california – Mom Read It

Bondi and Poppy Help Heal the Planet: Make Earth Day Every Day!

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Bondi and Poppy Help Heal the Planet, by Judith A. Proffer/Illustrated by Yoko Matsuoka, (Apr. 2023, Juju Press), $19.99, ISBN: 9781088113431

Ages 3-6

This sweet rhyming story stars two friends: Bondi, an Australian koala and Poppy, a California bear, who come together to raise awareness about the havoc wreaked by wildfires on their homes and how climate change plays a part in it. The two friends meet in Hawaii – the middle ground between their homes – where they spend time together and think of ways to help keep their homes – our home, Earth – safe. Kids will love the friendly-faced animals, colorful art, and playful rhyme. By outlining ways that everyone can pitch in and take responsibility for helping the environment – creating a family plan,; reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost; use less water and paper, and rely less on gasoline and more on our own bodies to get around – Proffer involves the whole family and empowers everyone from adults to kids. Initially published in time for Earth Day, Bondi and Poppy share a message worth repeating as Poppy’s part of the world heads into summer, when we rely on our air conditioners and prefer less walking over air-conditioned vehicles. A cute additional purchase for collections.

Fiction, Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Intermediate, Middle Grade

American Girl Trio: Melody, Nanea, and Julie

Posted on December 7, 2019 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Everyone is pretty aware of American Girl, the toy and book phenomenon that sent kids running to the stores for an experience – tea party, clothing selection, matching outfits – before Build-a-Bear got involved. The American Girl novels have big fans in every library where I’ve worked, but I never thought to pick up and read any of them for myself. But I received three from the publisher, so I figured, what the heck? Let’s see what these are about. I have to say, I’m pretty happy with them.

The three books that I received seem to be a repackaging of American Girl’s BeForever line of historical novels. The original books look to have been published in 2016-2017; these new releases have updated cover art and the interiors are very emerging reader friendly, with both color photos and artwork throughout, making it even more appealing and reader-friendly to emerging chapter book readers.

Melody: No Ordinary Sound (American Girl: Melody), by Denise Lewis Patrick, (Aug. 2019, American Girl), $7.99, ISBN: 9781683371403

Ages 8-12

It’s 1963 in Detroit, Michigan, and 9-year-old Melody just found out that she’s going to be singing her first church solo for the Youth Day celebration. Her older brother wants to be a Motown star, while their dad wants him to go to college and pick a more stable career; her older sister comes home from college with stories of protests, marches, and registering Black voters, and her cousin’s family arrives in Detroit, because racial tension in the American South has made it almost impossible to earn a living. As Melody and her family awaken to activism, a horrific church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama takes the lives of four children and leaves Melody speechless. She has to find her voice and sing for those who can’t.

No Ordinary Sound is such powerful historical fiction for intermediate and middle grade readers. I’ve enjoyed Denise Lewis Patrick’s books in the past, so I read this American Girl book first, and am so glad I did. Her characters experience three pivotal events in civil rights history – the Detroit Walk to Freedom; the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, and the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama – and encourage readers to see these events from a personal point of view, developing a deeper understanding of more than just the facts. Denise Lewis Patrick provides a slice of life story, where readers experience the everyday racism Melody and her family and friends experience; from being banned from buying a soda at a soda machine to being shadowed by store security at stores where they’ve been longtime customers.

No Ordinary Sound was a great introduction to the American Girl historical fiction series of books, and I’ll be sure to include this series in booklists and booktalks about civil rights and historical fiction. Melody’s books have their own page on the American Girl website, where you can read first chapter excerpts.

Civil Rights Teaching has lesson plans and resources about teaching the Civil Rights Movement, as does Facing History and Ourselves. The Grammy Museum has a lesson plan on teaching the impact of Motown. Education.com has a free, downloadable worksheet on the History of Motown, and TeachRock.org has a lesson Assembling Hits at Motown. PBS Learning Media has a teaching guide and primary source materials on The Great Migration, and National Geographic has an educator’s guide.

