him at the end of this journey.  In Dyerville he would find his father.  A new life would be waiting; all he had to do was make it to the other side of the gate.  Suddenly it didn't seem so impossible." (p. 52)  And he makes it.  It's just one little step in what could be a very long journey.  But as he clears the fence around the orphanage, "somewhere deep within his mind there was now a spark glowing.  It was small, but it wanted to grow." (p. 53) I don't want to ruin the suspense of the well-plotted story.  You just need to pick it up.

But here's what I will talk about.  This book isn't just about stories and telling them (although clearly that is a major focus, considering what I've already told you about Vince and his grandfather).  It feels just like a fairy tale set in real life.  After all, there are not one but two epic journeys written about here.  Each time Vince opens his grandfather's book, there is a picture that helps add to the drama of Vincent's journey.  Both stories have fairy tale elements in them - things that are almost too incredible to be true.  And yet they are.  There are also some elements of reality that are fairy tale scary, too.  Here is one of those moments: "Her breath was colder than the wind.  With her lips touching his skin, and in a childish voice, she began to sing: 'Oh, I have the moon in me.  And everything beyond.  I am a black hole, you see.  And I'll eat me some vagabond.'" (p. 144)  Just writing that quote totally out of context made the hair on my arms stand up!

There are, of course, lots of parallels between both journeys -both Vince and his grandfather are 12 when their journeys start.  When the director of the orphanage brings Vince the package, she asks Vince "' You were named after him.  Am I right?'  Vince nodded.  'My parents said I looked just like him too.  Almost identical.  I don't know.  I didn't see it.'" (p. 24)  Both boys are on their own, trying to solve a mystery of their own lives.  And of course, when the book begins, they are both stranded in places (the orphanage or the nursing home) without any family connection.  There are so many magical things that happen in this book to tie the two together, over and over.

I was truly spellbound by this book, as you should be by any true fairy tale.  It has adventure, magic and leaves you questioning  Please pick it up - you'll dive right in.

The Dyerville Tales.  M.P. Kozlowsky.  Walden Pond Press, 2014.

I won this ARC in a giveaway, without expectation of a review.

Hold Fast

I wish I could remember who mentioned Hold Fast first.  I read a lot of blogs that mention children's literature, and I apologize for the fact that I can't remember who it was.  But they mentioned that the book was about homelessness and that it was written by Blue Balliett.  I read both Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3 when they came out, but I hadn't read anything since then.  I thought this book sounded like it was something I wanted to try.  So I put it on hold, and then finally picked it up at the library.

The reason it appealed to me especially was because of its subject matter.  My cubicle at the MT Office of Public Instruction is quite close to our State Coordinator for Homeless, Neglected and Delinquent Education's desk.  I've heard her advocate for homeless children over and over again.  And I was hoping this book would make this situation real for children all over, while also being something children who are currently homeless would also be able to relate to.  I think Balliett scored on both points.

The book begins with the Pearl family.  There is Dash (Dashel) - the father, Sum (Summer) - the mother, and Early and Jubilation.  Early is in fifth grade, and Jubilation (who is mostly called Jubie) is still at home with Sum at four years old.  The Pearls' life is not easy - there is only one income, and that isn't very much.  Dash works at the Chicago Public Library as a Library Page.  Balliett says "The Pearl family rents the biggest apartment they can afford.  It is one room." (p. 8)  There isn't much there, but what is there is crucial to their growth and survival - words and books.  Dash often says to his children "'Words are free and plentiful'" (p. 6).  They use their library to its fullest extent - checking out books upon books and absorbing them.  They are learners.

But money is scarce, and when Dash is asked to do a side job, for which he's paid in cash, he agrees.  It's book-related, but has an air of mystery about it.  And then, one day, on his way home from work, Dash disappears off the street.  All that's left is his bicycle, a notebook, and a bag of groceries.  What could have happened to Dash?  Is he even still alive?

While Sum and Early are trying to find out what happened to Dash, they are visited by people claiming to be the police.  The "police" break down their door and rip apart all of the Pearl family's belongings.  Oddly, the "police" take all of the family's books, except one that got pushed under the coffee table.  It's rescued by Early - it is a book her father saved for her, Langston Hughes' The First Book of Rhythms.  At this point, the family doesn't feel safe in their home any longer (and the apartment is totally destroyed).  A neighbor tells Sum "' You and the babies shouldn't be where they can find you again.  No place near.  You best get you to a city shelter..." (p. 60).  The family has nowhere else to go, and any money they had was taken by the criminals.

I don't want to give away the plot's twists and turns because they are intricate and well-done, just like all of Balliett's books.  What interested me about this book were its two main themes - homelessness and books/reading/words/libraries.

