Alice Cary

Children's & YAPicture Book

A gentle and triumphant ode to friendship

Review by Alice Cary

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Paul,” begins the narration of an unusual, vibrant picture book from a Lithuanian writer and illustrator team that quickly veers into the unexpected in the very next sentence. “Wait, that’s not quite right. This story begins in a different way,” adds writer Evelina Daciutè. Daciutè’s lively, meandering narration is just one of the many pleasures of The Fox on the Swing.

This story is indeed about a boy named Paul, who lives in a very tall tree with a father who flies helicopters and a mother who makes mostly orange pottery. Every day Paul walks to the bakery to buy freshly baked rolls for his family’s tea, and on the way home he often encounters a fox on a park swing.

The two become fast friends, although as in most fables, this is a prickly, clever fox. “Being generous is like an ocean,” the fox tells Paul. “Would you like to be a drop in that ocean?” When Paul nods, the fox asks for one of his rolls.

The story is filled with humor and joy, all enhanced by the busy, beautiful collage-style art of Aušra Kiudulaite, which includes a lively cornucopia of helicopters, parades, wild animals, constellations, funny labels and signs on each and every page.

Paul’s storybook life turns upside down when his family moves to a new city, forcing him to leave behind his best friend, Fox. Everything will be better, Paul’s parents promise, but Paul doesn’t see things that way. Happily, an unexpected treat is eventually revealed after the move.

The Fox on the Swing transforms a tender story about friendship and moving into a jubilant, philosophical celebration of unexpected delights. It’s truly a book worth rereading, and new rewards are likely to be discovered each time.

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Paul,” begins the narration of an unusual, vibrant picture book from a Lithuanian writer and illustrator team that quickly veers into the unexpected in the very next sentence. “Wait, that’s not quite right. This story begins in a different way,” adds writer Evelina Daciutè. Daciutè’s lively, meandering narration is just one of the many pleasures of The Fox on the Swing.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Coming out, piece by piece

Review by Alice Cary

Twelve-year-old Claudia Dalton panics when her dad mysteriously disappears, until he sends a postcard saying that he “needs a little time to think some things over” while he visits an old friend. Then he starts sending Claudia a series of mysterious clues in the form of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Claudia works hard to solve each one, hoping the solution will bring her dad home.

Dad, it turns out, has picked a thoroughly unusual way to reveal to his family that he’s gay, but the setup works brilliantly in The Jigsaw Jungle, Kristin Levine’s compelling portrayal of a family in the midst of transition. Levine knows exactly how such a transition feels, as her own husband and the father of their two daughters came out in 2012.

Adding to the excellence of Levine’s tightly drawn plot is the fact that this story is told in scrapbook form—as a series of emails, phone conversations, receipts, flyers and transcripts of old home movies—compiled by Claudia, who’s just trying to make sense of everything.

The Jigsaw Jungle has a wonderful cast of likable and believable supporting characters as well, each with their own issues. Claudia’s grandfather, Papa, is a recent widower, while her new friend Luis is a child of divorce. Levine’s novel adeptly shows how acceptance and change, as hard as they may be, are vital foundations for love. “I decided I’ll just have to get used to the pieces I’ve been given, even if they don’t form the picture I had imagined they would,” Claudia explains.

The Jigsaw Jungle is a triumph of a book, portraying sensitive family dynamics in a loving, engaging way.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Twelve-year-old Claudia Dalton panics when her dad mysteriously disappears, until he sends a postcard saying that he “needs a little time to think some things over” while he visits an old friend. Then he starts sending Claudia a series of mysterious clues in the form of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Claudia works hard to solve each one, hoping the solution will bring her dad home.

NonfictionBusiness & Finance

The vanishing middle class

Review by Alice Cary

What Alissa Quart calls “the failing middle class vortex” is indeed a powerful force, growing stronger every day, as she knows from personal as well as professional experience. When her daughter was born, mounting day care and hospital costs forced Quart and her husband, both freelance writers in New York City, to adjust their lives. Now, as executive editor of the nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Quart spends her days investigating social and economic inequalities.

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America provides an in-depth look at two things people all too often shy away from discussing: money and class. The term standard of living, Quart notes, is used less and less, perhaps because “the notion that a relatively high quality of life should include small pleasures and comforts has faded.”

Quart introduces readers to a variety of people and families being squeezed, whom she calls the Middle Precariat—a “just making-it group,” who “believed that their training or background would ensure that they would be properly, comfortably middle-class,” but whose assumptions turned out to be wrong.

