bookpagedev

Biography

Playing at war to survive it

Review by bookpagedev

Alex Kurzem had kept his silence for more than 50 years, leaking out to his family only sparse and misleading details about his boyhood in Russia during World War II. Then, in 1997, when he was around 62 years old (he never knew his birth date), he revealed to his son, Mark, this book’s author, that he had witnessed the mass slaughter of his mother, brother, sister and hundreds of other townspeople by local fascist forces. From this, he concluded that he was probably born a Jew. But he was so young when it happened, he cannot recall his original name. The Mascot continues in two stages: Kurzem’s dredging up of additional excruciatingly painful memories until he has pieced together a coherent narrative, and his son’s ultimately successful attempt to document those elusive memories. The ironic twist in this tale is that after the young boy escaped into the woods around the town where the massacre took place, he was rescued by Latvian SS troops who adopted him as their mascot, even dressing him in miniature SS uniforms. He would play that role until the war was over, alternating between being horrified at the brutality of the soldiers who protected him and reveling in the special treatment he received. In 1949, Kurzem immigrated to Australia, where he eventually married and raised a family. Most of the present-day action shifts between Melbourne and Oxford, England, where the author was a graduate student. Poignantly, the elder Kurzem had kept the visible scraps of his memory pictures and official papers in a locked box that he guarded zealously. His ever-so-gradual revelation of the mementos to his son in late-night sessions around the kitchen table makes for a suspenseful unraveling.

Even with the proof of his ordeal and survival it is difficult to believe some parts of Kurzem’s story. By the best estimate, he would have been only five or six years old when he fled into the woods. Yet he says he survived there for weeks, foraging on plants, tying himself into trees to avoid attacks by wolves, eluding soldiers, suffering bone-chilling cold. Still, his other recollections pan out so reliably that perhaps his survival really is the miracle it seems to be.

Alex Kurzem had kept his silence for more than 50 years, leaking out to his family only sparse and misleading details about his boyhood in Russia during World War II. Then, in 1997, when he was around 62 years old (he never knew his…
NonfictionPolitics

A former president’s candid words

Review by bookpagedev

<b>A former president’s candid words</b> Thomas M. DeFrank was a young reporter for <i>Newsweek</i> when, in the fall of 1973, he was assigned to cover Richard Nixon’s newly appointed vice president, Gerald Ford. During DeFrank’s first few months on the beat, it became apparent that the mushrooming Watergate scandal would probably sweep Nixon from office. But it was while DeFrank was getting to know Ford as the dutiful vice president that he developed a high level of respect and affection for him.

Ford, in turn, liked and trusted the reporter and later agreed to do a series of no-subject-barred interviews. The proviso was that his answers would not be published until after his death, thus the title of this book, <b>Write It When I’m Gone</b>. Those interviews, which generally took place at Ford’s homes in Palm Springs, California, and Beaver Creek, Colorado, stretched from 1991 until the fall of 2006, less than two months before he died.

Even off the record, Ford was never vengeful or petty, DeFrank reports. He was congenitally too fair-minded and amiable for that. But he did hold grudges that were not easily neutralized. He disliked Jimmy Carter, who beat him out for the presidency in 1976, although the two eventually became friends. He blamed Ronald Reagan for failing to support him in the ’76 election and thought that Reagan took credit for policies his Republican predecessor had launched. Ford’s loyalty to friends was just as strong as his sense of political propriety: It held rock-steady for his former protŽgŽs, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, even as he watched them plummet in public favor. DeFrank, who’s now Washington bureau chief for the <i>New York Daily News</i>, assiduously documents Ford’s enthusiasms, high among which were his wife Betty, making lots of money from his past political prominence, daily swims, the University of Michigan football team and golf. The picture that finally emerges is of a warm and decent man who valued relationships over policies and who always seemed slightly surprised that other people fell short of his own standards.

<b>A former president's candid words</b> Thomas M. DeFrank was a young reporter for <i>Newsweek</i> when, in the fall of 1973, he was assigned to cover Richard Nixon's newly appointed vice president, Gerald Ford. During DeFrank's first few months on the beat, it became apparent that…
Business & Finance

Creating the innovative bathtub

Review by bookpagedev

Several years ago at a conference on creativity for nonprofit managers, we were asked to design the "perfect" bathtub. Nonprofit managers tend to think creativity is their middle name, so we attacked our task in determined fashion, ready to bring perfect bathing to the world. Sad to say, we came up with few great ideas: "self-cleaning," "built-in head rest" and "soft-sided" didn’t have anyone rushing to buy bubble bath.

