It’s rare that I’ll review just one picture book, but for this board book, “Below the Ice,” I’m making an exception because it is exceptional. Michaël Escoffier and Ella Charbon have created a brilliant board book—yes, I said brilliant—with a twist at the end worthy of any bestselling mystery novel.
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Young children learn about the world around them from their parents and their friends, but also through the books that they read. Included here are books which explain that the world around us is filled with different people who might have different kinds of skin color, different body types, or different family structures. But at heart, we are all the same, and most of us want the same thing: to be loved for who we are. These books will reinforce those concepts, and each one has its own unique appeal.
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In “Walkin’ the Dog,” Chris Lynch tells the story of Louis, a boy who loves being home, has no friends, and will be going to the public high school after being home schooled. His father is a retired firefighter who bought a fishing boat and moved them to a seaside town. His mother is an activist whose mental health has been suffering, and she is in a facility working on regaining her equilibrium.
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“Wrecker,” is pure Carl Hiaasen with its Key West setting and fabulous action, quirky characters, and clever plot. Carl Hiaasen is known for his novels about Florida, its struggle against pollution and destruction of the land and waters around it, as well as his tongue-in-cheek depiction of people who are oblivious to common sense and basic reasoning skills. This is a book that, in pointing out the racist past of Florida, and Key West in particular, could very well be banned in Hiaasen’s home state of Florida: In this clever and gripping novel, one of the characters actually feels terrible about an ancestor who was a member of the Klu Klux Klan and participated in the lynching of a white man who had dared to enter into a common law marriage with the Black woman he loved.
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What Kate Quinn and Janie Chang have accomplished in their new historical fiction, “The Phoenix Crown,” is phenomenal. They have combined fictional female characters and real people and real events to create a gripping story that revolves around the Great Earthquake of San Francisco in 1906. In fact, the first part of the story, Act 1, provides dates, days, hours, and minutes as chapter headings until the earthquake hits. The first chapter is set on April 4, 1906, thirteen days, fourteen hours, fifty-two minutes before the San Francisco earthquake, as Gemma Garland, an opera singer, arrives in San Francisco with her bird, Toscanini.
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James McBride’s backstory–his mother was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home and his father was a Black minister–makes his new novel, “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” an authentic historical fiction that showcases the outcast communities of Blacks and Jews in the rural American Midwest. There are, in fact, many, many characters in this complex story wherein we see reflections of the present in a memorable tale of good and evil. We do see that in the long run, good mostly triumphs over evil. But we also see that while much has changed since the early part of the last century, when this novel is set, and while we think of ourselves and our modern technology, not enough has really changed. And McBride makes that abundantly clear with his vivid prose and his lovely metaphor.
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Small town Texas in the summer of 1964 is the setting in “Mockingbird Summer” by Lynda Rutledge. During this summer, we see a town on the cusp of change, as its Southside (of the tracks) and Northside neighborhoods and implicit Jim Crow laws butt heads with the Civil Rights Era. We see most of the events through the eyes of Kathryn Kay Corcoran, or Corky as she is known to her friends. Corky lives with her parents, her brother, and their much-loved pets. Both Roy Rogers, a large mixed-breed dog, and Goldy, their senior horse, become important to the story, but especially Roy Rogers, whose unquestioning loyalty and instincts are highlights throughout the story.
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Motherhood is one of the themes In Lyn Liao Butler’s newest thriller, “What is Mine.” She demonstrates that motherhood, the quality of being a loving and caring mother—or not—does not pass from one generation to the next. Hope Chen and her sister Cassidy had parents who were cold and unfeeling. Yet Cassidy is, to the best of her ability, a caring mother to Luca. When Cassidy dies, Hope and her husband Shaun take Luca into their home and are determined to provide him with all the love and protection they can.
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Instead of “Once upon a time…” the fairy tales that we read in Kiyash Monsef’s wonderful fantasy novel “Once There Was” begin with different words. When the main character Marjan’s father, who was from Iran, told her the childhood tales about mythical creatures, he started the stories with “Once was, once wasn’t…” The first story is about a trapped unicorn saved by a young girl; that encounter changes the young girl and the lives of some of her descendants. We learn that Marjan is one of those who descended from that girl.
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Can I just say that I love the “City Spies” series by James Ponti? This latest one, “Mission Manhattan,” is just as exciting and thrilling as the preceding books, and reading them brings me as much pleasure as reading one of my favorite adult spy novels, like Tess Gerritsen’s “The Spy Coast” or even John Scalzi’s “Starter Villain.” While granted, these spy novels are geared for middle grade readers, the plots and the action are every bit as well plotted and gripping as many of that genre written for adults. The major differences are that the books in this series are much quicker reads with spies that are underaged. But they are no less brilliant than any seasoned adult spy.
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“Finally Heard” is Kelly Yang’s newest middle grade fiction. Author Yang is known for her powerful middle grade and young adult novels about fitting in, making friends, finding one’s place in life, and appreciating family. Many children appreciate the vulnerability in her fictional characters because it reflects some of their own feelings. Her first novel, “Front Desk,” for example, reflected her own experiences growing up as her parents managed hotels and she helped work the front desk.
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Jess Armstrong’s debut novel, “The Curse of Penryth Hall,” is a beautifully done Gothic mystery that is set in Cornwall in the post-WWI period. The main character is Ruby Vaughn, a woman who has experienced much of life partially as a result of being the pampered daughter of a wealthy New Yorker and volunteering in France in the war effort, tending to sick and dying soldiers. Now she lives with an octogenarian, Owen, and works for him in his antiquarian bookstore. They aren’t related, but Owen has come to treat her as a daughter—or perhaps granddaughter—and they care for each other in a very non-demonstrative British manner.
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