There are teachers driving Uber, grading papers between rides; adjunct professors drowning in debt, whom Quart calls “the hyper-educated poor”; and immigrant nannies caring for wealthy families while their own children are left behind in their home country.

“Each story was like a tiny detail in a giant oil painting that allowed me to understand the whole picture in a different way,” Quart writes. She backs up these anecdotes with clear, sharp analysis, noting that a systemic problem is the undervaluation of caring professions such as teachers, day care workers and parents. She also points to a variety of solutions, including better, cheaper day care, a universal child allowance, public pre-K and universal basic income.

Like Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, Squeezed is a thoughtful, enlightening and painful analysis of the ever-growing divide in the American economy.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What Alissa Quart calls “the failing middle class vortex” is indeed a powerful force, growing stronger every day, as she knows from personal as well as professional experience. When her daughter was born, mounting day care and hospital costs forced Quart and her husband, both freelance writers in New York City, to adjust their lives. Now, as executive editor of the nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Quart spends her days investigating social and economic inequalities.

NonfictionMemoir

Paint by numbers

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, July 2018

As director of the African American Studies program at Princeton University, Nell Painter seemed to be at the pinnacle of her distinguished career. The renowned historian had written numerous books, including the bestseller The History of White People. But at age 64, Painter surprised everyone by leaving Princeton to take up something completely different: art school. The road was anything but easy, as she explains in her bold, brave account, Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over.

Not satisfied with being what she calls a “Sunday painter,” she was determined to study art on a professional level. First she got a BFA at Rutgers University, then she earned an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Amid the tattoos, piercings and bright yellow hair of her fellow students, Painter’s fashion statement consisted of a white T-shirt, black pants and “sturdy” New Balance walking shoes. She was “an exotic in art school . . . a creature from another planet.” Her confidence was hardly boosted when a RISD teacher informed her that she would never be an artist. Adding to her turmoil were anguish and grief over the fact that Painter’s mother was dying on the West Coast, leaving her father depressed and needy, necessitating cross-country trips and interventions.

Nonetheless, Painter persevered, enjoying moments of absolute euphoria at having the time and freedom to paint, while also experiencing interludes of extreme self-doubt and loneliness. In the end, she triumphed by relying on what she calls her “old standbys: education and hard work.”

Painter concludes that “the Art World is racist as hell and unashamed of it,” but she was able to find her own artistic voice by incorporating both history and text into her work which, in a way, brought her career full circle.

Old in Art School is a fascinating memoir about Painter’s daring choice to follow a passion with courage and intellect, even when the odds seemed firmly stacked against her.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Nell Painter about Old in Art School.

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As director of the African American Studies program at Princeton University, Nell Painter seemed to be at the pinnacle of her distinguished career. The renowned historian had written numerous books, including the bestseller The History of White People. But at age 64, Painter surprised everyone by leaving Princeton to take up something completely different: art school. The road was anything but easy, as she explains in her bold, brave account, Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over.

Children's & YAPicture Book

A fascinating expedition for young readers

Review by Alice Cary

When Otis Barton and Will Beebe descended into the ocean’s depths in their bathysphere on June 6, 1930, they became the first humans to see deep-sea creatures in their natural environment. Barton and Beebe’s adventure inside their cramped invention was a great leap into the unknown—one filled with life-threatening risks.

Caldecott Honor-winning author Barb Rosenstock does a phenomenal job of choosing just the right details to bring this achievement brilliantly to life in Otis and Will Discover the Deep. Katherine Roy’s stunning, detailed illustrations show the marine life these two explorers saw off the coast of Bermuda, with gatefold pages that dramatize their otherworldly descent and endpapers that perfectly highlight the excitement and danger at hand. Completing the package are several pages of historical notes, including one from Library of Congress librarian Connie Carter, who was one of Beebe’s assistants. And don’t miss Roy’s fascinating description of her quest for artistic authenticity, which involved everything from building a digital model of the bathysphere to shooting reference photos.

Just as Barton and Beebe partnered to complete their bathysphere adventures, Rosenstock and Roy’s collaboration presents this story in a vivid, unforgettable way. Open these pages and dive right in!

 

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When Otis Barton and Will Beebe descended into the ocean’s depths in their bathysphere on June 6, 1930, they became the first humans to see deep-sea creatures in their natural environment. Barton and Beebe’s adventure inside their cramped invention was a great leap into the unknown—one filled with life-threatening risks.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Lonesome ducks

Review by Alice Cary

Fans of Robert McCloskey’s classic book Make Way for Ducklings will delight in the sly humor of Ellen Yeomans’ new picture book featuring two ducks who are just trying to muddle their way through one of their great challenges—figuring out how to be a duck.