If, as people say, we are all "born creative" then maybe our latent artistic side was resting. But resting for too long as the business world speeds on with new products and new ways to reach customers can spell disaster. A new research report shows that failure to innovate is a common trap that will hamper growth for 70 percent of large firms and even destroy entire companies.

We returned to our bathtub assignment, and this time the underpaid, overworked managers worked with perfect escapism in mind. Ideas like "Built-in television and stereo," "automatic aromatherapy sensors" and "massage action tub lining" began to emerge. We were on a roll; our creative juices were flowing.

It turns out we were on to something. These days, manufacturers report stereo and aromatherapy tubs are flying out of bath showrooms. Luck? No, it was creativity and innovation. This month, we examine seven books that promise to help business managers crawl out of the resting rut and get inspired.

If your company needs revving, go find Get Weird!: 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work by John Putzier. This is exactly the kind of refreshing challenge any group of managers can sink into after a long day at the office. Heck, buy one for every manager on your floor and get together over lunch to get weird.

With humor and ingenuity, Putzier challenges today’s mega-companies to reassess some of their personnel, education and marketing practices to make every work environment a fun and productive place for employees. Weirdness, his name for constant innovative and creative challenge for employees, can revitalize morale, sales and workplace cohesiveness. He makes a cogent argument that in today’s tight labor market companies must reinvent the way they retain employees and create new products. Admittedly, just reading some of his ideas gave me new vigor. Putzier is right: creativity has a purpose, and that purpose can revitalize every aspect of your workplace.

While Get Weird is a "let’s get the juices flowing" idea book, Whoosh: Business in the Fast Lane by Thomas McGehee Jr. is a primer for the creative innovation company. McGehee compares old-line corporate practices of the past to innovative companies he says have stayed ahead of the economic curve. McGehee deftly convinces corporate executives that innovation is not a "new" practice, but rather the lifeblood of business.

McGehee, the vice president of a major consulting firm with Fortune 500 clients, drew on his military past as the starting point for a belief in employee innovation. "Whenever I told a Marine what to do, he or she did it. Nothing remarkable there. But when I told a Marine what needed to be accomplished, he or she always did more. When people are free to choose how to get things done they almost always do more." He says current practice tells employees there is only one way to get a job done. That kills innovation in the workplace.

What McGehee calls Whoosh is not about employee perks or warm fuzzies. He says it’s about employee performance. I liked his no-nonsense, straightforward approach to convincing organizations that innovation is the best practice. He says, "no matter how the economy goes, one thing will remain competition. The organizations that are the strongest competitors win. Creation companies are the strongest competitors because they have strength in their people, in their structure and in their ability to use technology to enable both." If that argument doesn’t convince CEOs to open doors for a Whoosh of fresh air, nothing will.

Breakthrough Teams for Breakneck Times: Unlocking the Genius of Creative Collaboration adds another twist to the innovation and creativity puzzle. Authors Lisa Gundry, Ph.D., and Laurie LaMantia want everyone to have a good time at work, and this book is dedicated to the principle that enjoyable teamwork can be one of the most innovative and creative processes going. Sometimes one person’s good idea leads to another’s great idea and someone else’s brilliant idea. Once challenged, and once comfortable with being creative in front of each other, a group can feed off each other’s innovations. The duo cites examples from successful businesses and provides a framework for developing team principles to enhance creativity. The concept of "fit," how well a personality meshes with a corporation’s values, is used to help teams find places for every personality in the creative process. Combining organizational theory and creativity practices, Gundry and LaMantia offer invaluable tools for enhancing business and personal potential, developing creativity and making it all worthwhile. Refreshingly honest, Breakthrough Teams tells managers not to get bogged down on building the team, but to spend time developing creativity. This guide is a great place for managers to start the creative process.

A dreary commute can also be a good time to get your creative juices flowing. One innovative new entry is an audiobook, How To Think Like Einstein by Scott Thorpe and read by Kerin McCue which provides stimulating and thought-provoking listening on one of the greatest creative minds of the 20th century. Thorpe outlines the rule-breaking journey Albert Einstein traveled as he sought to uncover physics’ great mysteries. A master of creative thinking, Einstein wrote in 1949, "It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail." With common sense techniques, Thorpe makes genius sound like a simple process. Rearranging your way of thinking about concepts or problems defines the Einsteinian approach. Break the Rules, Think like a Spider and other exercises get mental juices ready to attack old dilemmas in new ways. Fresh and invigorating, Thorpe’s audio says we can all be Einstein in our own unique ways.

