Category: Book Review

All Book Reviews

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Rocky Road by Rose Kent

My local library had the foresight to carry several novels with deaf characters for children and teens.  Rocky Road is one of them. In the coming months, I will be including additional reviews as part of a “Deaf Series.”

Synopsis

Tess Dobson has always rolled with the punches that make up her life. Her dad left years ago,  her little brother, Jordan, is deaf, and her mom is a bit wild and crazy. Take, for instance, their sudden move from San Antonio, Texas, to Schenectady, New York.  Mom thinks the schools up north can help Jordan. The family has no money, but Tess’s mother plans to start up an ice cream shop in the middle of the winter. And they’re living in a run-down, old people’s community.

Tess manages to start some new friendships in the middle of seventh grade, keep up with her ASL practice for her brother, get to know some of her elderly neighbors, and help her mom with the preparations for the ice cream parlor. As Mom’s bipolar behavior intensifies, Tess learns that the family’s survival doesn’t depend on Tess.

Pros

  1. All the characters, no matter how quirky, are lovable and to be admired.
  2. With the main character’s southern personality, the down-home, Texas sayings that come out of her mouth make for a fun read.

Cons

While I think of this story as realistic fiction, it’s really not. The characters are almost caricatures. I have never met real people like Tess, her mom, and her friends. That said, there’s nothing wrong with making characters larger than life when the author wants to point out specific traits or actions that readers are encouraged to emulate. In Rocky Road’s case: be a friend and accept individual differences in the people around you.

Discussion questions

  1. Tess knows she can’t talk her mom out of moving, so she decides to make the best of a bad situation. How would you have reacted in the same circumstances?
  2. Why did Mom want to move?
  3. At what point in the story could you tell Mom probably needed medical help?
  4. If you had a brother or sister who was deaf, would you learn sign language?

Conclusion

The book jacket’s final line encapsulates the novel: “This moving story of family, community, and ice cream proves that with a little help from the people around us, life really can be sweet—and a little nutty—just like Rocky Road.” Which is why I loved this book.

 

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The Crescent Stone by Matt Mikalatos

The Crescent Stone by Matt Mikalatos

Power has its Price…

Synopsis

Madeline Oliver is dying from lung disease and there’s no cure. Jason Wu, after tragedy strikes, is left grief stricken and promises to only speak the truth from that point on. When a mysterious stranger name Hanali appears to Madeline and offers to heal her in exchange for one year of service to his people, Madeline and Jason are swept into a strange land where they don’t know the rules and where their decisions carry consequences that reach farther than they could ever guess.

Pros:

  • great writing
  • rich world building
  • plot line that kept me engaged
  • unique characters
  • original folklore

Cons:

  • once in awhile I caught the author “preaching” about societal issues which I found a little off putting (I like things to be a little less on the nose)
  • I did not find Madeline’s character made a big impression on me

This book took me a bit to get into but I really enjoyed it once I got further in! I really loved Jason’s character and his sense of humour. The story line is intriguing and full of just enough twists and turns to keep you turning to the next page. The characters in the Sunlit Land are unique and full of life and it was a wonderful place to visit. I’m looking forward to book 2!

*This book releases today! So you can now get your copy of it on Amazon!*

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Carry On, Mr. Bowditch By Jean Lee Latham

Set in post-Revolutionary War New England, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is the  biography of Nathaniel Bowditch, author of The American Practical Navigator, nicknamed the “Sailor’s Bible.” While I never paid attention to the author’s name when I was a child, I’m sure I read several of Jean Lee Latham’s biographical works. I recognized her writing style at once.

Synopsis

When Habakkuk Bowditch’s ship founders on the shoals near Salem, Massachusetts, the family is left in poverty.  His second son, Nat,  is much smaller than his other other sons, and Mr. Bowditch doesn’t expect Nat will have the strength needed to join the family tradition of working on a ship.  So he decides to send Nat into indentured service. There will be one less mouth to feed in a family of seven children and Nat will be able to earn a living after nine years. Nat lives with another family for nine years to learn the trade of ship chandlery, the business of supplying equipment and commodities for ships.

Nat’s intuitive understanding of math concepts combined with his passion for helping ships sail as safely as possible drives him to a phenomenal self-education. He learns bookkeeping, Latin, French, Italian, navigational techniques, and advanced mathematics, all with the purpose of writing a book which will correct mathematical errors in established navigational books.

But don’t think this story is only about academic subjects. Nat’s adventures from the Cape of Good Hope to the island of Sumatra add all the action a reader could wish for.

Pros

  1. Nathaniel Bowditch’s life is well-documented, and Latham’s story holds true to all the facts.
  2. Children reading this will get a strong sense of the New World culture circa 1800.

