Category Archives: ..Middle Grade Readers

May 10, 2013 · 8:53 am

Thermae Romae II by Mari Yamazaki, translated by Stephen Paul

Thermae Romae 2To get to know our time-traveling bather, start with Volume I. When in Thermae Romae, you need to do as this Roman does and find out how he journeys back and forth between far-spanning centuries and cultures with one thing in common – an obsession with the bath.

If the cover looks familiar, Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize-winning creator Mari Yamazaki explains how she risked marital peace to parody “one of the greatest works of ancient Roman sculpture,” Laocoön and His Sons. In spite of her husband’s angry reaction, she insists that her version of Laocoön “wearing a shampoo hat to keep the shampoo out of his eyes” is not such a far stretch: “I’m sure Laocoön washed his fair from time to time, and if he did massage his scalp, he certainly must have struck poses like the one on the cover.” You’ll find that sort of goofy humor on almost every page, all the while learning quite a bit about ancient Roman history, and modern Japanese bathing culture. Yamazaki will entertainingly convince you how such two seemingly disparate topics are actually quite related.

As Volume II begins, Lucius is a favorite of Emperor Hadrian, renowned as the innovative bath architect. In an act of potentially fatal jealousy, Senate members plot to get Lucius out of Rome with a ruse about a creating a new thermae in an area overrun by violent bandits. What happens instead is a bit of brilliant marketing, inspired by Lucius’ timely visit to a Japanese hot spring town where he wins big at a game booth, discovers kitschy souvenirs, and tastes his first bowl of steaming ramen and juicy gyoza. With further unpredictable forays into the land of the “flat-faces” (the phrase still bugs me, but not quite as much this second time around), Lucius learns to build a wooden barrel single bath shippable to the hinterlands, and how to balance the most gaudiest demands with just enough elegantly-tempered details.

Then half-way through the volume, Hadrian’s adopted heir (profligately portrayed by Yamazaki with apologies later – artistic license, right?) dies. With Hadrian’s own health less than robust, Lucius becomes determined to create something soothingly rejuvenating for his Imperator. His search magically sends him to meet “such a beautiful flat-face” as he’s never seen before … who just happens to be an ancient Roman scholar who speaks perfect Latin! Talk about back to the future … in centur-ion leaps!

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2013 (United States)

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May 8, 2013 · 9:02 am

Three Years and Eight Months by Icy Smith, illustrated by Jennifer Kindert

Three Years and Eight MonthsParents with young children: please take caution in sharing this book with your youngest readers. Although the narrator is “only a 10-year-old boy,” what he witnesses, endures, and survives during the titular ‘three years and eight months’ of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II is brutal, horrific, and inhumane. As in all wars, women, the elderly, and children always suffer most.

Choi lives with his widowed mother and his Uncle Kim in a “rundown apartment building in crowded Hong Kong.” Dismissed from school early one day, he watches his mother dragged away by Japanese soldiers. On Christmas, 1941, Japan takes official control of the island; for its citizens, occupation means destruction, starvation, imprisonment, and death.

Up in the mountains searching for firewood, Choi meets Taylor, the hapa son of Uncle Kim’s friend; Taylor’s American mother went to visit her California family and has been unable to return to Hong Kong since Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The two boys trade wood for food when they can, which leads them to meet a kind Japanese soldier who teaches them enough Japanese to give them a job at the military station. The boys’ entry there provides access to information, food, and even medical supplies they can pass on to Uncle Kim …

Award-winning author and publisher Icy Smith – whose last book detailed war’s atrocities in Half Spoon of Rice – clearly channels her own family background here. Her opening dedication is a harrowing warning: “This book is dedicated to my father, uncle, and grandmother, who lived the reality of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. My uncle was forced to work for the Japanese military and transported prisoners to death camps. … My father was a slave boy who witnessed the Japanese brutalities … My grandmother was victimized by Japanese soldiers for three long years and became a nun after the end of World War II.” Hopefully, the single, kind ‘enemy’ soldier was also a part of Smith’s ancestral past. Decades later, Smith bears witness, first with personal story, then with “Remembering History” at book’s end with dates, facts, numbers, and period photos.