Briefly noted The Other 90%: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life by Robert K. Cooper, Ph.D., is an exercise in unlocking your innovative potential. Cooper’s message is simple; you have more to offer the world than you know. You’ll be surprised at the extraordinary array of physical exercises (even relaxation techniques) and common sense advice Cooper offers to help you unlock the 90 percent of your brainpower you never knew you had.

Thriving in 24/7: Six Strategies for Taming the New World of Work by Sally Helgesen. A series of interviews led Hegelsen, author of The Female Advantage, to develop six strategies for coping with the ever lengthening, more-demanding-than-ever work world. This book offers a little piece of sanity in a confusing 24/7 world. Hegelsen says learn to love your job, make the work world the best place it can be and turn work relationships into something more than corporate connections.

Sharon Secor is a Minneapolis-based writer now experiencing the joys of corporate relocation.

 

Several years ago at a conference on creativity for nonprofit managers, we were asked to design the "perfect" bathtub. Nonprofit managers tend to think creativity is their middle name, so we attacked our task in determined fashion, ready to bring perfect bathing to the…

Fiction

Tension in a changing world

Review by bookpagedev

Nathan McCall’s first novel, Them, shares its name with a 1950s sci-fi horror movie about giant ants made by radioactive fallout. But the title turns out to be more appropriate than one might imagine, for the black and white citizens of McCall’s rapidly gentrifying Atlanta neighborhood of the Old Fourth Ward, where Martin Luther King Jr. was born, find each other just as scary and alien as super-sized bugs.

The story is told through the eyes of Barlowe Reed, a working-class African American who toils in a print shop, where he’s casually exploited by his tobacco-chomping boss. Our first view of Barlowe isn’t hopeful. Disgusted by post-9/11 representations of the flag everywhere, disheartened because his girlfriend’s dumped him and feeling oppressed by the powers-that-be that demand a portion of his meager wages on tax day, he destroys a stamp machine at the local post office. But the scene is a ruse. Barlowe is more an urban philosopher than a brawler, and he mostly watches, waits and takes action when he must as events unfold. McCall, author of the insightful Makes Me Wanna Holler, a meditation on the absurdity of American race relations, proves here that he’s a fine fiction writer as well. His characters are unforgettable. There’s not only Barlowe, but his talented, lazy hothead of a nephew who lives with him and the colorful longtime denizens of the Fourth Ward who are in danger of being displaced by the white folks who move into the neighborhood. One of the newcomers, Sandy, moves into the house next to Barlowe’s. She’s liberal and goodhearted, and Barlowe finds her incomprehensible. Still, a prickly, not-quite friendship develops between them. On the other hand, Sandy’s husband Sean has brought to his new neighborhood such insecurities, like his inchoate racism and uncertainty about his own manhood, that he becomes a danger to himself and others. The results are almost tragic, and it’s that narrow avoidance of catastrophe that gives the book a sort of hard-nosed optimism. Them is a well-executed and sobering examination of the tensions that can be a force for good or ill in a changing community.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

Nathan McCall's first novel, Them, shares its name with a 1950s sci-fi horror movie about giant ants made by radioactive fallout. But the title turns out to be more appropriate than one might imagine, for the black and white citizens of McCall's rapidly gentrifying Atlanta…
Fiction

Life through the pieces left behind

Review by bookpagedev

Some novels are written for adults. Not necessarily because they are sexually explicit or excessively violent, but because they are for readers who aren’t looking for easy answers or paint-by-numbers plots. Snapshots by Israeli author Michal Govrin is such a novel, difficult but thought-provoking in the best way. Snapshots opens with the news that Ilana Tsuriel, a renowned Israeli architect, has died in a car crash. Her husband is sorting through the papers and journals she’s left behind, and these documents form the majority of the novel unsent letters to her father, a pioneer Zionist; sketches of her work in progress; snapshots from her travels; and most surprising, the very intimate account of an affair with a Palestinian theater director, Sayyid. The mix of text, photographs and hand-drawn illustrations create a visual experience rare in fiction, and the shifts in time and place from New Jersey to Paris to Jerusalem increase the sense of mobility and fragmentation of Ilana’s professional and personal life.