Cons

  1. Because of the early nineteenth century culture, some adults may have a problem with the attitude of such things as “boys don’t blubber,” or that society approved of profits from whaling and sealing expeditions.

Discussion Questions

  1. Do you think Nat had a good attitude once he was indentured to the ship chandlery? Why or why not?
  2. Did Nat ever receive a college degree from Harvard?
  3. Why did wives of sailors need to be independent, able to run their entire households and provide for their families?
  4. Nat sailed on five different voyages. Which one of those voyages did you enjoy reading about the most?

Conclusion

As a Vintage Read, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is both educational and entertaining.

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Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

They killed my mother.
They took our magic.
They tried to bury us.
Now we rise.

Synopsis

Once, Zélie Adebola’s world was filled with magic. The land of Orïsha had Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

But when the ruthless king kills all the maji the magic disappears leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Pros:

  • wonderful writing
  • engaging characters
  • lots of action
  • rich story world and history
  • timely topic

Cons:

  • there is a sense of mysticism (magic) if a reader is opposed  to that which includes necromancy/blood magic.
  • has at its base African mythology and those deities associated with it
  • hints at sex/romantic interlude at one point but no graphic descriptions

Conclusion:

I love, Love, LOVE this book! I cannot recommend it enough. My friends are tired of me talking about this book. lol One person I recommended it to was a little taken aback by the anger of the main character but if you read the note from the author at the end you will understand why. What I really love is how Adeyemi can see that unbalanced power is not good on either side.

I gave this book only 4 stars because of the sense of earth magic that runs through it that may be off putting to some Christian reading.

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Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski

Lois Lenski’s American Regional books have been likened to the Little House books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Yes, the similar settings are hugely important to the story, but Lenski’s style is far different than Wilder’s, and I like them both. I found Strawberry Girl particularly interesting because it covers a place and time I’m unfamiliar with, Florida at the turn of the twentieth century.

Synopsis

Birdie Boyer’s father has purchased a long-abandoned farm in central Florida. Proud of their Cracker heritage (the Scotch-Irish pioneers who populated the Appalachian Mountains), ten-year-old Birdie works hard helping her family plant an orchard and strawberry field. However, the antagonists, a squatter family who have lived on the nearby land for generations, are determined to stop the Boyers from building fences. The Slaters own cattle and are used to allowing their cows to roam wild. You can see how conflict is going to build.

Once Birdie cools down from the latest Slater outrage, she and her mother still offer kindness to their neighbors, especially as they realize that wife and children suffer under the irresponsibility of the father. Today’s reader will find the ending improbable. Without giving away the plot, I’ll just tell you that Lenski uses the ideal to teach children virtues to strive for.

Pros

  1. Strawberry Girl offers a great history lesson about Florida and its culture.
  2. The language is simple and straightforward, even as Lenski uses southern terms that might be unfamiliar to her readers. Third-graders should be able to understand most of it.

Cons

  1. Many readers won’t care for what I’ve noted as pros. They don’t want a history lesson, and they don’t want to struggle with new vocabulary. I guess that’s more of a criticism of the reader than the book!
  2. Having been written over sixty years ago, the book is narrated rather than the deep POV most of us are now accustomed to. But the narration is excellent, which is why it won the Newbery Medal in 1945.

Discussion Questions

  1. If Effie Slater wanted to be friends with Birdie, why was Effie so hateful toward her neighbor sometimes?
  2. Who was able to better solve problems between the Boyers and the Slaters, Mr. Boyer or Mrs. Boyer? Give an example.
  3. What was Birdie’s surprise gift after all her work growing the strawberries?

Conclusion

Another very worthwhile vintage read!

 

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Sun and Moon by Desiree Williams

Sun and Moon by Desiree Williams is a good, summer romantic fantasy  appropriate for middle grade and young adult readers. It’s short, easy to digest, and has an assured happy ending, like a bag of popcorn at the movie theater.

Synopsis​

Eighteen-year-old Zara has been a slave since her parents were killed when she was only eight. She serves as the companion and bodyguard for a princess, and together, they plot escape from the princess’s despotic father, King Melchior.

There’s only one catch; she was chosen from birth to fulfill a much larger destiny, and the time arrives before she is ready. (No spoilers.)

Pros:

  • This is a clean romance suitable for all ages. Zara and Jaedon are both wonderful, easy-to-like characters.
  • The cover is beautiful.
  • The pacing keeps the reader engaged.
  • The world-building is great.

Cons:

  • For a demanding, older reader, this book tends to be too perfect, too sweet, and too predicable. By the end of 227 pages, not one, but three couples have managed to reach their happy endings.
  • Some readers may be uncomfortable with the idea of an assigned life mate and the use of symbols (like tattoos) that come to life to help the characters find each other.
  • The evil king is a little too evil to be believable.