This Duck and That Duck live near the Big Puddle. They’re alone, even though, as This Duck proclaims, “At a time like this there should be Other Ducks. . . . If there were Other Ducks, we would waddle in a line.”

Nevertheless, as spring turns to summer, the pair does manage to figure out swimming (“It’s like waddling but in the water”), and to their surprise, they finally find some other ducks when they peer into the water below. Young readers will be eager to explain just why these reflected ducks simply won’t get in line. Inevitably, autumn appears, and This Duck and That Duck get the itch to fly south, wherever that is. Spring finds them back at the Big Puddle, but this time, miraculously, there is a line.

Illustrator Chris Sheban’s watercolor ducks are wonderfully expressive and a perfect match for Yeomans’ appealing text. If you’re looking for a picture book for the small ones in your own Big Puddle, line right up for The Other Ducks.

Fans of Robert McCloskey’s classic book Make Way for Ducklings will delight in the sly humor of Ellen Yeoman’s new picture book featuring two ducks who are just trying to muddle their way through one of their great challenges—figuring out how to be a duck.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Friendship on the farm

Review by Alice Cary

When a bright yellow chick named Pip hatches, the first thing this inquisitive soul spots is Pup, a beagle snoozing in the farmyard, and thus an unlikely alliance ensues in Eugene Yelchin’s charming picture book Pip & Pup.

It’s not easy to tell a story without words, but Yelchin is a master―the myriad expressions of his illustrations depicting this lovable pair speak volumes. Although his art seems childlike, as if drawn by crayon, every animal’s face leaps to life. An astonished Pip uses his wings like binoculars to first spot Pup, and soon there’s a frantic Pip, who runs away in terror with Pup in eager pursuit. Pip makes a chaotic run through the barnyard, finally attempting to hide back in his newly hatched shell.

Yelchin works more of his magic with that eggshell, having Pip use its pieces as both a rain hat and rowboat during a frightening thunderstorm. Pip rows over to whimpering Pup, offering a rain hat as comfort, establishing their relationship. But as in all friendships, there are ups and downs. Before long, trouble rears its head when Pup accidentally crushes the shell to bits. Can their new friendship be saved?

Russian-born Yelchin, who won a Newbery Honor for Breaking Stalin’s Nose, knows that actions often speak louder than words. Pip & Pup is a wonderful story about how unexpected friendships evolve―and survive. This story is perfect for a quick but quiet burst of adventure before bedtime.

When a bright yellow chick named Pip hatches, the first thing this inquisitive soul spots is Pup, a beagle snoozing in the farmyard, and thus an unlikely alliance ensues in Eugene Yelchin’s charming picture book Pip & Pup.

NonfictionEssays

Life’s a beach and then you die

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, June 2018

If you’re ever stuck in an elevator or airport, just pray for David Sedaris to appear. Time passes quickly with this national treasure of a storyteller.

Reading Calypso, Sedaris’ latest collection of essays, is like settling into a glorious beach vacation with the author, whose parents, siblings and longtime boyfriend, Hugh, feel like old friends to faithful readers. Family gatherings at Sedaris’ North Carolina beach house are featured frequently in this collection of 21 essays, and at the Sea Section (his chosen moniker for his beach house), games of Sorry! become delightfully vicious and the clan gets gleefully nosy when James Comey is said to be renting 12 doors down.

Another favorite topic, not surprisingly, is aging. Sedaris, 61, observes that sometimes life at the beach feels like a Centrum commercial, and soon enough, he and his siblings will join the seniors they see zooming by on golf carts. “How can that be,” he asks, “when only yesterday, on this very same beach, we were children?”

While Sedaris is laugh-out-loud funny in his brilliant, meandering way, it’s his personal reflections that will stay with you. He writes of his sister Tiffany, who killed herself in 2013, admitting that he asked his manager to close the door in her face the last time he saw her. He describes scattering the ashes of his late mother in the Atlantic Ocean, writing, “My mother died in 1991, yet reaching into the bag, touching her remains, essentially throwing her away, was devastating, even after all this time.” Sedaris laments how he and his family never confronted his mother about her drinking, and he worries over the health of his 94-year-old father, who can’t be talked into moving to a retirement home.

Sedaris freely shares all, explaining, “Memory aside, the negative just makes for a better story: the plane was delayed, an infection set in, outlaws arrived and reduced the schoolhouse to ashes. Happiness is harder to put into words.”