Nanea: The Spirit of Aloha (American Girl: Nanea), by Kirby Larson, (Aug. 2019, American Girl), $7.99, ISBN: 9781683371380

Ages 8-12

Nanea is a 9-year-old Hawaiian girl; she’s the youngest in her family, and feels frustrated that she can’t do grown-up things, like help in her family’s store. When Pearl Harbor is attacked by Japanese aircraft on December 7, 1941, Nanea discovers that she has to grow up quickly. Her father is a mechanic at Pearl Harbor, and rushes to help out; her older brother is an Eagle Scout, and heads to the site to hand out food and provide aid. Nanea’s Uncle Fudge is taken into custody because he’s Japanese, and Nanea is thrust into a different world with blackouts, curfews, and fear. She and her two best friends work to make themselves useful, especially when “nonessential personnel” must leave the island, which puts her friend at risk. With the spirit of aloha – love, understanding, and compassion – Nanea focuses on kokua – good deeds – to help everyone around her.

The Spirit of Aloha was another strong historical fiction piece. Kirby Larson has written likable, relatable female protagonists, and she’s done historical fiction before, so I was confident I was going to read a good story. Here, we have the main event, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, as a means to show how war makes children grow up overnight. Nanea sees her life change in moments: the bombing itself; the rounding up of Japanese people and the detention center; her fears for her father and brother as they head into the middle of the disaster to help; curfews and blackouts curtains, and the overall loss of a relatively peaceful, carefree existence. At the same time, she focuses on her culture’s principles of love, compassion, and good deeds. Kirby Larson adds touches of Hawaiian culture here, like the meaning of hula and tossing leis into the water to assure a return to Hawaii, and there’s a glossary of terms at the end. Nanea is biracial, with a Hawaiian mother and a Caucasian father, and this adds an additional facet to Nanea’s story, as she communicates with her mainland grandparents to let them know what’s going on in Hawaii.

The Spirit of Aloha is a good introduction to World War 2 historical fiction for younger readers. You can find excerpts and more about Nanea on the American Girl website.

Scholastic has a teaching guide on the attack on Pearl Harbor; Teachers Pay Teachers has some free, downloadable resources developed by fellow educators; the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum has a lesson plan on developing visual literacy by analyzing photos from December 7, 1941. The New York Times has a lesson plan on using primary sources to teach the Japanese Internment, as does the Library of Congress.

Julie: The Big Break (American Girl: Julie), by Megan McDonald, (Aug. 2019, American Girl), $7.99, ISBN: 9781683371328

Ages 8-12

Nine-year-old Julie has just moved to a new neighborhood and started at a new school after her parent’s divorce; she, her mother, and older sister live in an apartment above her mother’s new store. She starts at a new school and hears they have a basketball team, which is great! She loves basketball! The coach, however, makes no bones about it: the team is boys only, and he’s never going to let a girl play on his team. Julie, empowered by her tennis-playing older sister who tells her about tennis star Billie Jean King and Title IX, the law prohibiting gender discrimination in any educational programs receiving Federal financial assistance (read: public schools can’t refuse any boy or girl from playing on an athletic team). Julie embraces her newfound activism and takes to the streets, getting people to sign a petition to let her play.

The Big Break is a snapshot of the 1970s, when the second wave feminist movement was still pushing for equal rights in the workplace and in our schools. An interesting subplot with a Vietnam vet, who helps focus Julie’s activism by petitioning against the closing of a veteran’s hall, reminds readers that the ’70s were also about coping with the fallout from the Vietnam War and the vets who returned to homelessness, and a lack of necessary mental and physical health services. Julie’s sister is a burgeoning feminist who follows the Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King Battle of the Sexes and tells Julie about Title IX, which opened the doors to school athletics for girls. At the same time, Julie is coping with her parent’s divorce – much more scandalous in the 1970s than it is today – and her feelings of grief and frustration with both her parents. Her mom appears to be a free spirit, with a ’60s-early ’70s flower child aesthetic; she’s a divorced woman entering the workplace and starting her own business venture: a store dedicated to handcrafted clothing and items, often repurposed. Julie’s pilot father often misses school events because he’s called to fill in for another pilot, and doesn’t initially support her bid to play on the boys’ basketball team.

