Deborah Hopkinson

Children's & YAPicture Book

A Pilgrim’s grand adventure

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Irish artist P.J. Lynch is known for illustrating books such as the beloved Christmas classic The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, recently released in a 20th anniversary edition. Lynch’s new historical fiction title, The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower, or John Howland’s Good Fortune, the first book he has both written and illustrated, was inspired by the life of Pilgrim John Howland. Howland’s story struck Lynch as a “quintessentially American one, of a man who started out with little and who, through sheer doggedness and good fortune, went on to achieve great things.”

The tale begins with young Howland scurrying through the streets of London to help his master, John Carver, provision the Mayflower for her voyage. Once at sea, Howland and the others endure seemingly endless bouts of bad weather. Incredibly, when Howland is swept overboard in a storm, he's able to catch hold of a rope for the brief moment it’s illuminated by a bolt of lightning.

Lynch vividly shows the harrowing experiences of the colonists during the winter of 1620 to 1621, and recounts the generosity of the Wampanoag tribe—including Squanto—that befriended them. After Carver’s death, Howland could have returned to England but chose instead to stay in Plymouth. An author’s note informs readers that Howland married fellow Mayflower passenger Elizabeth Tilley and had 10 children.

Enhanced by a large format that showcases Lynch’s striking watercolor and gouache illustrations, this fictionalized account of Howland’s story will spark young readers’ interest in learning more about the Wampanaog and English people who encountered one another so long ago.

 

Deborah Hopkinson lives near Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book for young readers is Courage & Defiance.

Irish artist P.J. Lynch is known for illustrating books such as the beloved Christmas classic The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, recently released in a 20th anniversary edition. Lynch’s new historical fiction title, The Boy Who Fell Off the Mayflower, the first book he has both written and illustrated, was inspired by the life of Pilgrim John Howland.

NonfictionSports

Swimming for Olympic gold

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

“I was a stranger,” writes Julie Checkoway in her preamble to this nearly lost story of a remarkable Maui swimming coach, “but it seemed to me that someone ought to try to save it.” Save the story she has, through exhaustive research and sparkling prose. 

In 1932, a schoolteacher named Soichi Sakamoto couldn’t bear to deprive the children of sugar plantation workers from playing in the only recreational water available: a dirty irrigation ditch. Sakamoto got permission to watch the children so they could keep playing in the ditch, and watching turned into a desire to teach. First, Sakamoto showed the kids how to float; then he taught what he called “speed-floating.” Eventually, his innovative teaching methods came to include rigorous physical training and individualized techniques for each swimmer. 

In 1937, Sakamoto challenged the children to join the “Three-Year Swim Club,” committing to three years of total sacrifice and discipline. Their audacious goal: nothing less than placing swimmers on the 1940 U.S. Olympic team. 

Checkoway’s compelling narrative reveals the incredible odds Sakamoto and his team faced: meager budgets, exhausting travel via ship, discrimination in mainland pools. And in the end, of course, the 1940 Tokyo Olympics never took place. If it had, Maui swimmer Fujiko Katsutani would have been a member of the U.S. Women’s Olympic Swim Team. 

Sakamoto wasn’t to be denied. At the 1948 Olympics, one of his swimmers, Bill Smith Jr., won the 400-meter freestyle. Sakamoto became coach of the University of Hawaii swim team, producing seven Olympians and 25 national champions over his long career. Through it all, he adhered to his vision to use “swimming as a means of teaching . . . children life values."

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“I was a stranger,” writes Julie Checkoway in her preamble to this nearly lost story of a remarkable Maui swimming coach, “but it seemed to me that someone ought to try to save it.” Save the story she has, through exhaustive research and sparkling prose.
Children's & YAPicture Book

A secret game to change history

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

John Coy’s many books about sports are especially popular with young readers, and here he brings his knowledge of the history of basketball to tell a timely and inspiring story about John McLendon (1915-1999), the first black coach in the American Basketball Association.

Game Changer explores a historical milestone: On March 12, 1944, members of the white Duke University Medical School team played a secret, illegal game against a black team from the North Carolina College of Negroes in segregated North Carolina. The game, the first of its kind, was arranged by McLendon, who had studied basketball under the game’s inventor, James Naismith. McLendon went on to a successful college coaching career and popularized the fast-paced tempo of the game that we see today.