The controversial nature of Ilana’s project, creating a series of impermanent structures in Jerusalem highlighting the connection of Israelis and Palestinians to the physical land of Israel, is also at the heart of her conflicted emotional relationships. Through letters home we learn she was estranged from her father, as much as she was drawn to his sincerity and shaped by his ideas. Her ambivalent relationship with her emotionally distant husband, Alain, a French Holocaust scholar, is hampered by her infidelities and his immersion in his work. Even her colleagues question Ilana’s recklessness and are suspicious of her ties with Sayyid. The penultimate section of the book, a day-to-day account of Ilana’s life outside Jerusalem with her children during the Gulf War, is a showdown between her artistic idealism and the political realities of living life in a bomb shelter. Ultimately, Snapshots asks more questions than it answers, and though it dazzles with poetic metaphors, one occasionally longs for a more straightforward story. But Govrin’s novel is a brave experiment that encourages us to ponder the many facets of ourselves.

Some novels are written for adults. Not necessarily because they are sexually explicit or excessively violent, but because they are for readers who aren't looking for easy answers or paint-by-numbers plots. Snapshots by Israeli author Michal Govrin is such a novel, difficult but thought-provoking…
Fiction

Tropical paradise holds a star’s secrets

Review by bookpagedev

<b>Tropical paradise holds a star’s secrets</b> In the mid-1940s, a storm-wrecked boat carrying the film star Errol Flynn washed up on a small island off the Jamaican shore. Flynn fell in love with the island and spent much of the last years of his life there, hosting glamorous parties, swimming off the beautiful beaches and, rumor had it, getting involved with younger and younger women. In <b>The Pirate’s Daughter</b>, Margaret Cezair-Thompson uses this footnote in the life of an icon to spin a tough and tender story about Jamaica’s people and politics. May is the illegitimate daughter of Errol Flynn, born to Flynn and Ida Joseph, a local mixed-race girl whose father, Eli, is instrumental in helping Flynn settle and build on Navy Island. Flynn takes no responsibility for his daughter in fact, he only meets her once and offers no financial or emotional support to Ida. May grows up feeling that she doesn’t belong to the emerging black nation that Jamaica is becoming or to the white society that her father represents. Ida, after leaving Jamaica to find work in New York, returns married to a successful European man, and leads the sophisticated life that she dreamed of as a child. Both women strive to find themselves in a world of shifting political and social allegiances as Jamaica struggles towards independence. Although Cezair-Thompson’s depiction of the aging star may be on target, Flynn is more of a device than a character a way for the author to include anecdotes of the rich and famous in her retelling of the island’s complicated history. In addition, Flynn is another in the line of white men involved with but not married to black women that re-occur in this narrative. Even the Jamaican landscape itself is a character, lovingly described as a place where geographic splendor remains constant amidst centuries of piracy, slavery, immigration and political upheaval. Trinadadian author V.S. Naipaul once wrote of the West Indies that the history of these islands can never be satisfactorily told. With a bold eye that doesn’t flinch at depicting the wide spectrum of Jamaican society and a keen ear for language and dialect, Cezair-Thompson makes an emotional connection to the island’s history and its people.

<b>Tropical paradise holds a star's secrets</b> In the mid-1940s, a storm-wrecked boat carrying the film star Errol Flynn washed up on a small island off the Jamaican shore. Flynn fell in love with the island and spent much of the last years of his life…
FictionHistorical Fiction

Capturing the brave and hopeful spirit of the frontier

Review by bookpagedev

Molly Gloss’ enchanting fifth novel, The Hearts of Horses, is set in eastern Oregon during the first winter of World War I. Many young men had already left for war duty grinning as if they were going off like tourists to see the Eiffel Tower when Gloss’ heroine, Martha Lessen, comes riding down through the Ipsoot Pass, looking for work breaking horses to saddle. Built big and solid as a man and five-eleven in her boots, Martha doesn’t break horses, she gentles them, and she tells her first customer that she can gentle most anything that has four feet and a tail. Word of Martha’s prowess quickly spreads, and soon she agrees to gentle the horses on a circle of six nearby farms a circle she rides daily, picking up a horse and dropping it off at the next ranch for a day so it gets used to different conditions, always accompanied by her own horse Dolly, who doesn’t take any guff and helps settle down the most skittish ones.

