In the Room Where It Happened: Starting from Seneca Falls Karen Schwabach

The cell was five feet by nine feet and stifling hot. It contained a bucket, a pile of dirty straw, and Bridie. Up near the ceiling was small barred window.

If Bridie jumped up and grabbed the bars of the window, she could pull herself up and see the poorhouse children weeding the cabbage field outside. Bridie would be weeding with them, except that she had opinions about the way things ought to be and spoke up about them.

And because of her opinions, Bridie finds herself on trial to be indentured to Farmer Kigley and quickly learns that he beats his wife almost as as often as he beats her. So Bridie runs away in the dark of the night and makes her way to the nearest town. Starved and cold, discovered by a black servant girl named Rose, Bridie is taken in work for a kind lady and unexpectedly finds herself in the midst of history. The town is Seneca Falls and the kind woman is Elizabeth Cady Stanton, already in the midst of planning the 1848 Seneca Falls Women's Convention, to be attended by Abolitionists Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott, and Lydia Marie Child, as well as Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman medical student.

Bridie finds herself attending the local school and assisting Mrs. Stanton, working on her "Declaration of Sentiments" which urged that women be given rights to their wages and inheritance and all rights before the law, and Bridie even gets a chance to help the local print shop set the type for Mrs. Stanton's posters advertising her historic Seneca Falls convention.

The boy, Davie, came up and took the notice from her hand. He was wearing a blue apron and was covered in ink. Davey smiled at her. "Want to watch me set the type?" he smiled. He picked up an empty composing stick and started to set the type. "You can do the next word if you want," Davey offered. Bridie did want. The moment the stick was in her hand, it felt like it belonged. She felt as if she was standing on the edge of something important.

Davey allows her to set the word RIGHTS on the document, and Bridie resolves to become educated and become a printer herself someday. Mrs. Stanton's Declaration of Sentiments is adopted with a majority of votes, and beginning in Seneca Falls, her plans for the advancement of women and former slaves made at that convention eventually changed the nation and spread around the world. But first Bridie must avoid re-capture by Farmer Kigley, barely escaping aboard a tow boat on the Erie Canal, where Rose and Bridie hide until they can make their way to the home of Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, where  Bridie soon  learns the printing trade working on the famous Abolitionist newspaper, The North Star. And from there, it's all history.

From Seneca Falls you could go anywhere! And Bridie did, in Karen Schwabach's Starting from Seneca Falls (Random House, 2020), an exciting novel of two girls, one an orphaned Irish immigrant and one a free-born black girl, who managed to stay free and make lives for themselves in a rapidly changing world. With details of the life of women in the mid-1800s, from the independent and energetic Elizabeth Stanton, a pioneer of the emancipation of women, the devout Quaker Lucinda Mott who fought for the emancipation of all races, and the courageous Frederick Douglass who believed in both, this historic novel is filled with danger and adventure which takes the reader back into that time, into the very rooms where it all happened and their future and ours were changed. With fast-paced action, hairsbreadth escapes, and brave female characters who help shape their own lives and change those of the future, this historical novel should be a first purchase for school and public libraries, and in classroom collections for Women's Month activities.

"The political is personal in this effective introduction to 19th-century society and women’s rights," says Kirkus Reviews.

The Skies of Tomorrow--TODAY! Flying Robots (Robots and Robotics) by Daniel Faust

Although the world of the Jetsons has yet to materialize (Where's my flying car?), the world of robotics is already here.

Large manufacturing robots in giant assembly buildings make steel, build cars and airplanes, and rule over the assembly of many things, from tiny electronics to huge airplanes.

But a lot of the action in robotics is up in the air, those flying bots known as drones or UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles.

Some flying robots seem to have been borrowed from nature, resembling dragonflies or bees, and some look like the the stripped-down machines they are, equipped with rotors for lift, stabilizers for control, motors for the rotors, wheels or pads for landing, and sensors to help them avoid objects, and their payload which can be a camera for making taking aerial film, or cargo for quick, direct deliveries. Flying robots can be controlled from the ground or they can execute longer flights programmed into their internal computers, some with artificial intelligence (AI) to make them safer and more effective.