Randy DuBurke’s powerful illustrations evoke both the 1940s time period and the emotions of young men who understood they were making history on that quiet Sunday morning. Particularly effective are panels that show the “innovative fast-break style of McClendon’s team in contrast to the slower, more traditional style of play." Coy’s text, which includes a bibliography and a timeline, brings the actions of the game to life while at the same time gives young readers enough history to appreciate the event’s significance.

“Today, people don’t think twice about players of different skin colors competing with one another on the court, but it wasn’t always that way,” Coy writes. “Coach John McClendon and those brave players who rose to the challenge in the Secret Game were years ahead of their time.” 

But who won? No spoilers here.

 

Deborah Hopkinson lives near Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book for young readers is Courage & Defiance.

John Coy’s many books about sports are especially popular with young readers, and here he brings his knowledge of the history of basketball to tell a timely and inspiring story about John McLendon (1915-1999), the first black coach in the American Basketball Association.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A young hero’s fate in 19th-century Japan

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Margi Preus has a remarkable ability to create fascinating, page-turning stories that transport young readers to faraway times and places. Whether she’s evoking Norway during World War II or 19th-century Japan, Preus combines impeccable research with strong characterization and plot—the very elements that draw readers into history and spark the curiosity to learn more.

Fans of her Newbery Honor-winning Heart of a Samurai will be delighted to discover that Manjiro (based on the historical figure of Nakahama Manjiro) also appears in Preus’ new novel, The Bamboo Sword. The actual Manjiro was rescued from a shipwreck at age 14 by an American whaling ship and spent time in America before re- turning to Japan. Although initially arrested, he was released shortly before Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo Bay in the summer of 1853, and as the only Japa- nese with firsthand knowledge of English and Westerners, he was an important figure in the opening of Japan to the West.

In The Bamboo Sword, readers experience the arrival of those first strange ships through the eyes of a fictional 13-year-old servant boy named Yoshi, who harbors the dream of becoming a samurai himself, a path not open to someone of his class. But events conspire to put a sword into Yoshi’s hand and to intertwine his fate with both Manjiro and a young member of the U.S. expedition, Jack Sullivan, inspired loosely by pioneering war correspondent and photographer Timothy O’Sullivan.

With its compelling story, block prints, historical photographs, glossary and substantive author’s note, The Bamboo Sword is historical fiction at its best.

 

Deborah Hopkinson lives near Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book for young readers is Courage & Defiance.

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Margi Preus has a remarkable ability to create fascinating, page-turning stories that transport young readers to faraway times and places. Whether she’s evoking Norway during World War II or 19th-century Japan, Preus combines impeccable research with strong characterization and plot—the very elements that draw readers into history and spark the curiosity to learn more.

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

FDR’s most impactful year in office

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

There is nothing so compelling as history well told, whether in print or on film. And viewers who were engrossed by Ken Burns’ recent PBS series on the Roosevelts will find Jay Winik’s new book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History, especially appealing. Winik, who has written about America’s founding (The Great Upheaval) and the Civil War (April 1865), brings his considerable gifts as a storyteller and a talented historian to this new work exploring the pivotal year of Roosevelt’s presidency and of World War II. 

Winik seamlessly sets FDR the man, beset by physical limitations and increasingly bad health, within the context of the complex, high-stakes international challenges he faced. In the spring of 1944, Winik shows us a Roosevelt exhausted and ill, plagued by headaches and a hacking cough—a man who sometimes fell asleep in the midst of dictation. 

Yet Roosevelt was also a “resolute and clear-sighted wartime leader,” a leader unwilling to accept defeat when, as it did during that crucial year, the entire history of civilization seemed to hang in the balance. Looking back, the defeat of Hitler and the success of the Normandy invasion may seem inevitable, but at the time this was far from the case. At the same time, Winik explores in detail the implications of the Roosevelt administration’s decision not to launch military strikes against Nazi death camps. 

As the 75th anniversary of America’s entry into World War II approaches next year, Winik has given us a chance to move beyond simple commemoration to a fuller understanding of the era.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

There is nothing so compelling as history well told, whether in print or on film. And viewers who were engrossed by Ken Burns’ recent PBS series on the Roosevelts will find Jay Winik’s new book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History, especially appealing. Winik, who has written about America’s founding (The Great Upheaval) and the Civil War (April 1865), brings his considerable gifts as a storyteller and a talented historian to this new work exploring the pivotal year of Roosevelt’s presidency and of World War II.
NonfictionHistory

The visitors who transformed Hawaii

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

One of the most rewarding aspects of travel can happen before we leave home: reading about our destination. While a good guidebook is indispensible, a history can do much to enrich our understanding of the place and people we are about to meet.