The Big Break is by Megan McDonald, who everyone also knows as the author of the Judy Moody and Stink series! Here, she gives readers a glimpse into the 1970s, where things are so different, and yet, still the same. Girls still get grief from boys in the athletic sphere. Homeless veterans are still not getting the services they need. People now use Title IX to protect transgender and nonbinary students. And girls are still discovering and embracing their voices in activism. You can read more about Julie on her American Girl page, including first chapter excerpts.

TedEd has a lesson plan on Title IX that’s friendly to younger students. NEA Today has a good article on ways Title IX has helped women and girls; PBS has a video on Title IX; Scholastic Kids Press has an article on how Title IX changed girls’ sports. Teaching History has resources on teaching the Vietnam War.

Each book comes with a peek into each girls’ life: maps of their neighborhood, pictures of their families, a glimpse at someone’s room. Back matter includes overall information about each American Girls’ moment in history. American Girl makes teachers guides, readers guides, and printable activities available.

Teen, Tween Reads

An Odyssey of Her Own: Elektra’s Adventures in Tragedy

Posted on August 8, 2018 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Elektra’s Adventures in Tragedy, by Douglas Rees, (May 2018, Running Press), $17.99, ISBN: 9780762463039

Ages 13+

Sixteen-year-old Elektra Kamenides was happy. She had a happy, secure life in the Mississippi college town where her father worked as a scholar on ancient Greece, and her mother, Helen, was an aspiring author. When her mother whisks Elektra and her 13-year-old sister, Thalia, out of Mississippi and away from their father, to go live on a roach-infested shack that alleges itself a houseboat in an area of California called Guadalupe Slough, Elektra is furious. Who wouldn’t be? The entire rug of her life has been pulled out from under her, and she can’t even get her father to return her calls. What is going on? Not even her sister Thalia’s endless optimism can shake Elektra, who decides she’s going to make like Odyseuss and get back to Mississippi. But like her Greek hero counterpart, the gods have other plans in store for Elektra.

Elektra’s Adventures in Tragedy peeks into the end of a marriage, a coming of age, and the strength of community. With distance, Elektra sees that the hero she made her father out to be was not necessarily the case; an emergency serves as her wakeup call to make the most of the present, and she discovers that she can survive and thrive in her new community, surrounded by her supportive neighbors. There’s good and colorful character development, including a veteran with PTSD and a Latinx family whose San Jose roots go back for generations. The cast of characters are primarily white and Latinx. There are amusing interludes at the local library, where a neighbor – and later, Elektra – takes out hundreds of books a week to keep circulation numbers strong, for the sake of keeping the library open.

I enjoyed the pace of the storytelling, the characters, the situations, and the relationships between the characters. This one is a good add to your realistic fiction collections.

Adventure, Fiction, Fiction, Middle Grade, Realistic Fiction, Tween Reads

Can our favorite Book Scavengers figure out The Unbreakable Code?

Posted on June 30, 2017 by Rosemary Kiladitis

The Unbreakable Code (Book Scavenger #2), by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman, (April 2017, Henry Holt & Co. BYR), $16.99, ISBN: 9781627791168

Beautiful historical fiction: Outrun the Moon

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Outrun the Moon, by Stacey Lee (May 2016, GP Putnam Books for Young Readers), $17.99, ISBN: 9780399175411

Recommended for ages 11+

Mercy Wong is a teenage Chinese-American girl living in 1906 San Francisco’s Chinatown. Her father labors as a launderer, her mother a fortune teller; her young brother Jack is sickly. Mercy wants to give her family much more in life, so she uses her wits and a bit of bribery to gain admission to the exclusive St. Clare’s School for Girls, convinced that she will learn the life skills and business acumen she needs to succeed in life. Life at St. Clare’s is frustrating: it’s essentially a finishing school for spoiled rich girls, and the Chinese girl is seen as beneath them – including by the school’s headmistress. Mercy’s determination is put to the ultimate test when the 1906 earthquake devastates San Francisco, destroying her school and Chinatown. Mercy pulls herself and her schoolmates together as they wait to be reunited with their families in the temporary park encampment. As the days press on and more news circulates about the devastation, Mercy sets a new task for herself: to ease the suffering of those around her.