The circle route is the perfect vehicle for Gloss to introduce her secondary characters: the ranchers and their families whom the bashful but acutely perceptive Martha meets and befriends as she makes her daily trek. These include George and Louise Bliss, whose son is off to war; the Woodruff sisters, who are borrowing the Bliss’ foreman, Henry Frazer; the Romers Reuben, an alcoholic, and Dorothy, his stoic wife who cares for their three young children and is aging fast; and Tom Kandel, who has rapidly spreading cancer. Gloss’ family has lived in Oregon for four generations, and she has taken the West as a setting for two previous novels, including the James Tiptree Jr. award winner Wild Life (2000), which also featured an unconventional female protagonist. She draws both her equine and her human characters with equal care, writing in sparse yet lyrical prose. During Kandel’s last days, the early morning clucking of his hens seems to him as soft and devotional as an Angelus bell. And as Martha and Henry ride the circle together, they glimpse the dark shapes of cows and horses against the blue-white snow as still as anchored boats on a millpond. Not just a horse story or a tale of the West, Gloss’ moving novel addresses themes of war, alcoholism, illness and death, and commitment to the land and a sometimes lonely, often harsh way of life and is a story not soon forgotten.

Molly Gloss' enchanting fifth novel, The Hearts of Horses, is set in eastern Oregon during the first winter of World War I. Many young men had already left for war duty grinning as if they were going off like tourists to see the Eiffel Tower…
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Trouble in Music City

Review by bookpagedev

Taylor Jackson and Whitney Connolly are two sides of the same coin. While both are beautiful blondes from the wealthy Nashville neighborhood of Belle Meade, the former has eschewed her background (much to her parents’ dismay) to become a homicide lieutenant in her city’s police department, while the latter is a rising star journalist for a local television station, with a twin sister, Quinn, who has gone the full-fledged upper-class housewife route. Jackson and Connolly see their jobs intersect when a body is found on the outskirts of the city, one that bears the unmistakable signs of being the victim of a serial killer. The search for the perpetrator will involve both women, as well as Jackson’s lover, FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin, in a multistate manhunt that will endanger all of their lives including Quinn’s.

In her debut novel, All the Pretty Girls, Nashville resident and former financial analyst J.T. Ellison does a skillful job of capturing the city and its flavors, while taking the police procedural out of its usual New York/Los Angeles/Chicago big-city milieu and placing it in a mid-sized, vibrant Southern city. She’s populated her novel with believable players, on both sides of the law. Murder is the same all over, but the Southern Strangler has a gruesome habit of leaving the hands of his previous victim next to the bodies of his newest ones. This lends a compelling urgency to Jackson and Baldwin’s efforts to track down the brilliant and methodical killer, who quotes Wordsworth and Keats. Jackson’s case load she’s also tracking a serial rapist and her increasingly complicated personal life keeps her head spinning, while Connolly’s suspicions are leading her down a path she’s scared to explore. What they don’t realize is that their different trails are converging.

Southern readers will find All the Pretty Girls a thrilling ride through a well-known locale, and the rest of the country will get a closer view and a different perspective of Music City.

James Neal Webb keeps his hands to himself in the Nashville suburb of Donelson.

Taylor Jackson and Whitney Connolly are two sides of the same coin. While both are beautiful blondes from the wealthy Nashville neighborhood of Belle Meade, the former has eschewed her background (much to her parents' dismay) to become a homicide lieutenant in her city's police…
Fiction

Unraveling a tangled web of deceit

Review by bookpagedev

The comparisons are inevitable: Bright young Brit pens a sharply observed story about life for an immigrant family in modern-day London. Accolades and awards ensue. Roopa Farooki, whose debut novel was nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize, is already being called the next Zadie Smith. But Bitter Sweets is so thoroughly absorbing that Farooki proves she needs no comparison. The Karim family is based on generations of deception. As a teenager in Bangladesh, Henna Rub lies about her age and her family’s social status to marry the wealthy Ricky-Rashid Karim. Devastated by being tricked into marriage, Ricky-Rashid spends little time with his vain and shallow wife in Bangladesh, building another, more satisfying life in London. It’s not surprising when their daughter, Shona, raised in a house so rarely visited by truth, secretly elopes with a handsome Pakistani man, Parvez, and moves to London. But Shona is uneasy in her new home from the start. Staring out the window as they land at Heathrow, Shona is bewildered at the grey patchwork quilt of England: She looked down at her sari, which seemed outrageously garish in this new gloomy and solemn world dressed for a party, she had been taken to a wake. The penniless newlyweds struggle to acclimate to a new country and try unsuccessfully to start a family. Shona asks her father for help, only to learn he’s taken on a second wife, a lovely Englishwoman. Shona and Ricky-Rashid make a deal: He’ll quietly give her the money for expensive fertility treatments, and in return, Shona will keep his secret.