As much as Smith’s words capture this true story, Jennifer Kindert‘s illustrations vividly enhance the chilling experience. Kindert, a Texas-based Thai adoptee of Swedish parents, has a lush style that fills each page with careful, intimate details which bring readers immediately into each scene: the distant worried look of a young mother with two small children she carries balanced in a basket, the treasures local residents have brought the Japanese troops to trade for a few cups of rice, the upturned face of an imprisoned woman momentarily distracted from her heavy labor, the portrait of Emperor Hirohito on the wall with his head symbolically truncated from view as a group of soldiers initially hear the news of the first atomic bombing. Every picture reveals and intensifies both the horror and the humanity.

Too much of our history is filled with tragedy… perhaps bearing witness, even in childhood, is one way to combat the nightmarish repetition. Hope springs eternal, right?

Readers: Children (with caution), Middle Grade

Published: 2013

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May 3, 2013 · 9:39 am

Avatar: The Last Airbender | The Search (Part One) created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, script by Gene Luen Yang, art by Gurihiru, lettering by Michael Heisler

Avatar Search1To find out what prompts this eponymous ‘search,’ you’ll need to read the three-part Promise – which reveals how Aang and Zuko are actually family (surprise!), and why family matters so much. “Family is in essence a small nation, and the nation a large family … in treating a family with dignity, a ruler learns to govern his nation with dignity,” an elder expounds to a gathering of young leaders in the city of Yu Dao, “the prototype for a new kind of city, one that unites the four nations.”

Aang, of course, is there, as is Zuko … who is solemnly affected by the wise man’s words: “I put my father in a prison and my sister in an institution. My mother’s been banished for years. What does that mean for my nation?” Zuko questions. And so the all-important search begins … for answers, for family. [Speaking of family, how thrilled are we that 2006 National Book Award finalist Gene Luen Yang continues to script these all-new Avatar adventures?!!]

Once upon a time, Ursa and Ikem were in love, expecting to spend forever together. But then-Fire Lord Azulon had other plans, determined to bind his family line with that of then-Avatar Roku’s. And so the stage was set for destruction: Ursa wed Fire Prince Ozai, who forced her to cut off all ties to her family and her hometown of Hira’a. After Ursa bore two royal children, she disappeared without a trace.

Years later, Zuko is convinced that finding his mother is the only way to achieve lasting peace. He releases his violent, unpredictable younger sister Azula in exchange for vital information she has about their mother; at his request – and against their better judgment – Aang, Katara, and Sokka join the antagonistic siblings on a journey back to Hira’a … but answers, of course, are rarely obvious and family dysfunction is never easily overcome.

Zuko’s about to discover the secret of his life (literally!) … and, of course, when he does, the volume ends (!) right there (!!!) and we’re forced back to waiting, and waiting. At least June is only a month away, harrumph. Who made the mistake of insisting patience is a virtue?

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2013

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· 9:33 am

Avatar: The Last Airbender | The Promise (Part Three) created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, script by Gene Luen Yang, art by Gurihiru, lettering by Michael Heisler

Avatar Promise 3Okay, since this is the third and last part of this specific Avatar series, let’s go back and catch up here … and yes, order matters!

Part Three opens with war – in the pouring rain, wreaking havoc on earth, throwing around fire as lightning threatens, the air aswirl in chaos and destruction. The Fire colonies will not budge out of the Earth Kingdom, and the Harmony Restoration Movement is not even close to reaching peace.

Friendships and alliances are threatened and tested; worst of all, looms the titular ‘promise’ Aang made to kill Zuko, at his request, “if you ever see me turning into my father.” As tempers flare, Zuko finds himself battling his father’s demands, even as the former Fire Lord Ozai remains imprisoned. Torn and twisted, Aang must find a way to reclaim peace, even if it means challenging the ones he most loves and respects.