Such is the case with Susanna Moore’s vibrant new book, Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawaii. A novelist (The Life of Objects) who has also written a memoir about growing up in the 50th state (I Myself Have Seen It), Moore brings considerable storytelling skills to her subject. She sees the history of the Hawaiian Islands as “a story of arrivals,” one that encompasses not only flora and fauna blown by the winds but early Polynesian travelers, explorers, missionaries and whalers.

Moore focuses most intensively on the often heartbreaking clashes that arose when native Hawaiians came in contact with Europeans, beginning with Captain Cook’s landing in 1778. For the native people of Hawaii, foreigners became “the source of the darkness that made darkness.”

It took a little more than a century for this isolated, structured society to undergo profound cultural and social transformations that had a devastating impact. As Moore notes, “the Hawaiian people, thanks to the introduction of diseases to which they had no immunity, and an encompassing melancholia that overtook them with the loss of their culture, came close to disappearing as a race.”

While Moore’s book does not extend to present day, it will likely make readers curious to find out more, which is just as it should be. “The task of understanding the past is never-ending,” she writes. Paradise of the Pacific reminds us that beyond Hawaii’s beautiful beaches lies a complex, multi-layered history we can only begin to appreciate.

 

In Paradise of the Pacific, Susanna Moore sees the history of the Hawaiian Islands as “a story of arrivals,” one that encompasses not only flora and fauna blown by the winds but early Polynesian travelers, explorers, missionaries and whalers.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Biscuits for good behavior

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Ragwood is a farm dog. He’s really, really good at it. Most dogs aren’t—but don’t despair: Ragweed is here to tell you exactly what to do.

Everyone on a farm has a job, and Ragwood can explain them all. Take pigs: Pigs lie in the mud all day. "That’s their job. That’s not your job. Don’t lie in the mud. Mud is lovely. It smells like worms and toes and earwax, so you will really, really want to lie in the mud.” And of course, every farm has chickens. Can you guess what a chicken's job is? Yup, you’ve got it: “Chickens sit on their nests all day to make eggs.” Now, is that a farm dog’s job? No. But would an aspiring farm dog WANT to sit on their nests? You betcha. But as you should take it from Ragweed, if you sit on the chickens’ nests, you will definitely NOT get a biscuit.

You see, the farm dog’s main job is to get biscuits. And just as Ragweed is spectacularly skilled at getting biscuits, author-illustrator Anne Vittur Kennedy is a wizard at creating a hilarious, warm-hearted picture book that future farm dogs (and their families, including parents) won’t tire of reading again and again. From its delicious voice, enticing refrains and satisfying conclusion, Ragweed’s Farm Dog Handbook is one of those deceptively simple but perfectly constructed picture books that should be part of every home—country or city. To paraphrase Ragweed, “You’re going to love this book.”

 

Deborah Hopkinson lives near Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book for young readers is Courage & Defiance.

Ragwood is a farm dog. He’s really, really good at it. Most dogs aren’t—but don’t despair: Ragweed is here to tell you exactly what to do.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

One small step, one giant leap

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Half-Japanese, half-black, Mimi Yoshiko Oliver loves looking at the moon and wants to be an astronaut. In January 1969, she moves from California to the frosty Vermont town of Hillsborough, an unwelcoming place. The farmer next door is always rude, and Mimi is teased at school. Even after she forms a tentative friendship with a girl named Stacey, she’s not invited to Stacey’s home. Then there’s the matter of shop class. Mimi would rather take shop than home ec so she can use power tools to work on her science project, but girls are supposed to “learn how to cook and sew so they can be good homemakers.” 

Slowly, Mimi and her family discover small moments of harmony, like finding the first crocuses in the snow. When Mimi and Stacey decide to challenge the exclusion of girls from shop classes, their courage inspires the entire eighth grade to an act of civil disobedience. 

Told in evocative free verse, Full Cicada Moon is a lyrical portrait of a strong family at a time of immense change, perfect for that budding scientist who loves to look at the stars.

