Book Thoughts: Suspension of Disbelief, featuring Huntress by Malinda Lo and Captain America

If you ever read books or watch movies outside of realistic contemporary fiction, you're familiar with the idea of the willing suspension of disbelief, even if you haven't heard the phrase before. It's how when we're faced with a story with fantastic settings or characters, if there's something "real" in there that connects these fantastic situations with the consumer, we're willing to suspend our disbelief - the instinct to roll our eyes and say something is impossible - in order to enjoy the story. Wikipedia is telling me the term was coined by philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was saying that if writers could add "human interest and a semblance of truth" to their stories, readers would be willing to go along with whatever else was thrown at them.

Today, reading the comments in another blog, I came across what is allegedly the contemporary rule for the suspension of disbelief:

The rule of suspension of disbelief is that if you have something fantastic...you have to make everything else as true-to-life as possible. If you have little things which takes you out of the believability, you find it less likely to believe the fantastic things.

In this case, the media in question is the new Captain America movie, where it appears some of the military units have been integrated, even though in reality, integration didn't happen until after WWII.

While reading this, in my head I heard the proverbial needle scratch across the record. Because in the book blogosphere, I think we just had this conversation, in a more specialized sense perhaps, inspired by Malinda Lo's blog post on taking the homophobia out of fantasy. Lo's point is that when authors are creating fantastic new worlds, even if those worlds are often based in some part on our own, we have the ability to remove something that is unfortunately common in our society, and truly imagine some place fantastic. We don't have to "make everything else as true-to-life as possible" - to use Lo's books as an example (and I'll be sure to review Lo's latest, Huntress, this week), just because we have fairies and magic doesn't mean we also have to have an oppressively patriarchal and homophobic society. Lo does an amazing job in Huntress of making love between women just another romantic possibility - there's some good-natured teasing about who likes whom, but it's never a joke because of gender.

So rto go back to Captain America, if we're already going to re-write history to say the Nazis have some bizarre Red Skull on their side, and the US develops a super soldier serum that turns a scrawny guy into Captain-freakin'-America, why would the straw that breaks the camel's back be a black man fighting alongside the personification of American ideals?

Suspension of disbelief is a good rule to keep in mind when creating a fantastic setting - to continue another comic book movie conversation I saw this weekend, will our disbelief be shattered in Iron Man 3 when Tony Stark doesn't call upon the other Avengers to fight the latest bad guy? It's also important we remember the less-than-perfect aspects of our history, and the real struggles real people went through in order to correct historic injustices, but I'm having a hard time seeing this particular argument as anything other than nerd!rage. Want to have a real conversation about re-writing history in a fantasy/sci-fi context? Check out Ta-Nehisi Coates' examination about the dearth of people of color in X-Men: First Class. In the meantime, I plan on enjoying Captain America's look at what WWII could have been like, unless something realy ridiculous pops up - still not sure I'm buying the CGI that makes Captain America's actor look like a 98-pound weakling...

Review: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

I know it's only March, but I think we have here our first serious awards contender of 2011. If Between Shades of Gray were a movie, it would be a December-released prestige picture, an obvious ploy for an Oscar win, but one it would surely deserve.

It's 1941, and Lithuanian Lina leads a comfortable life. Her parents dote upon her and her younger brother, she has friends and family and crushes, and amazing skills with pencils and paintbrushes that are opening doors to her future education.

But that idyllic life comes crashing down around Lina late one night, when armed men break into the house and pull Lina, her mother and her brother from their beds without explanation.

And so begins Lina's journey - one that stretches thousands of miles, from the quiet suburbs of Lithuania into the frigid depths north of the Arctic circle, as Lina and her family become victims of Stalin's march in Lithuania and the Baltic states at the outbreak of World War II. Her only comforts are her family, her artwork, and her hope that her furtive sketches and notes will be passed hand to hand until they reach her father and he'll escape from wherever he's being held to come find his family.

Lina's and Lithuania's story was totally new to me. I vaguely knew that Stalin's Soviet Union wasn't a great place to be, but had no real idea about the elimination tactics that he used. It's horrifying to think that in some ways this man was our ally - and yet he was using the same tactics as Hitler. Sepetys does an amazing job portraying the dehumanizing tactics used by the NKVD (the predecessors of the KGB) - it's gut churning and horrifying.

