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A Crooked Kind of Perfect
by Linda Urban
Reviewed by Julie M. Prince
Zoe Elias is a realistic and charming 10 (almost 11!) year old girl with big dreams. She wants to play the piano at
Carnegie Hall. But, she has no piano...only a wheezing organ that has more gadgets and buttons than an airplane cockpit.
While her mom works nonstop, Zoe is left to the devices of her fun-loving, agoraphobic dad. He helps her practice her
organ lessons by dancing around, accompanying her on his pot-lid cymbals. In turn, she helps him with his Living Room
University courses—everything from "Earn Bucks Driving Trucks" to "Make Friends and Profit While Scrapbooking."
Zoe's home life changes a bit when a cute, rough-and-tumble boy from school follows her home one day in search of more
leftover cookies from her dad's "Bake Your Way to the Bank" course. What's with this kid, anyway? Zoe is willing to let
Wheeler's daily visits slide, as long as he doesn't get in the way of her plans for the Perform-O-Rama organ competition.
It turns out, Wheeler may be the key to getting there.
This book is a fun, easy read. Not at all heavy-handed or overbearing, it's just a simple book that kids will relate to on
an every day level. Watch for this book in upcoming award announcements, because I think it's a real winner!
The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School
by Candace Fleming
Reviewed by Joyce Rice
Mr. Jupiter's classroom of fourth graders at Aesop Elementary School is filled with adventurous, curious students. There
is Calvin Tallywong, who remembers his days in kindergarten and wishes he could return. There is Amisha Spelwadi who is
the champion speller, and there is Lil Ditty the classroom poet. These students and their classmates introduce the reader
to the genre of fables through their stories and events, and the lessons they learn. The reader will meet the librarian,
Miss Turner, Mrs. Playwright the itinerant drama teacher and Mrs. Bunz the lunchroom monitor. Mrs. Bunz rules the
lunchroom with an iron fist and a bullhorn. Every student in Aesop Elementary School knows about Mrs. Bunz and her
torture methods if you don't behave in the lunchroom. However, when Mr. Jupiter joins the staff, things are bound to
change. Each of the stories illustrates a specific moral, or lesson, which is included at the end of the story. The
lessons are both contemporary such as "practice what you preach," and traditional such as "slow and steady wins the
race." The use of contemporary events and characters will make this a valuable classroom tool for teaching fables.
Students will be able to compose their own stories easily after reading these stories and understanding the simplicity of
the task.
So Totally Emily Ebers
by Lisa Yee
Reviewed by Julie M. Prince
Emily Ebers has been uprooted from her New Jersey home and dragged across the country by her mother, Alice. Here she is,
living in Rancho Rosetta, California. Far away from her father, she can't even visit him while he's on tour with his former
band, The Talky Boys. Emily just knows that Alice has plotted to make her life miserable.
If it weren't for her new best friend, Millicent Min, Emily wouldn't have anything to look forward to this summer. But,
why is Millicent being so mysterious? Why is she so embarrassed when Emily finds out that she's being tutored, especially
when her tutor is the totally hunky Stanford Wong? Apparently, Millie doesn't trust her enough to know that Emily wouldn't
judge her just because she's a little behind in school.
After a blow-out argument with Millicent, in which Emily finds out that even Stanford has been lying to her, Emily feels as
though there's no one to whom she can turn. Oh, sure, there are the popular girls from volleyball who want to be friends...but
for some reason, she isn't able to be herself around them. What's a depressed girl to do, with a meddling mom at home and
nothing of her dad but the credit card he gave her for her birthday? Shop!
Emily is a super sweet character, but not without flaws. Her feelings of anger and resentment are so strong that we, the
readers, feel them with her—even as we're yelling, "Emily, stop being a dope!"
Yee is "totally" awesome at telling the same story from three different perspectives. (Millicent Min, Girl Genius,
Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time, So Totally Emily Ebers.) All the characters are linked,
but not for obvious reasons. They each come with a separate set of problems: being an outcast, dealing with peer pressure,
and the trauma of divorce. All things that kids deal with on an everyday basis, and all dealt with in a realistic and
relatable manner.
I can't wait to see what this author offers up next!
Birmingham, 1963
by Carole Boston Weatherford
Reviewed by Bruce Black, Wordswimmer
Using the emotionally restrained voice of a ten-year-old fictional narrator, Carole Boston Weatherford draws readers into
the heart of an African-American girl who witnesses one of the most brutal racist acts of the Civil Rights era.
"The year I turned ten," Weatherford begins the free verse poem that is her new book, Birmingham, 1963, "I missed school
to march with other children for a seat at whites-only lunch counters."
The narrator continues:
Like a junior choir, we chanted "We Shall Overcome."
Then, police loosed snarling dogs and fire hoses on us,
And buses carted us, nine hundred strong, to jail.
With these words, Weatherford, the award-winning author of two dozen books for children, including Moses: When Harriet
Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, and Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins, introduces readers to the
racial tension and unrest that was part of living as an African-American in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.
Although the narrator is fictionalized, the events are real, notes Weatherford in the book's afterward. And it's through
this narrator's eyes that readers glimpse the devastation and grief that follow the bombing which took place on Sunday,
September 15, 1963, as worship was just beginning at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the city's meeting place and
rallying point for many of the the Civil Rights leaders and marchers.
The day I turned ten,
I saw blood spilled on holy ground
And my daddy cry for the very first time.
What had those girls done to deserve this?
At supper, no one had much appetite.
Afterwards, Mama washed and I dried dishes
While she hummed "Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen."
Weatherford's poem offers a painful but realistic and unsentimental glimpse into the strained years of the Civil Rights
era. Events unfolded across the country, as well as in Birmingham, where Weatherford notes, racists "set off so many
bombs in Birmingham's black neighborhood that the city was nicknamed 'Bomingham.'"
Stark black-and-white photographs of the times—a scene of the church after the explosion, a portrait of a hooded
Ku Klux Klan man shouldering a rifle, and a picture of a crowd of young blacks being dispersed with water from
high-pressure fire hoses—add drama and heart-ache to the poem as the story unfolds.
Middle Grade Review EXTRA: Don't miss Camille Powell's review of the Barnstormers series here
Books Reviewed:
A Crooked Kind of Perfect, by Linda Urban. Harcourt Children's Books, 2007. ISBN: 0-1520-6007-3.
The Fabled Fourth graders of Aesop Elementary School, by Candace Fleming. Schwartz & Wade, 2007.
ISBN: 0-3758-3672-1 .
So Totally Emily Ebers, by Lisa Yee. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007. ISBN: 0-4398-3847-4.
Birmingham, 1963, by Carole Boston Weatherford. Wordsong, 2007. ISBN: 1-5907-8440-5.
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