No Place Like Home: The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser

In the middle of a quiet block on 141st Street, inside a brownstone made of deep red shale, the Vanderbeeker family gathered for a family meeting. Papa adjusted his glasses. "You kids know how much Mama and I love you, right?"

Oliver, who was nine years old and wise in the ways of the world, squinted. "Are you guys getting divorced?"

"No, we're--" Papa began. "Is it true?" six-year-old Hyacinth whispered, tears pooling in her round eyes. "Of course, we're--" Mama said.

"What's a dorce?" interrupted Laney, who was four and three quarters. "STOP!" Mama threw up her hands. "Papa and I are not getting a divorce!" Papa stood up. His face was so grim that his ever-present smile creases disappeared. "I didn't see this coming, but Mr. Beiderman's not renewing our lease."

"What's a lease?" asked Laney.

Things have never been great between the lively Vanderbeeker kids and their curmudgeonly landlord. From the moment he'd screamed when the then six-year-old Isa had played her first violin solo, "Twinkle Twinkle" in front of his always closed door, the children knew The Beiderman wished they would leave. It didn't help when their dog Franz used his door for a fire hydrant, or when Oliver hit a baseball through his window and practiced dribbling his basketball loudly on the sidewalk in front of the brownstone. But Hyacinth had learned to walk Franz outside and Isa had practiced violin in the basement for years, and Oliver always played ball at the park now. They had tried hard, but now Beiderman is just a mean old hermit who is ruining Christmas and making them move from the only home they'd ever known.

The kids called their own meeting. They had only eleven days to save their home.

They decided that they would just have to try to win Mr. Beiderman over. But a surprise breakfast, with fresh bread and pastries from Castleman's Bakery, winds up a dropped mess in front of his door when Jessie sees his angry eyeball glaring at her through the peephole.

"Total... failure," she sobs to her siblings.

Hyacinth decides to try a holiday gift, a hand-stitched placemat in Christmasy colors and with Franz on his leash and on his best behavior, she heads upstairs to knock on Beiderman's door.

Hyacinth trembled as she stood before a monster of a man with shaggy, dark hair. His face was pale and lifeless. He was wearing black, black, black. "Leave me alone! Move out of here and let me be!" he bellowed.

The children decide to collect signatures from all their neighborhood friends on a petition to Mr. Beiderman to let them stay in the brownstone. As they talk to the neighbors, they learn that there is a sad story of the tragic loss of his own family behind Mr. Beiderman's seclusion. But when the landlord sees the petition, he angrily calls their parents, who order the kids to apologize to Mr. Beiderman.

Hyacinth picks a little black kitten from the litter mother cat Francesca Priscilla Arlington is raising under the hydrangea bush in the backyard, and wrapping her own rainbow knitted shawl around the kitten and placing him in a box, she steals up to leave the kitten at Beiderman's door, knocks, and races downstairs.

But as it began with Isa and her violin, the feud ends dramatically, with Isa, playing "The Swan" outside Beiderman's door, in Karina Yan Glaser's charming family novel, The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).

Each of the Vanderbecker kids is a distinct individual with whom different readers may identify, and their varied, funny, messy, and loving lives, although set in the present, have the nostalgic ambiance of family classics, from that favorite of yesteryear, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (Dover Children's Classics), to All-of-a-Kind Family to The Moffats and more recently, The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy (see reviews here.) A story of a bitter, lonely man and a family sorrowfully facing the loss of their home, friends, and familiar neighborhood is a great holiday book for middle readers, an affirmation of the importance of an affectionate and tolerant family, a warm home, and a close-knit and caring multicultural community within a big city. Readers are going to be left longing for more stories of the Vanderbeekers from 141st Street.

Who Says? Fish In A Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Getting an award for not being smart enough to deserve it is the worst feeling. Like getting this certificate is going to make me pat myself on the back and transform into a different person. I swear I'll never accept an award that I don't deserve.

Keisha calls my name as I run from the classroom. I run into the bathroom and hide in a stall.

The door opens. "You okay?" Keisha asks.

"No. I'm not."

"Who runs from an award?" Keisha asks.

"I didn't win it for real. Mr. Daniels is just trying to be nice. You don't understand. Go away."

"You're right, Ally. I don't understand."

"Look," I say. "Imagine if every time you got on your bike, you had to worry if the wheels would come off. And they do. But you still have to ride."

"Why in the world are you talking about bikes and wheels coming off?"

"My brain," I say, leaning my head against the cold wall. "My brain will never do what I want it to do."