Personal Thoughts

Sun and Moon was too sweet and easy for my taste. I don’t think the author intended this book to be a Young Adult book, but the female lead’s age is ripe for this market. Certainly, the content is appropriate for this age group.

The novel had the potential to be much better if only the author had included grittier conflict and not so many happy endings. For lost opportunity, I will give it four stars, but as a “popcorn” romance, it’s a perfect summer read.

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M.C. Higgins the Great by Virginia Hamilton

Synopsis

Set in Appalachia of northern Kentucky along the Ohio River,  M.C. Higgins is the oldest son in an African American family, proud of his great grandmother’s mountain and proud of his skills as a swimmer, a hunter-tracker, and how he can shimmy up his forty-foot steel pole to view the hills. Then two strangers enter his domain. The first might be able to make M.C.’s mother a famous singer. The second is a girl who lives the kind of freedom M.C. never considered aiming for.

Over all of them, hover the age-old superstitions handed down through the generations and the brewing storm of strip miners laying bare Sarah’s Mountain. M.C. will soon need to make a choice: stay on his mountain as the coal industry destroys it, or move off the mountain and join the modern world.

Pros

  1. The setting may be more of a main character than M.C. Higgins. Virginia Hamilton’s descriptive imagery is superb.
  2. Readers will gain a solid sense of the culture that has inhabited Appalachia for centuries.
  3. While this is a coming-of-age story during a specific era in a specific setting, it goes beyond race bias and evil coal mine owners. This is M.C.’s story and what happens between him and his parents, between him and his siblings, and between him and the strangers who visit his mountain.

Cons

  1. The setting may be more of a main character than M.C. Higgins. Hamilton’s descriptive imagery and literary style will cause the average juvenile reader to close the book by page 10. I was a voracious reader as a child, but this book would not have held my interest. I would have skipped all the amazing prose to get to the action.
  2. The relationship between M.C. and his father bothered me. They loved each other, respected one another, but the way each challenged the other bordered on generating feelings of hate and disrespect.

Conclusion

M.C. Higgins the Great was a novel I appreciated for its literary excellence. It painted a portrait of one specific area of the United States with a brush that allowed me to become immersed in the setting using every one of my senses. However, I believe it’s a novel geared toward adults, not youth. It takes an especially thoughtful young reader to enjoy what M.C. Higgins has to offer.

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The Electrical Menagerie by Mollie Reeder

Fans of The Greatest Showman will love The Electrical Menagerie

I kind of fell in love with Sylvester and Huxley and the story world. I read an ARC of The Electrical Menageries, and when the blog tour sign ups came around, I raised my hand. I’m not one for rereading books but The Electrical Menagerie is one I’ve already read twice and will likely read again.

Synopsis

The Electrical Menagerie, one-of-a-kind robotic roadshow, is bankrupt.

Sylvester Carthage, illusionist and engineer, has the eccentric imagination the Menagerie needs to succeed creatively — but none of the people skills. Fast-talking Arbrook Huxley, meanwhile, has all the savvy the Menagerie needs to succeed commercially — but none of the scruples.

To save their show, Carthage & Huxley risk everything in a royal talent competition, vying for the chance to perform for the Future Celestial Queen. In this stardust-and-spark-powered empire of floating islands and flying trains, a shot at fame and fortune means weathering the glamorous and cutthroat world of critics, high society, and rival magicians —but with real conspiracy lurking beneath tabloid controversy, there’s more at stake in this contest than the prize.

Behind the glittery haze of flash paper and mirrors, every competitor has something to hide… and it’s the lies Carthage & Huxley tell each other that may cost them everything.

Pros

  • Sylvester and Huxley are interesting characters; I love that Sylvester is in his 40s and Huxley in his 20s. This aspect reminded me of The Greatest Showman as did the premise of a struggling circus. Fans of the musical will enjoy this book
  • Great world building with islands in space, stardust, and magic
  • The electrical characters, trains, and other inventions are fascinating
  • There is no sexual content beyond a kiss
  • Action is exciting but not violent
  • Overall it’s a clean read for all age levels

Cons

  • No cons based on the story itself – it’s a tight story with great pacing, interesting characters and story world
  • There is murder and crime
  • One character gets drugged and there is some alcohol use by the main characters; drunkenness and drugs are not glorified
  • The characters lie and conceal their pasts

Discussion Questions

  1. Sylvester had a crippling illness as a child. How do you think his childhood and adolescence affected his outlook on life as an adult?
  2. How do you think Huxley’s upbringing affected his outlook on life as an adult?
  3. If you could have an electrical, what would you choose a performer, a companion, or a worker?
  4. Which of the other acts did you think sounded the coolest (you can’t choose the electrical menagerie)?
  5. Which character did you identify with the most?
  6. How do you think Sylvester’s health will come to play in the sequel?
  7.  How do you think Huxley’s past will factor into the sequel?

