The Book of Jonas (review)

The Book of Jonas by Stephen Dau
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The lives behind collateral damage

Fifteen-year-old Younis is injured and orphaned when a U.S. military raid gone awry hits his village in an unnamed Muslim country that resembles Afghanistan. With the aid of an international relief organization, he is sent to the U.S., where he is assigned to a well-meaning but rather clueless foster family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He changes his name to Jonas on the plane: “He suspects this will cause trouble; he does it anyway.”
“The Book of Jonas” (Blue Rider Press, 2012), Stephen Dau’s debut novel, is a powerful story examining the human costs of war. Younis—now Jonas—attends high school in Pittsburgh. He is a brilliant outcast, finding refuge in the school library, “an oasis of wooden bookshelves and learning.” The target of merciless bullying, Jonas at last snaps and hands one of his tormenters a savage beating. Jonas is sent to a counselor named Paul, who helps him work explore the trauma that destroyed his family and home.
Jonas is awarded a full scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, where he makes friends and falls in love with a beautiful pre-med student from India. “Where do you go in your mind,” Paul asks Jonas repeatedly. In dreamlike fragments that punctuate the present-day narrative, the story of what happened in the days following the attack unfolds. Jonas’s story is interspersed with that of Christopher Henderson, an idealistic American soldier who found him in a remote mountain cave and nursed him back to health. Christopher’s story is told in excerpts from his diary; one of the entries tells the story of a baby gazelle that was adopted by a lioness—a parable that encapsulates the heart of this novel.
Jonas meets Christopher’s mother Rose, who has dedicated her life to finding her son, now missing in action. As she presses him for answers about the disappearance of her son, Jonas is forced to confront his emotional trauma and the knowledge of what really happened to Christopher.  Things begin to disintegrate as he begins to drink, often to the point of blackout. The ending is both heartbreaking and emotionally honest.
The book’s structure recalls a church service or mass, with short chapters within sections titled “Processional, Invocation, Remembrance, Communion, Confession, Atonement, Benediction, Recessional.” And in fact “The Book of Jonas” is a kind of prayer for the survivors of “collateral damage,” soldiers and civilians alike. Recommended for older teens as well as adults, this brilliant and timely novel is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand the consequences of war.

Sara Latta is a science writer and author of 17 books for children and young adults. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com.

This review originally appeared in the March 17, 2013 issue of The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois).


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Tell the Wolves I'm Home (review)

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Love and grief in the time of AIDS

“Tell the Wolves I’m Home: A Novel” (Dial Press, 2012), by Carol Rifka Brunt is a coming of age story of love, grief, and renewal as two lonely people become unlikely friends. The only person who really understands fifteen year-old June Elbus is her uncle and the renowned painter Finn Weiss. June is shy at school; her older sister Greta, with whom she was once close, has turned mean and nasty. Finn, her godfather, confidante, and, to her shame, secret crush, shares her love of the medieval era and introduces her to the glories of Mozart’s Requiem.
June’s world is turned upside down when Finn dies of a terrible disease that her mother initially talks about only by tracing the letters A-I-D-S onto a table. At the funeral, June glimpses a strange man lingering at the edge of the crowd. June soon learns that the man, Toby, was Finn’s “special friend,” as her mother puts it.
Despite her initial mistrust, June forms a clandestine friendship with her uncle’s partner, since her family hates Toby and blames him for Finn’s illness. They work through their grief, talking about Finn’s art and passion for life. June comes to learn more about Finn, herself, and the nature of love.
Rifka Brunt absolutely captures the attitudes toward AIDS and the gay community in the mid-to-late 1980s: the homophobia, the stigma surrounding AIDS, the ignorance, and of course the pain of losing so many loved ones. Readers today who are not old enough to remember the AIDS crisis may shake their heads at June’s worry that Finn might have infected her by kissing her on the top of the head, but it’s important to remember that misinformation about the transmission of the virus was rampant at that time.
It was international news in 1987 when Princess Diana visited an AIDS hospital and shook hands with one of the patients without wearing gloves, to make the point that the virus could not be transmitted though normal contact; that same year, however, police wearing long yellow rubber gloves arrested protesters at an AIDS conference.
Tell the Wolves I’m Home is a 2013 winner of the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Alex Award, given to books written for adults that have special appeal to teens. Be forewarned: this beautiful book may very well have you doing the ugly cry.

Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 17 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com.

This review originally published in Sunday, February 24, 2013 edition of The News-Gazette.


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The Fault in Our Stars (review)

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Stellar Read—or Listen

I hadn’t originally intended to write a review of John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars” (Dutton Juvenile, 2012).  Not because I don’t adore John Green (I do) or his books (ditto), several of which I’ve reviewed for this paper. But I like to spread the love to authors who may not have received the attention they deserve. John Green’s fans, a.k.a. nerdfighters, are legion. I thought I’d give some other deserving authors a few column inches.
Sorry, other deserving authors. I’ll get to you later. You might say it was in the stars that this week’s review is for the audio version of “The Fault in Our Stars” (produced by Brilliance Audio, 2012; narrated by Kate Rudd). I generally write about print books in this column, but I had hardly removed the earbuds after listening to Green’s most recent gem when I learned that it had just won the American Library Association’s Odyssey Award for best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults. Well done, judges, well done.
Hazel Grace Lancaster, the narrator, is sixteen. She has cancer, and must carry an oxygen tank with her wherever she goes. Despite an experimental drug that has bought her a few years, she is terminal. She meets Augustus Waters, who has lost a leg to cancer (“I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago…”) at a support group. The two kindred spirits, sharing an irreverent sense of humor and a searching intelligence, eventually fall in love.
Augustus manages to arrange a trip to Amsterdam so that Hazel Grace can meet the author of her favorite book, “An Imperial Affliction,” to find out what happens to the characters after the book’s abrupt ending. What happens during the trip should remain a surprise, but it’s significant.
In the hands of a lesser author, a story about two teens with cancer would be sentimental and maudlin. While “The Fault in Our Stars” deals quite honestly and often heart-wrenchingly with the problems of kids with cancer, it is also filled with Green’s trademark humor and intelligence.
As any listener of audiobooks knows, the narrator can make or break the listening experience. Kate Rudd does a wonderful job of bringing the characters, especially Hazel Grace, to life. At 31, she is young enough to sound quite convincing as a teenager. In an interview, she admits that there were at least 100 pages where she is actually crying as she’s reading. So that explains Hazel’s very convincing breathlessness and the frequent catches in the voices of the parents.
Listen to this book in a place where you won’t mind if anyone catches you weeping or laughing out loud. If they do, just share one of your earbuds.


Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 17 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com.

This review originally appeared in the Sunday, February 3, 2013 edition of The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois).





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The Vanishing Act (review)

The Vanishing Act

Near the beginning of Mette Jakobsen’s debut novel “The Vanishing Act” ( W.W. Norton, 2012), Minou, the story’s 12 year old narrator tells the reader “You might not believe my story. You might read it as a fairytale, a fable straight out of my imagination.”

            Despite what Minou says, this quiet, slim novel is very much a fable, a tale of love, loss, and aching loneliness. Minou, her father; a kind, mad Priest; a magician named Boxman; and a dog called No Name live on an island “so tiny that it can’t be found on any maps.” One year earlier, her mother walked out into the cold morning with her umbrella and a turtle and disappeared from their lives. While everyone else on the island has given up hope of finding Minou’s mother, the girl is convinced that she is alive, off on an exciting adventure from which she will soon return.

            Jakobsen throws the reader into Minou’s world with the novel’s opening sentence: “It was snowing the morning I found the dead boy.”

Minou, and her father carry the frozen boy to their house, laying the body out on the mother’s empty bed for three days until the delivery boat could come to pick him up. The boy, Minou is sure, holds the secret to her mother’s disappearance, and she confides in him, a silent confessor.

