Alice Cary

NonfictionMemoir

Featherhood

Review by Alice Cary

In folklore, magpies are said to bring bad luck, but that certainly wasn’t the case for Charlie Gilmour. An abandoned baby bird helped this young British author finally exorcise the long shadow cast by his biological father, who abandoned him as an infant. Gilmour's remarkable memoir, Featherhood: A Memoir of Two Fathers and a Magpie, explains in lively, compelling detail how caring for this bird prepared him to become a father himself.

With razor-sharp wit and storytelling, Gilmour interweaves the story of this bird, whom he and his partner named Benzene, with that of his past. His biological father, Heathcote Williams, was a poet, actor and activist very much in the public eye. After Heathcote left, Gilmour's mother eventually married Pink Floyd musician David Gilmour, who adopted Charlie. Despite the fact that Gilmour ended up having what he calls “a dream childhood,” thoughts of the elusive Heathcote haunted him. “Heathcote has lived and breathed in my head all my life,” he writes, “a sort of animated scarecrow constructed from secondhand stories and snatched encounters.” Heathcote, who was an amateur magician, would occasionally appear in his son’s life, only to vanish once again. When Gilmour was an adult, he spent a little time with Heathcote, who was by that point approaching death, and Gilmour paints a searingly honest portrait of this culmination of their fraught relationship.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our interview with Charlie Gilmour, author of Featherhood.

Gilmour freely admits that he was an unlikely candidate to become a wildlife rescuer, writing, “Even healthy animals haven’t had the best of luck in my hands.” Nonetheless, the tiny, ailing Benzene grew up and thrived—while proceeding to take over the household. Undeterred by Benzene’s free rein—not to mention her droppings—Gilmour became completely smitten by, if not obsessed with, the magpie, even holding birthday parties for her with invited guests. Benzene's life "seems more akin to that of a medieval prince than to that of a bird," Gilmour writes, "filled as it is with music, flowers, shiny baubles, and meat.”

Benzene became so tame that Gilmour feared releasing her into the wild, and at the end of the book he cautions readers not to follow his example but to consult wildlife rescue organizations instead. Nonetheless, he reveled in the experience, concluding, “Caring for this creature this past year has brought me out of myself, made me see it’s not just catastrophe that lurks in the unknown; there’s beauty to be found there too.”

Worthy comparisons can be made between Featherhood and Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk, and Gilmour was also influenced by Philip Roth’s memoir Patrimony. Gilmour’s upbringing could hardly be more different from Tara Westover’s, but like Educated, Featherhood represents the debut of a talented young writer reckoning with an unusual past.

In folklore, magpies are said to bring bad luck, but that certainly wasn’t the case for Charlie Gilmour. An abandoned baby bird helped this young British author finally exorcise the long shadow cast by his biological father, who abandoned him as an infant.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A Long Road on a Short Day

Review by Alice Cary

Settle in for a wintry journey in A Long Road on a Short Day, and join Samuel Hallett and his father as they set out to procure a dairy cow for Samuel’s mother on a blustery January day. This illustrated chapter book’s timeless feel makes it a wonderful choice for a cozy read-aloud.

Mindful of the coming snowstorm, Samuel’s father briskly tells his son to “Keep up” and adds, “It’s a long road on a short day.” Mr. Hallett plans to barter for the cow, and begins by offering his “best Barlow knife” to a neighboring farmer. As the day progresses, the weather becomes increasingly cold and snowy, and the titular phrase becomes a delightful refrain shared between father and son.

Unfolding in short chapters devoted to each new person with whom the Halletts strike a trade, A Long Road on a Short Day is exquisitely written by co-authors Gary D. Schmidt, a two-time Newbery Honor author and National Book Award finalist, and Elizabeth Stickney, a pseudonym for Schmidt’s late wife. The duo previously collaborated on Almost Time, a picture book about another father-son relationship. That bond is central here as well, as Samuel’s father involves his son in their mission and expresses pride after Samuel makes a difficult decision. The plot is brisk and perfectly paced, and Samuel’s spirit shines through in moments when he meets animals, including a dog and a new litter of kittens, and wishes that “it wasn’t a brown-eyed cow his mother was wanting.”

