Lynn Beckwith

Draw near the fire, light the lamp and hear the gentle story of Crow-Girl, her grandmother and the family she builds for herself when she is left alone in the world. With the calm drama of the incoming tide, beloved Danish writer Bodil Bredsdorff brings this story of kindness, bravery, evil and redemption to the English-speaking world in The Crow-Girl. What a gift her words are.

Crow-Girl and her grandmother live all alone in a small cottage, tucked into a cove. Theirs is a life filled with the joys and challenges of staying alive. They keep the fire burning, gather food from the sea, cook their ancient stews and do all the mundane and comforting tasks that make up life.

It soon becomes clear that the grandmother is nearing the end of her life. She spends her final days instructing her granddaughter about the ways of life and death. She warns her of the dangers of eating bad shellfish, tells her to sleep far from the fire and describes the different types of people in the world. One day, after Crow-Girl makes a wonderful stew and brews up a cup of tea, she realizes that her grandmother has died. "The girl was about to ask what she should do. But suddenly it dawned on her that this was exactly what she could not do, what she could never do again."

Wearing her grandmother's sturdy gray shawl, Crow-Girl goes out to meet the world. Through her travels, she finds the types of people her grandmother has told her about, those who make you feel inside "as if you are drinking a good, warm soup" and those who "cause you to freeze inside, even if you are sitting before a roaring fire and have eaten your fill." Crow-Girl relies on her grandmother's advice and her own intuition. And, when she returns to her cottage by the sea, the orphan girl finds a new family, created by her own wit and heart.

Precious few books are translated into English every year. Reading a marvelous tale like this one makes me wish for many more.

In this companion volume to her novels The Giver and Gathering Blue, beloved author Lois Lowry brings the threads of the previous books together in an unforgettable way. Her third society, a utopia called Village, is made up mostly of people who have escaped from other, more oppressive places.

The inhabitants of Village welcome the downtrodden and the weary, giving them food, shelter, clothing and education. The newcomers are eventually made citizens. A man called Leader eventually gives each his or her true name, whether it is Stocktender, Seer or Messenger. But something is amiss in Village. In frightening and subtle ways, people are changing, especially Mentor, the beloved schoolteacher. He once loved all children, especially the new arrivals who needed him most. But now he is leading the charge to close the utopia's borders, saying that he wants to keep new arrivals out to preserve Village for the villagers. But will closing the borders save Village? Is there danger ahead for the inhabitants of Lowry's utopia?

As the book unfolds, Lowry asks the reader to consider what it means to be human. Is it the love of knowledge or the love of things? Should we welcome the weak or protect what we have? What is the balance between the needs of citizens and the needs of oppressed people from outside a nation's border? These questions are as ancient as human history and as current as the front page of today's newspaper. Lowry skillfully tackles them through the story of Matty, the book's young hero and one of the first people to notice the changes in Village. With his beloved dog, Matty embarks on a quest to find a missing Villager before it is too late.

His journey makes Messenger more of a fairy tale than a contemporary narrative, though the book's underlying ideas are modern. We have a boy who is just beginning to discover his true gifts, a Forest which actually attacks travelers, a Leader who risks his life for his citizens, and a devastating conclusion that will certainly leave readers breathless, shocked and forever changed. This reviewer can't stop thinking about it.

Minerva Kalpin, the star of the new Depression-era novel Chig and the Second Spread, is so tiny that her nickname is Chigger, after the little red insect that lives in the hills around her hometown, Niplak. Niplak might be small, with only about 100 families sprinkled through the hills, but Chig loves it. She's a new pupil at Miss Barkus' one-room school and excited to "dip her toe into the river of learning." Though just four feet tall, Chig is a year older than the other beginning students. Her mother taught her at home so she would not be too far behind her peers and hoped for a growth spurt that never came.

Chig loves school and Miss Barkus, but all is not well in class. First, Chig is so quiet that she often can't be heard. She worries about becoming invisible to those around her. To make matters worse, the class bully Ed Beemus taunts her and makes hurtful comments about her height. Then one day, during lunch, Chig notices the missing "second spread" on her classmates' sandwiches. Instead of meat and ketchup on their biscuits, there is just ketchup. The lack of food is a sign of hard times, a signal to Chig of the financial worries of the outside world. Soon she, along with her trusted teacher, come up with a plan to stem the tide, at least in their little town.