Drones can be used for military weaponry and surveillance, map-making, photography, and short-range delivery of everything from medications to a world of products.

There are many components and plans for flying robots and many shapes and purposes described and pictured in Daniel Faust's book, Flying Robots (Robots and Robotics) (PowerKids Press), a basic state-of-the-art book on aerial robotics designed expressly as an introduction to flighted rebotics for upper elementary and early secondary readers, complete with a glossary and index to give early enthusiasts an easy takeoff into the popular subject of drone-building and flying.

Books for getting young drone fans up to speed include David Macauley's The Way Things Work Now and National Geographic Kids Everything Robotics: All the Photos, Facts, and Fun to Make You Race for Robots.

Bugged! Something Is Bugging Samantha Hansen by Nancy Viau

It started last fall on our class trip to Slippery Stone Cave. I was being extremely helpful to our cave guide, and That Kid Richard said I was a science freak and had rocks in my head. But Todd Kensington stuck up for me. I decided right then that Todd would be my boyfriend one day--in a few years when I was allowed to have a boyfriend. But then Kelli invited Todd over to her house. I got so mad at Kelli.

Kelli and I don't stay mad for long. She's been my friend since kindergarten. Best friend. But since Christmas vacation, she's only been over twice. She has not been best friend material these days.

The rocks in Samantha's head have been displaced pro tem by the next science unit--insects--but her relationship with Kelli is not exactly buzzing. Kelli has started dance lessons and has been as busy as a bee with her ballet friend Ling. But, not surprisingly, at school Samantha finds a new obsession, not fractions and percentages, but bees--and on an outing to a local apiary with her grandfather, she is dismayed to learn that the owner is planning to sell out and move away. Her angry stomping around gets her in trouble with her mom, who is starting a new job and her teenaged sister Jen, thinks she's a big baby to make a fuss over a bunch of bees.

But her teacher, Miss Montemore, is sympathetic, and That Kid Richard Frey, who does have cute dimples, helps her start their class Bug Club.

But dimple-faced boys are not important now. What I need is a friend. A best friend. Someone who wants to hang out with me. And if that someone liked science, that would make the second half of fourth grade fifty-million percent better.

Samantha finds a science friend, her classmate Kat, who also loves science and is very funny besides, and Kat joins her in forming a club and heading up their campaign, Save The Bees. Before she knows it, she's Samantha Hansen, Entymologist, and President of the Bug Club, the science kids organize a demonstration, complete with Save the Bees posters and articles in the local newspaper.

The apiary is saved, with a surprising new owner and there is clearly more nature science and best friends in Samantha's future, in Something Is Bugging Samantha Hansen (Schiffer Publishing, 2019). It's not as if Samantha Hansen has exactly lost her love for rocks. She's not fickle, but in this humorous sequel to Samantha Hansen Has Rocks in Her Head, (see review here) she's playing the field, that is, the field of beehives at Orchardville Farm, learning about beekeeping, and perhaps a little about juggling emotions and controlling her temper with her best friends (plural) and potential far-in-the-future boyfriends. Samantha Hansen is a delightfully lively and honest character in this forthcoming funny and down-to-earth realistic fiction book for middle readers.

Do The Right Thing: Sticks and Stones by Lisa Fowler.

Daddy don't say a word. The bumping up and down of the wagon jolts me back to the problem at hand. He's mad, all right, but what he's not got a clue of is that I'm fuming, too. I don't like the lying Daddy wants me to do, but what's worse is that he's making me do it in front of the triplets. I know by the looks of things we've crossed over the county line from Chattanooga. Words I can't suck back come spewing from my mouth.

"This wouldn't be happening if Mama was here. Huh! She wouldn't let me or the triplets help you tell lies in the first place. I fold my arms across my chest sort of proud and haughty-like. "The way I see it you was too busy snatching up money, jumping around like a chimpanzee in a tree, and passing out lies to--"
"Whoa!" Daddy pulls hard on the reins and Old Stump clip-clops to a halt. "Get down!" he whispers.