Lina is an amazing artist and Sepetys uses her artistic eye to add some beautiful language to a story of hardship and terror. Lina doesn't draw strictly realistic - she's inspired by Munch - which gives Sepetys many opportunities for perfect metaphors, like the snakes crawling out from the neck of one particularly horrid guard's jacket.

I read this book over the course of just one day - and not even a weekend. Even when I had to take breaks, my mind was still in the book. At one point I paused to eat dinner with my husband, and I felt a bit of guilt sitting down to a full hot meal when part of my brain was still in Altai, the first camp Lina is sentenced to. And then when I could get back to reading and reached the end of the book I was crying - almost sobbing. And I don't easily cry at books.

While on the surface Lina's story isn't terribly different from any other fictional Holocaust account, I still feel it's an important contribution to the genre of WWII titles. The writing alone makes it worth a read, but it's also important to remember that in most any conflict there are indeed shades of gray - that even while we may call someone an ally, that doesn't make them (or even us) perfect examples of our ideals.

Reviewed from an ARC picked up at ALA Annual 2010. Between Shades of Gray is available today!

Review: The Dark Game by Paul B. Janeczko

Nominated for the 2011 YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction

I've never been much of a fan of spy/mystery stories. I don't have anything against them, it's just that in the huge number of stories that are published every year, other things pique my interest first. Janeczko says in his introduction that he guesses the reader of the book has an interest in spies that "may run as deeply as [his]." Well that's not the case for me, but I still found this to be an incredibly interesting book.

Janeczko covers spying in America and by Americans from the Revolutionary War through early 2001. He picks out a few individual spies or campaigns for the major wars (plus the cold war) the US has engaged in, as well as highlights some of the evolving technology that's important in spy work (such as cameras, naturally). Some of these stories are absolutely amazing - like the tunnel the US and British dug from West to East Berlin in order to tap into Soviet telegraph cables.

Janeczko definitely has a flair for drama, as often these are tales of agents or governments crossing and double-crossing each other. For example, in the case of the Berlin tunnel, just when you think the story has ended and all is well for the US...Janeczko reveals a major twist in the story, illustrating that even the best laid plans can go awry, and sometimes you won't even know it.

I also have to say I'm really impressed that Janeczko highlights female spies, without ghettoizing them into a "lady spy" section. He covers the glamorous Mata Hari as well as Virginia Hall - a woman with a wooden leg who aided the French Resistance in WWII. Women spies also played important roles in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Janeczko clearly has a deep interest in the technical side of spying. Not only are advances in technology highlighted in each chapter, but he often goes into detail about various codes that spies use. I'll admit a lot of these codes went over my head, but me and numbers just don't get along (and many of these codes rely on number substitutions), so I'm willing to be that's more of a problem on my part. It's still interesting to see the variety of codes used and how they've changed - with a highlight for me being the Choctaw Code Talkers in WWI, who were able to foil the Germans who were evesdropping on US communications by using an utterly foreign language.

This isn't an exhaustive biography of any one spy - rather this is an overview of how spying has affected US policies by looking at a few of the most influential individuals (both those who spied for the US and those who spied against us). I don't know how well known some of the people and events would be to someone who has a hard core interest in spies - I, for example, knew about the women mentioned in the Civil War from my reading on women's roles during that war - but it's certainly an enlightening and entertaining read for someone totally new to the subject.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Anne Frank: The Graphic Biography by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon

Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon are making a career for themselves out of adapting stories to graphic novel form. I first became aware of them with their graphic adaptation of The 9/11 Report. Since then they've looked at the War on Terror and written a biography of Che Guevara. Now, with the blessing of the Anne Frank House, they've put together a biography of the Holocaust's most famous young victim: Anne Frank.

Jacobson and Colon go back to the 1920s, when Anne's parents met, to give Anne's brief life a history and context. Both of Anne's parents were well-to-do members of society, with her father working for the family bank and serving honorably in World War I. The book briefly covers their early lives together and the birth of Anne's sister, Margot, before bringing Anne herself into the story.

Anne had a happy childhood, filled with loving friends and family, that was unfortunately marred by increasing hardship, thanks to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, ultimately leaving the family no choice but to move into the famous Secret Annex.

Jacobson and Colon do an excellent job of putting Anne's life into the context of the greater war that was being waged first in Europe, and then around the world. Periodic "snapshots" take us to important events, giving us a quick synopsis of the events and their aftermath (for example, the new restrictions placed on Jews in German-occupied territories after Kristallnacht). World maps also quickly and clearly identify that allies and axis powers as well as their colonies and territories throughout the world. The visual nature of the graphic novel is really utilized well here.

