2book multi

by Trisha Ping

CHRISTMAS WITH THE KENNEDYS
Caroline Kennedy shares some of her family's most time-honored holiday traditions in A Family Christmas. After a brief introduction, and a reproduction of a letter Kennedy herself wrote to Santa from the White House in 1962, the book moves on to include dozens of musings on the season from authors, musicians and public figures. It encompasses the traditional (Irving Berlin songs, Bible verses, Robert Frost poems) as well as the surprising (who in the family is a Run-DMC fan?) and is beautifully illustrated in watercolor by award-winning artist Jon J. Muth, who also worked with Kennedy on her anthology A Family of Poems.

A Family Christmas is not quite as intimate as its title might imply the book includes few personal stories or anecdotes. But the solid selections easily stand on their own merit, and Kennedy's eclectic, erudite collection of poems, carols and stories is sure to become one that readers will return to year after year.

TRADITIONS AROUND THE WORLD
It's time to think about the whys behind the whats. Christmas Around the World, a beautiful pop-up book illustrated and engineered by Chuck Fischer, highlights the ways people worldwide (well, in Europe anyway, though there is a brief section on Latin America and the U.S.) celebrate the season. Dynamic 3-D spreads on Italy, Germany, France and Russia are complemented by pull-out books and fold-out flaps, where text by Anne Newgarden gives details on that region's unique holiday customs. Russia's pages are dominated by a large pop-up of their double-headed imperial eagle. The spread on France is particularly festive, with the white dome of Montmartre rising above charming cobblestone streets crossed with star-shaped garlands and filled with Parisian shoppers. Christmas Around the World is the perfect introduction to foreign customs for young children.

Meera Lester limits herself to investigating only 101 holiday customs in Why Does Santa Wear Red? . . . and 100 Other Christmas Curiosities Unwrapped. The 101 curiosities include songs, stories, craft ideas, pop-culture quizzes and recipes, in addition to solving the mystery of Santa's sartorial choices. Like Newgarden and Forbes, Lester shares European and American Christmas traditions, including more esoteric figures like France's PÂre Fouttard (St. Nicholas' evil counterpart) and Italy's La Befana, who declined to accompany the Three Wise Men and has been looking for the Baby Jesus ever since. Not a book that's necessarily meant to be read from cover to cover, Why Does Santa Wear Red? is a portable size, making it easy to dip into whenever you have a moment to escape the holiday frenzy.

Christmas: A Candid History by Bruce David Forbes is a more in-depth look at Christmas customs and the reasons behind them. From the Puritans' ban on the holiday to today's Christmas culture wars, Forbes leaves no stone unturned, digging up every detail about the holiday in America. The result is an interesting book that is sure to make you the biggest Christmas know-it-all at the office party.

COOKING WITH SANTA
Everyone's favorite gift-giver has a taste for more than just Christmas cookies. In Santa's North Pole Cookbook, the jolly old elf shares Christmas recipes gleaned from his years of traveling around the world. More than 70 of Santa's favorites are presented here, as told to writer Jeff Guinn (The Autobiography of Santa Claus), and accompanied by stories from Santa and cooking tips from his personal North Pole chef, Lars.

CATCH HIM IF YOU CAN
At first it's not completely clear whether writer Bob Eckstein is making a serious attempt to find the first snowman in The History of the Snowman . . . until you reach the end of the first paragraph, that is, and realize you're off on a tongue-in-cheek look at the snowman in film, song, cartoons, advertising and literature throughout history. In the 1920s, for example, Frosty was a pickled, skirt-chasing, under-the-table lush who bore a striking resemblance to W.C. Fields ( Both started . . . parading crimson noses and enjoying prolific silent movie careers based on their reputations as charming drunks. ) before a short-lived rehabilitation in the 1960s. At the close of 20th century, the snowman endured the white trash years, appearing in (horrors!) a Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen movie, and playing the villain in abysmal slasher pics like 1996's Jack Frost. Eckstein does claim to have found the very first snowman, but we won't ruin the fun by revealing when and where.

AUTHORS FIND HOLIDAY INSPIRATION
Christmas stories can warm even the coldest of hearts. Perhaps that's why every year, another best-selling author joins the crowd of writers who release books with holiday themes. This year, memoirist and teacher Frank McCourt enters the ring with Angela and the Baby Jesus, illustrated by Loren Long. This story, set in 1912 Ireland and starring a six-year-old Angela (McCourt's mother, of Angela's Ashes fame), is an endearing fable that will delight both adults and children in fact, Scribner is publishing a large-format picture book edition for the younger set to read on their own.

Biography, Classics, Fiction

Fiction Classics Biography

Lovely gifts for literary folks

Feature by Lacey Galbraith

by Lacey Galbraith

STEINBECK'S CAMELOT
Unexpected gems whether rediscovered works or reissued classics are welcome surprises, and John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is just such a treasure. Christopher Paolini, wunderkind author of the bestsellers Eragon and Eldest, has written a foreword for this little-known Steinbeck work, and included in this edition are letters from the author to both his literary agent and the book's original editor.

Steinbeck, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, began writing The Acts of King Arthur in 1958, but as Paolini writes, he stopped working… sometime in late 1959, just as he seemed to hit his stride. Nine years later, he died. It would be his last work. The book's genesis began in Steinbeck's childhood, that time of life when influence is key for many artists. Parents with less than eager readers should take heart: In his introduction, Steinbeck writes that as a child, "words written or printed were devils, and books because they gave me pain, were my enemies." When an aunt gave him a copy of Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, "fatuously ignor[ing] my resentment toward reading," antagonism changed to fascination. He was drawn in, hooked by the language and the storytelling. Translating the legend's magic to future generations of children became his intent, but for numerous reasons, completing the task proved a challenge. What he did accomplish, however, is enchanting all the same. Its handsome dust jacket, its shadowy and vintage-esque illustrations, Steinbeck's prose: King Arthur and his noble knights are as dramatic and marvelous as ever here.

THE TOLSTOY HOUSEHOLD
Song Without Words: The Photographs and Diaries of Countess Sophia Tolstoy by Leah Bendavid-Val is one of the more beautiful books published in time for the holidays. In September of 1862, Sophia Behrs married Count Leo Tolstoy in Moscow. The ceremony was opulent, Bendavid-Val writes, the countess shy and a little afraid. During the course of her 48-year marriage, the Countess Tolstoy bore 13 children (seeing only eight live to adulthood), ran a lively household, managed the day-to-day business affairs on their estate, Yasnaya Polyana, 60 miles outside Moscow, meticulously hand-copied her husband's prodigious literary output and still found time to write daily entries in her diary and take more than a thousand photographs, most of these during the 25-year span from 1885-1910.

Divided into chapters with simple categorization The Family, Servants and Peasants, Artists, Illness and Marriage the book is a fascinating glimpse into not only Russia during the 19th century, but also life as an aristocrat during that time. The photographs are stunningly elegant: landscapes of the verdant pond and bathhouse at Yasnaya Polyana, informal self-portraits of the countess with her family or alone by a window, tending to her plants in the soft light of a winter day. Her marriage was a demanding and passionate one, but she viewed her husband as a genius and took countless photographs of the iconic writer.

Her style is forthright and unsentimental, never heavy-handed. She worked with an accomplished eye, one imbued with a tender love for its subjects. In addition to the publication of this book, a traveling exhibition of her work is planned for 2008. The countess was a woman devoted to her family and her role within it, but she was also a highly creative and fierce individual. As her great-grandson writes in the foreword, "you were a worthy Lioness."