Young readers will be fascinated by the trades the Hallets make with their neighbors, which range from a book of poetry, a gold pocket watch and even a pony and cart. The traders themselves, including a wealthy widow and a doctor who has just delivered a baby, leave strong impressions despite the relatively short interactions they have with the Hallets. Eugene Yelchin’s illustrations give the book a firm anchor, warmly conveying the old-fashioned setting, while the text offers a handful of historical references, such as roads being “rolled” for the snow.

A Long Road on a Short Day offers a memorable father-son journey as well as an enthralling glimpse into the past.

Settle in for a wintry journey in A Long Road on a Short Day, and join Samuel Hallett and his father as they set out to procure a dairy cow for Samuel’s mother on a blustery January day. This illustrated chapter book’s timeless feel makes it a wonderful choice for a cozy read-aloud.

FictionComing of Age

A Crooked Tree

Review by Alice Cary

As 15-year-old Libby Gallagher ponders several dark moments in rock ’n’ roll history, she muses, “It all said to me that chaotic and dark forces were spinning around us. One foot wrong, and you’d be pulled into the vortex.” Unfortunately, a multitude of missteps have already affected Libby and her family, and that vortex threatens to loom closer every day in Una Mannion’s taut, richly imagined debut, A Crooked Tree.

Living near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in the early 1980s, Libby is the third of five children whose parents divorced and whose Irish immigrant father has recently died, leaving a gaping hole in their already fractured family dynamic. One evening, tempers flare during an outing, and Libby’s mom stops the car six miles from home and orders 12-year-old Ellen out of the car and into the dark, expecting her to walk the rest of the way. From that fateful moment on, Mannion sets up a series of domino-like events, skillfully building suspense that gains momentum to a dramatic conclusion.

Libby is an insightful, likable narrator who inhabits a teenage world in which adults are largely absent, busy tending to their own issues, allowing unknown dangers to blossom and grow. The Gallagher family struggles to get by emotionally and financially, and their mother has a secret boyfriend who fathered her youngest child. The story tackles many issues, including divorce, parental death, grief and child molestation, as well as class and immigration issues, making this nostalgic 1980s story surprisingly topical.

Despite the surrounding turmoil, the Gallagher clan is full of achievers. Ellen is a talented artist, observant Libby likes to lose herself in nature, and their siblings Marie and Thomas are scholastically gifted. These characters are bolstered by an intriguing supporting cast, including Libby’s close friend Sage and Thomas’ friend Jack, who becomes Libby’s romantic interest. Looming large is a sexual predator roaming the area whom the kids call Barbie Man, creating a sense of constant foreboding and fear.

A Crooked Tree marks the welcome debut of a talented, captivating new voice.

As 15-year-old Libby Gallagher ponders several dark moments in rock ’n’ roll history, she muses, “It all said to me that chaotic and dark forces were spinning around us. One foot wrong, and you’d be pulled into the vortex.” Unfortunately, a multitude of missteps have already affected Libby and her family, and that vortex threatens to loom closer every day in Una Mannion’s taut, richly imagined debut, A Crooked Tree.

NonfictionBiography

The Book Collectors

Review by Alice Cary

“Books bring us closer together. They’re a bridge between us,” Hussan Ayash tells journalist Delphine Minoui over Skype. Ayash belongs to a group of rebels in Syria who spent four years, from 2012 to 2016, under siege in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus. In 2013, they discovered a cache of books in the ruins of a bombed house and decided to rescue them. They dug through the wreckage of other buildings as well, salvaging 6,000 books in one week, and created a secret library in the basement of an abandoned building. In precise yet passionate prose, Minoui tells this remarkable story in The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War.

With a French mother, an Iranian father and a home base in Istanbul, Minoui understands the region well and has won awards for her reporting on the Middle East. When she saw a photo of the library bunker, her first instinct was to travel to Daraya and start interviewing these unusual librarians. That journey would be impossible, however, so she began communicating with several of the young men online and formed an unusual relationship with them, worrying constantly about their safety. This personal connection forms the heart of the book, deepening the story while laying bare the sacrifice and deprivation of the rebels. For those four years, Daraya was besieged by bombs and poison gas, food was scarce, and there was no running water or electricity. As she communicated via video chat, Minoui remained careful to keep her coffee and snacks out of the camera’s view.