This biography is also extremely powerful when it comes to illustrating what happened after the family was discovered, grimly detailing the family's days in various concentration and extermination camps. Jacobson and Colon pull in references from other prisoners who knew Anne, some who knew her both before the war and were also imprisoned with her.

The graphic novel format is perfect to bring Anne's story to a wider audience, and one that works for all ages. This could be read by children who are just being introduced to Anne Frank (I think I first read her diary in fourth grade), or older students or adults who are re-visiting the era. The format is used extremely effectively, as I found it easier to understand the timeline of events and to connect Anne's life with what was happening in the rest of the world easier than ever before. It's a quick read and while not the most exhaustive biography of Anne Frank ever, it's a great introduction to a powerful story.



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Wrapped in Foil. Be sure to stop by and check out all the other great nonfiction books this week!

Double Review: Ashes by Kathryn Lasky and Once by Morris Gleitzman

I have soooooooooooooooo many books to review it's not even funny, folks. Remind me next time I want to start slacking off on my blogging that should be accompanied by a commensurate slacking off on reading. I'm still reviewing books I read in July. Ack!

Ashes is told by precocious 13 year old Gaby Schramm, growing up in 1930s Berlin. Her father is a professor and often works with Albert Einstein. But a growing darkness in Berlin is starting to encroach on Gaby's idyllic life. Public book burnings. Uprisings against Jewish scholars and shopkeepers. A beloved literature teacher pushing Hitler Youth meetings. And her older sister and her boyfriend seem to be harboring a few secrets, too. Gaby watches as the world begins to collapse around her in the prelude to World War II.

Once takes place well into WWII, beginning in Poland in 1942. Felix is 10 years old and was put in a Catholic orphanage over three years ago to wait in safety until his Jewish parents could return. Felix knows little about what's going on outside of the orphanage and, tired of waiting for his parents, runs away with his precious notebook filled with imagined stories of his parents' exploits in tow. As he searches desperately for his parents, Felix is confronted with the full brutality of the Nazis, witnessing murders and mass graves, and rescuing a surly little girl from a burning house where her parents died. When they reach the city, Felix is still valiantly hoping to find his parents, but is instead confronted with the realities of a ghetto, where the few children left must be hidden in basements to protect them from the trains that would otherwise carry them away.

These are two starkly different looks at WWII in Europe, and once again both cover this familiar territory in fresh new ways. Ashes is a somewhat conventional coming of age story, made remarkable by the time it is set. Once is horrific, as it explores the brutality of the war through the eyes of an innocent child, and doesn't pull any punches.

I enjoyed the complexity of the characters in Ashes, as no one, even the Nazi sympathizers, and one-dimensional. I especially liked that Gaby is both a voracious reader and an excellent student of math and science. So often in books characters are reduced to liking one or the other, their love of books or science used as a sort of shorthand for their personalities. The inclusion of Albert Einstein was done very well, and didn't feel stilted or gimmicky like other fictional appearances of real life characters can be.

Once is absolutely beautiful and horrifying. On one level it's a rather simplistic story, as it's told through the uncomprehending eyes of 10 year old Felix, whose naivety is compounded by his isolation in the remote orphanage for almost four years. While Gaby is on the verge of being a young woman at the onset of the war, Felix is still very much a child. Reading his innocent descriptions of what as an adult reader I know were untold atrocities is disconcerting and extremely effective.

Review: Warriors in the Crossfire by Nancy Bo Flood

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 4/12



There are endless variations on stories about WWII, which is a testament to just how far reaching and traumatizing that war was. While there are lots of stories about the war in Europe, and many stories about Japan, I found Warriors in the Crossfire to be a new take on the Pacific Theater, focusing on the island of Saipan, an important strategic point in the war for both the Japanese and the Americans.



For Joseph, the 13 year old son of the village chief, and his cousin and best friend Kento, the second world war is a chilling specter on the horizon - but at the same time, that horizon feels far away. Kento is the son of a native woman and a Japanese administrator, secure of his place in Saipan and sure of his safety. He wants to be both a samurai and to learn the ways of the island warriors from Joseph - just in case he needs to protect his mother and sister.