Shona finally conceives and gives birth to twin boys, but even in this blessing there is deception. Shona hides from Parvez a key fact about the twins’ parentage. When the older twin falls in love with Ricky-Rashid and Verity’s daughter, Shona is confronted with the question: Can she unweave decades of lies to save her family? Bitter Sweets is a piercing examination of the blurry lines between love and desire, truth and self-protection and guilt and redemption. It’s no lie: Farooki tells a vivid, unforgettable story.

The comparisons are inevitable: Bright young Brit pens a sharply observed story about life for an immigrant family in modern-day London. Accolades and awards ensue. Roopa Farooki, whose debut novel was nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize, is already being called the next Zadie…
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Is Cornwell’s latest a return to form?

Review by bookpagedev

The pre-release publicity promotes Patricia Cornwell’s latest Kay Scarpetta mystery (number 15 in the series), Book of the Dead, as her best in years, a return to the heady days of From Potter’s Field and Body of Evidence.

So, is there some truth to the hype? Well, yes. And no. The story starts out dramatically enough: Scarpetta is summoned to Italy to consult on a high-profile murder case with a lovely young tennis star as the victim. So far, so good. The evidence is inconclusive, or at least contradictory; frustrated, Scarpetta returns to her South Carolina home. Here, she will hook up with longtime compatriot Marino, who has inexplicably given up police work to become Scarpetta’s forensics lab lackey. He has also shaved his head and become a biker, complete with a pneumatic bimbo girlfriend. Much is made of Marino’s unrequited puppy love for Scarpetta, acted out in increasingly childish attention-seeking vignettes which seem to be appreciated as such only by the bystanders, never by the principals. Regulars Benton Wesley (Scarpetta’s boyfriend, resurrected from the dead a few books back) and Lucy (her devoted, Ferrari-driving lesbian niece) put in appearances as well. Oh, and let’s not forget one of the villains of the piece: Scarpetta’s longtime nemesis Dr. Marilyn Self (I always thought that character should have been named Dr. Jacqueline Hyde), once again up to no good. If you can put aside the over-the-top characterizations, though, Cornwell’s plotting is up to form, and she leads the reader on a merry bicontinental chase toward an unexpected denouement.

So, the final grades: for grisly crime scene depiction, a solid A; for plot development, B+; for characters, a perhaps overly generous C-. The early Scarpetta novels rank among the best of the genre. Here’s hoping that number 16 will mark a return to that form for Patricia Cornwell.

Bruce Tierney was weaned on the Hardy Boys. He writes from Saitama, Japan.

The pre-release publicity promotes Patricia Cornwell's latest Kay Scarpetta mystery (number 15 in the series), Book of the Dead, as her best in years, a return to the heady days of From Potter's Field and Body of Evidence.

So, is there some truth to the…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Sharon Creech’s royally entertaining tale

Review by bookpagedev

<b>Sharon Creech’s royally entertaining tale</b> Siblings Pia and Enzio have been slaving away for their master for years, dreaming of escape. Like most of the people in their village, they yearn to live beyond the banks of the Winono River at the Castle Corona, home to King Guido, Queen Gabriella and their children. This is not your typical royal family. They’re spoiled, clueless and completely irresponsible, which makes them brilliantly funny characters. Living a starkly different lifestyle in the village below the castle are Pia and Enzio, a mysteriously beautiful pair whose admiration for one another is heartbreaking and lovely. Neither has any memories of their past, only that they’ve always been together. When returning home from fetching water one afternoon, Pia and Enzio find a leather pouch a pouch that changes their lives. Eventually, these two families, though living opposing lifestyles, help each other learn more about themselves through a series of comical scenarios. Sharon Creech, winner of the Newbery Medal for <i>Walk Two Moons</i>, creates an unpredictable storyline that emphasizes the importance of family whether you’re royal or not. Although the exact location of the village and castle are never given, Creech writes poetic and mystical descriptions of these places, painting a charming and magical picture of faraway lands. Her writing creates a place of impossible beauty, a setting young readers will melt into.