"GET. DOWN." He motions me off the wagon. From the corner of my eye, I see the wagon wobble. Filbert, Macadamia, and Hazelnut are moving close, so they can hear.

Then he does it. I mean he really does it. He takes off, leaving me standing on the dirt road, alone in the dark.

Working in the Kentucky coal mines isn't buying Mama that big house she wants, and one day Daddy takes twelve-year-old Chestnut and the triplets off in a traveling medicine show wagon, telling them that he going to make a pot of money and make Mama happy again, but from the short rations he's keeping them all on, Chestnut doesn't believe he's making much money at all. The triplets are getting ragged and skinny and Chestnut never gets quite enough to eat. Old Stump is pretty worn out, and the wagon is crowded, and it just kills Chestnut to pretend to be from every single town, bragging about how that traveling man's elixir cured her granny of everything that ails her, just to fool the customers into buying the stuff. She knows Daddy's elixir is "snake oil" tonic, made of grass clippings and flavorings, and that he's taking them all farther and farther away from Mama.

Daddy stops and waits for her to catch up a ways down the road, but Chestnut is still angry, angry enough to take matters into her own hands. She starts drawing up and posting advertising signs showing their wagon and telling all and sundry the next town they're heading for, so that Mama can know where to look for her missing kids. But it's been nigh onto two years, and Mama hasn't come for them. And as they travel across Mississippi, Chestnut is losing hope.

They meet up with an old black man, Abraham, Daddy knows from the coal mine back home, and he joins up with them to play his banjo as the triplets sing. The crowds do get a little bigger, but Chestnut notices that their meals aren't getting any bigger. Abraham tells her it was not her Daddy's choice to take them off from home with him, but Chestnut believes Daddy is just using the triplets to sing and look cute and her to work the crowd of suckers for him. And if it looks like if Mama can't find them, Chestnut herself is going to have to run away and go find her.

And then, in a general store in Beaumont, just west of the Texas line, Chestnut gets her chance to get enough money for a bus ticket back to Kentucky.

I tag along as usual, and when we get to the general store, I scatter. Abraham and Daddy are loading up on supplies. "Excuse me, sir," Daddy babbles on to the man behind the counter. "Where do you keep your nails?"

The man takes money from the customer beside Daddy and slides the bills into the cash drawer. He leaves the cash register wide open and moves off, showing Daddy to the nails. I take a quick look around. There's not a soul in sight. I move quick. Paper money! I reach for it, quick as a flash.

Stealing's wrong--but only if you don't have a good enough reason.

But when the law catches up with them, Daddy goes to jail for stealing the money, and the sheriff calls Mama to come down on the next train, Chestnut realizes that she can't leave Daddy in jail, and she confesses taking the money. And when her pretty, well-dressed mama arrives and says her piece, Chestnut realizes that she's had it all wrong from the git-go, and her opinion of Daddy takes a turn for the better.

Set in the rural South in 1921, Lisa Fowler's Snakes and Stones (Sky Pony Press, 2016) features a hard-headed, funny, and spirited narrator with plenty of spunk and ginger in her, as she takes care of her little sister and brothers and does what's right in the face of much she does not understand. It's hard for our young heroine to accept that it's Daddy who's been trying to do the right thing all along, and as she finds out for herself, it's not always so easy to know what that right thing is. With a feisty and plucky heroine and the sights and sounds of a traveling medicine show along the road, this is a novel that engages readers right away and takes them along for a ride they'll never forget.

Dendrology by Another Name Would Seem as Green: Treecology by Monica Russo

"Trees can be seen almost everywhere we live. Even if you have never seen a forest or taken a woodland walk, you might have enjoyed the cool shade of a tree on a hot day or seen the beauty of a tree in flower. Trees give us visual relief from the city environment. Trees are a vital part of a healthy forest ecology."

Trees are such an integral part of most people's lives that we take them for granted as part of our mental landscapes. We can't see the trees for the forest, so to speak.