For Joseph, the skills of a warrior have a much more practical purpose. For while he is afforded some privileges, like attending the local Japanese school, he knows that the rights of his people are severely abridged. He literally has to use his hunting skills to provide enough food for his parents, his sister and her husband, and his nephew, especially as the Japanese increase their demands for workers from the native population.

As the realities of war draw closer, Joseph's father gives him a near impossible task: protect his family from the crossfire of the Japanese and American soldiers, living in a cave with limited provisions. And the hardest part? He's not to trust Kento who is, after all, Japanese. If forced to choose, who would Kento protect - his Japanese or his native family? And who would Joseph pick if faced with a similar choice?

This is a short but well-paced, action-filled book. Joseph is a well-rounded character saddled with an impossible responsibility in the face of war. I loved the look at the culture on Saipan, how it was an uneasy balance between the Japanese rulers and the various native villagers. While the war mostly takes place off screen, the ending has an absolutely chilling portrayal of the Battle of Saipan and the grim orders given to the Japanese civilians on the island.

Double Review: Firefly Letters by Margarita Engle and Crossing Stones by Helen Frost

Found via: The Amelia Bloomer Project

As you've no doubt heard by now, April is National Poetry Month. Which means nothing to me, since my relationship to poetry has been well documented in other places on this blog. But I happened to read two books this month that not only share some thematic qualities, but were written totally in verse. Also, I have finally figured out what it takes to get me to like your verse novel. But that's the sort of revelation best left for the end (I am such a tease!)

Margarita Engle definitely has her niche: write books about little known parts of Cuba's history in poetry format. Last year I reviewed (and was underwhelmed by) Tropical Secrets, about Holocaust survivors taking refuge in Cuba. While I wasn't a fan of that book, I wanted to take a chance on Firefly Letters because it was described as a suffrage story, about Swedish suffragist Fredrika Bremer's 1851 trip to Cuba. Fredrika was historically accompanied by a slave, Cecilia, who was the only one in the area who spoke English well enough to act as a translator. Fredrika and Cecilia are two of our narrators, each contributing poems about her experiences in Cuba, one as a foreign tourist and the other as a teenage, pregnant slave. The third character is the fictional Elena, the privileged daughter of the family that owns Cecilia and is playing host to Fredrika for the three months of her stay.

Cecilia and Fredrika have the more active roles, as wealthy women and girls were expected to stay home. So Fredrika's and Cecilia's poems are about traveling the countryside and meeting slaves, while Elena's poems are limited to being observations about the world around her and introspective bits about how meeting Fredrika, a woman with so much more freedom than she has, is changing her thoughts and opinions.

Crossing Stones is another multi-narrator bit of historical fiction, this time 1917 in Michigan on the eve of the first World War. The three narrators are Muriel, strong-willed and outspoken; Ollie, her brother who is desperate to grow up; and Emma, next door neighbor, Muriel's friend, and Ollie's love-interest (who shares the attraction). This is a much broader story than Firefly Letters, as through Ollie's eyes we see some of the horrors of trench warfare in Europe during the war. The three narrators share their hopes and dreams and conflicts about the war, while also going through the more mundane tasks of rural Michigan life. The war leaves its scars on both families, and Muriel's family also has to deal with her aunt running off to Washington D.C. to protest in front of the White House, demanding suffrage for women, despite the war that's going on.

I have to say, that describing Firefly Letters as a suffrage book is totally misleading. While I have no doubt that the historical Fredricka Bremer was a suffragist, the focus of the story is more on her work as an abolitionist. Some very basic women's rights are mentioned, ones that are even more basic than the vote, but suffrage isn't ever brought up, which was greatly disappointing.

Firefly Letters also suffers from an extremely simplistic format. It's the exact same format used in Tropical Secrets where every poem uses a standardized stanza format and varies little in length, so you really have to rely on the names at the beginning of the poem to know who is speaking. Crossing Stones uses different styles of poetry as well as shaping the poems to make them distinct: Muriel's poems are free-verse and zig-zag across the page, while Ollie's and Emma's poems are "cupped-hand" sonnets that are roughly circular, giving them an additional connection outside of the growing relationship described in their poems.

While I feel Crossing Stones is the stronger of the two books on most counts, it still left me wanting a little bit more. When Muriel visits DC to see her aunt, I wanted loads more description, since I know a bit about what a dangerous time it was to be a suffragist at the time (unlike today, people didn't protest in front of the White House, so protesters were rare to begin with, let alone women protesters. And then there was the feeling that mere women shouldn't be questioning the president during a time of war). But I think I've figured out when poetry novels work for me.