SHORT AND SWEET
Packaging, presentation and of course, highly crafted fiction, are the obvious draws inherent in McSweeney's intriguing One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box. That which comes in miniature often goes hand-in-hand with cute, but this boxed set of short fiction leans less toward precious and more toward captivating. Comprised of three small books, it comes in a slipcase with cover art designed by Jacob Magraw-Mickelson. His black-and-white illustrations are highlighted with the occasional fleck of shimmery gold, and as they wrap and curve around the corners of the case in endless detail, they tell a story all their own. The books inside, though, are as clever as their covers are beautiful. Each is a collection of short fiction by a different author Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape by Sarah Manguso, Minor Robberies by Deb Olin Unferth and How the Water Feels to the Fishes by McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers and no one story runs longer than 500 words. Also referred to as snap fiction or flash fiction, short-shorts are poetry magnified. There's no room for error. A reader's attention can't stray. The writer must capture immediacy and intimacy in a matter of words. The art of the short story is made purer if not more finely wrought when distilled down to the essence of its form. The folks at McSweeney's get this, hence, One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box. Stories to slide in your back pocket, slip in your purse, carry with you throughout the day. Perfect as a gift for those who love quirky, new-style fiction, this collection will also appeal to readers with short attention spans.

THE POWER OF POETRY
Poetry Speaks Expanded is the newest edition of the 2001 bestseller Poetry Speaks. Like its predecessor, it takes a traditional form (poetry) and adds a 21st-century twist (audio). Poetry is meant to be heard and not just read. Poetry Speaks Expanded takes 47 poets and, across the span of three audio CDs, features them reading selections from their work. There are 107 poems total, each presented in written form alongside a short, biographical sketch of the author. Critical essays by well-known writers add to the anthology's comprehensive scope. In more ways than one, it's a hefty collection.

Nineteenth-century poets like Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Walt Whitman are represented, as are 20th-century greats like Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and Wallace Stevens. Anne Sexton's here, as is Ezra Pound and e.e. cummings. New additions to the anthology include Jack Kerouac and, in the biggest coup of all, James Joyce. Previous difficulties with securing the rights to his work prevented his inclusion in 2001, but now readers can listen in awe as he reads from Anna Livia Plurabelle in Finnegans Wake. Poetry is the oldest of art forms. It's fitting, then, that here its voice rings louder and ever more true.

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

A celebration of native ways during a season of plenty

Feature by Lynn Beckwith

by Lynn Beckwith

Political correctness might be a tired concept to many, but it's done wonders for the world of children's books. Now, young readers can learn all about the customs and cultures of people of color, including those who lived on North American soil long before Columbus, the Pilgrims or the Vikings arrived.

Verla Kay's simple, rhyming text in Broken Feather gently informs the youngest reader about the life of a young Nez Perce boy. Broken Feather loves his home and life a life filled with hunting, harvesting, dancing and time spent with family. But this existence is jeopardized by the arrival of white settlers.

Early in the narrative, the reader sees white men and their long guns, hunting the land. Later, the wagons start arriving, and the territory becomes crowded with new settlers "bringing wagons/Cutting trees/Building houses/Where they please." The words of Broken Feather's father cut to the heart of the story, just as the settlers cut to the heart of the forests surrounding the Nez Perce land. Stephen Alcorn's stylized block prints add a wonderful extra dimension to the story. The author's note and final map of the Northwestern states add details that older readers and parents might want to know about the history of the Nez Perce people.

With her newest volume We Are the Many: A Picture Book of American Indians, Doreen Rappaport has written a beautiful nonfiction book about notable Native Americans. The artistic team of Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu illustrates each chapter with their signature watercolors, filled with detail, emotion and life.

Young readers will love the book's brief biographies, which employ both native and familiar terms (did you know that "Asiyahola" is the Seminole name for Osceola?). They'll marvel at the number of different tribes that live on our continent. Some familiar characters are included in the book (Sacajawea, Squanto and Jim Thorpe), but readers will also learn of William McCabe (one of the Navajo code talkers) and the Conley sisters (who argued the Wyandot Indians' land ownership case before the U.S. Supreme Court). Readable and accessible, this lovely volume fills in many of the blanks left by textbooks.

Paintings by Oneida artist Lisa Fifield and stories by Ojibway writer Lise Erdrich comprise Bears Make Rock Soup. Each brief tale is based on a principle of Native American lore. Both animals and people play the role of helper, and the earth is revered and respected.

Erdrich's gentle language is natural and has a cadence that makes it perfect for reading aloud. In hues as varied as the earth they celebrate, Fifield's pictures spill across the page. Though these are new stories rather than fresh interpretations of old narratives, each has the feel of a familiar and much-loved tale. "The nest is our home, our Earth. We share it with all creatures. Because of this there is always hope and life continues," Erdrich writes. Her book is a true treasure.

While the previous stories will be of greater interest to younger readers and listeners, Joseph Bruchac's The Winter People is historical fiction aimed at an older audience. Set in 1759 during a global conflict between France and England, the story opens in a little village in Quebec, one of the arenas of the war. Based on historical fact, Bruchac's novel is a retelling of true events through the life of Saxso, a young Abenaki boy who fights against the British and their Stockbridge Indian scouts.

After the battle, which left much of their village destroyed, the surviving Abenaki people attacked the retreating Bostoniak (as they called the British) and followed them to rescue family members who had been kidnapped. All the help he receives along the way shores up Saxso's bravery. His family sustains him with their gentle teachings, and a Southbridge warrior admires his courage all part of the young warrior's coming-of-age.

Bruchac, who is of Abenaki descent, is known for his dedication to retelling the stories of his people, which are often forgotten or left out of history books. This novel is one of his best.

Family & Relationships, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Family & Relationships

Challenge the way you think about love

Feature by Sarah McCraw Crow

by Sarah McCraw Crow

Valentine’s Day. If those two words inspire dread rather than desire, take heart; a new crop of books offers advice and wisdom, whether you’re out there looking for The One, long married and bored with your sex life, or downright heartbroken.

BYE BYE LOVE
The qualities that we usually look for in a partner—sense of humor, charisma, beauty, good family, intelligence—are often red flags in disguise, write Michael Bennett, M.D., and Sarah Bennett in F*ck Love: One Shrink’s Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship. Dr. Bennett, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, and his daughter Sarah, a comedy writer, teamed up for a previous book, F*ck Feelings, in which they advised that paying less attention to feelings helps you manage life better. The Bennetts write in an irreverent, sometimes profane style—for instance, each chapter, devoted to a red-flag trait, includes F*ck in its title: “F*ck Beauty,” “F*ck Charisma” and so on. Despite the irreverence, the Bennetts’ advice is sincere and sensible. They explain how and why readers should seek partnership qualities (common goals, shared effort when times get tough) more than the red-flag traits. Though it includes advice for readers in relationships, this book is most useful for those in the dating world.

THE RIGHT MATCH
Susan Quilliam’s How to Choose a Partner covers some of the same material as the Bennetts’ book but takes a quieter, more meditative approach. She refers to classic novels like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd for anecdotes. A British psychologist, author of 22 books and advice columnist, Quilliam also teaches classes on love and sexuality. “We now approach partner choice with bigger expectations, deeper confusion, and heavier pressure than ever before,” she writes, offering advice on meeting potential partners (aim for a “slow river”: put your energy into groups that offer a steady flow of different people) and what to look for in a partner. Quilliam emphasizes partnership qualities, breaking these down into goals, values and personality traits. The book has a straightforward style, with appealingly quirky illustrations.