But when you look at the impact of trees in absolutely every aspect of human life, you see how essential they are for life on this planet. They actually give us everything they have--the habitat for untold species we depend upon, fuel and building materials, protection against the elements, the nurturing source of streams and rivers, and the life-giving oxygen in the very air we breathe.

It's no wonder that environmental science education often begins and ends with trees and the effect of their presence or absence on human ecology. Monica Russo's new Treecology: 30 Activities and Observations for Exploring the World of Trees and Forests (Young Naturalists) (Chicago Review Press, 2016) offers both an easy educational read for older middle readers and a source book for educators of all kinds, from Scout and camp leaders to classroom teachers. Russo's eight chapters--What Is a Tree? Tree Families, From the Ground Up, Woodland Wildlife, It's Dead...No, It's Alive! It's Nuts! Food for Animals, Out and About, Tree Treks, and People and Trees--and Forest Conservation--begin with the essential definitions and lead the student through widening circles of interaction with the meaning of trees to life on earth and how they themselves fit into that picture, sometimes even simply by planting and tending a tree.

Russo has a hands-on approach to nature science, getting kids down digging in the forest litter and plucking leaves from the branches, counting tree rings, and getting their hands dirty investigating the unseen forms of life that exist even in dead trees and expanding their world view from the canopy of rain forests and the effect forests have on  life even in earth's deserts. Plenty of projects and activities dot each chapter, from a simple leaf rubbing or a collection types of leaves right down to a census of the life forms that exist in a woodland, from the backyard grove to local arboretums to national parks. Multiple color photos fill the pages, illustrating what is discussed in each section.

Russo includes a glossary that introduces cool terms such petiole and fascicle, a table of common and scientific names, a collection of organizations which offer varied materials, a teacher's guide, bibliography, and index. Just in time for those "signs of fall" nature walks, this is an essential for public and school libraries, and a handy and inexpensive resource for any home or classroom bookshelf.

“A labor of love reflecting years of experience in the field as well as in writing for young readers," says Kirkus Reviews.

Manmade: The Human World by Jon Richards

Lots of books teach kids about the natural world, the land, the oceans and rivers, the air, and living creatures who make it their home.

But what about the human world, what humans have built and what they do on the surface of the earth, below the surface, and even in the space above the earth? That overlay (and underlay) is the subject of Jon Richards' just-published The Human World (The World in Infographics) (OwlKids Books, 2013), a book in the publishers Infographics series which seeks to portray the facts and figures of human activity in a variety of icons, pictograms. and colorful graphics.

Using bright backgrounds and a rainbow of colorful symbols, author Richards and artist/designer Ed Simkins set out to show middle readers some of the fascinating facts about human makers and shakers on the earth.

For example, a pictogram shows the silhouette of one car with the icons of eleven humans to show how many cars there are in relation to people on the earth. On another page a line graph shows earth's population at 791 million in 1750, rising slowly until 1900, to 1.6 billion, and then rising like a rocket to a predicted 9 billion by 2050. A companion infographic shows a human icon standing on his share of earth's surface, 0.03 square mile, in 1900, and the human individual standing on his 2050 share of land, 0.006 square mile.  A color co-ordinated world map shows where those people live--5.09% in North America, 10.61% in Europe, and 60.31% in Asia, with the populations shown by colored circles of related size.

And a lot of these people get around in cars. An array of car icons show the relative size of car production, with China, at the top with 13,897,083 cars produced in 2010, and the U.S. at the bottom of major producers with 2,731,105. A similar graphic shows that all of these automobiles produce 15.9% of earth's carbon dioxide emissions, while electricity generation produces 43.9%. A series of different-sized air control towers shows that Atlanta in the U.S. has the heaviest annual air passenger count, followed by Heathrow, U.K., Beijing, China, Chicago, U.S., and Tokyo, Japan.

Richards provides many more facts in show-not-tell infographics format--annual vacation lengths represented by different-sized beach chairs, relative work weeks shown by decreasing-sized workers at their laptops, and even the six most-popular tourist destinations, led, surprisingly, by France. Final sections deal with communications and the digital world, including the amazing fact that there were 5.3 billion cell phones (in 2010), with one and a half billion  of those in China and India.