Last year I loved Because I Am Furniture, an intense story of abuse. After reading the two historical verse novels back to back, I figured out that Because I Am Furniture worked for me because it's a very personal story. It's all about Anke's feelings and emotions. In Firefly Letters and Crossing Stones, not only do we have to learn the backgrounds of multiple characters, but historical settings need to be described as well, and these settings don't always fit neatly into the first person poem structure, leaving me wanting to know more, more, more. So now I think I can approach future verse novels with more confidence - for historical settings, I'm going to need a vested interest in the subject in order to stay interested despite the format (a la Crossing Stones), otherwise I'm going to start skipping them.

Double Review: A Faraway Island by Annika Thor & War Games by Audrey & Akila Couloumbis

I have a huge backlog of books to review, and it looks like both of these titles have been on my radar since before I started taking notes of where I was finding books. ~sigh~ But I can tell you that A Faraway Island won the 2010 Batchelder Award as the most outstanding book "originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English and published in the United States."

Why did I pair these two books together for a double review? Because they both share new (to me, at least) stories of the atrocities of World War II. It is both amazing and terrifying that 60+ years after that war, there are still stories to be told and discovered.

A Faraway Island was originally published in Sweden in 1996, and is the first in a series of stories about two Jewish sisters from Vienna, Stephie and Nellie, who have been sent to Sweden for their protection. Their parents are still in Austria, trying to secure documentation for the whole family to flee to America. Despite assurances that the sisters would live together, Stephie and Nellie are split up: Nellie lives with a warm family with other children and a kind foster mother called Auntie Alma. Stephie on the other hand is sent to live with Aunt Marta, a cold and stern woman who decorates Stephie's bedroom with a picture of Jesus and seems quick to anger. Stephie and Nellie have to adapt to their new lives as refugees, learning a new language and culture, in addition to the usual trials and tribulations of growing up. As their stay in Sweden grows longer and longer, Nellie easily slips into the ways of her new country, calling Auntie Alma "Mom" and speaking more often in Swedish than German, while Stephie despairs of ever getting home.

In a lengthy author's note, Thor explains that while Stephie and Nellie are fictional characters, she based their stories on extensive interviews with former refugees who have made their lives in Sweden since WWII.

Most of my problems with the story stemmed not from the plot, but from the writing. It often felt stilted, which could easily be written off as a translation issue. I thought the greatest strength of this book was a small, almost throwaway moment that had a huge impact for me. One of the questions that always comes up in discussions of the Holocaust is how could no one know what was happening? From our position 60 years on, knowing the horrors of the concentration camps, it seems like they would be impossible to ignore. When Stephie is trying to get the adults to cooperate and find a way to get her parents into Sweden, one person expresses their doubt that Germany would actually be shooting and incarcerating its own citizens. It's a brief moment, but perfectly illustrates the complete ignorance most of the world had regarding what the Nazis were truly capable of.

War Games also covers an aspect of WWII I had no previous knowledge about: the occupation of Greece by Italian and German forces. Petros lives in a small village, mostly insulated from the rest of the war in Europe. Italian forces have waged battles with the Greek army nearby, and the economy is in a state of freefall, but otherwise life continues as normal for Petros. Until his cousin Lambros, a member of the army, stumbles to his house, bloodied and bruised, with a dire warning: the Germans are coming. While Petros' family isn't Jewish, they do have significant American ties having lived in America for many years. Petros' father orders the family to hide or destroy anything connecting them to America, just in time for the Germans to arrive and decide that the family home will now be housing a German commander. Petros and his older brother Zola become determined to resist in any way they can, right under the enemy's nose.

This is another book based on a true story, with many of the experiences taken directly from Akila's childhood in Greece. The authors condensed many events so they all took place at the beginning of the occupation, rather than spread out over several years. There are lots of great characters here, probably because they are all based on Akila and his family. Petros and Zola's sibling rivalry is well done, so that even though there's a lot of antagonism between the two, when push comes to shove they look out for each other.

Some of the aspects of war are briefly touched upon, but are mostly ignored in favor of focusing on the more exciting resistance plot. It's mentioned a few times that they're worried about friends and neighbors reporting the family to the Germans for being American or for hiding Lambros, a known resistance member, but nothing really comes of those fears. When the commander does show up, Petros spares only a few thoughts for how nice he can be before moving on. I would have loved for the story to be a bit longer to allow for a chance to explore more of the ambiguities of the story.