SPICE IT UP
Sex is the glue of marriage, writes Dr. Kevin Leman, a psychologist and author of more than 50 books about marriage and parenting. In Have a New Sex Life by Friday: Because Your Marriage Can’t Wait Until Monday Leman notes that what happens outside the bedroom affects what happens inside the bedroom, and readers need to consider the different ways that women and men communicate and process emotions. The book follows a five-day structure, considering a different aspect of sex (why women need sex, why men need sex, get your mother out of the bedroom) each day. This book is not for everyone; Leman writes from a Christian perspective for married, heterosexual couples. That said, his advice on how to talk to your partner about sex, and how to incorporate new sex positions and more “spicy” techniques into your routine, is frank, openhearted and sensible.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE
Carrie Jenkins’ What Love Is: And What It Could Be is not a self-help book, nor is it a collection of heartwarming essays. Instead, Jenkins aims to come up with a definition of romantic love that suits her as both a philosopher and a human being. A professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Jenkins walks the reader through theories about romantic love past and present, drawing from classical philosophy, science and literature. This might sound dry and academic, but Jenkins adds fun with pop culture references and vivid images. She explains biological arguments (humans fall in love because it leads them to reproduce) and societal arguments (romantic love is a product of social expectations and traditions), and she posits that love has a dual nature. She shows how our understanding of romantic love has changed over time, and she hopes it will come to include polyamory, because she’s married, with a long-term boyfriend. I wish Jenkins had revealed a little more about her personal life, which she refers to in the book’s prologue: “On the mornings when I walk from my boyfriend’s apartment to the home I share with my husband, I sometimes find myself reflecting on the disconnects between my own experiences with romantic love. . . .” I’d love to know what else she reflects on, as she goes from one partner to another.

HEALING FROM HEARTBREAK
Meditation teacher and Buddhist practitioner Lodro Rinzler takes on heartbreak in Love Hurts: Buddhist Advice for the Heartbroken. Rinzler offers ancient Buddhist wisdom in a youthful, playful style. The book’s opening lines: “If you’re reading this, you’re probably heartbroken. I mean, why else would you pick up a book about heartbreak? I’m sorry you’re heartbroken.” For this book, Rinzler met with dozens of people who shared their stories of heartbreak, not just romantic heartbreak but all sorts of loss—giving up a child for adoption, losing a parent, losing family members. The book is made up of about 50 short chapters, and Rinzler suggests readers flip to the chapter they need at the moment (“If You Feel Like You Will Never Love Again,” “If You Are Feeling Angry,” “If You Need to Hear a Less Bizarre Joke”). It also offers a primer on mindfulness meditation, and on the concept of love in the Buddhist tradition—which includes loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity—“we include in our heart the people we like, the people we really don’t like, and the vast number of people we have never even met,” Rinzler writes. As to why our hearts break, Rinzler is succinct: “Your heart breaks because life isn’t what you thought it would be.” Love Hurts is a wise, funny companion and a reminder that we can move through loss and beyond it.

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Fiction, Literature

Fiction Literature

Celebrating National Poetry Month

Feature by Charles Wyrick

by Charles Wyrick

In his introduction to Three Centuries of American Poetry: 1623-1923, editor Robert D. Richardson, Jr., cuts straight to the chase in order to defray any criticism that this new anthology of poets is just another lump in the already overstuffed shirt of the Western canon. To quote Richardson, "There ain't no canon. There ain't going to be any canon. There never has been a canon. That's the canon." Though Richardson's collection doesn't totally debunk literary tradition, it does attempt to widen perceptions about poetry and literature in general. Rather than posing as a who's who of American poetry, Richardson and co-editor Allen Mandlebaum explore poetry's various forms. Their refreshing approach emphasizes diversity and invention. The collection places anonymous hymns and spirituals side by side with the big names in American literature. In the end, what Three Centuries of American Poetry reminds us is that poetry is a fluid form. A canon is a standard, a fixed point by which measurements are drawn; in short, canons are static. Poetry is ever-changing. Richardson and Mandlebaum's vision treats poetry as part of a grand continuum. In the spirit of this celebration of verse, here's a brief look at four poets writing today who excite us with their unique creations.

Those who known Michael Ondaatje as author of the bestselling novel The English Patient might be surprised to find out that Ondaatje is an also an accomplished poet. His new book entitled Handwriting deals with the imprints or impressions humans make on the natural world. Writing beautifully about his native country of Sri Lanka, Ondaatje's poems take us in and out of the teeming jungles that form such an important part of his country's character. But Ondaatje is not what one would call a nature poet. His interest lies more in watching humans struggling against greater forces. In Buried Ondaatje follows a bronze buddha as it is taken from a temple into the jungle to be hidden from thieves during war. Through minimal line construction he builds a remarkably lyrical description that intertwines religion and myth into his characters' encounters with the lush yet unforgiving landscape. Here individuals struggle under religious law and natural law as the poem reveals its complex and haunting portrayal of the immutable spirit of humanity and the indomitable power of nature.

Like Ondaatje, Philip Levine builds grandiloquent portraits out of regional materials. Instead of bejeweled buddhas, Levine deals in slag heaps, sliding garage doors, poolhalls, and parking lots. Writing about the industry-worn landscape of Michigan in The Mercy, Levine finds inspiration in industrial images. In the poem Drum, oil barrels and trash mounds transform into the sleeping forms of "A Carthaginian outpost sent/ to guard the waters of the west." Here and elsewhere Levine makes imaginative discoveries out of his surroundings. In forgotten refuse, Levine sees an ancient army. Throughout his new collection discoveries such as these are made. Yet Levine's great gift as a poet lies not only in his keen eye for catching surprising associations, but in his compassion. Levine's poems will dovetail from imaginative daydreams into powerful meditations that explore suffering, time, and transcendence. Through a hard-won alchemy that sets life against industry, humans versus machines, Levine addresses hopes, aspirations, and desires. More than a poet of things, he is a poets of beings, a chronicler of individuals and families whose lives are tied to a land of machines. All of the poems that comprise The Mercy involve us in Levine's understanding of not only the details of labor but the lives hidden deep within industry's shadows.

Unlike Ondaatje and Levine's somewhat geocentric work, Louise Gluck's new book Vita Nova focuses on less easily identifiable terrain. In the collection's title poem, Gluck coolly relays the particulars of a dream. Gluck often uses abstract concepts for launching the themes in her work, choosing dreams, memories, myths, or philosophical conundrums as keys to her poetic explorations. Vita Nova's recurring theme is grief. The poems in her book repeatedly express the sorrow of losing a loved one. Through her artistry Gluck seeks to position her grief in relation to herself and to the other forces that shape her life. Yet balancing sorrow with life doesn't make poetry. What carries the book is Gluck's voice. Using a verse form of her own invention, she manages to sound both elegant and informal in her maneuvers with and around her sorrow. Her writing style invokes a grave tone that sounds graceful and profound even when syntax belays informality. Gluck is a true master of her language in the manner by which she draws her life-learned themes out of the carefully staged, elegant yet powerful lines of her art.