“The library is their hidden fortress against the bombs,” Minoui writes. “Books are their weapons of mass instruction.” Although a good many of the library’s founders hadn’t grown up as readers, they became book lovers during the long siege. The library’s most popular titles form an eclectic mix: Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, The Little Prince, Mustafa Khalifa’s The Shell, Les Misérables and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

The Book Collectors is a phenomenal story of hope in the midst of complete devastation. As 23-year-old Abu el-Ezz told Minoui in 2015, “Reading helps me think positively, chase away negative ideas. And that’s what we need most right now.”

“Books bring us closer together. They’re a bridge between us,” Hussan Ayash tells journalist Delphine Minoui over Skype. Ayash belongs to a group of rebels in Syria who spent four years, from 2012 to 2016, under siege in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus. In 2013, they discovered a cache of books in the ruins of […]
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

The Devil and the Dark Water

Review by Alice Cary

With The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, British writer Stuart Turton kept readers guessing Agatha Christie-style as they investigated a mystery with a time- and body-hopping detective named Aiden Bishop. In The Devil and the Dark Water, Turton presents readers with another cat-and-mouse game, but a vastly different setting: A galleon that sets sail from the Dutch East Indies in 1634, bound for Amsterdam.

The Devil and the Dark Water artfully combines intriguing characters, fascinating historical details and a seafaring labyrinth of twists and turns—not to mention a demon named Old Tom. There is never a dull moment in this 480-page whodunit, but readers will be thankful not to be physically aboard for the grueling journey. As passengers arrive, a leper suddenly shouts that the voyage is doomed, and then burns to death. What more could possibly go wrong? As the ship’s constable notes, the “crew is comprised of malcontents, murderers, and thieves to a man.”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: How Stuart Turton learned to banish demons on the Internet.

One passenger may be able to get the bottom of the strange curse and ensuing foreboding events—and deaths—that follow. Unfortunately, detective Samuel Pipps is locked in the brig without knowing what crime he is accused of, leaving his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, to investigate. A trio of women (the captain’s wife, daughter and mistress) are also sleuthing, adding a refreshingly feminine twist to this Sherlock Holmes-styled mystery. Turton’s characterizations dovetail nicely with his careful, clever plotting. Meanwhile, he uses history to his advantage, adding dollops of commentary on women’s rights, class privilege and capitalism that lend the novel a contemporary vibe.

As talk of Old Tom’s powers ramp up, passengers wonder whether the ship’s misfortunes may be supernatural, and which unfortunate soul will be Tom’s next target. Steadfast Hayes remains convinced that “There were only people and the stories they told themselves.” With no end of stories aboard this ill-fated galleon, and even a touch of romance, possibilities abound. Meanwhile, a ghost ship lurks in the distance, and a huge storm wreaks havoc.

History and mystery lovers alike will delight in the heart-racing escapades of The Devil and the Dark Water.

With The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, British writer Stuart Turton kept readers guessing Agatha Christie-style as they investigated a mystery with a time- and body-hopping detective named Aiden Bishop. In The Devil and the Dark Water, Turton presents readers with another cat-and-mouse game, but a vastly different setting: A galleon that sets sail from the Dutch East Indies […]
NonfictionEuropean HistoryArts & Culture

The Language of Thieves

Review by Alice Cary

As a boy growing up in Nuremburg, Germany, Martin Puchner was fascinated when vagrants came to their house, asking for food, guided by secret signs scratched into the house’s exterior—related, it turns out, to similar signs used by American migratory workers during the Great Depression. His father explained that these signs were part of an underground, mostly spoken language called Rotwelsch, a mixture of German, Hebrew and Romani languages. Puchner’s early fascination eventually led him to become a professor of English and comparative literature at Harvard University.

His father, uncle and grandfather had all been equally obsessed with this mysterious language, and exploring this fixation became key not only to understanding his family heritage but also to making peace with his German roots. After carting around boxes of his uncle’s Rotwelsch archives for 25 years, he finally began to investigate. An unusual, intriguing project, The Language of Thieves: My Family’s Obsession With a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate is the result.

Puchner traces Rotwelsch’s roots back to the days of Martin Luther and finds modern-day speakers of a closely related variant in Switzerland. While such sweeping history is interesting, the crux of his story is personal. When his father enlarged a 1937 photograph of Puchner’s grandfather, he discovered that he wore a Nazi button on his lapel. Puchner tracked down his grandfather’s dissertation in Harvard’s Widener Library. He was shocked to discover that his grandfather had studied Rotswelsch as it related to the origins of Jewish names and recommended a registry of such names.