 

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Reading Calypso, Sedaris’ latest collection of essays, is like settling into a glorious beach vacation with the author, whose parents, siblings and longtime boyfriend, Hugh, feel like old friends to faithful readers. Family gatherings at Sedaris’ North Carolina beach house are featured frequently in this collection of 21 essays, and at the Sea Section (his chosen moniker for his beach house), games of Sorry! become delightfully vicious and the clan gets gleefully nosy when James Comey is said to be renting 12 doors down.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Claiming the league as her own

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Children's Top Pick, May 2018

History comes alive in Ellen Klages’ captivating novel Out of Left Field. In 1957 San Francisco, 10-year-old Katy Gordon is an ace pitcher who makes a Little League team while disguised as a boy, only to be told she’s ineligible when the coach discovers she’s a girl.

Determined to prove that girls should be allowed in the organization, Katy heads to the library to learn about women who have played baseball. Her research unfolds like a scavenger hunt, with Katy writing about and interviewing several sports pioneers. “Anyone who says girls can’t play baseball is just ignorant about the history of the game,” one former player tells her.

Klages masterfully weaves in a multitude of historical details, addressing complex issues in sophisticated yet engrossing ways. In school, Katy learns about current events like the launch of Sputnik 1, the arrival of a new baseball team (the San Francisco Giants) and the civil rights movement. When Katy is assigned to write about a hero, she makes baseball cards featuring the diverse female players she’s learned about (they’re included in the back of the book along with other historical notes). “There had been a lot of girls like me, and I felt like we were sort of teammates,” Katie says. Out of Left Field is a grand-slam salute to the power of persistence, research and the pursuit of justice.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

History comes alive in Ellen Klages’ captivating novel Out of Left Field. In 1957 San Francisco, 10-year-old Katy Gordon is an ace pitcher who makes a Little League team while disguised as a boy, only to be told she’s ineligible when the coach discovers she’s a girl.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

In search of a great aunt Amelia

Review by Alice Cary

Just when 12-year-old Bea feels as though she’s lost her place in the world, a grandmother she barely knows takes her on the road trip of a lifetime in Rebecca Behren’s latest historical novel, The Last Grand Adventure.

It’s 1967 and Bea and her grandmother, who calls herself Pidge, are on a secret mission: They’re traveling from California to Kansas in hopes of reuniting with Pidge’s sister, who happens to be Amelia Earhart. They plan to reach the house where “Meelie” was born by July 24, on what will be the legendary aviator’s 70th birthday.

Behrens, who’s written about Alice Roosevelt (When Audrey Met Alice) and Roanoke’s lost colony (Summer of Lost and Found), makes this outlandish premise both believable and thrilling. Pidge reveals a handful of letters she’s received over the years, reportedly written by her long-lost sister, filled with intimate childhood details that only family could know. The letters reveal fascinating tidbits of Earhart’s life as well as actual quotes from the aviator herself, supplemented by a series of helpful author’s notes at the end.

Bea, meanwhile, is reeling from her parent’s divorce and her father’s remarriage. With her mother traveling as a journalist, Bea lives with her father, new stepmother and younger stepsister, Sally, who idolizes Bea—much to Bea’s annoyance. Wondering where she fits into this new family configuration, Bea jots down her many fears in a worry journal.

She begins to fill an adventure journal as well when she’s sent to help her increasingly forgetful grandmother adjust to her new retirement home. With little money or food, Pidge and Bea stowaway aboard a train, hitchhike, fly aboard a small plane and more in a desperate attempt to reach Kansas in time.

As they journey, Bea not only gets to know her grandmother but learns invaluable lessons about her own life. She begins to appreciate her mother’s career and to understand that her new stepsister might actually be a gift instead of a burden. Most of all, she learns that she’s a “capable Earhart Girl.”

The Last Grand Adventure is a tightly-plotted, beautifully written homage to the power of sisters, adventure and the enduring mysteries of history.

Just when 12-year-old Bea feels as though she’s lost her place in the world, a grandmother she barely knows takes her on the road trip of a lifetime in Rebecca Behren’s latest historical novel, The Last Grand Adventure. It’s 1967 and the pair is on a secret mission: traveling from California to Kansas in hopes of reuniting with her grandmother’s sister, who happens to be Amelia Earhart. They plan to reach the house where “Meelie” was born by July 24, on what will be the legendary aviator’s 70th birthday.

YA FictionYA

An unforgettable, vital debut

Review by Alice Cary

Jay Coles’ powerful, anguished debut novel, Tyler Johnson Was Here, inspired by so many tragic headlines, is already garnering worthy comparisons to 2017’s award-winning The Hate U Give. Of particular interest is the fact that Coles is a 22-year-old recent college graduate, composer and professional musician whose writing was inspired by the police brutality experienced by his family and community.