Richards and Simkins provide an eye-catching glossary, with white text and bright icons set off against a black background, and an brief but useful index.  There's a (human) world of information to tempt students to find further facts in other sources. Other books in The World in Infographics series include The Human Body (The World in Infographics), The Natural World (The World in Infographics), and Planet Earth (The World in Infographics) (see reviews here).

Telling the Tales of A Wimpy Kid: Jeff Kinney by Christine Webster

Jeff began writing Diary of a Wimpy Kid very quickly. After a while, he realized that much of what he was writing was not very funny. He decided he needed another plan. Before he started writing an actual book, he dedicated his time to coming up with 77 idea pages. From here, he would choose only the very best ideas on these pages.

It took Jeff four years to fill those 77 idea pages. He then cut 80 percent of the material he felt was not worth putting in the book. He was not sure his diary idea would ever have a chance of being published. Jeff pitched his idea to Charlie Kochman, a comic book editor.  Charlie immediately liked it. Here the idea of making Wimpy Kid a series for kids was brought up. Jeff was skeptical, but he agreed to revise Wimpy Kid for younger readers.

And so a bunch of bodacious best-sellers was born!

Success didn't come easy to author-illustrator Jeff Kinney. A kid who loved funny books, such as Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, and Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins series, Kinney was drawn right away to cartooning. Early on, even as his college newspaper comic strip Igdoof was a hit at the University of Maryland, Jeff realized that he wasn't much of an artist, not even as a cartoonist. He went to work as a programmer, designing a website, Poptropica, and kept on trying to peddle his comic strip to newspaper syndicates with no success. But while he kept his day job, Kinney also kept on working on various comic ideas, keeping a journal of ideas, and slowly he settled on a comic stick-figure style with episodes based on the life of a clueless seventh grader. Admittedly incorporating many of his own worst qualities as a middle schooler, Kinney kept on drawing and revising his story, shaping his collection of jokes and cartoons into a connected narrative, working late into the night while his family slept.

And then his first book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1, was published  into almost instant best-seller status, with almost as many adults as kids among its fans, making his hapless hero Greg Heffley an instant literary celebrity.  Kinney may not be a stellar cartoon artist, but he has the magically sensitive ability to portray his benighted and self-centered seventh-grade anti-hero sympathetically, in a way that stirs all those embarrassing memories for grown-ups and resonates with the experiences of 'tween readers.  All of Kinney's characters are immediately recognizable to readers, from his pesky little brother Manny to his equally hapless but always gung ho buddy, Rowley, his snarky garage-band rocker big brother Rodrick, and the rest of the middle school milieu,  all of  which manage to  get in the way of  Greg's only life goal, to reach the top level in Twisted Wizard.

Christine Webster's, Jeff Kinney, with Code (Remarkable Writers) (AV2 Books, 2012), the opener in the biography series Remarkable Writers, features a clear description of the years of  hard work and constant revision that went into Kinney's runaway success--to date six best-sellers and a very popular movie spin-off.  Webster points out the many failures that led to this success. and the drive, life choices, and frequent changes of direction that resulted in Kinney's career accomplishments. The author also provides additional supplementary and back matter--a timeline, a breakdown of the biography as a literary type, a quiz on the facts in the text, and a audio-visual online link with even more information for book reports or browsing. Jeff Kinney comes across as a real person, a guy, a dad, and  a writer with whom many kids can identify and perhaps emulate in finding their own futures, and this series helps young readers go right along with him in the creation of his best-selling and beloved character.

Back Off, Tiny Tim! A Very Baby Mouse Christmas by Jennifer L. Holm

Baby Mouse will do whatever it takes to make sure she gets the present she wants this year--even if she must outsmart Santa himself!

BabyMouse wants a Whiz-Bang, the electronic gizmo du jour, It's a phone; it texts; it's a video game and music player; it does everything her heart desires--except straighten her permanently kinked whiskers. But that's a story for another day.