Like Gluck, Rita Dove, the greatly heralded former Poet Laureate of the United States, is less a poet of place and more an archaeologist of the self. Yet unlike Gluck, Dove's sense of self is closely interwoven with her deeply felt pride in race. Several poems in her new collection On the Bus with Rosa Parks find her telling tales of women who fought for racial equality through peaceful action in their everyday lives. In Rosa a short, quiet, and beautiful homage Dove honors the power of Rosa Parks's political action by matching the simplicity and dignity of Parks's protest with a simple, memorable poem. Doing nothing was the doing Dove says of Parks, and this beautiful line both encapsulates and honors Parks's courageous action. The subtle lyrical strength of this powerful poem testifies not only to Rosa Parks but to Rita Dove and the power her words will have over generations to come.

Whether addressing a place or a feeling, private or political action, poetry lives through individuals and their voices. So forget the Western canon and try out some new poetry this spring. Maybe April will turn out better than predicted.

Nonfiction

Nonfiction

Celebrating the season of the Cub

Feature by John C. Williams

by John C. Williams

It’s a new world, baseball fans. The Cubs are World Series champs for the first time since 1908—and there’s plenty to read this spring about the team’s success. The lovable losers stopped losing by employing a manager untethered to traditionalism, a load of young talent and an analytics-savvy front office. This sort of data-driven thinking has become a favorite topic of baseball books, and we get another strong entry this year. The gem of the season, though, takes us back to an earlier era and a much rowdier and more dysfunctional bunch.

To start with the team of the moment: It’s hard to overstate the enormity of the Cubs’ triumph. Just three years ago, they were fresh off an abysmal 96-loss season; in this very space, a reviewer had the gall to call the Cubs “inherently funny.” Oh, how the tables have turned. The last laugh goes to Scott Simon, whose My Cubs: A Love Story is a brisk, sweet romp through Cubs history to the glorious present. Who can forget the numberless celebrity Cub fans who emerged at the 2016 Classic—your Bill Murrays, your John Cusacks, your Eddie Vedders? Simon, host of NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday,” was among them, if not so frequently the object of the Fox cameraman’s gaze. Hard to question his bona fides, though. “Uncle Charlie” was Charlie Grimm, who managed when the Cubs last appeared in the Series in 1945. “Uncle Jack” was longtime broadcaster Jack Brickhouse. Neither of these men was Simon’s uncle in the technical sense, but they were close enough to get him access to Wrigley as a boy and a lifelong Cubbie bug.

The personal bits are the best parts here. Simon also finds some deep cuts, such as a remembrance of second baseman Ken Hubbs, whose star shone bright in the early ’60s before a plane crash snuffed it out. Most of the rest is familiar to the initiated—the goat, the Bartman, the victory just lived—though sprinkled liberally with Simon’s Cubs-related doggerel. The Chicago faithful should eat it up, baseball fans with an ear for whimsy will be amused, and no one can begrudge it (Cleveland devotees excepted).

BUILDING A DYNASTY
More straightforward, though deeper, is Tom Verducci’s The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse. The stars of this show are Theo Epstein, the curse-dispelling general manager who earned his first star with the Red Sox, and Joe Maddon, the unorthodox coach and, as is reported here, big Pat Conroy fan. Verducci, who got plenty of access to his subjects, handles Epstein’s transition to the Cubs from the Sox and Maddon’s coaching philosophy. He structures the story of the team’s construction around a game-by-game description of the 2016 Series. It’s an effective and entertaining breakdown of what looks to be the next MLB dynasty.

THE FUTURE OF STATS
You can be sure the Cubs front office is hip to the stats that are the subject of ESPN analyst Keith Law’s Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think about Baseball. The subtitle, in all its verbosity and italicization, nicely encapsulates the author’s impatience with atavistic analysis. And it provides the three-part structure for the book.

In the first section, Law brings the hammer down on stats like batting average, RBI and fielding percentage—pillars of baseball cards but irrelevant to a player’s true quality. In the second, he discusses more revealing measures like on-base percentage and fielding independent pitching. In the third, he applies modern stats to questions like the Hall of Fame and discusses where the future of baseball analytics is going—particularly with the advent of MLB’s Statcast product, which promises to give us new information and to make hard-to-quantify abilities like defense easier to grade.

Many readers will already know the undeniable truths here (like the idiocy of saves and pitcher wins); on some of the less familiar concepts (like weighted on-base average, or wOBA), the book is, unfortunately, a bit murky. In most of its sections, though, it qualifies as a useful introduction to (or refresher on) statistical fundamentals—assuming the reader doesn’t mind a little snark, a flat attempt at humor here and there or a condescending tone. Pete Palmer and John Thorn’s The Hidden Game of Baseball (to which this book owes a great debt) is better stats through dense mathematical analysis. Michael Lewis’ Moneyball is better stats through narrative. Smart Baseball is better stats through polemic.

DYSFUNCTIONAL FUN
One team that most certainly did not believe in “smart baseball” was the 1970s Oakland A’s, which took three straight Series from 1972–74. Jason Turbow tells their tale in Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s. This team is a perfect fit for Turbow, a wonderful storyteller who gave us a rollicking look at major league players’ daily lives in The Baseball Codes. These A’s were a dysfunctional bunch, known almost as much for their fighting in the locker room as for their play on the field. (Manager Dick Williams could shrug off his own role in one of these scrums by telling the press, “And don’t forget, I had five or six scotches at the time.”)

What arguably fueled the winning was the one person the A’s hated worse than each other: owner Charlie Finley. He was a dictator, a micromanager and a showman. He favored loading up the bench with pinch runners; one of his prized signings was a sprinter who couldn’t read a pitcher’s pickoff move. And he was a skinflint, a quality that earned him the enmity of his players and that famously drove off star pitcher Catfish Hunter. The beauty of Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic is that it works on two levels: as a great yarn but also a sharp illustration of the game as it existed just before free agency changed it forever. Turbow tells the story with a facility that makes it the read of the season.

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality

Nonfiction Religion & Spirituality

Easter journeys of life and love

Feature by Howard Shirley

by Howard Shirley

The Easter season is a time for pondering life’s promise and seeking new direction for the path ahead. It is also a time of love, for the love of Christ is at the heart of the Christian experience. This Easter, five new books offer inspiring journeys of change, hope, amazement, empowerment and love.

“You are one decision away from changing your life forever,” writes Craig Groeschel, bestselling author (Soul Detox) and founding pastor of Life.Church in Edmond, Oklahoma. Unfortunately, we don’t always recognize that decision when it comes along or make the best choice. But like the proverbial domino, each decision knocks into the next, and soon we find ourselves in circumstances, for good or ill, that we never imagined and never intended.

Recognizing those moments of decision and following God’s guidance is the focus of Groeschel’s latest book, Divine Direction: 7 Decisions That Will Change Your Life. The seven decisions are characterized by the actions that define each circumstance: Start. Stop. Stay. Go. Serve. Connect. Trust. Using life moments, humor and biblical examples, Groeschel explores how these decisions arise in our lives and how God’s word offers wisdom and encouragement in every circumstance. Divine Direction is an engaging read, with both challenges and insight, pointing the reader toward making conscious, deliberate, life-changing decisions with confidence in God’s plan. If you are struggling with challenges, whether overcoming past pain or seeking a better future, Divine Direction will be a welcome guide.