So, too, does her father, a philosopher who believes that he is a descendent of Descartes. Logic and reason, in his mind, is the key to finding the ultimate truth—a belief that Minou has adopted and fervently hopes will help her untangle the mystery behind her mother’s disappearance. In flashbacks, we learn more about her mother, an artist who arrived on the island with just one red suitcase filled with “five dresses, eight jars of paint, two brushes, and a white enamel clock that didn’t work,” as well as a peacock nestled in a golden bowl. Both Minou’s mother and father were scarred by a war that, although unnamed, seems very much like World War II.  

The other characters in this sparse narrative are equally enigmatic. There is Priest, who performs Tai-Chi like exercises every morning, bakes pretzels that no one wants to eat, and sends out origami animals during his sermons to Minou and No Name.  The Boxman, a retired magician, now makes the boxes the magicians use when sawing women in half. All are a part of the story of the disappearance of Minou’s mother.

Jakobsen’s writing is lovely and captivating. After reading this book, you may find yourself revisiting Minou on her island “so tiny that it can’t be found on any maps.”

This review originally published in the Sunday, October 21 edition of The News-Gazette.

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Beautiful Creatures (review)

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Southern Gothic Fantasy Hits the Big Screen

I always prefer to read the book before seeing the movie. I think it’s more fun to imagine what the characters look like before some casting directors do it for me. If the filmmakers do a good job of bringing the book to the big screen, it adds to the fun. Harry Potter, anyone?
So when I saw that the movie “Beautiful Creatures,” based on the book of the same name (Little, Brown and Co., 2009) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, was coming out this year just in time for Valentine’s Day, I knew I had to read the book first.
All I can say is this: if the movie lives up to the book, I’m going to enjoy it.
Sixteen-year-old Ethan Wate lives in the small southern town of Gatlin, South Carolina, where nothing ever seems to change and old folks still refer to the Civil War as “The War of Northern Aggression.” The biggest event in town is the yearly Civil War reenactment that everyone—save Ethan and his family—seems to relish.
Nothing changes, that is, until Lena Duchannes comes to town. She is, literally, the girl of his dreams. For months, he had dreamed of a beautiful girl he had never met. She is falling, and he must save her. When Ethan meets the mysterious Lena on their first day of sophomore year, he knows it’s her. It is also clear that she is no ordinary teenager. She moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation with her uncle Macon Ravenwood, the town recluse.
Ethan falls for this strange new girl who is unlike any of the perky, blonde, fake-tanned cheerleader types who dominate the school’s social scene. She’s dark-haired, pale, wears all the wrong kind of clothes, and drives a hearse to school. Yes!
As Ethan quickly discovers, Lena’s differences go way, way beyond her looks. She is a Caster, which is something like a witch. Although, as Lena points out, “That’s such as stupid word, really. It’s like saying jocks. Or geeks. It’s just a dumb stereotype.” Ethan and Lena begin to fall for each other, even as they learn that their pasts are inextricably bound together. And Lena is struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations.
Authors Garcia and Stohl do a terrific job of describing the atmosphere, culture, and secrets of a small southern town, creating a gripping ending that will have you wishing for more. Wish granted: there are of course sequels—not to mention the movie!

Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 17 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com. This review originally published in the Sunday, January 13 edition of The News-Gazette.



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Sailor Twain by Mark  Siegel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mystery, Romance and Legend on the Hudson