Right now, BabyMouse has to make sure that Whiz-Bang is in her stocking on Christmas morning, and she plans her campaign as carefully as a military tactician. She drops hints like mad at home; she writes a personal letter to Santa making her case, and just in case the mail goes astray, she disguises herself as a tot in line to see Santa at the Mall. She enters a best-holiday-decorated locker contest at school hoping to win one, with disastrous results to her locker door. She searches all the usual hiding places on closet shelves at home, but only succeeds in inducing avalanches of old boots and mittens. She thinks about nothing but Whiz-Bangs as she goes to Wilson's for Hanukkah, takes in the Nutcracker ballet, featuring the Dance of the Sugar Plum Whiz-Bang, and even has a disturbing dream where she is Scrooge, visited by the three Ghosts of Mean Girls.

"No crumbs for YOU, Bob Crachett. I need to sell my cupcakes so I can buy a Whiz-Bang."

Finally Christmas morning arrives. Under her tree BabyMouse finds--a doll house!

"Does Santa even READ those letters?"

And then--her faith is restored. There is one more small, rectangular package for her, and inside--Oh, Joy!--a Whiz-Bang! There's just one problem.

"Batteries not included."

"Typical" said BabyMouse.

Will BabyMouse find the true meaning of Christmas with her family while her much-wanted Whiz-Bang lies battery-less? You betcha!

In three-time Newbery author Jennifer Holm's A Very BabyMouse Christmas (Random House, 2011) our heroine finds fun and fulfillment with her family, ably abetted by the cartoons of brother Matthew Holm, in book #5 of her best-selling middle grade graphic novels. Baby Mouse gets the spirit of Christmas right at last.

"Sometimes the best presents are the ones you don't expect."

Spoofing the Singalong: Sipping Spiders Through a Straw: Campfire Songs for Monsters by Kelly DiPucchio and Gus Grimly

A-campin' we will go,
With monster friends in tow.
Hi-ho, the scary-o,
We dare you to say no.

We'll fill your nights with fear.
We'll rip your tent and sneer.
Hi-ho the scary-o,
We're glad you made it here.

Collaborators Kelly DiPucchio and Gus Grimly have a surefire kid pleaser in their new collection of silly. slightly scary campfire songs, Campfire Songs For Monsters (Sipping Spiders Through A Straw) Set to childhood standards such as the title takeoff of "Sippin' Cider Through a Straw," these are songs kids will love to sing at summer camp, family camping trips, backyard sleepovers, Halloween shindigs, or just any time when they feel like giggling through some silly songs.

Here's a sample chorus from "Home, Home of the Strange," set to (you got it) "Home on the Range:"

Home, home of the strange,
Where the feared and the freaks come to play.
Where the stench in the air
Comes from goon underwear,
And the kids are all pasty and gray.

And here's a bit from "My Darling Frankenstein," tune borrowed from "My Darling Clementine:"

In the kitchen, in the castle,
Filled with mold and turpentine,
Lived a baker, monster maker,
And her true love, Frankenstein.
Oh, my crispy, oh, my crunchy,
Oh, my frosted Frankenstein.
You're so yummy, in my tummy,
My delicious Frankenstein.

Serve with monster cookies!

Then there's this anthem to the national pastime:

Take me out to the graveyard,
Take me out to the tombs.
Buy me some worms from that Quasi named Jack.
I don't care 'bout that hump on his back.
So it's 'Boo, boo, boo,' for the bone team.
If they don't win, then they're lame.
For it's 'one, two, three bites, you're out,'
At the old graveyard game.

The parodies never seem to stop, from the grossout "Blow, Blow, Blow Your Nose," and "For He's a Stinky Old Fellow," to the simply silly "I've Been Running Over Road Toads" and "If You're Scary and You Know It." Gus Grimly adds his signature comic spooky cartoons to create just the right atmosphere for this spoofy spookarama of spectral songs. It's a hoot to run through these ditties, even in the daylight, but hang some ghosts, bats and owls about, or start up your bonfires at dusk, and have yourself a haunted hootenanny!