I loved, loved, loved this book. Stacey Lee weaves a beautiful, powerful work of historical fiction, choosing a moment in time when people were forced to come together: black, white, Asian, wealthy, poor, the earthquake was the great equalizer. How the survivors chose to move forward often left me open-mouthed, as prejudices – racial and class (or perceived class) – prevailed.

Mercy Wong is the kind of protagonist whose name every reader needs to know. She’s smart, witty, determined, and full of love for her family. She has hopes and dreams, and she refuses to let other people’s ways of thinking narrow her own scope. When intimidated, she presses onward. She’s a survivor even before the earthquake hits, and in its aftermath, she becomes so much more: she becomes a beacon.

Stacey Lee brings every single character in this book to beautiful life. Every character moved me to a reaction, whether it was disgust, anger, or affection. She also reminded me that I’m as quick to judge others – even literary characters – on surface impressions – just as these seemingly skin-deep characters judge those around them. She unpacks these characters as the book progresses, and while their actions are still small-minded and cruel, the reasons are explained. She also weaves aspects of Chinese culture and true historical details into her narrative, giving us a work of historical fiction from a time period not usually touched on, through the eyes of a narrator with a very unique perspective.

I just told a colleague that I want to wrap myself up in Stacey Lee’s words; they’re beautifully written and just curl around you, even when describing dark, aching moments.

Author Stacey Lee is a We Need Diverse Books founding member. Her previous book, Under a Painted Sky, received starred reviews from PW and Kirkus, and Outrun the Moon has received a starred Kirkus review. You can read an excerpt at the Entertainment Weekly website.

Add this book to your collections, booktalk it for summer, and give it to anyone who loves good literature.

Horror, Post-apocalyptic/Dystopian, Teen

Book Review: Ex-Heroes, by Peter Clines (2012, Crown)

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 16+

Peter Clines’ Ex series, beginning with Ex-Heroes, is one of those series created for adults but easily crosses over into the teen readers’ market. It provides an interesting new take on the zombie apocalypse, with this universe offering superheroes who continue protecting humanity by creating a haven in an abandoned Hollywood movie lot for survivors.

As with the best post-apocalyptic/zombie tales, the interplay between people facing the end of the world is what makes Ex-Heroes compelling reading. You not only have survivors, The survivors are split into those inside the sanctuary and those outside – inside the sanctuary, we have the superheroes – metahumans – and “regular” people. Outside, there are predatory gangs that have turned the surrounding areas into their kingdom. They try to infiltrate or sabotage the heroes’ camp and supply runs, but have been largely unsuccessful until they find themselves with a terrifying advantage that could destroy everything the heroes have striven to build. Add in the fact that within the sanctuary, there’s dissension in the ranks as more and more people find themselves uneasy about being governed by superpowered individuals, and you have a the makings of a compelling post-apocalyptic saga.

The best zombie stories are not so much about the undead, but about the survivors and how people break down – or endure – life at the end of the world as they know it. Here, Ex-Heroes shines. The relationships between heroes is complex to begin with, and the stress of the situations around them, added to the fact that there are now superpowered undead to compound the situation, amp up the action and the desperation. We get origin stories and back stories for the major heroes: Stealth. Gorgon. Regenerator. Cerberus. Zzzap. and The Mighty Dragon, and the action shifts pretty seamlessly from past to present, giving us a full picture.

While written for adults, Ex-Heroes is an accessible book for teen audiences who enjoy horror/post-apocalypse fiction. The violence is not gratuitous and while there are allusions to sex and some language and overall content, I see no reason why a mature teen would not be able to read and enjoy this book.

Ex-Heroes is the first book in Peter Clines’ Ex series, which also includes Ex-Patriots, Ex-Communication, and Ex-Purgatory.