Let’s get one thing straight: the mermaid in Mark Siegel’s graphic novel “Sailor Twain, or The Mermaid in the Hudson” (First Second, 2012) is no cute Disney creature wearing strategically placed seashells. She’s beautiful, all right. She’s also seductive—and, quite possibly, dangerous, more like the Sirens of Greek mythology than the Little Mermaid.
The year is 1887. Elijah Twain, a young steamboat captain, rescues an injured mermaid from the waters of the Hudson River. He carries her to her cabin and nurses her back to health. Twain is a poet, and she becomes his muse. He keeps her a secret from the rest of the boat, from his wife, and most especially, from Lafayette, the ne’er-do-well womanizer and owner of the ship. But Twain suspects that Lafayette may have a secret of his own—and that it may have something to do with mermaids. A meeting with C.G. Beaverton, enigmatic author of “Secrets and Mysteries of the River Hudson,” propels the story forward to its unexpected and deeply satisfying ending.
Siegel weaves together legend, local history, intrigue, and romance in a kind of fairy tale for young adults. His gorgeous, moody charcoal drawings capture the feeling of New York’s Gilded Age perfectly. In an interview with the “Los Angeles Times,” Siegel said that the idea came to him on his morning train rides to work in Manhattan alongside the Hudson River. Of the appeal of mermaids, Siegel said “...a song that we can’t resist, even though we know it’s going to pull us down—anyone who’s lived a bit on this planet knows mermaids. Some people can be mermaids to us. We can be mermaids to others, sometimes. And chemical siren-songs too, like crack, or smack, or alcohol, even coffee (not all mermaids spell disaster for us sailors, of course.)”
In the tradition of a 19th century novel, Siegel began serializing “Sailor Twain” in 2010 ahead of book publication. You can read the opening chapters, along with Siegel’s commentary, at http://sailortwain.com/chapters/.
“Sailor Twain” is one of those books that compelled me to turn back to the first page as soon as I read “The End.” It does include some nudity (and not just the mermaid’s bare breasts) and a few sex scenes. I’d recommend “Sailor Twain” for older teens and adults.

Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 16 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com. This review was originally published in the Sunday, December 23 edition of the News-Gazette.


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Never Fall Down (review)

Never Fall Down

Arn was eleven years old when the Khmer Rouge, a radical Communist regime, came to power in Cambodia. He was a happy, mischievous kid who hustled for spare change by singing and dancing with his brother, selling ice cream, playing games of chance.

            And then the peasant soldiers, wearing black pajamas and hats, came to town. Arn would never be that happy, mischievous boy again.

            “Never Fall Down” (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, 2012), a National Book Award finalist by Patricia McCormick, is based on the true story of Arn Chorn-Pond, a survivor of the genocide inflicted on the Cambodian people. Tens of thousands of people died from starvation, overwork, and disease; many more were tortured, killed, and buried in mass graves.

            When the Khmer Rouge soldiers first come to his town, Arn was happy; the war, they said, was finally over. But soon those with education or money disappear; those who remain are marched into the countryside. Arn is separated from his family and assigned to a child labor camp, where they work punishing hours under the blazing sun. He watches other children, weak from hunger, disease, or exhaustion, die before his eyes.

            McCormick uses Arn’s distinct and beautiful voice to tell the story of how he survived those brutal years: “I see some kids die in the field. They just fall down. Maybe it’s malaria. Or maybe they starve. They fall down, they never get up. Over and over I tell myself: never fall down.”           

One day, the soldiers ask if any of the kids play an instrument. Understanding that this may help him survive, Arn volunteers to play in the band—even though he’s never played a note in his life. Under the tutelage of an old musician, he quickly learns to play a traditional stringed instrument called the khim. The beautiful traditional Cambodian songs are forbidden. Instead, he and the other boys play revolutionary songs to bolster the spirits of the workers and, increasingly, to drown out the sounds of soldiers killing people they suspect of being traitors.

            Arn is forced to watch, and later, take part in, the brutal murder of innocents. He learns to key to survival: “I make my eye blank. You show you care, you die. You show fear, you die. You show nothing, maybe you live.” Just as the country is about to be liberated from the Khmer Rouge, he is handed a gun and forced to become a soldier.

            Arn escapes from the army; he ends up in a refugee camp in Thailand, very near death from disease and starvation. An American minister adopts Arn and two other Cambodian boys. The final section of the book describes Arn’s struggle to overcome the guilt and trauma of his experience with the Khmer Rouge; he has dedicated his life to humanitarian causes around the world.

            “Never Fall Down” is not an easy read; there are many scenes of death and graphic violence. But it is also a beautiful and important book.  

            To learn more about Arn Chorn-Pond, go to http://arnchornpond.com/.

This review originally published in The News-Gazette, Sunday, December 12, 2012. Sara Latta is a children's science writer and author of 14 books. You can learn more about her work and link to past reviews at http://www.saralatta.com.