JOURNEY TO THE CROSS
North Carolina pastor Steven Furtick explores God’s love through Christ’s words on the cross in Seven-Mile Miracle: Journey into the Presence of God Through the Last Words of Jesus. Furtick weaves the story of the seven-mile walk to Emmaus, where the resurrected Jesus revealed His place in Scripture to two of his followers, with the seven sentences Christ uttered on the cross. Imagining these statements as mileposts along the way to Emmaus, Seven-Mile Miracle examines not only how each of Christ’s words fulfilled prophecies about Him, but also how each sentence matches our own experiences and struggles in life—and offers us hope, through Christ, in this world and the next. Furtick’s writing is approachable and accessible, but also offers deep insight into Scriptural truths. Whether you’re looking for a compelling Easter read or want to grow richer in your faith at any time, the Seven-Mile Miracle is a journey worth taking.

THE POWER OF GOD
Another journey winds its way through James Robison’s Living Amazed: How Divine Encounters Can Change Your Life. Through autobiography and personal testimony, the renowned evangelist and minister traces the moments of amazement he has found—and continues to find—in his walk with Christ. From miraculous answers to prayer, to unexpected direction and even unwanted (yet needed) spiritual correction, Robison reveals how the Holy Spirit has worked in his life and in the lives of others he has encountered. Filled with interesting anecdotes and firm conviction, but also an uplifting openness towards others, Living Amazed encourages the reader to seek a deeper relationship with Christ and to trust Him in all things. Amid these insights and Scriptural teachings runs Robison’s call for unity in the Christian faith, and a challenge to overcome denominational disagreements and embrace every believer as part of the body of Christ, working together to serve Christ’s purpose. Robison’s life story is remarkable, and his challenge to personally embrace the limitless power of God is compelling. Robison has lived a life of amazement, and Living Amazed calls everyone to do the same.

WOMEN AND THE BIBLE
The rise of feminist thought has brought a swell of challenges against the Bible and its treatment of women. From the admonition that wives should “submit” to their husbands to Paul’s instruction that women should “remain silent” in church, the Bible faces questions and outright rejection by many activists. Wendy Alsup counters those arguments through in-depth analysis in Is the Bible Good for Women? Using the Christian principle that the Bible’s purpose is to point to Christ, Alsup argues that even the most troubling passages of Scripture reveal God’s love for women and their status as equal heirs of Christ. Throughout the book, she reveals the historical and cultural realities behind laws, stories and restrictions that are troubling today, placing these strictures in context both in their time and in our biblical understanding. In the end, Alsup argues, the Bible is not only good for women today, but also at the heart of a truly empowering identity for all God’s daughters.

LOVE IN ORDINARY DAYS
I can think of no more empowering book for either God’s daughters or sons than Maria Goff’s inspirational Love Lives Here: Finding What You Need in a World Telling You What You Want. In beautiful, touching and often amusing stories, Goff, wife of bestselling author Bob Goff (Love Does), offers wisdom gleaned from her life as a mother, neighbor and wife. And a life of love it is. From imaginary lava flows down staircase steps to actual dangers in war-torn Iraq, she shares a life both ordinary and extraordinary, and through that life the love God has for us all. This is not a book you gobble up in a reading rush. Rather, Love Lives Here is like a home-cooked meal with cherished friends, full of moments to be savored, each chapter a delightful morsel for the soul. It is a night around the table—laughing, talking, sharing, full of smiles and sometimes tears. Love lives in Love Lives Here, and Goff’s words will linger in your heart.

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Women poets who challenge boundaries

Feature by Julie Hale

by Julie Hale

Offering invaluable perspectives on gender, politics and life on the domestic front, these four diverse poets work in a range of styles to create work that’s moving and deeply personal.

Channeling the quick-change nature of contemporary experience, Morgan Parker’s intoxicating There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé is both an of-the-moment book and a collection for the ages. In aggressive poems packed with pop-culture references, Parker explores her identity as a black woman, often writing without the constraints imposed by punctuation. The freedom gives her work a sense of breathless, unchecked urgency.

From Beyoncé to Michelle Obama, Parker invokes a gallery of cultural icons as she probes the nature of African-American womanhood. “Will I accidentally live forever / And be sentenced to smile at men / I wish were dead,” she writes in “The President’s Wife.”

Filled with mid-stanza mood shifts, the poems track the movement of Parker’s mind, flying high on a cloud of grown-up sophistication one moment (“records curated to our allure, incense, unconcern”), then telling the world to go to hell (“I don’t give any / shits at all . . .”). “I live somewhere imaginary,” Parker writes. That place, the reader suspects, is poetry.

Afro by Morgan Parker

I’m hiding secrets and weapons in there: buttermilk
pancake cardboard, boxes of purple juice, a magic word
our Auntie Angela spoke into her fist & released into
hot black evening like gunpowder or a Kool, 40 yards of
cheap wax prints, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a Zulu
folktale warning against hunters drunk on Polo shirts and
Jägermeister, blueprints for building ergonomically perfect
dancers & athletes, the chords to what would have been
Michael’s next song, a mule stuffed with diamonds & gold,
Miss Holiday’s vocal chords, the jokes Dave Chapelle’s
been crafting off-the-grid, sex & brown liquor intended
for distribution at Sunday Schools in white suburbs, or in
other words exactly what a white glove might expect to
find taped to my leg & swallowed down my gullet & locked
in my trunk & fogging my dirty mind & glowing like
treasure in my autopsy

A POISED DEBUT
Layli Long Soldier creates a work of dignity and power from the seed of a single word in the haunting collection WHEREAS. A member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, Long Soldier draws upon the bureaucratic language of the U.S. government—specifically that of the 2009 congressional apology to Native Americans—using the term “whereas” as the foundation for an extended cycle of poems that includes brief, concrete pieces and lengthy prose narratives. Tension simmers beneath the surface as she reflects on her culture, sense of identity and family: “Whereas her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota, / therein the question: what did I know about being Lakota?”

In ways that feel fresh and innovative, she plays with word patterns and typography to produce poems that appeal to the eye as well as the intellect. She can stop the reader cold with a stunning image, as in “Steady Summer,” when “two horseflies love-buzz / a simple humid meeting / motorized sex in place.” Long Soldier is such an assured, versatile poet that it’s difficult to believe this is her debut.

ECO-CONSCIOUS
Pastoral poems typically celebrate the beauty of the great outdoors—Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” is a classic example—but for Rebecca Dunham, the pastoral tradition’s benign portrayal of humans at one with nature is no longer valid. She upends the tradition in Cold Pastoral, an urgent collection inspired in part by her research into the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Dunham interviewed oil rig workers, oystermen and others affected by the spill, and she incorporates their stories into poems such as “To Walk on Air,” in which crew members jump from the burning rig: “. . . feet cycling air. / Their boots / pierce cloud as they crash / into a sea stirred to wildfire.” For the men in “Pump Room,” the earth is “a blue balloon,” the bit of the oil drill “a pin pushed / as far as it can go, until—everything / that could go wrong was going / wrong.”

Filled with images of desolate beauty, Cold Pastoral does the important work of bearing witness. In “Black Horizon,” Dunham writes of “dark / pools oiling sands of blinding / white”—a vision that “never fails to shock.” Dunham’s work preserves and reminds us of that shock at a time when we can’t afford to forget.

POETIC CONTRADICTIONS
Hard Child, the second collection from award-winning poet Natalie Shapero, is a book of abrasive beauty. Detached and Plath-like, Shapero’s approach can be clinical at times, and many of her poems seem cold and removed. Yet she creates connections with the reader through the use of black humor and unexpected rhyme and wordplay.

