Webster Bible Church and Webster Christian School Library Blog

Follett Titlewave

It’s 1962, and 5th-grader Franny Chapman lives in fear of an atomic attack by the Russians on her Washington, D.C.-area neighborhood.

Air-raid drills at school, her Air Force father on high alert, President Kennedy delivering somber speeches on TV, and her Uncle Otts building a bomb  shelter in their yard–all these things add to her worries.

Then there’s the preteen angst of fighting with her best friend and crushing on the cute boy down the road.

This substantial documentary novel (377 p.) began as a picture book in the author’s mind way back in 1996 but is now just book one in “The Sixties Trilogy.” Primary source materials (song lyrics, photographs, quotes, posters, etc.) are interspersed throughout the book.

Deborah Wiles sets this story in the very neighborhood where she grew up.  As someone born in 1959 who also grew up in this area, I thoroughly enjoyed the authentic stroll down memory lane with Deborah.

Obviously an incredible amount of research and planning went into the content and format of this book. Writing an historical fiction book about the Cold War era is a tricky thing. What I’m not sure about is how many readers in the targeted audience will make it all the way through this novel. I have a lot of emotional attachment and background knowledge surrounding the time and place,  so I don’t consider myself a competent judge in this matter. However, even I felt like the story dragged a bit in the middle.

Nonetheless, Deborah Wiles has admirably completed an amazing book which conveys both information and emotion about the Cold War era. I hope that it finds a spot in some social studies classes.

Recommended for grades 5-8.

Awards/Lists: Children’s Books of the Year 2011–Ages 12-14; Booklist Books for Middle Readers 2010;  Notable Children’s Books 2011; Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts 2011; Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2011;  Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Children’s Books 2010

Follett Titlewave

“From the time I was really little–maybe just a few months old–words were like sweet, liquid gifts, and I drank them like lemonade. 

I could almost taste them. . . . Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered.  All of them. . . . By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.

But only in my head.

I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.”

Word-lover Melody Brooks has cerebral palsy.

She attends the local public school, and for the first time ever, she and her special needs classmates are being included in the regular classrooms. Sadly, Melody concludes that the students and even some of the teachers assume “that my brain is messed up like the rest of me.” (p.152)

When Melody gets a Medi-Talker (a combination computer, music player and speech device), she is able to talk for the first time using a computerized voice.   Even so, it’s difficult to get people to overlook her physical limitations and treat her like any other 5th-grader. Will Melody be allowed to compete in the national Whiz Kids competition?

Thank you, Sharon Draper, for helping us understand what it is like to live with cerebral palsy.   Thank you for teaching us how to respectfully relate to students with special needs.

Highly recommended for grades 5-8.

Awards/Lists:  Children’s Books of the Year 2011–Ages 9-12; Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts 2011; Teachers Choices 2011; Young Adult’s Choices 2011.

“A fictionalized biography of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who grew up a painfully shy child, ridiculed by his overbearing father, but who became one of the most widely-read poets in the world.”(Follett Titlewave)

First impression:  This book, with it’s luminescent cover and prize-winning illustrator, is different from anything else I’ve read by Pam Munoz Ryan.

Open the book:  Wow.  The green words are triple-spaced, surrounded by huge margins, imprinted on thick cream paper.  Short paragraphs, frequent dialogue.   Illustrations vary from realistic to surreal, from double-page spreads to small insertions.

Relax.  Breathe.  Linger.  Enjoy.  Relish.  Dream.

That is what the book design says to me.

While I was reading this book at home, my 11-year-old daughter walked by.  I heard a sharp intake of breath and then she said, “What! No fair! That book has, like, ten words per page!”  I guess her walk-by glance at the book gave her a similar  impression.

Pablo Neruda grew up misunderstood and repressed by his controlling father.  “Stop that incessant daydreaming!” his father would bellow.  Thus Pam Munoz Ryan chose the title, The Dreamer, for her fictionalized biography which chronicles Neruda’s life growing up in the shadow of the Chilean Andes until the time he left for the university in Santiago–on the path to becoming the beloved poet who “wrote to the common person and about the common thing” (author’s note).

Pam Munoz Ryan is one of my all-time favorite authors.   All of her books are wonderful, but this book is GENIUS.

She tells the story from the perspective of a young boy with a vivid imagination and a gift for words.  Her own writing must be imaginative and poetic–and it is!  Ryan chooses to write in the third person, yet the story feels intimate and tender.  She delicately covers the truth of  the verbal and emotional abuse Neruda endured yet judiciously mixes it with hopeful vignettes of his stepmother’s love, his sister’s support, a librarian’s kindness and his uncle’s brave example.

Peter Sis’ drawings perfectly complement and extend the story without ever distracting from its flow.  Who better than Sis to illustrate such a story?  His Caldecott Honor Book autobiography, The Wall:  Growing up Behind the Iron Curtain, chronicles his own repression as an artist.

In an author interview, Ryan talks about her book resonating with middle school readers:  “When I wrote the book, I often envisioned a middle grade boy and girl as the potential readers – brooding adolescents, who might feel misunderstood and might be a closet artists.”

I have added this book to our recommended reading list for grades 5-6 and 7-8 at Webster Christian School.

Interest Level:  grades 5-8; Reading level-5.3 (Follett Titlewave)

Awards/Lists:  Booklist Books for Middle Readers-2010; Boston
Globe Horn Book Honor- 2010–Fiction & Poetry; Pura Belpre Author Award Winner-2011; National Parenting Publications Award–GOLD; Book Industry Guild of New York (Best Book Design); Kirkus Best Children’s Books of 2010; Smithsonian Notable Book;

“When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.”(Follett Titlewave)

Forgive me for saying this.

I fear that most Americans do not know the true meaning of hardship.

A Long Walk to Water=1 reality check.

Ms. Park wisely kept the text short (120 p.) and snappy with brief paragraphs and a liberal sprinkling of dialogue.  While Salva’s story is incredibly sad, his indomitable spirit and the hopeful ending balance things out.

The Newbery-awarding winning author, Linda Sue Park, lives in Rochester, New York–the very city to which Salva emigrated in 1996.  Linda met Salva several years ago, and Linda’s husband even visited  Sudan to see the wells.

The reading level  is 5.9 (Follett Titlewave) and School Library Journal’s suggested reader audience is grades 5-8, but I don’t think my fifth-grade daughter is ready for this book just yet.  Salva witnesses a lot of violence–which is a true and necessary part of the story.  The author relates these incidents honestly and simply without any unnecessary detail.

A more age-appropriate book for upper elementary is the picture book,  Brothers in Hope:  The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan, by Mary Williams (founder of the Lost Boys Foundation).  The text is longer than your average picture book and the topic is heavy, but our 4th-grade teacher read it in one sitting to her class last year and the students remained engaged and interested.

Caroline B. Cooney’s Diamonds in the Shadow is a suspenseful young-adult novel about African refugees who are sponsored by a church.  Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is another great middle-school story about a fifth-grade African refugee who comes to live with his aunt and cousin in Minneapolis.

Highly recommended for grades 6-9.

Awards/Lists:  Jane Addams Book Award, 2011