 

Deborah Hopkinson lives near Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book for young readers is Courage & Defiance.

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Half-Japanese, half-black, Mimi Yoshiko Oliver loves looking at the moon and wants to be an astronaut. In January 1969, she moves from California to the frosty Vermont town of Hillsborough, an unwelcoming place. The farmer next door is always rude, and Mimi is teased at school. Even after she forms a tentative friendship with a girl named Stacey, she’s not invited to Stacey’s home. Then there’s the matter of shop class. Mimi would rather take shop than home ec so she can use power tools to work on her science project, but girls are supposed to “learn how to cook and sew so they can be good homemakers.”
NonfictionHistory

How houses became homes

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

No one writes about history like Judith Flanders. Reading her work (The Victorian City, Inside the Victorian Home) is like going back in time with an expert guide at your side.

In her new book, The Making of Home, Flanders ventures beyond one city or time period to explore the political, religious, economic and social factors that led to the notions of home that still influence us today. Make no mistake—this is not a history of decoration or architecture. As Flanders puts it, “It is not the style of chair that is my primary concern, but how people sat on it.” 

While such a broad topic might be dry in the hands of a lesser writer, Flanders boasts an astounding ability to seamlessly weave facts and ideas. In her discussion of the evolution of lighting inside and outside houses, we’re treated to Robert Louis Stevenson’s comments on gas street lamps: “The city-folk had stars of their own; biddable domesticated stars.” Like those stars, every page of this remarkable book sparkles with insights. 

If you’re left curious to know more about, say, the impact of technology on kitchen design and women’s lives, The Making of Home includes extensive notes and an 18-page bibliography.  

As Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home.” In The Making of Home, Flanders helps us appreciate how much there is to know about something we care about so deeply.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

No one writes about history like Judith Flanders. Reading her work (The Victorian City, Inside the Victorian Home) is like going back in time with an expert guide at your side. In her new book, The Making of Home, Flanders ventures beyond one city or time period to explore the political, religious, economic and social factors that led to the notions of home that still influence us today.
Children's & YAPicture Book

A leader for us all

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

BookPage Children's Top Pick, August 2015

Fannie Lou Hamer was a tireless champion of civil rights, from the moment she attempted to register to vote in 1962 until her death in 1977. Malcolm X called her “the country’s number one freedom-fighting woman.” In 1964, Hamer came to prominence at the Democratic National Convention, where she delivered a speech that aired on national television. An older white man once expressed what many felt, telling her that she did “what he was afraid to do.” 

Voice of Freedom

Award-winning poet Carole Boston Weatherford and debut artist Ekua Holmes bring Hamer’s courage and legacy to life in this striking volume. The large, attractive format shares Hamer’s life story through powerful, first-person poems and colorful, detailed collage illustrations. The poems often incorporate Hamer’s own words, and source notes, a timeline and bibliography are included in the back matter.

Voice of Freedom 2As Weatherford tells us in her author’s note, Hamer was an unlikely heroine. Born in 1917 into a large sharecropping family, she married Perry “Pap” Hamer in 1944 and worked with him on a plantation. She first became active in voting registration efforts after realizing she didn’t even know she had the right to vote. Being arrested and beaten only solidified her resolve, and she became a leader and inspiration to others. 

“All my life I’ve been sick and tired. Now I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” said Hamer. Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer is a fitting tribute to her unforgettable spirit.

 

Illustrations © 2015 Ekua Holmes. Reproduced by permission of Candlewick.

Deborah Hopkinson’s next book, Courage & Defiance, will be released this fall.

This article was originally published in the August 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a tireless champion of civil rights, from the moment she attempted to register to vote in 1962 until her death in 1977. Malcolm X called her “the country’s number one freedom-fighting woman.” In 1964, Hamer came to prominence at the Democratic National Convention, where she delivered a speech that aired on national television. An older white man once expressed what many felt, telling her that she did “what he was afraid to do.”
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Forging a new path

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Calpurnia fans, rejoice! Callie Vee, heroine of Jacqueline Kelly’s Newbery Honor winner, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, is back. The sequel picks up in the year 1900, just after a rare snowfall in central Texas fulfills one of the budding young scientist’s dreams. 

The only daughter in the midst of six brothers, Callie continues to find herself at odds with her parents’ notions of what is proper for a young girl. But in her 13th year, Callie finds ways to forge her own path, whether it’s learning to type to gain knowledge from the town vet (and earn money for college) or helping her younger brother Travis hide his latest wild creature from the rest of the family.