In later years, Puchner’s uncle tried to reinvigorate Rotswelsch, publishing translations of the Bible, Shakespeare and more—a project Puchner felt was a “doomed translation exercise.” Still, somehow the Rotwelsch “virus” continued from generation to generation.

While Puchner’s scholarly interests remain in focus, he writes clearly and thoughtfully, using history to examine past, present and future. While speakers of Rotwelsch have long been persecuted, he concludes that we should use its existence “as a reminder that our settled lives are not always possible, that there are people who are unsettled, whether from necessity or choice.” This and similar nomadic languages, he says, as well as their speakers, deserve our utmost respect.

As a boy growing up in Nuremburg, Germany, Martin Puchner was fascinated when vagrants came to their house, asking for food, guided by secret signs scratched into the house’s exterior—related, it turns out, to similar signs used by American migratory workers during the Great Depression. His father explained that these signs were part of an […]
NonfictionTrue CrimeMemoir

Dancing With the Octopus

Review by Alice Cary

Some memoirs recount riveting stories. Others are notable for their masterful storytelling. Debora Harding’s Dancing With the Octopus: A Memoir of a Crime accomplishes both. She has not one but two mesmerizing stories to tell, and the emotional honesty of her razor-sharp prose will hook readers on page one.

In 1978, when Harding was 14, she was abducted at knifepoint from her church parking lot in Omaha, Nebraska, raped, held for ransom and left to die during an ice storm. The young teenager displayed astonishing resilience in the face of such a brutal assault. Ironically, her calm, measured reaction may have been bolstered by the ongoing physical and emotional abuse she and her sisters endured at home from their mother. Harding had already developed strong survival instincts in the face of violence.

Decades after her assault, Harding decided to visit the prison where her attacker, Charles Goodwin, a repeat violent offender, was incarcerated. “I wanted to rid my brain of the image of that ski mask and see the human with the eyes,” she writes. In the years leading up to this face-to-face moment, she also tried to reconcile her relationship with her parents—her own forgiving, intellectual nature aided by a supportive husband, therapists and medicine. Ultimately, however, “trying to emotionally connect with Mom . . . was like trying to fix a broken cup with an empty glue stick.” Meanwhile, she wrestled with how much she adored her father but couldn’t ignore the fact that he had buried his head in the sand while his wife abused Harding and her siblings.

With remarkable perception, Dancing With the Octopus shows how, day by day, year by year, both her criminal assault and family dysfunction left Harding with a lifetime of consequences, including seizures, PTSD and depression. One of the book’s great strengths is how artfully Harding lays out the details of her multifaceted story, weaving in and out of time rather than relying on a chronological timetable.

Dancing With the Octopus begs to be compared to other exemplary bad-mother books, such as Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle. It’s completely different from Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance but is equally compelling. Ultimately, though, Harding’s memoir is unique and unforgettable, offering a multitude of insights that are as harrowing as they are uplifting and wise.

Some memoirs recount riveting stories. Others are notable for their masterful storytelling. Debora Harding’s Dancing With the Octopus: A Memoir of a Crime accomplishes both. She has not one but two mesmerizing stories to tell, and the emotional honesty of her razor-sharp prose will hook readers on page one. In 1978, when Harding was 14, she […]
FictionHistorical Fiction

When We Were Young & Brave

Review by Alice Cary

On the eve of World War II, Elspeth Kent and young Nancy Plummer meet aboard a ship as they travel to Chefoo School, a missionary school in northern China. Nancy is already homesick for her family, especially her mother, while Elspeth has come to teach and reinvent herself, having lost the man she hoped to marry in a mining accident. A few years later, in 1941, Elspeth is ready to return to England when the Japanese army takes control of the school after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Inspired by true events, When We Were Young & Brave tells the story of what happens to Elspeth, Nancy and the rest of the school’s students and staff for the duration of the war.