Ally has a great memory for anything she hears. Math is easy for her, and she's a talented artist. Everyone says so. But letters and words seem to wiggle across the page when she tries to read them. To hide her difference from everyone else, Ally has a whole bagful of tricks to distract attention from her inability to read, which means she spends a lot of time hiding in the bathroom or sitting in the Principal's office. Her teacher Mrs. Hall and her hard-working mother just tell her she needs to try harder.

But Ally knows that trying harder to read the wiggly letters only makes her brain freeze like a broken Etch-A-Sketch. She's in constant fear of being discovered and risking the scorn of the whole class, led by Shay, who might as well have CLASS MEAN GIRL on a sign around her neck. But when Mrs. Hall takes a leave of absence, things get better when Mr. Daniels comes to take her place. Mr. Daniels seems to value what she can do well, and without a word to the class, he changes her assignments to make them possible to complete. Slowly, Ally begins to understand herself and see that she's not the only one who doesn't always fit in. As her friend Keisha tells her...

"Look.  You don't fit in. I don't fit in. Albert doesn't fit in. Who says who fits in anyway? Who wants to fit in with people like Shay?"

You can't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree is the theme of Lynda Mullaly Hunt's latest, Fish in a Tree (Penguin Group, 2015).  Recognizing individual differences mean that accepting our own and others' abilities and deficiencies goes deeper than just giving the nod to "diversity." Writing for middle graders, Hunt's singling out archetypes such as Shay, the mean queen bee, Albert the class brain, Keisha the street-smart black girl, and Jessica, the needy wannabe who apes the "popular" kid, may appear a bit obvious, and it seems a bit strange that a veteran teacher and principal can't recognize a case of dyslexia right under their noses, but Hunt is not writing for adults; she is writing for youngsters for whom these are brand new problems. And with her new understanding that her reading problem is just one among those her classmates share, Ally comes to see that in a way, her mom and Mrs. Hall were right--she does have a lot of hard work ahead. What is different is that she knows she's not the only one and she's not afraid to ask for help any longer.

Hunt's latest book is a worthy companion to the recent notable classroom-centered novels that help preteen students understand and deal with differences, their own and those of others in the school setting. Notable among these are Rob Buyea's Because of Mr. Terupt, Jennifer L. Holms' The Fourteenth Goldfish, Ann M. Martin's Rain Reign, and R. J. Palacio's Wonder.

Boggled!: A Plague of Bogles by Catherine Jinks

"Shhh," Alfred hissed when he spotted the grate. "That's the one." He pulled Jem back from the door. "She'll have met her end in there, poor lass." Alfred rummaged through his brown bag. "Bogles like drains," he said, quietly. "Never think any hole is too small for a bogle." He had a small leather bag in one hand and his spear in the other. "Can you sing?"

"I can sing," Jem confessed, "but not like Birdie."

"Step into the ring of salt only when I tell you. Don't move till I move. And whatever you do, lad--do not touch the salt on your way out o' the ring."

Jem began to sing. "Brandy or rum I tipple in, with my darlin'..."

What was that smell? The bogle seemed to pour through the doorway like a wave of black treacle. Then, as it gathered itself into a kind of crest--rearing up behind Jem--a huge, gaping hole appeared in its body. The bogle was starting to encircle him. Glancing down at the slimy noose that was about to tighten around his ankles, he took his eyes off Alfred for a moment.

"JEM! NOW!" screamed the bogler.

It ain't over till it's over. With Birdie taken in by the wealthy folklorist, Miss Eames, studying for a career in the opera, and Jem working for a respectable grocer, Alfred Bunce is fresh out of apprentices and figures it's high time to retire from bogle-slaying. But when Jem hears about the disappearance of scullery girl Flossie in a pub built over a dungeon of Newgate Prison, he locates Alfred and begs him to hunt down the bogle beneath the bar.

As they soon learn, it seems that many bogles have plagued the area around Newgate. It's a plague of bogles, and Alfred and Jem reason that there must be a reason for the relatively rare child-eating monsters to congregate in one area. No child is safe in the neighborhood, and reluctantly, Alfred has to enlist the help of Miss Eames and Birdie to help him clear the area of bogles. Birdie is more than a bit bored with her middle-class life, and Miss Eames can't resist pursuing her research, so the four of them begin their bogle eradication mission.

But even their skills seem to be up against more than they can handle. There must be something drawing ever more bogles to Newgate, and Jem suspects his old employer, Sarah Pickles, for whom he thieved for seven years, is involved. He does some sleuthing on his own and learns a horrible truth. Sarah is in cahoots with the ruthless butcher John Gammon, a.k.a Salty Jack, who runs a powerful protection racket in Newgate Square. Sarah is now a "baby farmer," one who takes in the babies of poor working girls for pay, with a generous cut for Salty Jack, but who spares herself the trouble of caring for them by heartlessly feeding them to bogles in the cellars, where they disappear without a trace. With a abundant diet of tender babies at hand, the plague of bogles is explained, but even the streetwise Jem is staggered by the evil of Pickles and Salty Jack. He sets out to spy on Sarah Pickles to gather proof for the police, but falls into her trap and winds up chained in her cellar, perfect bogle bait himself.