On the brink of vast, irreparable destruction, the Avatar teaches us, of course, that violence is never the answer – indeed, banding together for peace proves most powerful of all. If we can train young minds through such entertaining adventures now, surely the next generations will make that peace a lasting reality? I’ll willingly stick with that narrative …

Oh, and speaking of sticky – check out who and how boba tea got invented back in the day. Talk about an Uncle Iroh (who was voiced in the animated series by the legendary actor Mako before he passed away!) ahead of his time! So surprisingly sweet, indeed.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2012

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April 12, 2013 · 9:00 pm

Sorako by Fujimura Takayuki, translated by GEN Manga

SorakoHaving discovered manga/manwha on the verge of being old, I often have these delicious moments of ‘gaaaah’-wonder at coming across something original in the graphic industry. So here’s a not-quite-three-years-old publishing niche I recently learned about – I know! What took me so long?!

Meet GEN Manga, purveyors of Indie Manga from the Tokyo Underground, which promises that “GEN stories are published nowhere else in the world. They come straight from the artists in Japan to you. We translate the stories and put them out as they are created.”

While most of GEN’s output thus far – available digitally, or in limited print editions – is via serialized issues of manga and (more recently added) manwha (manga with Korean origins), they’ve also begun offering standalone books. GEN’s latest is a loose collection of slice-of-life episodes that vary in quality and length about an intermittently job-searching young woman named Sorako. The opening sequence is one of the longest, and certainly the most developed, as it introduces Sorako who is waiting for the missing family dog Toma to return. Sorako named Toma after noticing the kanji character for ‘stop’ (止) marking the road on her way home the day the puppy joined the family. Sorako, too, is currently at a stopping point, caught in a limbo of inaction, a sharp contrast to her own name which means ‘a child of the sky.’

Of the shorter, less memorable pieces is a two-page interlude in which Sorako decides that she might swim off a few pounds, but the lack of a swimming cap easily dissuades her from her plans. Again, for now, she’s more comfortable stopping (止) than soaring. In other episodes, a young woman working in a coffee shop dreams of going to England as she practices English with an unseen television voice alone at night, Sorako’s less-than-earnest job search gets a reprieve when she breaks her leg, and in the final story, a young married woman tries to decide if she’s going to study abroad or not (and we see that same ‘stop’ (止) character four pages from the end, this time positioned (cleverly) in the opposite direction.

Sorako is comprised of “indie stories (doujinshi, or independent) so the author creates them as she likes,” explains GEN’s Editor-in-Chief Robert McGuire. “There is no conformity to conventional standards or directional content editing as usually is the case with manga. In other words, she is free, as all artists are at GEN Manga, to experiment. However, because of this a certain amount of avant-garde or unconventionality is common. Readers should enjoy and expect a more artistic approach when reading them. GEN Manga strives to represent otherwise unseen indie manga as it is made in ‘doujinshi circles’ in Japan.”

So there you have it. Unique and uncensored, to expect the unexpected. That’s quite a return for the mere $2.99 digital investment.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2013 (United States)

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April 4, 2013 · 9:29 am

Where The Streets Had A Name by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Where the Streets Had a NameHere’s the seemingly simple story: When her grandmother falls ill, 13-year-old Hayaat decides that a jarful of her ancestral soil – a mere six miles away – will be the very thing that will make her grandmother well, so Hayaat grabs her best friend and goes off on her quest.

But … there’s always the ‘but’ … when home is a conflict zone, six miles might as well be 600. Hayaat is a Palestinian living inside heavily guarded walls in Bethlehem, her family forcibly displaced from her father’s home of many generations once filled with olive trees and open space. Now cramped into a tiny apartment, the family of seven is often at odds with one another, their movement restricted by long curfews. The family matriarch, Hayaat’s grandmother, has little left beyond her stories of another time and place, of family Hayaat can never meet except through the stories she never tires of hearing.