The latest novel from bestselling English author Hazel Gaynor (The Girl Who Came Home) is reminiscent of J.G. Ballard’s powerful classic Empire of the Sun, based on his own experiences as a boy in China after World War II. When We Were Young & Brave is told in alternating chapters by Elspeth and Nancy, as each tries valiantly to maintain an attitude of stoic optimism. Once the school group is moved to a large internment camp, they suffer malnutrition, disease and more. In the face of all this, Elspeth and the rest of the staff provide heroic solace to their charges, continuing with lessons, activities and Girl Guide meetings, trying to impart as much structure, normalcy and distraction as possible. The narration flows smoothly, full of big and small moments: an adopted kitten, sunflower seeds planted as an act of memory and hope, the worsening illness of Nancy’s best friend and a Chinese newborn who needs care. Years pass until eventual liberation, and Gaynor excels at describing the rhythms of this difficult daily life.

Readers will quickly find themselves immersed in When We Were Young & Brave, which, despite its subject matter, is an uplifting, hopeful tale of camaraderie in the face of hardship and danger.

On the eve of World War II, Elspeth Kent and young Nancy Plummer meet aboard a ship as they travel to Chefoo School, a missionary school in northern China. Nancy is already homesick for her family, especially her mother, while Elspeth has come to teach and reinvent herself, having lost the man she hoped to marry in a mining accident. A few years later, in 1941, Elspeth is ready to return to England when the Japanese army takes control of the school after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
YA FictionYA

We Are Not Free

Review by Alice Cary

“We’re already fighting a war out there. Why do we have to fight one in our own country too?” wonders Minoru “Minnow” Ito, a Japanese American teenager living in San Francisco during World War II. He’s one of the 14 characters whose story Traci Chee tells in We Are Not Free, a captivating portrait of teens whose experiences were shared by over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry who were forced to live in inhumane incarceration camps during the war.

The topic is a departure for the New York Times bestselling Chee, whose acclaimed debut novel, The Reader, kicked off an epic fantasy adventure trilogy that concluded with 2018’s The Storyteller. But it’s also a deeply personal one, inspired by the experiences of her grandparents and their families; the book's title comes from words spoken by her great-aunt during her incarceration.

We Are Not Free is a lively but sobering saga that starts in March 1942, just before the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes began, and continues through March 1945 as several characters return to their much-changed neighborhoods, where lives and livelihoods have been destroyed and racism remains rampant. The grand sweep of the novel allows her to explore the wide variety of situations that Japanese Americans faced during this time: forced resettlement, loyalty pledges with hidden consequences and military service that often included unjust treatment.

Chee’s 14 narrators hail from nine different families and include Minnow, who loves to draw; lively, rebellious Twitchy; college student Mas; softball-loving Yuki; and Frankie, who “always looks like he’s spoiling for a fight.” The connections and relationships among these teenagers form the heart and soul of the novel, and their yearnings, heartbreaks, fear and anger ring true on every single page. A “character registry” at the beginning of the book helps readers keep track of the sprawling cast, though readers may find themselves occasionally wishing they could follow some characters more closely. Even so, what Chee sacrifices in depth, she makes up for in breadth, rewarding readers with an exceptional portrait of a community scarred by prejudice, intolerance and racism.

Whether she is describing Yuki’s dismay at a shop owner’s refusal to serve her and her teammates ice cream or portraying the horrors Twitchy faces on the battlefield in France and Italy, Chee is an extraordinarily gifted writer whose words here have a searing intensity. Though her book is packed with historical detail, her characters and their interactions sparkle with energy, even as their experiences remain all-too-timely. One character warns, “It’ll happen again, if we’re not careful.” We Are Not Free is a superb addition to the works of literature that chronicle this shameful chapter of American history.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Author Traci Chee shares her personal connection to the history she depicts in We Are Not Free.

“We’re already fighting a war out there. Why do we have to fight one in our own country too?” wonders Minoru “Minnow” Ito, a Japanese American teenager living in San Francisco during World War II. He’s one of the 14 characters whose story Traci Chee tells in We Are Not Free, a captivating portrait of […]
Children's & YAPicture Book

Soaked

Review by Alice Cary

In Abi Cushman’s delicious moody first picture book, Soaked, rarely has a dreary day been so delightful.

Sometimes when you’re in a funk, you just need to stay that way for a while; so it is with Bear. Channeling his inner Eeyore, Bear declares his feelings on the book’s very first page: “Look at all this rain. Everything is dreary. Everything is drenched. And no one is happy.” Pelted by rain and holding an ice cream cone that’s been destroyed by the storm, it’s easy to understand where he’s coming from.