Catherine Jinks' second book in this series, A Plague of Bogles (How to Catch a Bogle) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), almost outdoes her initial tale with non-stop suspense, wry humor, and a well-fleshed out glimpse of Victorian London populated by vivid, unforgettable characters that could have come straight out of Dickens. Jinks is a master storyteller and a verbal artist who sketches out her setting and characters with infinitely fine strokes deeply steeped in British folklore, all the while keeping the tension building toward a slam-dunk climax.

With a a deliciously Dickensian slang glossary that dutiful eighth graders plowing through required reading of Great Expectations would love and a teasing touch of Jinks' next sequel appended, this second book in the trilogy has it all--deadly danger in deep, dark sewers and the dungeons of Newgate Prison, resilient orphans determined to survive, and a cast of colorful adult characters, from the Fagan-esque Sarah Pickles to a murderous butcher with all the cold-blooded guile of a Mafioso chief. This novel is a deftly plotted Gothic mystery, a page-turning thriller that grabs the reader like a hungry bogle and doesn't release until the final word is gobbled down.

Jink's initial book is How to Catch a Bogle, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014, 2013) just out in a brand-new paperback edition. (Read my review here.)

From Columbus, You Could Go Just About Anywhere: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Interstate 77 could take you south
but my father said
no colored Buckeye in
his right mind
would ever want to go
there.
From Columbus, my father said,
you could go just about
anywhere.

Her father had wanted to name her Jack, after himself, but her mother chooses Jacqueline to make sure she will never ever be called Jackie.

Her mother longs to return home, to Greenville, South Carolina, to the soft summers and and warm arms of her family, and when Jacqueline is two, they move there, right into her grandparents' hugs and comfortable house. Grandpa becomes "Daddy," to her, and she and her older brother and sister settle in to the Black community there, soon losing their Buckeye way of fast talking. But times are changing even there, and her grandfather had his own ways of changing, too.

"This is the way brown
people have to fight,
my grandfather says.
You can't just put your
fist up.
You have to insist on something
gently. Walk toward a thing
slowly. But be ready to die,
my grandfather says,
for what is right.

But in time Jaqueline's mother grows restless of walking slowly and, leaving her three children behind, she follows her brother to New York City to find opportunity and a better place for her family.

How can we have both places?
How can we leave all that we've
known--
What about the
fireflies and ditches?

But their mother comes back for them and Jacqueline moves to her third place, expecting glorious things, even diamonds in the sidewalk. It's not like that in Brooklyn, but her brother learns that he can sing, her sister learns that she is brilliant, and Jacqueline has a teacher who tells her every morning

Now that Jacqueline is
here, the day can finally
begin.
And I believe her.

And it does begin. She learns to write her name, Jacqueline Amanda Woodson, on the first page of her composition book, and then she slowly fills it with stories that she imagines. Her mother worries that her made-up stories are just lies, but her uncle tells her to keep writing, and she does. She finds her first poetry, strange at first, some coded language only white people know, but as her teachers ask her to remember and recite it, it becomes her language, too.

How an award-winning author finds her own stories is the subject of Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014), a memoir of the people and the places she loved and where she was loved as she grew up. Written in blank verse that flows as easily as her storytelling, this book is filled with vivid, memorable people and a strong sense of place, of three geographical places, but also of finding a personal place in the world. It is one of many American stories--recollections of family love, hard work, and the willingness to move on--that run through all our own narratives.

A 2014 National Book Award finalist, Brown Girl Dreaming gives middle readers an understanding of life in the second half of the twentieth century and how it brought us to where we are now. Its lyrical flow takes readers deep into that time, not so long, ago, and makes it as real as yesterday, with the sights, sounds, and scents of three places in the heart of the writer. “A memoir-in-verse so immediate that readers will feel they are experiencing the author’s childhood right along with her. . . .The poetry here sings: specific, lyrical, and full of imagery. An extraordinary—indeed brilliant—portrait of a writer as a young girl.” says Horn Book

Both Sides Now: Trapped by Laurie Halse Anderson

I know we shouldn't be doing this. Dr. Mac and my parents would be furious if they knew. But I can't help myself. I'm too furious not to do it. Maggie feels the same way. She was really upset and angry about what happened to Chico.