Hayaat bears the scars, both inside and out, of a childhood amidst guns, soldiers, and shifting borders. Her best friend Samy is a virtual orphan who lives with his aunt and uncle, having lost his father to prison and his mother to a heart attack soon thereafter. The intrepid pair venture forth through barriers, guard towers, and checkpoints – never mind not having any travel permits – and head toward Jerusalem with only a vague description of a long-ago neighborhood and a much-missed home. Their journey is aided by the kindness of strangers, including a peace activist couple, the husband a former Israeli Defense Force soldier who refused to finish his service in protest of the military mistreatment of Palestinians.

Randa Abdel-Fattah – Australian-born and domiciled, of Egyptian and Palestinian descent – offers a sobering novel about the harsh lives of children who inherit the consequences and tragedies of adult hostilities. In spite of childhoods stolen by violence, identities shaped by resentment and hatred, young people like Hayaat somehow manage to hold on to their humanity: “… so long as there is life there’ll be love … I’ll do more than survive … in the end we are all of us only human beings who laugh the same, and … one day the world will realize that we simply want to live as free people, with hope and dignity and purpose. That is all.”

Out of the mouth of babes …

Tidbit: Just as I finished writing this post, this link serendipitously landed in my inbox from a dear friend: “Books about Contemporary Palestine for Children” by Katharine Davies Samway. Timing really IS everything!

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2008, 2010 (United States)

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April 3, 2013 · 9:19 am

Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am by Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis

Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I AmBen Bright – popular senior, lead in the school musical opposite both his girlfriend Ariela and best friend Niko, the older son in a warmly bonded family of four – has a secret. Without telling his family and friends, he’s bypassed college and chosen the U.S. Army. “‘Ninety-nine percent of our friends are going off to college, and then what?’” he tries to make Ariela understand. “‘Finance? Law? Banking? That’s not a waste? People like us should volunteer – kids with privilege and skills and talent. So-called. I want to reach the end of my life and say, ‘I did something important. I saved lives.’”

Having initially volunteered for the Army reserve – “I’m not going to war,” he had insisted – shock turns to worry when Ben is deployed to Iraq. Less than three months after he leaves home, Ben is caught in an explosion: “Brains fold inward on themselves and then billow outward, soft as jellyfish. The precise electrochemical connections short-circuit – connections that control thought, smell, taste, touch, sight, sound, movement, memory. Connections that define what it means to be human. In a millisecond, that definition changes.” Ben Bright’s body survives, but his brain is forever changed; his journey back from TBI (traumatic brain injury) will be the most formidable fight of his life.

Winner in the teen category of the American Library Association‘s 2013 Schneider Family Book Awards which “honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences,” Somebody is a shattering, devastating read. In spite of its slim page count, the narrative is emotionally dense, weighted with impossible questions of patriotism, duty, hope, promise, and love; the consequences of Ben’s solo decision for his parents, brother, girlfriend, best friend, and even his fellow soldiers will reverberate forever.

Authors Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis speak directly to the generation right now in one of the most contemporary titles I’ve read to date, with nods to Glee and Taylor Swift. While I momentarily wonder if such details might make the book seem outdated sooner than later, as long as war looms somewhere in the world and teenagers for whatever reason decide to make that fight their own, the power of Somebody will not diminish. Graduation is fast approaching for millions of high school seniors … might I insist that Somebody would make an excellent addition to every gift list.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2012

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March 29, 2013 · 11:19 am

Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves, & Other Female Villains by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple, illustrated by Rebecca Guay

Bad GirlsIf beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then perhaps bad behavior might be, too. “In this book we are taking a look back through history at all manner of famous female felons,” write mother/daughter author-team Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple (who, between them, have hundreds and hundreds of titles). From as far back as 110 BCE to the 20th century, Bad Girls includes 26 women who have quite the historical rap sheet. But were they all really that bad? “Every crime – no matter how heinous – comes with its own set of circumstances, aggravating and mitigating, which can tip the scales of guilt. And views change.”