Amid a dismal gray and cloudy landscape, Bear’s downcast eyes perfectly convey his sour temper, which is nicely counterposed by plops of pink from his melted ice cream. Bear’s determination not to be cheered up by his patient companions—a sneaky badger, a watchful bunny and a big-spirited, fun-loving, Hula-Hooping moose—is impressive. Anyone who’s ever had a bad day will find Bear’s gloomy mood relatable, and only a reader with a heart of stone could resist the appeal of the dispositional tug-of-war between Bear and Moose.

Cushman propels her story forward with minimal text; her images do most of the work through a pleasing combination of spots and full-page spreads. In one, Moose stands on his head, apparently oblivious to the rain, as Bear sits on a log nearby, wallowing in his misery and letting out a “Blahhhhh. . . .” that spans the entire spread, highlighting Bear’s ennui. Pops of color contrast against the book’s muted palette and enliven the action, especially when it comes to Moose’s multicolored, glow-in-the-dark Hula Hoops.

There’s verbal fun, too, as when Bear, having been sufficiently restored to good spirits by his friends’ efforts, jumps in a puddle and gleefully exclaims, “It’s so splishy and sploshy! Silly and soggy!” Of course, even when the rain stops and the sun starts to shine again, brooding Bear gets the perfect last words: “Blah. Too sunny.”

In Abi Cushman’s delicious moody first picture book, Soaked, rarely has a dreary day been so delightful. Sometimes when you’re in a funk, you just need to stay that way for a while; so it is with Bear. Channeling his inner Eeyore, Bear declares his feelings on the book’s very first page: “Look at all […]
NonfictionSocial Science

Caste

Review by Alice Cary

In The Warmth of Other Suns, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson eloquently traced the lives of the 6 million Black Americans who fled the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration. Never once in that 640-page book did she mention the word racism. “I realized that the term was insufficient,” she explains. “Caste was the more accurate term.”

Her latest book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, is a much anticipated follow-up and couldn’t be timelier. In it, she examines the “race-based caste pyramid in the United States,” comparing this sociological construction to two other notable caste systems: those of India and Nazi Germany. “As we go about our daily lives,” Wilkerson writes, “caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

Wilkerson’s comparisons are profound and revelatory. Chapters describe what she has identified as “the eight pillars of caste,” the methods used to maintain this hierarchy, such as heritability, dehumanization and stigma, and control of marriage and mating. In addition to such insights, including how immigrants fit into the caste system, what makes this book so memorable is Wilkerson’s extraordinary narrative gift. Highly readable, Caste is filled with a multitude of stories, many of which are tragically familiar, such as those of Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray. The story of Sergeant Isaac Woodard Jr. is particularly shattering. Returning home on a Greyhound bus after serving in World War II, Woodard asked the driver to allow him to step off the bus to relieve himself, but the driver refused. When Woodard protested, the driver called the police and had him arrested. The police chief, in turn, blinded the returning soldier with his billy club.

Stories like these are painfully informative, making the past come alive in ways that do not beg but scream for justice. That said, Wilkerson is never didactic. She lets history speak for itself, turning the events of the past into necessary fuel for our current national dialogue.

Dismantling the caste system is possible. Wilkerson points out that Germany did it after World War II. But in the meantime, “caste is a disease, and none of us is immune.” If you read only one book this year, make it Caste, Wilkerson’s outstanding analysis of the grievances that plague our society.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Love audiobooks? Check out Caste and other nonfiction audiobook picks.

In The Warmth of Other Suns, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson eloquently traced the lives of the 6 million Black Americans who fled the Jim Crow South during the Great Migration. Never once in that 640-page book did she mention the word racism. “I realized that the term was insufficient,” she explains. “Caste was the more […]
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Fighting Words

Review by Alice Cary

“I’ve learned that some things are almost impossible to talk about because they’re things no one wants to know,” says Delicious Neveah Roberts, the narrator of Newbery Honor author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s magnificent Fighting Words. The 10-year-old, who goes by Della, already sports a tattoo and openly admits that she has a “big mouth” and that her superpower is, “I don’t take snow from anybody.” (Della uses the word “snow” as a substitute whenever she’d rather use a “bad word,” which is frequently.) “Sometime you’ve got a story you need to find the courage to tell,” Della informs the reader with characteristic directness.