That's why we're here in the woods, hiding behind a boulder. Maggie and I talked about it at lunch today at school, and we agreed. We have to find the creep who set the trap that caught the dog.

When Brenna Lake discovers a stray dog near death in a hunter's trap in the nature preserve, her first thought is to get the wounded animal to Dr. Mac's Place, the vet hospital where she volunteers with her best friend Maggie Mackenzie. Although Dr. Mac, Maggie's grandmother, has to amputate the damaged leg, the dog, which the girls name Chico, begins to recover, and Brenna turns her attention to discovering the identity of the illegal trapper.

Again hiding near the disabled trap where she found Chico, Brenna finds herself confronting a teenaged boy who comes back to reset the trap. Armed with a holstered pistol, the boy, Billy Morrison, angrily defends his right to trap on the land where the Morrison family has always hunted, and frightened by the confrontation, Brenna and Maggie run away and report the crime to the sheriff.

When Brenna tells her family about the incident in the woods, her teen brother Sage, who has become a radical animal rights activist, storms out in anger, and Brenna's family fears that he will urge his group to take violent "direct action" revenge against the young trapper.

But when Brenna learn that Billy has only received a small fine, she and the other vet volunteers determine to pay Billy Morrison a visit and talk him into giving up trapping for good. There they find Billy about to shoot a trapped fawn, and Brenna realizes that the only chance to save the little deer involves calling her volatile brother to drive the victim to Dr. Mac. Surprisingly, Billy asks to come along, and as the two wait for the fawn to be treated, she learns that he traps fur animals to help support his family, and Brenna surprises herself when she suddenly sees his actions from his point of view.

Laurie Halse Anderson's just published new edition of her Trapped #8 (Vet Volunteers) is a fast-moving story with a bit of mystery and suspense which will appeal to middle readers. With realistic moral complexity and family conflict and a well foreshadowed resolution added to the basic animal rescue plot, it is one of the best written books in this excellent and highly readable series.

Peanut Wizard: George Washington Carver and Science & Invention in America by Cheryl Harness

Noted biographer Cheryl Harness's The Groundbreaking, Chance-Taking Life of George Washington Carver and Science and Invention in America (Cheryl Harness Histories) (National Geographic, 2008) tells the incredible life story of a little black boy, born a slave, whose love for nature and thirst for education took him from his first school in Neosha, Missouri, to a professorship at the University of Iowa and on to Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute.

George Carver was a baby when his mother Mary, slave to Moses and Susan Carver, was abducted to Arkansas during the Bushwhacker/Jayhawk Wars following the Civil War. Mr. Carver located baby George and his brother Jim after his mother died, and trading a good horse for their return, he became a foster father to the two orphan boys. Sickly after the whooping cough, at first George helped Susan at home with her washing, weaving, and gardening, eventually becoming the "plant doctor" for neighbors all around. When he was twelve, George was allowed to leave for a town eight miles away to go to the colored school there, and from that point he began his wandering in search of education. A stint on a sodbusting homestead in Kansas was followed at last by a chance to attend Simpson College in Iowa and then on to Iowa State University, where he drew attention for his mastery of botany and his paintings, which were exhibited in Chicago at the 1893 Colombian Exposition.

But it was his relocation to Tuskegee Institute where Carver found his lifelong vision.

Forty-five years later, old George would still remember his first impression of the sunny South. There was "not much evidence of scientific farming anywhere." As far as he could see, "everything looked hungry: the land, the cotton, the cattle and the people."

Professor Carver threw himself into his work in Alabama, devising and then teaching what is now called organic farming, rotating crops and nourishing the land by composting vegetation into the exhausted soil, planting legumes, including the peanut he made so famous, to enrich the land further. Always more of an idea man than meticulous scientist, Carver created hundreds of products from what he was able to coax out of the earth in Tuskegee's agricultural station's fields--dyes and oil from peanuts, plastic from soybeans, flour from sweet potatoes. Carver's agricultural bulletins helped replace the South's boll weevil-blasted cotton with other marketable crops, and his "power alcohol" became the first bio-fuel. But it was as a visionary advocate for scientific farming and biochemical development of products that Carver became most famous. A gifted speaker and salesman for his ideas. always attired in his shabby suit with his ever-present flower in lapel, he testified before Congress and was a friend of Franklin Roosevelt and his secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, whom he had known as boy in Ames, Iowa.

