Shelf Awareness--Spectacle

YA Review: Spectacle

Spectacle by Jodie Lynn Zdrok (Tor Teen, 368p., ages 13-up, 9780765399687)

Ever since the accident left Maman unable to work, 16-year-old Nathalie Baudin has been earning money penning "the daily morgue report" for Le Petit Journal. Nathalie and other Parisians stand in long lines to cluster eventually at "the viewing pane," where they can see the latest murder victim. Two weeks into her tenure, Nathalie accidentally touches the glass and is transported to "another place" where she sees the murder occur, "silent[ly] and in reverse." Her reaction to this experience is witnessed by "the fetching young morgue worker" Monsieur Gagnon, but she's too shaken to respond honestly to his inquiries.

Nathalie's friend Simone urges her to go to the police, but Nathalie is scared they'll think she's "unhinged." Nathalie's parents and her Aunt Brigitte were subjects in a series of experiments by now-disgraced Dr. Henard in which patients were given blood transfusions to grant them "magical powers." The procedure, once seen as "a promising new discovery," is now considered dangerous. Nathalie's Aunt Brigitte is proof of this: she is in an asylum, unable to tell the difference between dreams and reality. As the gruesome body count rises, the "Dark Artist" killer gets up close and personal, and Nathalie must decide whether to run from her visions or allow them to lead her to the murderer.

Jodie Lynn Zdrok has created an eminently readable, unapologetically macabre period piece that evokes the dark mystery of Jack the Ripper-era serial murders. Featuring a strong and likable heroine in Nathalie--who's proud to be the first woman "of any age" to write for Le Petit Journal--the power of Spectacle "is real, beautiful, and devastating," and should be especially welcome to fans of Libba Bray's Diviners novels. --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI.

Discover: In 1880s Paris, 16-year-old Nathalie grapples with her job as morgue reporter as well as her rather macabre "gift."

Shelf Awareness--Just Right: Searching for the Goldilocks Planet

PB Review: Just Right: Searching for the Goldilocks Planet

Just Right: Searching for the Goldilocks Planet by Curtis Manley, illus. by Jessica Lanan (Roaring Brook Press, 48p., 9781250155337)

"When you look toward the stars, do you ever wonder if anyone is looking back?" A girl gazes up at the sky, lost in thought. "Is Earth the only planet with intelligent life? Is it the only planet with life at all?" These questions, and many more, are explored in the pages of Just Right: Searching for the Goldilocks Planet.

Although "people believed that other worlds must exist" for "thousands of years," it wasn't until 1995 that astronomers found proof that "some other stars... have planets." Now they're asking whether any of these distant "exoplanets" can support life. Using telescopes and "special methods for looking at starlight," astronomers have "already found a few Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting within the habitable zones of their [own] stars." But they don't yet know if any of these planets can support the kind of life we have on Earth.

Curtis Manley's text explains its fairly sophisticated concepts--including big ideas like "what could we do" if we found evidence of "beings like ourselves"--in a clear, concise way. Jessica Lana's illustrations cleverly take this informative text and make it accessible to young readers. By following the girl and her family as they enjoy a day trip to the planetarium, Lana presents much of the book's scientific information as dynamic exhibits on view; her expansive double-page spreads bring the material to life, depicting molten cores, gaseous and rocky exoplanets and more behind and around the family. Endpapers and back matter further enrich the volume, which emphasizes the tantalizing mysteries that abound in the search for "a planet much like our own--a Goldilocks planet, a planet that's just right." --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI.

Discover: Astronomers search the stars, hoping to learn whether life exists anywhere else in the universe.

February Book Picks

Novels:

In WICKED NIX, by Lena Coakley, with illustrations by Jaime Zollars, Nix is a fun—if unreliable—narrator in a story of fairies and humans coexisting rather badly. All the other fairies have left for the Summer Country, but Nix has been left behind by the Queen to guard their forest. Since he can’t use magic, he decides to make plenty of mischief when “a people" moves into an abandoned cottage nearby. WICKED NIX, at 110 pages, is a short and completely enjoyable tale. (MG)

In EVERLASTING NORA, by Marie Miranda Cruz, the main character is as twelve-year-old girl in Manila who, along with her mother, becomes homeless after the death of her father. The two must move into a cemetery, where they live alongside a whole community of others who squat in and among the tombs. When her mother disappears, Nora begins a frantic search, gaining friends, family, and a deeper awareness of herself along the way. It’s well crafted and moving. (MG)

SWEEP, THE STORY OF A GIRL AND HER MONSTER, is by Jonathan Auxier, author of The Night Gardener. In this new yarn, even though life on the road is difficult, as long as Nan Sparrow has the Sweep by her side, the world is full of “all sorts of wonderful things.” But when her beloved guardian disappears, leaving only a "charred lump of soot” behind, six-year-old Nan is forced to work alongside Newt, Whittles, Shilling-Tom, and the awful Roger, in Master Wilkie Crudd’s much abused Clean Sweep crew. But after Nan, now eleven, gets stuck in a chimney and almost dies, she wakes to find her bit of char has miraculously turned into a creature that’s alive. Nan knows at once that this is a gift from her Sweep, so she takes little “Charlie” and runs away from Crudd, hoping somehow for a better life as her own master. Auxier has done it again with this magical, complex, and rewarding read. (MG)

Picture Books:

“It’s my birthday. So boo! I hate all of you.” Thus begins I HATE EVERYONE, written by Naomi Davis and illustrated by Cinta Arribas. The main character is not having a good day, but readers follow along as she works her way through a very interesting tantrum. The art is bold and appealing, with a decidedly weird pink, blue, purple, and orange palette. “Don’t sing…okay, go ahead. Sing.” And enjoy!