Salome, she of the dance of the seven veils who was rewarded with the head of John the Baptist on a platter, might have been just 10 or 11 (!!) and easily manipulated by the adults around her. Bloody Mary was a highly educated, sought-after Princess who was declared suddenly illegitimate, then banished at the whim of her own philandering father King Henry VIII. The slave Tituba, who only did her young charges’ bidding, could only escape hanging if she confessed to being a witch. Madame Alexe Popova helped desperate wives off their cruel husbands – over 300 of those bad boys. Typhoid Mary was never ill herself, but she was a typhoid carrier who wouldn’t let the doctors fix her infection-ridden gallbladder, even for free … if you were healthy, would you submit to the knife?

Decades, centuries, millenia later, how might these women be judged now? “As our world changes, so does our definition of bad,” Yolen and Stemple remind us. “[Y]ou will have to decide for yourself if they were really bad, not so bad, or somewhere in the middle. And perhaps you will see that even the baddest of bad girls may have had a good reason for what she did.”

Admittedly a page-turner – like a mangled train wreck, you can’t look away, except to flip the page – Bad Girls is a unique hybrid of short biographies with a graphic twist: each chapter ends with a graphic novel/manga-style conversation (hurray for Rebecca Guay‘s multi-varied ease in changing styles) between mother and daughter, debating the good, bad, and the often ugly circumstances. Their exchanges are cutesy, off-the-cuff, albeit with a few too many predictable quips – “The Tudors were a nasty bunch. Always sneaking and scheming” gets the expected reply, “Rather like modern politicians.” Yolen seems to be the older, wiser voice while Stemple is quick with her 21st-century judgments of “icky” and apparently more concerned about her wardrobe (her shoe-obsession – misplaced attempt at humor? – seems totally out-of-place). That said, let the bad girls speak for themselves. Read at your own risk … then be sure to decide for yourself.

Tidbit: Younger readers might better enjoy The Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Dastardly Dames, a thus-far seven-title collection featuring women who lived by their own rules (the series and Bad Girls have Cleopatra and (Bloody) Mary Tudor in common). Older readers should definitely check out this TEDxVancouver talk, “The Sociology of Gossip,” about what gossip – especially about supposedly badly-behaved women – says about our so-called modern society. It’s an eye-, ear-, and brain-opener!

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2013

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March 25, 2013 · 9:43 am

The Language Inside by Holly Thompson

Language InsideThis might be a spoiler of sorts: The advance galley is printed with a March 12, 2013 pub date, but when I went searching for an image of the book’s cover to load here, online bookstores list a May date. Hmmm … if the latter is correct, then let this post serve as urgent advice: pre-order this book now.

I don’t know what makes my usually poetry-resistant brain so appreciative of novels-in-verse, but they definitely provide moments of blissful delight. And I’m growing rather partial to Holly Thompson‘s ethnic-blending, boundary-crossing, expectation-defying titles for young adults (check out her Orchards here).

Meet Emma Karas: while her name and face might suggest otherwise, Emma is Japanese. Culturally, anyway: she’s lived most of her life there, speaks the language like a native, and has a preference for miso and ramen over hamburgers and pasta. When she’s unexpectedly uprooted to Lowell, Massachusetts, all she wants to do is go home – to Japan.

Emma’s mother has cancer. Her treatment means Emma, her brother, and their mother will live in Lowell with her father’s mother. Emma’s father visits as often as he can from his job in New York City. Emma is torn between being the supportive daughter to her suffering mother, and feeling disloyal to her Japanese friends and their families who remain in shock and mourning less than a year since the devastating 2011 Tōhoku tsunami and earthquake.

To fill some of her longing-to-be-home hours, Emma volunteers at the Newell Center for Long Term Care, where she’s assigned to work with Zena, a stroke victim who can only communicate through her eyes. Zena is a poet, and her silent words which Emma helps put to paper have a healing effect on them both. The Newell Center is also where Emma meets Samnang, a fellow high school student with a troubled past, who works with two elderly survivors of the Cambodian killing fields.