In a chatty, casual narrative style, Cheryl Harness weaves George Washington Carver's amazing life story in and out of the events and personages of his times--from that other idea man, Thomas Edison, to Adolf Hitler. A clever feature of this biography is a progressively scrolling timeline at the bottom of each page to let the reader know what was going on in Carver's world at each stage of his life--the capture of Geronimo, the sinking of the Lusitania, the writing of Winnie the Pooh, the landing of Lucky Lindy, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, and the Fermi team's first nuclear chain reaction at the Manhattan Project--a device which provides a window for young readers into the history of Carver's time. Back matter includes a "G. W. Carver Chronology," a timeline, "Science and Invention March On," and a full index. Cheryl Harness' fine pencil and ink drawings illustrate the text prolifically. The author sums up Carver's lasting contributions to American life thus:

More than anything, George was a teacher. He taught by example how an individual could live with dignity in an unfair world and how all individuals could practice good Earth-keeping. He was "green" before today's eco-champions were born. He showed folks how to recycle and build up their land naturally instead of using it to death, then standing helpless when soil washed or blew away. He showed how nature and mankind could co-exist in harmony....

The Big War: A Pocket Full of Seeds by Marilyn Sachs

As Nicole Nieman walks home for lunch, her thoughts are with her friend Francoise, who had fled during the night for fear of being picked up by the Nazi soldiers rounding up Jews. Nicole enters her home to find it empty, a cut-glass pitcher broken on the floor, and her parents' room ransacked. A neighbor fearfully approaches.

"Nicole," said Mme. Barras, "you have to get away. You can't stay here. They were looking for you, too. How lucky you were that you were not home. But go now! Don't stay! They are coming back!"

At first the Niemans believe that the Germans, who occupy all but the southern part of France, will not come to Aix-le-Bains, in theory under the control of the Italian forces after the invasion of France. Nevertheless, a steady stream of Jewish refugees passes through on the way to the Swiss border, and her parents and other members of the Resistance give them temporary shelter in their homes. But when the Italians surrender to the American forces, the Nazis move ever closer and their arrest of French Jews escalates, even in Aix-le-Bains. Now Mama and Papa and little Jacqueline have been taken and Nicole is on her own.

Grabbing her bike, Nicole rides into the countryside to ask for help with a family who had cared for her when her parents were working abroad, but although her French friends kindly give her food and temporary refuge, all are too afraid of the Germans to let her stay. With no place left to turn, under cover of night Nicole goes back to her school to sleep fitfully in the entryway. Amazingly, the Headmistress Mme. LeGrand, a suspected German sympathizer, takes her in and hides her among her boarding school students with falsified papers. Grateful, but still in despair, Nicole is moved to turn herself in to the Germans in the hope of being reunited with her parents. Then a woman released by the Nazis gives her a message from her mother:

"Your mother said that she loves you very much and has faith that you will always do the right thing."

"She said that?"

"Yes, and there was one more thing.... That you must not get caught. She said that whatever suffering lies ahead for them, she and your father could bear up as long as they knew you were safe. She said knowing that you were safe would keep them going, and that they would come back to you as soon as they could."

Marilyn Sachs' A Pocket Full of Seeds offers a snapshot of one Jewish family and their struggle to remain free as the tide of war turns. Many are taken and some are lost, but hope, like a pocket full of seeds in winter, lives within those who survive.

Changing Tide: Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes

It is Martha Boyle's twelfth summer, and she seems to be floating away on some strange tide. Her thoughts keep turning to the sad story of Olive Barstow, a shy, almost reclusive classmate, who was suddenly killed in traffic only a few weeks before. How can someone only twelve be dead?

As Martha's family travel to visit her grandmother Godbee at her home on the Cape shore, nothing seems the same and nothing seems right. Godbee, always to Martha "strong, smart, pretty, protective, safe, and yes, brave," admits that things are not the same for her, either. What she has been is slipping away, she confides to Martha in their daily truth-telling time. Her brother Vince, who was always there like a best friend, spends most of his time with his friends. And the Manning boys, her brother's vacation buddies, the ones she always hated because they teased her and drew her brother away from their usual vacation games--now one of the Mannings has kissed her and one of the Mannings has proven that he is the one who cares about her.

As Martha struggles to the surface of her new world, she fills a jar with ocean water for Olive, who wrote in her journal that she longed to see the ocean. When Martha returns home, she tries to take the ocean water to Olive's mother, but Mrs. Barstow has left and gone away, and all Martha can do is write Olive's name in sea water on her doorstep. Writ in water, Olive and Martha's childhood are both gone, and Martha goes back home to begin the rest of her life.

Kevin Henkes, whose most famous female character had been Lily of Lily's Purple Plastic Purse, has shown that he knows how to get inside the feminine mind once again. In Martha, Henkes has perfectly captured the borderline between childhood and maturity and a girl's first steps over that line.