<b>The Castle Corona</b> is a story of royal proportions, offering readers a unique take on a classic fairytale; lovable, fascinating characters; and an intriguing, spirited plotline.

<b>Sharon Creech's royally entertaining tale</b> Siblings Pia and Enzio have been slaving away for their master for years, dreaming of escape. Like most of the people in their village, they yearn to live beyond the banks of the Winono River at the Castle Corona, home…
Children's & YA

The mysteries of family

Review by bookpagedev

In most ways, Brendan Buckley is not unlike other 10-year-olds. He likes sports (he’s a blue belt in Tae Kwon Do), enjoys hanging out with his friends (especially riding bikes with best friend Khalfani) and is super curious about everything. In fact, he even has a confidential notebook in which he lists both his top-secret scientific discoveries and his as-yet unanswered probing questions.
 
But as a child of mixed race, Brendan has always known he is different and has often pondered his heritage—"Am I white? Am I black? . . . Why do some people just not understand?" Those are just some of the mysteries Brendan records in his notebook and strives to solve.
 
Young readers will be readily drawn into Brendan’s active life, especially after a serendipitous turn of events changes everything for him. A budding rock hound, Brendan attends a mineral convention and meets Ed, the grandfather—the white grandfather—he never knew he had. As Brendan dons his detective hat, the story follows him on his quest to uncover the hidden history behind Ed’s absence.
 
In her first novel, author Sundee Frazier is careful to draw Brendan as a well-rounded character with both silly and serious sides. She weaves suspense into Brendan’s search for self and throws in a bit of science along the way. Readers, even reluctant ones, will read on to see where Brendan’s journey will lead.
 
Frazier, an author of mixed race, is well poised to pen this tale of self-realization and acceptance. She adeptly uses analogies that younger readers can relate to—such as comparing mixed race to the delicate combination of white and black minerals that enhance the beauty of a rock.
 
Science may not be able to explain all the questions in Brendan’s notebook, but it becomes the driving force in his search to discover who he really is. And in the process, he gains not only a new hobby, but a newfound family dynamic as well.

Sharon Verbeten is a freelance writer and former children’s librarian from De Pere, Wisconsin.

In most ways, Brendan Buckley is not unlike other 10-year-olds. He likes sports (he's a blue belt in Tae Kwon Do), enjoys hanging out with his friends (especially riding bikes with best friend Khalfani) and is super curious about everything. In fact, he even…

YA FictionYA

Running away from the future

Review by bookpagedev

At the beginning of Slam, Nick Hornby's first young-adult novel, 16-year-old Sam Jones says that everything in his life seemed to have come together. His divorced mother is finally happy. Sam is doing well at school, at least in his art classes. And, most importantly, he's just met a gorgeous girl named Alicia. For the first time, Sam, a dedicated skateboarder, feels like his life is going as smoothly as the tricks he performs at the local skate park. And then Sam gets hit with a dose of reality that hurts even more than a face full of concrete. Alicia, now an ex, is pregnant, and Sam's about to become a father. Faced with history repeating itself (Sam's parents had him when they were teenagers), Sam does something that seems logical at the time he runs away to the seaside and throws his cell phone into the ocean, convinced that by running away, he can keep reality at arm's length. Thanks to mystical advice from Sam's guru (in the form of a poster of professional skater Tony Hawk), as well as some magical glimpses into the future, Sam discovers that he can't run away forever. In fact, in an odd sort of way, Sam, who's never thought much about his own future, comes to embrace the certainty of having a child, the knowledge that no matter what else happens in this uncertain world, at least he'll have one relationship that stays constant the one with his son. In his popular, well-regarded novels for adults, Hornby has become known for chronicling the exploits of young (and not-so-young) men who live in a state of perpetually arrested adolescence. In Slam, Hornby explores an adolescent who is whizzed into the future and into a new maturity by a responsibility that he may not be ready for, but that he knows he has to face. There are no tidy endings here, but, as Sam says, in real life, I suppose there are lots of twists and turns to come. Narrated by Sam, whose voice is a credible mixture of confusion, anger, indecision and hopefulness, the novel will bring Hornby's writing to a new generation of readers.

At the beginning of Slam, Nick Hornby's first young-adult novel, 16-year-old Sam Jones says that everything in his life seemed to have come together. His divorced mother is finally happy. Sam is doing well at school, at least in his art classes. And, most importantly,…

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