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Reaching for Sun
by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
Reviewed by Allie, Bildungsroman
Reaching for Sun celebrates the growth of a young girl
who flourishes over the course of a year, just like
the flowers in her family's garden. As things change
with the seasons, so does she, thanks in part to an
unexpected new friend, her motivated mother, and her
inspirational grandmother.
Josie was born with cerebral palsy, a condition which
has affected one side of her body more than the other.
She is a little shy and a little embarrassed to be in
the special education class. She is very close to her
mother and her grandmother, but hasn't any close
friends at school.
Reaching for Sun is a verse novel told from Josie's
point of view. Though Josie sometimes has difficulties
expressing herself and speaking her thoughts, her
voice on the page is full of strength. The book is
split into four portions, marking each season and
accentuating it with a famous quote. The floral motif
is punctuated with illustrations of a flower slowly
sprouting, budding, and opening on the bottom of the
right-hand pages, creating a sort of flipbook, akin to
that in What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones.
A beautiful book simply told, I recommend Reaching for
Sun alongside Rules by Cynthia Lord, Hugging the Rock
by Susan Taylor Brown, and So B. It by Sarah Weeks,
all well-written stories in which young characters
and/or their family members overcome physical
limitations and discover their inner strengths.
Book bloggers, librarians, teachers, and parents—please take note of this book and get it in March.
This will definitely be on my Best Books of 2007 list.
I quoted my favorite poem, "Poppies," during Poetry
Friday.
In short: Highly recommended.
Read
my interview with the author.
Finding Day's Bottom
by Candice Ransom
Reviewed by Kelly Fineman, Writing and Ruminating
When I first began this book, I spent a few pages seriously considering whether I wanted to continue because of the
deliberate hickishness of the text. The story features a main character named Jane-Ery ('Jane-Eery'), a Mama and a
Grandpap, all of whom use terribly colorful language, laden with folksiness whenever possible (Jane-Ery isn't twitchy,
she's "got the jim-jams"; Grandpap doesn't drink his coffee black, he drinks it "barefooted"; Mama says "goin'" and
"waitin'" and "kilt" instead of "killed"). And the very first sentence makes clear that Jane-Ery's Daddy just died.
Tragic opening plus deliberately self-conscious folksiness? Not my usual cup of tea.
And yet.
The story snared me. And I had to read a few pages more, and then more, and, well, what can I say? I not only finished it,
I also liked it. The folksiness never stopped jumping up at me, but I stopped resenting it and let it wash by, and what I
found was an engaging story of one girl's recovery from a devastating loss.
Jane-Ery is understandably bereft after her father's death in an accident at the saw mill where he worked, and not just
because she misses her Daddy. She's also lost touch with her friends after her mother pulled her out of school to help with
the chores. And she's had to give up her bedroom and share with her mother to make room for Grandpap.
Set in the Appalachian mountains in the early part of the mid-nineteen hundreds, when not everyone had electricity and
no-one had television, Jane-Ery lives a labor-intensive sort of life. Her family uses a hand-pump to get their water and
lights the house at night using lamps that burn coal oil. Their garden and the woods around them are the source of nearly
all their vegetables, which must be "put up" the old-fashioned way, using Mason jars and boiling water. Even the fresh
pork sausage they make from their hogs is stored in lard-filled jars, since they don't have any means of
refrigeration.
Small wonder that Jane-Ery misses her father. He was the one who shared stories with her, bought her penny candy on the
sly, and sometimes told her Mama that enough work was enough. With him gone, Mama works all day cooking, cleaning, and
canning, and all night mending and sewing. Once the garden grows, Grandpap works "from can't-see to can't see", weeding and
hoeing and harvesting the crops as they come in. And Mama expects Jane-Ery to do chores all the time as well.
It was Grandpap who roped me into this hardscrabble story with his folksy sayings and easy ways. He knew when to be quiet
and when to tell stories; when to use personal information and when to switch to fantasy; when to suggest a walk and when
to sit still. And he told Jane-Ery about Day's Bottom, "a place of light and wonderment," that set her mind racing: could
she find her father there?
Because of his stories, Jane-Ery got through an awful lot of tedious chores and difficult times. And because of him and his
stories, I hung in there and read all the way through to the end. And I can't tell you whether Jane-Ery found Day's Bottom,
but I was glad that I went along for the ride.
Nathan Fox: Dangerous Times
by Lynn Brittney
Reviewed by Michele Fry, Scholar's Blog
Lynn Brittney's Nathan Fox: Dangerous Times is more or less a retelling of Shakespeare's Othello as a
spy story.
In Elizabethan England, the Spymaster General, Sir Francis Walsingham, has formed an intelligence network to ensure that
England's Queen remains safe from assassination. Walsingham is always on the lookout for new agents, and 13-year-old-boy
actor, Nathan Fox, has just caught his eye. Nathan is a gifted young actor in the same company as actor and fledgling
playwright, William Shakespeare. Nathan is of gypsy descent and a skilled acrobat and horseman. He also picks
up accents and languages very easily. The Spymaster General sends one of his top agents, John Pearce (a former actor
himself), to recruit Nathan, who accepts with considerable delight and excitement. He leaves the theatre, but not before
promising to keep Will Shakespeare fully informed of his adventures. He is then taken to Master Robey's School of Defence to
learn the skills that will keep him alive: dagger-throwing, sword-fighting, and street-fighting, as well as code-breaking.
He sets off on his first assignment, partnering Pearce, and they travel to Venice to secure an alliance against the dreaded
Spaniards. In Venice, Nathan and John, who are posing as servant and master, meet the great General Othello. However, their
mission doesn't go quite as planned and the partners become embroiled in the events that surround the tragic love affair
between General Othello and the young noblewoman, Desdemona.
I read Shakespeare's Othello a few years ago, so I knew how the main plot of this story was going to turn out. I'm
not sure if that's a good thing or not as it meant I wasn't reading the story with any expectation of it turning out to be
anything other than a tragedy, from the point of view of Desdemona and Othello. I also knew in advance that this was the
first book in a series, so I didn't fear for Nathan's survival at any point, even though he got into some life-and-death
situations. For younger readers, though, this probably won't be an issue, and it will probably work well as an introduction
to Shakespeare's play.
Nathan Fox: Dangerous Times has been shortlisted for the 2007 Waterstones Prize. There's a
Nathan Fox website that has some useful references for
children who've been reading the story.
Books Reviewed:
Reaching for Sun, by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer. Bloomsbury, 2007. ISBN: 1-5999-0037-8.
Finding Day's Bottom , by Candice Ransom. Carolrhoda Books, 2006. ISBN: 1-5750-5033-9.
Nathan Fox: Dangerous Times, by Lynn Brittney. Macmillan Children's Books, 2007.
ISBN: 0-3304-4116-7.
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