The family's time in the shelter is difficult, for sure.  When they first arrive, they are placed in a large room of bunkbeds, called a cluster, crammed with families.  Balliett is compassionate in her descriptions, but realistic too.  The rules are laid out in a matter of fact way by the director" "Know where your kids are at all times, and never leave the shelter without them... You can use the shelter phone to make fifteen minutes of calls anytime between nine A.M. and four P.M....patience and politeness go a long way.  Everyone's call is important." (p. 82-3).  There is no privacy, but there are shelter residents who hold fast to their kindness and generosity, even in bad situations.

The shelter tests the Pearl family's strength.  Already frazzled beyond the breaking point and worried about Dash, Sum is trying to make calls - both to notify people of their whereabouts and also to try and find some job to sustain them.  But even after Sum waits in the endless phone line, she quite often has to leave messages, and there is no way for anyone to call her back.  The family is required to eat meals at specific times, and if they miss a meal, there is nothing else to eat, so the Pearl family also has to shuffle errands around their meal times.  It is constantly noisy, even at night.  Sum is beginning to shut down, and stop functioning.

Early and Jubie are the ones who "hold fast" - to their belief in finding Dash, and to their belief that they will get out of this shelter.  As Sum begins to give in to her depression, the Pearl children, particularly Early, encourage Sum to hold fast and keep fighting.  "Hold fast" comes from a Hughes poem in The First Book of Rhythms.  The words of that poem inspire Early to dream: "Dig down, fly high, remember where you want to go, and one day you'll get there: Roots + Wings + Dreams = Home!" (p. 42-3).  She, like many children, is resilient enough to take this experience and use it to propel her forward, instead of collapsing under its weight.

Of course, as a former librarian, I love any book that incorporates books and reading into its pages.  But this one does so much more than that.  It is instilled in almost every word of this book, and Balliett does that with such love and tenderness.  Reading is what saves this family over and over again.  Balliett writes about their relationship with words and books so beautifully.  "Dashel Pearl offered words to his kids from the day they were born.  A man who loved language almost as much as color or taste or air, he explained to his daughter, Early, that words are everywhere and for everyone." (p.6)  "This was a family of important words and their important histories." (p. 15)  This family has little besides words, but to them, words are all that matter.

This book is sad, joyous, scary and thoughtful.  It is chock full of energy, compassion, misery and struggle.  But most importantly, it is full of reading, learning, and the love of words all wrapped up in a mystery.  Don't miss it.

Hold Fast.  Blue Balliett.  Scholastic Press, 2013.

borrowed from Lewis & Clark Library

The Romeo and Juliet Code

Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but I do not really like historical fiction.  Go ahead and flip back through my blog posts if you like; I’ll wait here.  See?  These are the books that I like best,  and while there are a couple of picture books with historical themes, there is no typical historical fiction.  And I’m really uninterested in reading historical fiction about World War II – I’ve read plenty, and unless I’ve heard enough buzz, I just won’t make the effort.  So you know that if I’m recommending historical fiction about World War II to you, it has to be pretty good.

Felicity arrives in Boothbay, Maine in May of 1941.  Her mother, Winnie, and her father, Danny, stay long enough to say goodbye, then leave Felicity to get to know her father’s family alone.  They are on their way back to London, where their work is, and leaving Felicity in the United States, where they believe she will be safe.  Britain has already been in the war for some time, so Felicity has grown used to deprivation, bombings, and dark, cold nights without electricity.  She arrives in Maine to find a family she’s never met, a seaside house that no one ever visits, and more secrets than even she can untangle.

Felicity is eleven years old, and her aunt Miami calls her an “odd duck”.  She is grown-up enough to have never called her mother and father anything but their first names (she often refers to them as “my Winnie” or “my Danny”) but still young enough to carry around a stuffed bear, Wink.  She is old enough to stay by herself late into the night in London when her parents are working, but young enough not to wonder why they are always so late, need language coaches for their jobs, or have abandoned her in Maine without even a forwarding address.

But it is obvious that Winnie and Danny are not the only people keeping secrets from Felicity.  Felicity’s uncle, Gideon, was visibly angry with Danny when they left Felicity, and neither Uncle Gideon or Felicity’s grandmother (called The Gram) will talk to Winnie.  Felicity doesn’t intend to eavesdrop , but she hears Uncle Gideon and The Gram talking about someone who is sick, hidden away somewhere in the house, named Captain Derek.  And Uncle Gideon often tries to connect with Felicity, even though she is sure she should stay angry with him after his behavior with Winnie and Danny.