Author Gwenyth Swain includes many historic details about small-town Depression-era life in this charming novel. The general store has the required wood-burning stove where the "chair testers" spend their hours gossiping. Recess is filled with pretend games, intense marble tournaments and inevitable lunch swapping. Swain's wonderful sense of rural living will earn her comparisons to novelists like Kate DiCamillo, Sharon Creech and Cynthia Rylant. She is an author who deserves her place in that sorority.

Lynn Beckwith is a second grade teacher in Nashville.

The tale of Frances Scott Key, huddled in a prison off the coast of Baltimore, anxiously looking for the stars and stripes of the American flag, is the stuff of legend. Amy Winstead was taken by the story of the national anthem after visiting Washington, D.C., with her family and has written a lovely account of the song's evolution.

Blending fact and fiction, Winstead, who based her book, in part, on research at Fort McHenry, tells the story of Jed and Nathan McTavish, two boys who worked on their father's oyster boat in the Chesapeake Bay. While selling oysters to the American soldiers, the boys are captured by British sailors and taken to a truce ship to wait out the battle. The British sailors assure them that it will not take long for their troops to capture the fort, but Nathan and Jed are not so sure. They are "Yankee Doodles" through and through. From there, the story becomes a tale of watching and waiting. The boys meet others on the ship Colonel Skinner, Dr. Beanes and Francis Scott Key.

Lush watercolors burst into life as the battle begins in earnest. The McTavish boys tell the men that their father is serving in the Maryland militia. As an oysterman, he has a keen knowledge of the bay and the many ships sunk there. All the prisoners realize the difficulty of the battle when the rockets begin to fall, and the patriots' ammunition seems to miss its goal. But, in the morning, as we all know, the flag is still there, and the British are forced to retreat into the Atlantic.

The Star-Spangled Banner is a wonderful tribute to a beloved tune. Little readers will love the detailed pictures, from the soldiers' brightly colored uniforms, to the immense ships, to the red glare of the rockets. Brave and smart, Jed and Nathan are a wonderful pair of protagonists. Together, they help bring an unforgettable era to life.

For young readers who have wondered where the national anthem came from, this volume brings history to life with an exciting story and stunning illustrations. Readers curious about the real facts behind how Key's song came to be will be inspired to find out more.

Though born with an unusual name, Cedar B. Hartley prefers to stay out of the limelight. "As for me, I avoid the main swell of street action and drift toward the puddles," she says. "A puddle of people is full of rich deposits." Cedar, sometimes called Cedy, loves the people in her puddle. There is Carmello, her best friend and direct opposite; her mother, an earthy type who has to work two jobs to hold the family together; and her brother Barnaby, who got in trouble and had to be sent away. Cedar misses having a father the story she has been told about him is that he died of a heart attack. Shortly after her 12th birthday, though, things begin to change.

Drawn beyond her little puddle, Cedar meets Kite, a boy of few words but enormous physical gifts. The son of circus folks, he can swing through the trees like a bird and balance on his hands. Through Kite's quiet friendship, Cedy's puddle becomes quite large indeed. When her friend's dog needs an operation, Cedy and Kite organize a circus to raise the necessary funds. As the children collaborate to pull the production together, each character finds out his or her importance in the show and in the community. When she hears gossip about her father and brother, though, Cedar doesn't know what to think. Just when she is about to give up, Oscar, another new friend, shores her spirits. "Cedar, I think you . . . I mean, you planted seeds," he says. "Did you ever think what a thing would grow? You have a green thumb for people."

This debut novel from Murray, who is Australian, is sure to please. The first-person account is filled with wonderful colloquialisms from Down Under, which are explained in Cedy's glossary at the end. Whimsical line drawings add to the tale. Cedy's acrobatic moves are drawn to perfection even her failed ones! The story feels like a long conversation with a thoughtful, open and literate teenager; it was a disappointment to turn the last page and realize the conversation was over. Bravo for Cedar B. Hartley, the star of her own circus!