DOOR, by JiHyeon Lee, is a wordless fantasy, in which a boy finds a key, and follows a mysterious bug to an old door in a wall. The key fits, and opens the door into a world of outrageous—and friendly—beings who invite the boy to join their picnic. The beasties speak an unintelligible language, but all parties manage to communicate anyway. The “real world” is monochrome, while the fantasy appears to be delicately drawn in colored pencil. It’s a lovely piece of bookmaking from Chronicle and JiHyeon Lee.

STORIES OF THE NIGHT, by Kitty Crowther, is another picture book with lots of pink in it, but it’s very different from the one above. Little Bear wants "three stories, please, please, please?” so Mother Bear obliges with one about the Night Guardian who bangs a gong when it’s time for sleep, a second about a tiny girl who gets lost while picking berries until she meets up with her friend Jacko Mollo (a bat), and a third about a little man who never takes off his coat and has trouble sleeping until he finds one of his friend Otto’s “stone poems.” Whimsical, nonsensical, original, and truly lovely.

--Lynn

Shelf Awareness--When I Found Grandma

PB Review: When I Found Grandma

When I Found Grandma by Saumiya Balasubramaniam, illus. by Qin Leng (Groundwood Books, 32p., ages 4-7, 9781773060187, March 5, 2019)

When Maya says that she wants to see her grandma, Mother explains "Grandma lives many thousands of miles away." But, a few weeks later, while walking home from school, Mother says she has a surprise for Maya, and it's even "more special" than cupcakes. Inside, Maya finds her "special surprise": Grandma!

Maya learns right away that Grandma does things differently. She wears a "crimson sari" and offers "homemade sweets"--which Maya quickly decides she doesn't like as much as cupcakes. The next day at dismissal time, instead of waiting outside Maya's classroom with the rest of the parents and grandparents, Maya's grandma strides right in, wearing her "fancy clothes" and jingling her bangles. Not only does she draw attention to herself, she draws embarrassing attention to Maya, calling her by the wrong name (Mayalakshmi). For dinner, Grandma cooks "a meal with rice and cashews," and Maya pushes the nuts away. Worst of all, the next morning, instead of taking the exciting trip Father had promised to an island with a carousel, Mother says the family will pray at a temple for Holi. Maya "wishe[s] Grandma had never come."

Recognizing how upset her granddaughter is, Grandma offers to pray on the island with the carousel--it doesn't matter where she prays, she says, because "strong prayers come from honest hearts." Mother packs cupcakes and Grandma leaves her sari at home, borrowing pants and shoes from Mother; she even buys a bright red-and-blue, "all-American" baseball cap along the way. When they get to the island, Maya races ahead to the carousel "to show Grandma her favorite pony." But when she gets there, Grandma--and the rest of her family--are nowhere in sight. As Maya closes her eyes and tries to pray "honestly," just like Grandma said, she hears a familiar "loud voice" and sees Grandma's "red-and-blue cap bob[bing] in the distance, high over people's heads." That night, when Grandma makes her rice and cashew dinner again, Maya tries the nuts and decides they aren't so bad after all.

Saumiya Balasubramaniam takes a tender yet piercing look at the complexity of family bonds, especially when they span oceans and generations. Maya's initial unhappiness gives way to acceptance and love in a way young readers are sure to understand. Her struggles with cultural differences are convincingly stated, and reinforced perfectly by Leng's lively ink and watercolor illustrations: on page after page, Maya's body language makes her thoughts crystal clear. Leng's broken lines and dynamic use of color and texture help promote the feeling of a strong little girl in motion. Her detailed paintings so clearly define Maya's world that her abstract treatment of the moments when Maya is lost feel even more powerful by contrast. When I Found Grandma is a book for all ages, likely to have lasting appeal. Maya's and Grandma's compromises are satisfying and, by the end, as Father points out, Maya didn't just find Grandma, they "found each other." --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI.

Shelf Talker: Maya is eager to see Grandma, who lives far away, but the visit gets off to a difficult start when Grandma dresses, cooks and acts differently than Maya expects.

February's Book of the Month--The Poet X

February’s Book of the month is the debut novel-in-verse THE POET X, by Elizabeth Acevedo. It’s won so many awards, I’m going to skip naming them all here, but they are richly deserved.

High school sophomore Xiomara Batista is tired of being seen as “the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips/so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school/now ask me to send them pictures of myself in a thong.” And she’s tired of being Mami’s “miracle,” a ”symbol of God’s love,” who must "go to Mass every single day…until [her] knees learn the splinters of pews.”

Xiomara wants her own voice to be heard, and she's coming to realize that her way to speak up is through poetry. But even though a poster announcing Spoken Word Poetry Club "feels personal/like an engraved invitation,” poetry club is on Tuesdays, and Mami is dead set on Xiomara being at confirmation classes during that time. To make matters worse, Xiomara finds herself liking a boy—and Mami says no boyfriends until Xiomara has graduated from college. “And even then,/she got strict rules/on what kind of boy/he better be."

THE POET X is an intense look at one young woman breaking free to live an honest life of her own making—and managing to hang on to her loved ones along the way. The story explodes through the poems Acevedo has crafted, cutting right to the heart of her main character, Xiomara, whose name means “One who is ready for war.” Her “parents probably wanted a girl who would sit in the pews/wearing pretty florals and a smile./They got combat boots and a mouth silent/until it’s sharp as an island machete.”

Acevedo’s poems are so perfect, I keep quoting her—it seems I can’t write about this book unless I use her words, not mine.

--Lynn