In first-person poems that often portray the narrator as an outsider, Shapero explores motherhood, gender and history. In “Secret Animal,” she writes, “I would rather / eat straight from the cup of my palm, as / though I’m my own secret animal: fed / from the far side of a link fence, trusted / in spite of warnings.” For the poet, everyday experience is often spiked with menacing signifiers. In “Monster,” a new baby outfit reminds the speaker of the jacket a child wore in Schindler’s List, inspiring a bleak consideration of the past.

Shapero’s poetic voice is at once irascible and appealing, cynical and comical. It’s a tone she employs without isolating her audience—one of the many pleasures to be found in this engaging collection.

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Offering invaluable perspectives on gender, politics and life on the domestic front, these four diverse poets work in a range of styles to create work that’s moving and deeply personal.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Words at play

Feature by Julie Hale

by Julie Hale

April is a time for celebrating the power of poetry—its expressive potential, anything-goes embrace of subject matter and (yes!) capacity for play. It’s never too early to spark an appreciation of language and verse in young readers. The books below are a great place to start.

ADVENTURE AT THE MARKET
Part of poetry’s appeal is its ability to elevate and celebrate everyday experiences. Michelle Schaub’s Fresh-Picked Poetry: A Day at the Farmer’s Market (ages 4 to 8) is a prime example of this principle. The 18 works in this spirited book chronicle the adventures of a young boy and girl during a trip to the farmer’s market. Schaub communicates the carnival feel of the occasion in “Market Day Today”: “Farmers chat. / Musicians play. / A neighbor- / stroller- / dog parade.” From “Sally’s Sweet Corn” (“Eat it fast. / Eat it slow. / Crunch in circles. / Nibble rows.”) to “Market Melody” (“Twing, twang, twiddle, / thrum-a-rum— / fiddle pluck / and banjos strum.”), Schaub captures the sounds, sights and smells of the market. Dynamic watercolor pictures by Amy Huntington reflect the pleasure and wonder of the youngsters as they peruse produce, sip lemonade and try to keep their frisky dog in check. This irresistible collection is sure to inspire many market expeditions.

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
Jane Yolen explores the earth’s hidden mysteries in Thunder Underground (ages 5 to 10). The soil, the sea, the city streets—all conceal bustling, secret worlds, and Yolen shows what goes on there in this engaging group of 21 poems. “Spelunk” is a spellbinding descent into the mouth of a cave, where stalactites form “fairy-tale castles,” while “Subway” tracks the endless activity of a train, “growling as it goes from street to street.” Yolen’s skills as an innovative verse-maker are on full display as she plumbs nature’s depths in poems about hidden rivers, percolating volcanoes and busy insect colonies. Josée Masse’s mixed-media illustrations feature an adventuresome pair of children, along with half-hidden surprises that await excavation, like pottery shards and fossils. Yolen uses language and imagery in ways that are never less than arresting. This is a superb collection that will expand the reader’s understanding of both poetry and science.

POETRY IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS
The idea of spending the night outside makes Lucy, the heroine of Tamera Will Wissinger’s Gone Camping: A Novel in Verse (ages 6 to 9), quake in her hiking boots. But with her grandpa and her brother, Sam, she braves a stay at the Sugar Pines Campground. Wissinger tells the story of their excursion through a series of cleverly crafted poems, mixing sophisticated forms, including rondel, kyrielle and blank verse, with a kid-friendly idiom and plenty of humor. Lucy is worried while setting up camp: “During the day the tent is bright. / How dark will it get tonight?” But by bedtime, after s’mores and a blessing from grandpa, she has conquered her fear: “My shield is this pillow, my sword—this flashlight. / Spookiness, Shadows, Strange Noises: GOODNIGHT.” Matthew Cordell’s buoyant illustrations are just right for this trip into the woods. With an accessible glossary of literary terms, Wissinger’s tale is the perfect campfire read.

AN AWESOME ANTHOLOGY
Spanning centuries and cultures, Kwame Alexander’s new collection, Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets (ages 8 to 12), is a delightful survey of verse forms and narrative voices. Alexander shares original poems inspired by 20 of his favorite writers, a diverse group that includes Maya Angelou, Billy Collins, Rumi and Emily Dickinson. With help from poets Chris Coderley and Marjory Wentworth, he delivers a broad range of works. The spare, refined “Contemporary Haiku” is a salute to 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō: “Pens scratching paper / Syllables counted with care / Poets blossoming.” The syncopated “Jazz Jive Jam” pays tribute to Langston Hughes: “ ’Round midnight came a band of neighbors / swinging soul to soul. / The landlord even cut a rug / and let the good times roll.” Ekua Holmes’ stunning mixed-media illustrations have a poetry all their own, making this homage to an international group of literary legends a book to be treasured.

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

Halloween reading for scaredy-cats

Feature by Robin Smith

by Robin Smith

While reading about scary things under the bed might not make the fears go away, Joe Fenton's newest, What's Under the Bed?, will give little scaredy-cats something to laugh at. When bespectacled Fred climbs into his bed with Ted, his stuffed bear, it's time to begin his nightly wonderings. "What's that noise? What's that sound? Is there something on the ground?" The black-and-white illustrations, at times punctuated with the imagined monster's colors, are oversized to the point of hilarity – especially the very big head, complete with little hairs. When Fred discovers the object of his fears, he can finally go to sleep . . . or maybe not.

Emily Gravett's new picture book, Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears, is a new twist on the genre. This humorous book is actually about the author's fears, and the pencil-carrying mouse "writing" the story is simply a foil. Starting with arachnophobia and moving to aichmophobia (knives, the kind the farmer's wife used), our little friend faces many fears, common and esoteric. Using found objects, chewed paper edges (thanks to Gravett's pet rat), a muted gray, red and beige palette, and an array of fabulous foldouts, Gravett's portrait of what would frighten a mouse (and a person) is just what the psychiatrist ordered. On each page, she encourages readers to record their own fears. The big reveal at the end will provide a welcome relief and spontaneous laughter.

Silhouettes, coupled with adorable pink-cheeked ghosties, tell Belgian Emmanuelle Eeckhout's amusing tale of misplaced fears with a cheeky touch in There's No Such Thing as Ghosts!. Armed with a butterfly net, a little child (nicely androgynous), ignores Mother's request to stay out of the house down the street because it's rumored to be haunted. "Haunted? There's no such thing as ghosts! But if there is . . . I'm going to catch one!" Our brave Everychild enters the house and finds nothing, but the young reader will see what the ghost chaser is missing on every page. Not scary at all, this little book (the smaller size is very appealing) allows the reader to look carefully at the illustrations, rich in white space and droll details, and discover all manner of hidden things. My favorite was seeing a lineup of ghosts waiting for the bathroom. Yellow, black and pink give the artwork a retro feel, but the story line is timeless.

Patrick Loehr's book about disgusting food, Mucumber McGee and Lunch Lady's Liver, is an amusing ode to unrecognizable cafeteria food. When Mucumber arrives late to lunch, he is treated to a "very special recipe" of Liver Cake. Told in rhymes, the story follows Mucumber, decked out in a suit with a bow tie, as he takes a bite of the cake that he fears might end his life. But, never fear, we learn that, "it won't taste as bad as it looks / Because lunch ladies are usually . . . very good cooks." A dark purple and black creepy tone adds to the fun. Serve it up the next time you are reading aloud to a group of children. They will get the joke, and might even try some new food the next time they go through the lunch line.