 

 Purchase Links

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Menagerie-Celestial-Isles-Book-ebook/dp/B07D5TM5VS

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39719906-the-electrical-menagerie

 

About the Author

Mollie Reeder

Mollie’s first job was with a major theme park, where she operated a roller coaster, fixed parade floats, and helped Scooby-Doo put on his head. Now, Mollie is a movie producer and the author of character-driven science fiction/fantasy novels for adults who never outgrew imagination. Her favorite things include Jesus, dinosaurs, and telling cinematic stories that blend glitter and grit.

Social Media Links

Website — Twitter — Instagram

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Heartless by Marissa Meyers

 

Heartless by Marissa Meyers

Before she was the Queen of Hearts she was just a girl in love…

Synopsis:

In Heartless, Catherine just wants to open a bakery with her best friend. But the King of Hearts wants her as his wife. How can she keep hold of her dream when her parents are convinced that this marriage is best for her and the kingdom?

When she meets Jest, the very irreverant and handsome court jester, she is drawn to him like a magnet. She falls in love and realizes that she would sacrifice everything to be with him.

However, in a land of magic of madness fate might have other ideas.

Pros:

  • Meyers writes in very rich details with great world building.
  • Great believable characters
  • Heartless has a unique plot line that has many twists and turns despite the fact we all know the ending

Cons:

  • The land of Heartless is the Wonderland that Alice visited and it contains absurd magic just like the original which some people might not enjoy.
  • Initially I found Catherine very distant but I think that is intentional. As I read further I warmed to her and saw the tragedy of the story.

Conclusion:

I loved Heartless!!! The rich details really drew me into this story. I have to admit that Alice in Wonderland is not one of my favourite stories but Meyers gives it new life. There are many twists and turns in this story where we all know the ending. It’s also fun to find the “origins” of many of the things that are in the original Lewis Carroll classic.

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Onion John by Joseph Krumgold

Twelve-year-old Andy Rusch walks to school and walks home for lunch. He’s    free to roam the countryside surrounding his small town of Serenity the whole day long, and his parents have no trouble with him befriending the village’s odd-man character, Onion John.

Today’s generation of children will read Onion John and consider it a fairytale, yet when the novel was written in 1959, it was contemporary realistic fiction. It’s a sweet story of contrasts—growing up and meeting the future versus looking back and accepting the past. Andy and his father both learn wisdom as they try to help Onion John. For Andy, that means being Onion John’s best friend, and since he’s the only person in his community who can understand John’s garbled speech, he also becomes John’s interpreter. For Mr. Rusch, it means turning Onion John  into a good-deed project and organizing the town to help build the “homeless” man a proper house. Except Onion John doesn’t want a new house, and he doesn’t need an interpreter to thrive in the world he has established for himself.

I grew up in communities like Serenity. Why didn’t I read this book as a child? It has such a beautiful ending. My only excuse: the main character is a boy. I only liked girl stories.

Pros

  1. Krumgold weaves life lessons in so subtly, the reader never feels preached at.
  2. The characters often disagree with one another, yet they always keep loving each other. Something our society needs to learn in the 21st century.
  3. Everyone in town is nice. No villains, other than misguided good intentions. You may be thinking, “Why did she say this is not a fairytale?” Because while the people are nice, they’re not perfect. And isn’t that reality? Not many of us rub shoulders with evil people all the time. Friction happens because two decent people have different opinions.
  4. Andy has both a mother and a father, and they enjoy a happy marriage. They love their son. Almost everything I read these days has a main character who is orphaned, half-orphaned, or is a child of divorce . Onion John portrays a refreshing setting.

Cons

  1. I felt the plot still had a slight sagging middle before the town got on board to build Onion John a new house. Then again, maybe it was the boy-style plot details that didn’t hold this old girl’s interest.
  2. Today’s parents might be horrified at the freedoms allowed to Andy, afraid their children would make the mistake of straying too far from home and into an unsafe neighborhood. Unless you live near a crime-ridden area, please don’t overreact. And if you do live in a dangerous area, you could address this as a safety issue via Discussion Question one.

Discussion Questions

  1. What kinds of activities do you think you would have participated in if you were allowed to range from one end of town to the other and out into the country? Would it be safe to have that kind of freedom where you live today?
  2. How did Andy and his buddies show friendship to Onion John? How did Onion John show friendship to them?
  3. What was wrong with Mr. Rusch’s plan to help Onion John?
  4. Did you like Onion John’s decision near the end of the book? Why or why not?
  5. Who do you think was the wisest character in this book and why?

 

Conclusion

If you want a taste of mid-twentieth century Americana combined with a wise attitude toward life, read this book. As a Newbery Medal winner, many libraries still carry it, and you can find it on Amazon.