I’m not going to ruin any of the mysteries  in this book by talking about them here.  There are many mysteries contained within these pages.  This story is told through Felicity’s point of view, and it is extremely limited at first.  Felicity believes what she is told, even when it doesn’t fit with what she has observed or overheard.  It takes a long time for her curiosity to kick in, and for her to start to wonder what is really going on in her family, both in Maine and abroad.  But once her curiosity begins, Felicity begins to investigate, to question and to rethin k what she’s seen and heard in the past.

I want to say something about the combination of the title and the cover.  The title refers to a code that Felicity must solve, not necessarily something romantic or tragic.  I think that the entangled boy/girl feet on the cover and the names Romeo and Juliet might make young readers believe there is more romance inside than there actually is.  There is no kissing, hand-holding or even entangled legs within – while Felicity does like someone, it is mostly unrequited, and I think the cover’s misconception might steer readers away who might otherwise have been attracted to its mystery, adventure and historical fiction combination.

I wonder if there are going to be inevitable comparisons to last year’s Newbery-winning Moon Over Manifest.  Both books include family secrets, and combine a mystery with historical fiction.  However, I feel that this book is much stronger than Moon Over Manifest.  I couldn’t get invested in the dual storyline of Manifest.  Here, within two chapters, I had put off all my naptime plans to sit down and finish this novel.  Felicity’s family is full of entertaining quirks which make them warm and exciting to be around.  While Felicity does look back, it is handled in conventional flashbacks to her time in Britain, and not in the more unwieldy dual storylines.  It helps Felicity piece together the solutions to her mysteries as she looks back and remembers details that seemed unimportant at the time.

One other thing I love about this book is that it isn’t tied up in a neat little bow at the end.  I actually liked that Felicity’s parents hadn’t come for her yet by the end of the novel, and in fact much of the mystery surrounding them hasn’t been solved.  But Felicity is in a safe, welcome place and that makes the ending happy still.  I hope this post has made you want to seek out this book and investigate its mysteries for yourself.  It’s well worth it.  Then comment here and let me know what you thought.

The Romeo and Juliet Code.  Phoebe Stone.  Arthur A. Levine Books: Scholastic, 2011.

Borrowed from Lewis & Clark library

Trash

One of the things that I love about School Library Journal's Battle of the Books is that I've read things that I would not have read otherwise.  When I heard about Trash, it did not seem like my kind of book - I am not always an enthusiastic reader of books with teenage boy protagonists.  I rarely connect with teenage boy characters, so it has to take some special characters for me to get past that.  But this book was different from the first page.

Raphael and Gardo are sorting trash, on the top of a large mountain of refuse in a landfill.  Suddenly something slips out of a bag - a wallet with ID, a key and a substantial amount of cash.  To Raphael and Gardo, who live in the landfill in a sort of scrabbling, hand-to-mouth existence, the cash is most important.  But when the police come looking for that same wallet, Raphael and Gardo know they have unearthed something much more valuable than they first thought.
They enlist one other boy, a loner known as Rat, to keep their secret.  These boys have already kept the wallet a secret from their neighbors because of the amount of cash.  Raphael and Gardo know that cash makes them vulnerable in their dumpster society.  They could be robbed or killed over it.  In their neighborhood (called Behala), people never have any money at all - they mostly use recyclables or found trash to barter for food and supplies.  This is a bleak, hopeless society.  The adults in Behala are just barely surviving.  Raphael, Gardo and Rat, however, are still young enough to have a slim glimmer of hope.  And that is enough to allow them to set off on a quest to solve the mystery behind the wallet. 

Mulligan has created an incredible story.  These boys have nothing - no money, little family, even less education.  And yet they are resilient, clever, street-smart.  The three are able to get information because they have always lived by their wits, so they are observant and have perfected being invisible to the adults around them.  Perhaps only this particular group of boys would have this combination of daring and smarts that allows them to solve this mystery.  Most teen boys wouldn't be curious about the rest of the contents of the wallet, probably discarding them while keeping the cash.  Or they might have bowed to authority and handed over the wallet to the police when they came looking for it. 

This is an adventure story at heart, but it is combined with the mystery that unfolds in front of the boys.  At times, the action is heart-stopping - will the boys be caught by the police before they uncover a mystery that hints at political corruption?  Mulligan keeps the tension ratcheted  up at an unendurable level, and you wonder how these poor, uneducated boys can possibly survive.

One other unique thing about Mulligan's novel is the voices - each of the boys have chapters told through their eyes, and they all have very different ways of looking at this situation.  They all see each other's strengths and weaknesses, and work together as a seamless partnership.  It is truly miraculous that these boys have the wherewithal to not only survive their bleak upbringings but to hold out hope for a better life.

Trash.  Andy Mulligan.  David Fickling Books: Random House, 2010.

personal copy