Finally, Emily Jenkins looks at a different kind of fear in The Little Bit Scary People. Part bibliotherapy and part kid's-eye-view, this offering will be welcomed by teachers and parents of children who are afraid of the people they meet every day: the skateboarder with an unusual haircut, the principal, the impatient music teacher, a classmate who talks to herself, and even the policeman. Using comforting first person, a redhead with a shy, observant temperament is able to conquer her fears by imagining all these "scary" people at home, with their children and loved ones, living their regular non – scary lives. Jenkins' book provides a nice introduction to the idea of empathy and imagination.

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

Rhymes for young readers

Feature by Robin Smith

by Robin Smith

New readers and listeners love the cadence and predictability of rhymed poems and J. Patrick Lewis is a master of the form. In the hyperbolically titled The World's Greatest Poems, illustrated by Keith Graves he offers an amusing and inventive ride into the world of superlatives. From the kookiest hat to the tallest roller coaster to the highest air on a skateboard and every other nutty record in between, Lewis delights readers with his verbal acrobatics and clever poetic forms. The bouncy rhymes are illustrated with droll acrylic-and-pencil drawings that poke fun at the records that people keep. Here is Lewis' limerick to the world's largest potato: "There once was a tater named spud / Who said to his tater tot, 'Bud, / Remember the size is / What takes Tater Prizes, / So don't be a stick-in-the-mud!' " I can imagine young readers dragging out almanacs and record books to write other record-breaking poetry.

Just for laughs
Oops! by Alan Katz, illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist Edward Koren, indulges in silly rhymes. Katz recently scored a hit with Take Me Out of the Bathtub and this collection promises to appeal to the same audience. Sometimes treading on the edge of what adults would call good taste, Katz proves once again that poetry can be very funny indeed. "Hair? Where?" is told from a mischievous boy's point of view: "Dad says, 'You're giving me gray hair!' / At my behavior / he's often appalled. / But I don't see much / gray hair was up there . . . / looks more like I'm making him / bald!" Katz is all about groan-producing puns and plays on words that will have kids rolling their eyes. When he makes sly references to bodily functions, the surprised reader will laugh out loud. Perfect for sharing with boys.

In combat
Lee Bennett Hopkins, one of the most prolific poets and anthologists in the world, compiles powerful poems about centuries of conflict in America at War, illustrated by Stephen Alcorn. Tracing American history from the Revolutionary War to the current war in Iraq, Hopkins chooses poems from familiar voices like Sandburg and Whitman, Levertov and cummings, but also introduces the gut-wrenching poignancy of poems by Iraqi veterans. Part history book, part art book and all poetry, this volume will be as comfortable in a classroom as on a coffee table. These poems get at the heart of what it means to fight in a war, serve in the military and be affected by war.

Abuzz about bees
Naomi Shihab Nye's new collection, Honeybee is a response, in poems and essays, to the recent news of the honeybee's decline. It seems Nye has always been interested in the language of bees and the news that the bees were ailing inspired this volume. Nye's unique voice for peace and justice, coupled with her unwavering wonder, make her one of my favorite poets. Whether she is writing about the variety of humans at an airport or the return of the frogs' song, Nye seems alive in a way that ordinary people can only imagine. Nye's perspective is the prism of hope and the trust that people can live together in peace. I keep coming back to this phrase from "Missing Thomas Jefferson," "I am looking for the human who admits his flaws / Who shocks the adversary / By being kinder and not stronger / What would that be like? / We don't even know." If you are a newcomer to Nye, start here; then, like a honeybee, dip into the nectar of her many other collections.

Children's & YA, Picture Book, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA Picture Book

Remembering larger-than-life heroes of black history

Feature by Robin Smith

by Robin Smith

I love the careful, almost photographic style of illustrator (and now writer) Kadir Nelson and was thrilled to hear that he was working on a history of Negro League baseball for young readers. We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball was well worth the wait. Everything about this book is beautiful, even the copyright and dedication pages, which are lightly printed with quotations from Negro League greats such as Satchel Paige and Buck O'Neil. In my town, there was a baseball card store where former Negro League players used to sit around and tell stories over coffee, while adoring fans looked on. This book has the feel of a grandfather telling stories from way-back-when, during Jim Crow. And what stories they are! In nine chapters, called innings, of course, the stories flow with the cadence of the spoken word . . . and some of the bravado that often goes along with oral storytelling. "Some of those guys would spike their mother if she were blocking home plate." Can't you picture the old guys nodding their heads in agreement?

Though the stories flow in We Are the Ship, it's the artwork that is absolutely stunning. Nelson frames most of the illustrations from a perspective slightly below the level of the subject, as sports photographers often do. That allows the players to appear larger than life, towering over the reader. With its fascinating details about life as a black person in America, from Jim Crow through the current baseball era, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of baseball, African Americans and race. With all the talk of steroids and drugs in baseball this year, Nelson reminds us of another time, a time when players played for the love of the game.

A FAITHFUL COMPANION
Night Running: How James Escaped with the Help of His Faithful Dog, written by Elisa Carbone and illustrated by E.B. Lewis, is a true story that Carbone found while researching her young adult novel, Stealing Freedom. It tells the story of James and his dog, Zeus, who eventually make it across the Ohio River to freedom. James worries that Zeus will be a burden on the long trip, but it turns out that Zeus is one special dog one who will sniff out slave catchers, fight off other dogs and even pull his boy out of a river. Another gripping story brought to life with the watercolors of the incomparable E.B. Lewis, who knows how to sniff out a fantastic manuscript himself.

PLAYING WITH PASSION
Biographies are an important part of the books available for young history readers. Piano Starts Here: The Young Art Tatum, by Robert Andrew Parker, tells the story of someone I am embarrassed to say I had never heard of. But that is the magic of the story—I was drawn in from the first page and found myself thinking about Art Tatum for weeks. I went to websites to explore his music and was completely amazed that this jazz pianist, mostly self-taught and nearly blind since birth, found the prominence he did. Written in the first person and illustrated in Parker's familiar filmy watercolors outlined with pen, this biography reveals the author's obvious admiration for his subject. From the time Tatum started playing in clubs in 1926 at the age of 16, his short life spanned the heyday of the Jazz Age through the mid-1950s. Parker's telling makes it all so alive that it is hard not to want to know more. Children often ignore the end matter that is so important in books, but I hope they will read about the author and Tatum in the fascinating endnotes. For the child or adult who has a passion, whether musical or not, and is inspired by others who follow their passions, this would be a welcome gift.

REVISITING A TRAILBLAZER
Most children learn about George Washington Carver in school and are able to connect him with the words "peanut" and "sweet potato." Tonya Bolden explores Carver more seriously in George Washington Carver, a book to accompany a traveling exhibit on Carver from the Field Museum in Chicago. Filled with archival photographs, artifacts and Carver's own scientific drawings, this is a book to slowly savor. Maybe it's because Carver working in his lab reminds me so much of my own grandfather working in his pharmacy, but Carver has always been a hero to me. His dedication to the earth and his reverence for nature will surely resound with ecologically aware students today. I particularly enjoyed the tidbits that Bolden sprinkles into her narrative—Carver saving everything, even string; Carver knitting and doing embroidery; and, my favorite, a photo of Carver taking his early morning walk, specimen case in one hand, a branch in the other, and a flower tucked in his lapel. Reading about the research he completed with the most basic tools renews my admiration for him. Bolden's straight-shooting afterword addresses Carver's detractors (he did not publicly oppose segregation, which put him at odds with some in the Civil Rights movement) and brings him back into the fold of famous scientists. Now, I just have to hope that the traveling exhibit comes to my city (check fieldmuseum.org to see if it's coming to yours).