Emma and Samnang are both cultural anomalies as defined by others’ assumptions: ” … when the language outside / isn’t the language inside,” Emma writes in a poem. Emma can’t be Japanese and yet she’s not quite American. Samnang is American and yet his Cambodian features make him forever other. Could such teenagers be anything but destined for each other?

As lyrical and effecting as Language is, it’s not read without questions, specifically about narrative choices. Why did Emma’s mother need to have her treatment in the States? Surely a country as advanced as Japan would have equivalent treatment options; additionally, given how long the family has been based in Japan, close family friends seem to be abundant in Japan, and virtually nonexistent Stateside. Why would Emma’s mother choose to stay with her mother-in-law instead of her own parents in Vermont? Why would Emma’s father work in New York when his wife is so seriously ill? As kind and thoughtful as she is, why is YiaYia so resistant about the foods that might comfort her extended family most?

The questions go on, but eventually such logistical details pale as Emma and Zena’s tender relationship develops, and as Emma and Samnang tentatively fall in love. ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff,’ actually comes to mind. Yes, questions linger, but ultimately, those moments of blissful delight extend … and win out.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Poetry, Cambodian American, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific

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March 11, 2013 · 9:07 am

War Brothers: The Graphic Novel by Sharon E. McKay and Daniel Lafrance, illustrated by Daniel Lafrance

War BrothersIf you look at the bottom of this post at “Filed under,” you’ll see this title is listed as both “Fiction” and “Nonfiction.” That’s not a mistake – and the explanation is found in the book’s “Postscript”: “This is a book of fiction based on interviews in Gulu, Uganda. Everything that happened in this book has happened, and is happening still.”

In 2002, 14-year-old Kitino Jacob begins writing his story on a lined notepad in his childish hand: “My story is not an easy one to tell, and it is not an easy one to read … There is no shame in closing this book now,” he warns. As if to underline the warning, for those who decide to continue, the panels depicting the most harrowing parts of the story are ominously edged in black.

Joseph Kony, guerilla leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – populated by stolen and brutalized children – is terrorizing then entire country of Uganda. On the eve of traveling to their school, Jacob and his friend Tony are assured of their safety: “Kony cannot get us. Do not be worried. We are safe. I heard Father talking to headmaster Haycoop about hiring extra guards to surround the school. There is no reason to fear Kony and his rebel soldiers.”

But on the first night back at George Jones Seminary for Boys, a motley gang of LRA recruits murder the adults and kidnap the students. “It’s true … they’re just kids!” Jacob immediately realizes, but these are the very ‘kids’ who force Jacob and his friends to kill or be killed. They are starved, abused, and turned into murderers. The “good boys,” he learns, “become especially mean, especially dangerous,” like Tony who once aspired to be a priest but is quickly transformed into a killing machine. Somehow, Jacob manages to hold onto his humanity, convinced that his father will save him and his friends.

Last year saw a fervor of Kony-related activity in the media: from the film, Kony 2012, which went viral, to the filmmaker’s public breakdown, to the outcry of what happened to almost $20 million in donated funds to the film’s producing company Invisible Children. “While Kony has lost much of his power, he continues to carry on his crimes across the border in the Congo and DRC,” Jacob explains in a final closing letter dated 2012 at book’s end. That Kony remains free is terrifying, but his LRA – as diminished as it is – represents only a fraction of the estimated 250,000 child soldiers in the world. What these children must endure after surviving war in order to even attempt to return to their former world will be an even greater battle.

While capturing the horrific tragedy of the life of child soldiers, co-creators Sharon E. McKay and Daniel Lafrance also manage to offer inspiration: war decimates, and yet everlasting bonds can also be forged. “[T]his is also a story of hope, courage, friendship, and family,” Jacob reminds. He echoes his friend Hannah, “… that if the world knows that child soldiers suffer unimaginable cruelty and pain, then help will come. I hope this is right.”

With testimony as formidable as War Brothers, we can’t say we didn’t know. And now that we know, we must help, offer hope, and make change. That’s a mantra for us all.

Readers: Middle Grade (with caution), Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, .Nonfiction, African, Canadian

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