The story centers on twin brothers Tyler and Marvin. While a college recruiter from MIT courts Marvin, Tyler gets involved with “a legit thug” in their neighborhood in Sterling Point, Alabama. When the boys attend a warehouse party that’s raided by police, they lose track of each other in the ensuing chaos. One of the officers shoots Tyler, and a video surfaces that shows the unarmed teen saying, “Leave me alone. I’m just going home.”

Marvin is left to grapple with grief, guilt, hate, anger, the legal process and the fight for justice. What this novel may lack in nuance, it makes up in heart, soul and ambition, providing an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the kinds of murders and tragedies fueling the Black Lives Matter movement.

Teen readers will be left with much to contemplate and with no easy answers. As Marvin concludes, “This is only the beginning of a long fight. It’s my turn to speak up and resist.”

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Jay Coles’ powerful, anguished debut novel, Tyler Johnson Was Here, inspired by so many tragic headlines, is already garnering worthy comparisons to 2017’s award-winning The Hate U Give. Of particular interest is the fact that Coles is a 22-year-old recent college graduate, composer and professional musician whose writing was inspired by the police brutality experienced by his family and community.

NonfictionMemoir

A memoir of life on the razor’s edge

Review by Alice Cary

How are families shaped by race, economics, genetics, love, jealousy and rifts? These are the questions Gregory Pardlo ponders in his highly anticipated memoir, Air Traffic. “In studying my family’s destruction, I am studying my own,” he writes in a raw, telling statement.

Pardlo enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame in 2015, when his second book of poetry, Digest, won the Pulitzer Prize. Air Traffic is a narrative digest of his life and those of his family members, several of whom also experienced dramatic rises and falls. The poet delves deeply into a mosaic of memories, chronicling growing up black in Willingboro, New Jersey, in the 1970s and the battles he, his brother, father and other relatives have fought with depression, alcoholism and mental illness.

The Pardlos seemed firmly entrenched in middle-class security until August 5, 1981, when President Reagan fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, including Pardlo’s father. Gregory Sr. never quite recovered from the blow.

Meanwhile, during his teen years, the author’s “self-image was caught in a bitter custody battle between Alex. P. Keaton and Jimi Hendrix,” yet his adult years morph into a yo-yoing stream of failure and success.

The book’s powerful final chapter, “On Intervention,” offers a fascinating account of how Pardlo’s younger brother, Robbie, became the subject of the A&E reality show “Intervention” in 2010. Robbie shot to fame as a musician, once singing backup for Whitney Houston and forming the R&B trio City High, known for its Grammy-nominated hit, “What Would You Do?” Robbie’s drinking, however, caused his life to implode.

“Alcoholism was the Muzak of our familial dysfunction,” Pardlo explains. “Most of the time we didn’t even notice it.” Ironically, the intervention helped the author, not his brother, find his way to sobriety. However, Pardlo writes, “There can be no happily ever after for a recovering drunk like me.” That being said, Pardlo seems to be defying the odds, turning his pain into mesmerizing poetry and prose.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

How are families shaped by race, economics, genetics, love, jealousy and rifts? These are the questions Gregory Pardlo ponders in his highly anticipated memoir, Air Traffic. “In studying my family’s destruction, I am studying my own,” he writes in a raw, telling statement.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A thrilling, timely adventure

Review by Alice Cary

“When people on television talk about walls and documents, I never thought they were talking about my mom,” muses Jason Riazi, the 12-year-old narrator of Nadia Hashimi’s action-packed The Sky at Our Feet. Jason always knew his mother grew up in Iran, but he had no idea that she was an illegal immigrant until he watches immigration officials take her away.

Jason never met his father, an Afghan translator who was murdered while awaiting his American visa. Jason’s mom was already studying in America when Jason was born prematurely, but after her husband’s death, she was too frightened to apply for asylum.

After his mother disappears, Jason goes on the run, leaving his New Jersey home to seek help from his mother’s best friend in New York City. There, he meets an epileptic girl who joins him for an exciting avalanche of events and coincidences. As unbelievable as these circumstances may be, young readers will be swept up in Jason’s likable, sincere narration.

Hashimi’s unusual, riveting thriller provides a thoughtful look at the issues facing two tweens who feel like outsiders.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“When people on television talk about walls and documents, I never thought they were talking about my mom,” muses Jason Riazi, the 12-year-old narrator of Nadia Hashimi’s action-packed The Sky at Our Feet. Jason always knew his mother grew up in Iran, but he had no idea that she was an illegal immigrant until he watches immigration officials take her away.

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