INSPIRING PORTRAITS
If you're looking for a new reference book on civil rights history for young children, David Adler's newest offering is a good place to start. Heroes for Civil Rights, illustrated by Bill Farnsworth, discusses eight men, two women and three groups of people who fought for civil rights. The heroes are arranged alphabetically, from Ralph Abernathy to Earl Warren. I especially enjoyed revisiting the stories of Fannie Lou Hamer and Fred Shuttlesworth, two lesser-known heroes. Adler includes Lyndon Baines Johnson and Earl Warren to remind children that some white people, too, fought for civil rights. Farnsworth's oil paintings remind me of the formal portraits we often see hung in businesses or schools to honor past presidents and principals. Sepia tones add to the serious presentation. It's hard to look in the eyes of murdered civil rights workers Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney without thinking about their ages—early 20s—the ages of my own children. Simple, spare and easy to navigate, this is a great resource for children who love history.

WHAT LIES BENEATH
Though the horrors of slavery are acknowledged in Jean Ferris' fine young adult novel, Underground, set in the Mammoth Cave region of Kentucky in 1839, they are mostly a thing of the past for Charlotte Brown and her beau, the brilliant cave explorer Stephen Bishop (a real-life figure). Their new owner treats them well, even allowing Stephen to explore and map caves on his own for days at a time. When Stephen brings Charlotte into Mammoth Cave for privacy as he teaches her to read, Charlotte finds a safe place to hide runaway slaves from the slave catchers and their dogs. She also discovers that she loves Stephen and that she has the inner resources it takes to lie in order to protect the runaways.

Though Charlotte and Stephen are the main characters of this novel, Mammoth Cave itself also figures prominently in the story. A beautiful but peculiar place, filled with blind fish, white crickets and sounds that resemble the voices of spirits, the cave seems to have a life of its own. Ferris weaves interesting details about the daily life of slaves into her fast-paced story. Historical information about the Underground Railroad is also seamlessly included in this suspenseful page-turner, as is an overall sense of respect for the cave itself.

YA, YA Fiction

YA Fiction YA

Summer sizzlers: Terrific teen novels for lazy days

Feature by Lynn Beckwith

by Lynn Beckwith

Once kids hit the age of 13, they seem to be stuck between different worlds. They're still children, but they wish they were adults. They want to be trusted, but often act impulsively. Their reading, appropriately enough, is just as unpredictable as they are. One minute, they pick books from the bestseller lists, and the next, they nostalgically curl up with Dr. Seuss. Because teens are such a tough audience, we've rounded up some new books that are sure to keep them entertained during those long June afternoons.

KEEPER OF THE NIGHT
In her new book Keeper of the Night, writer Kimberly Willis Holt takes on a sensitive subject a mother's depression and suicide. Holt addressed the topic of mentally challenged parents in My Louisiana Sky and the treatment of the morbidly obese in When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. Both books have a loyal following and are on summer reading lists across the country. Set in the Guam of her military brat childhood, Holt's newest novel has a shroud of mystery hanging about it, as the child narrator struggles in the months following her mother's suicide.

Holt's plain, direct prose belies the deep pain the narrator feels as she tries to understand her mother's life and death. The book opens with the breathtaking sentence, "My mother died praying on her knees." Slowly, almost like the stories that surface during therapy sessions, Isabel's sadness and confusion emerge. The death is terrible enough, but the aftermath threatens to engulf every member of Isabel's family. Tata, her father, sleeps curled on the floor next to his bed. Little sister Olivia's bedwetting and nightmares disrupt her sleep. Older brother Frank uses the long nights to carve words in the wall next to his bed and eventually into his own skin.

Isabel's story is both heartbreaking and inspirational, as we watch her sink further into sadness. But, at the breaking point, she and her family are saved by their ability to tell their stories, forgive themselves and begin again.

THE DREAM BEARER
Walter Dean Myers returns this summer with another powerful story of young men growing up in Harlem. In The Dream Bearer, David Curry meets mysterious Moses Littlejohn, an African-American man with white hair, a stubbly beard and baggy clothes, who professes to be a 303-year-old dream carrier. Moses is looking for someone to pass his dreams to, and, as it turns out, David could use a few.

Caught between his violent, unpredictable father, his dedicated mother and Tyrone, his older brother, who is beginning to succumb to the temptations of gang and drug life, David is a gentle boy who listens to the older man's dreams, which soon become a part of him, adding to his understanding of himself, his family and the larger world of Harlem. Myers' latest is a tale that will linger with readers.

A NORTHERN LIGHT
Jennifer Donnelly's first book for young adults, A Northern Light, is a story as big and bold as the North Woods of New York State where it is set. In the tradition of Gene Stratton Porter, Donnelly delivers a novel filled with the particulars of life at the turn of the century, weaving in details of the local farming and logging cultures, and examining attitudes of racial prejudice and feminism.

Narrator Mattie Gokey loves poetry and would like nothing more than to accept the scholarship to Barnard that her teacher, Miss Wilcox, has helped her earn. But her mother recently died of breast cancer, her brother left the family farm after a fight with her dad, and she is desperately needed at home, where her sisters and brothers are too old to be bossed but too young to do farm work.

A talented writer with a thirst for books, Mattie tells her own story in a strong but conflicted voice. Her best friend, Weaver Smith, is also hoping to go to college, but as a black boy saving money for Columbia he faces his own challenges. Their unusual but completely believable friendship sustains Mattie through a difficult year and helps her decide on a course for her life. As the novel progresses, she makes two big promises, and these promises frame the narrative.

For readers who will eventually graduate to the sweeping books of John Irving and Barbara Kingsolver, A Northern Light is the perfect stepping-stone. Deft foreshadowing and a real-life mystery keep the story moving along.

LUCAS
With Lucas, author Kevin Brooks tells the poignant story of Caitlin McCann and her family, who are also reeling from a death. Caitlin's mother died almost 10 years ago, but the wounds still fester, especially for her father. At his suggestion to "let it all out," to "cry herself a story," Caitlin recounts the events of her 15th summer, from the first time she sees the beautiful outsider, Lucas, to the tragic events on the mudflats.

In between, Caitlin spins a dark, suspenseful tale of British life in a small island village not the resort town you might imagine, but a small-minded, inbred community characterized by alcohol abuse, gossip, prejudice and evil. When Lucas, a pale boy with a ghostly presence, suddenly appears on the island nothing is the same for Caitlin. She is bewitched by his manner and his kindness. Lucas seems to have a sixth sense about people, and he warns Caitlin about her companions, whom he sees as dangerous, angry and cruel. Turns out he's right about everything.

This taut story, though quite a bit longer than most young adult novels, will keep readers in its web, much like Lucas keeps Cait captivated throughout the narrative. As the tale unwinds, we see Lucas become the object of jealousy and suspicion, as mean Jamie Tait and his cohorts plot to rid their island of this "gyppo." Brooks' wonderful novel, told by an unforgettable protagonist, reminds us of the redemptive power of stories.

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