Della is inseparable from her 16-year-old half-sister, Suki. Their mother was incarcerated in Kansas after blowing up a motel room while making meth with both girls at her side. Her parental rights were terminated, and the girls fell through the cracks and continued to live with Clifton, their mother’s boyfriend, in Tennessee. As the book opens, the girls have just made a bold escape from Clifton’s house and have been placed into foster care after Suki caught Clifton abusing Della. Della reveals, “I’d had sixty seconds of terror. Suki had had years.”

Bradley depicts the girls’ story, including Clifton’s abuse, directly but gently, in a way that never once feels inappropriate for a middle grade readership. She carefully recounts the aftermath of their trauma (Suki has screaming nightmares and attempts suicide) as the girls are placed first in temporary care with a woman Della describes as an “emergency replacement witch” and then with cigarette-smoking Francine, about whom Della observes there is “nothing motherly,” but who turns out to be exactly the protector the sisters so desperately need.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley reveals why Fighting Words is the book she was put on earth to write.

Della makes a few friends at her new school, most notably Neveah, with whom she shares her middle name. As Della and Suki debate whether and how to testify against Clifton, Della clashes with her teacher and a bully named Trevor, who likes to pinch girls’ backs to see whether they’re wearing bras. These tensions culminate in a powerful moment in which Della proclaims, “Never touch me again. Never touch me or any girl in this class without permission ever again.”

In all truthfulness, I was reluctant to read Fighting Words when I learned about the topics its plot would include. “How depressing,” I thought. But oh, how wrong I was. Bradley handles these tough subjects in ways that are enlightening, empowering and—yes—uplifting, thanks largely to the irrepressible Della’s engaging narrative voice, which itself is a testament to Bradley’s immense talent.

As their friendship deepens, Della’s friend Neveah, whose family lost their apartment and briefly lived out of their car, lends her a copy of Barbara O’Connor’s How to Steal a Dog. Though Della fails to connect with O’Connor’s tale of another girl in a “tough spot,” Neveah’s articulation of the book’s importance in her life is certain to be echoed by some readers of Fighting Words: “I was glad, you know, to read the book. To know it didn’t only happen to me.”

An award-worthy tale about a feisty survivor, Fighting Words is a story readers will draw strength from, and Della is a heroine they’ll be unlikely to forget.

“I’ve learned that some things are almost impossible to talk about because they’re things no one wants to know,” says Delicious Neveah Roberts, the narrator of Newbery Honor author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s magnificent Fighting Words. The 10-year-old, who goes by Della, already sports a tattoo and openly admits that she has a “big mouth” and […]
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

The Summer We Found the Baby

Review by Alice Cary

At first glance, The Summer We Found the Baby, a short novel about a baby discovered in a basket on the steps of the new children’s library in Belle Beach, Long Island, appears to be a sweet snapshot of life in a small town during World War II. But author Amy Hest packs much into its pages—an intricate plot, deeply imagined characters and relationships and adroitly tackled big issues such as death and unplanned pregnancy—and handles it all with delicacy and care.

Alternating rapidly among three narrators—12-year-old Bruno Ben-Eli; his next-door neighbor, 11-year-old Julie Sweet; and Julie’s 6-year-old sister, Martha—the book begins in the morning just before the library’s opening–day celebrations. Julie and Martha have arrived early with a homemade cake for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, to whom Bruno and Julie have both written letters in the hope that she might attend the day’s festivities. It’s the girls who discover the baby nestled in a basket on the library steps, but it’s Bruno who spots them walking away from the library with the basket. “Holy everything,” he thinks, “Julie Sweet is a kidnapper.”

The action unfolds quickly from this auspicious beginning. With each twist and turn of the plot, Hest is adept at filling in only as much backstory as is needed for each character. The three resourceful children are united by an undertone of sadness and longing. Bruno’s beloved older brother, Ben, is serving overseas, and Julie and Martha’s mother is deceased. The war casts a long shadow over the book’s events, and Hest adds spare but effective historical references throughout the story. 

Hest’s prose is wonderfully unadorned, her narrative voices natural and the story deliciously satisfying. The Summer We Found the Baby is a quiet wonder and a rare delight.

 

At first glance, The Summer We Found the Baby, a short novel about a baby discovered in a basket on the steps of the new children’s library in Belle Beach, Long Island, appears to be a sweet snapshot of life in a small town during World War II. But author Amy Hest packs much into […]

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