As it happens, 1900 brings disasters big and small, from the heartbreaking drowning of a litter of mixed coyote-canine pups to the mysterious disappearance of Callie’s five-dollar gold piece. More tragic, however, is the news from Galveston. Despite Granddaddy’s attempt to warn the mayor of the city that the ominous plunge in the barometer means the approach of a dangerous storm, a tragic flood strikes. And while the Tates’ relatives are safe, Callie faces a new challenge—learning to forge a relationship with her 17-year-old cousin, Aggie, who comes to stay. 

Peppered with quotations from Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate is historical fiction at its very best, transporting us into the world of characters we can’t help but love.

 

Deborah Hopkinson’s next book, Courage & Defiance, will be released this fall.

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Calpurnia fans, rejoice! Callie Vee, heroine of Jacqueline Kelly’s Newbery Honor winner, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, is back. The sequel picks up in the year 1900, just after a rare snowfall in central Texas fulfills one of the budding young scientist’s dreams.
NonfictionHistory

A family’s efforts in the French Resistance

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Paris in World War II—a time when young people in the French resistance risked their lives every day. Often the difference between life and death, between escape and capture, was a matter of luck, of coincidence, of fate.

Charles Kaiser’s remarkable portrait of one Parisian family examines the high cost and often tragic consequences that accompanied the decision to resist. The Cost of Courage is also a story of recovery and resilience, brought to life thanks to the author’s commitment to honoring Christiane Boull-oche-Audibert and her family.

Kaiser, the son of a diplomat, first met the Frenchwoman in 1962, when he was 11 years old. An enduring bond developed between the two families, but one topic always seemed off-limits: World War II.

As Kaiser would eventually come to learn, Christiane—along with her sister Jacqueline and brother André—was an active member of the French resistance, while their parents and older brother, Robert, were not. Christiane helped transmit radio messages, and coded and decoded telegrams to and from London. Christiane and Jacqueline managed to evade the Gestapo, but André was wounded and sent to a concentration camp. Still, after the invasion of Normandy, it seemed that the family would persevere. Those hopes would be tragically dashed just three weeks before the liberation of Paris.

A former New York Times reporter, Kaiser brings a journalist’s eye to uncovering one family’s painful history. The Cost of Courage is a poignant reminder that there are many untold stories of World War II, but that those who lived them will soon be gone.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Charles Kaiser’s remarkable portrait of one Parisian family examines the high cost and often tragic consequences that accompanied the decision to resist. The Cost of Courage is also a story of recovery and resilience, brought to life thanks to the author’s commitment to honoring Christiane Boull-oche-Audibert and her family.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Ribbit, my liege

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Hopper is a happy frog who loves to play. But Hopper also has a problem—he doesn’t quite fit in with everyone else. In fact, Hopper seems so different that an old turtle, sounding suspiciously like another wise elder who lived near a swampy pond, tells him, “Hmm . . . young pond-hopper . . . perhaps you are not a frog.”

Now, as everyone knows, a frog that is not a frog can only be one thing: a prince! And that’s how it happens that Hopper embarks on a quest to find a princess who can, with just one kiss, turn him into a prince once again.

Like all heroes on a quest, Hopper encounters enormous challenges. First of all, it’s just not that easy to find a likely princess—especially in the forest. Hopper meets a woodpecker and a skunk, but when he runs into a dangerous fox, he begins to think the whole quest might be a very bad idea.

Then, miraculously, Hopper’s life is saved in the nick of time by a ball—a ball chased by a dog who loves to give wet, slurpy kisses. A dog whose name just happens to be Princess.

Jackie Urbanovic, author of the New York Times best-selling Max the Duck series, has created a fanciful, funny tale that reminds us that although we may not turn out to be princes or princesses, in the eyes of a true friend we will always be royalty.

 

Deborah Hopkinson’s next book, Courage & Defiance, will be released this fall.

Hopper is a happy frog who loves to play. But Hopper also has a problem—he doesn’t quite fit in with everyone else. In fact, Hopper seems so different that an old turtle, sounding suspiciously like another wise elder who lived near a swampy pond, tells him, “Hmm . . . young pond-hopper . . . perhaps you are not a frog.”

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