Review: Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis

Winner: 2010 Coretta Scott King Author Honor

This one managed to stay under my radar for awhile. I have no excuses - if it's been under yours as well, consider this your wake up call to get a copy for yourself ASAP!

Octavia and her older sister Tali are under strict orders from their parents to look after their grandmother, Mare, as she takes them on a road trip from California to a family reunion in Alabama. Neither sister is very enthusiastic - Mare isn't your ordinary grandmother, from her name to her long painted finger nails, to driving like a maniac. She's an embarrassment more than anything else.

But the long drive leaves plenty of opportunities to talk (and talking is something Mare loves to do). She regales her granddaughters with stories from her long life, from working as a maid and helping raise her sister in Alabama...to joining the Women's Army Corp in World War II! Mare was a member of the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-female, all-African-American battalion to serve in WWII. Mare tells of the extensive training she underwent, the harrowing journey across the Atlantic to England, and serving her tour of duty overseas, where attitudes towards blacks were far, far different from in the US.

I think if this had strictly been Mare's story, we'd be hearing this talked about in the same breath as Flygirl - two very different stories of African-American women in WWII, but similar in some respects. However, Mare's War feels a bit didactic at times; after any major revelation in Mare's story we need to cut back to Tali and Octavia reacting in horror that people were ever so uninformed. There are reaction chapters for everything from the implied abuse Mare and her sister suffered from their mother's boyfriends to racism in Europe to the revelation of a lesbian friend. While I appreciated the inclusion of these details in Mare's narrative, I felt like we were being hit over the head with the message that people in the past were Wrong (which they totally were, but did we need that message repeated with every injustice Mare faced?).

I absolutely loved Mare, both as a young woman and as a grandmother. I would have loved to have her as a grandmother when I was growing up. Well, I probably wouldn't have liked being dragged on a road trip, but other than that I thought she was just awesome. It's because of her characterization that I'm including this book in my list of books read for the Women Unbound reading challenge. Defining fiction books that fit into the challenge is a little trickier than non-fiction, but as this is a look at an important and interesting aspect of women's (and African-American) history, I feel it counts. Plus, an individual woman doesn't get more unbound than Mare!

Cover comments: Not one, not two, but three African American women on this cover!

At the book jacket literary cafe, the art director from Simon & Schuster mentioned that they'll often go with illustrated covers for books that are intended more for academic markets - books that fit in well with various bits of curriculum. The cover, combined with the occasional heavy-handedness on the Messages in the text, makes me think there was probably a big push to get this into classrooms and libraries.

Review: Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz

Found via: Bill at Literate Lives

I came across Literate Lives via the Comment Challenge while bloggers Bill and Karen were running a series of Newbery predictions. I know next to nothing about the Newbery award, since most of my reading is now focused on Printz-level books, but I really wish Brooklyn Nine had been at least an honor, 'cause this was an awesome book.

Brooklyn Nine is a series of nine short stories following a family through nine generations of baseball. While mostly set in Brooklyn, there are two stories that step outside of New York - one into Virginia during the Civil War, and another back to my home state of Michigan during WWII with a female baseball player. How could I not love a book that combines baseball, women's baseball in WWII, AND my two home states?

What I found most fascinating was the mix of baseball history and American history that was woven into many of the stories. For example, I had no idea that pre-Civil War, it was accepted that you could get someone out by catching the ball after it bounced. It takes a few generations for the game to evolve into the one we recognize today. Additionally, major and minor historical events are integrated - stories take place during the Civil War and WWII, and in 1981, boys playing little league are teasing each other for seeing Empire Strikes Back and Indiana Jones a dozen times each, and debating who Yoda meant when he said one other person also had the force (no one guesses its Leia!). In between, characters face racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and regular run of the mill bullies.

My favorite stories were Frankie Schneider in 1926, a numbers genius who has given up on the idea of going to college because she's a girl and is a fan of the dismal Brooklyn Robins, Kat Flint in 1945, the newest member of the Grand Rapids (Michigan!) Chicks, and Michael Flint in 1981, who's in the process of pitching a perfect game.

Michael's story is actually one of the most beautifully written stories I've read, possibly ever. Gratz does an amazing job amping up the tension as we follow Michael through his first ever perfect game. Gratz says in the notes that he based Michael's ninth inning on the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's 1965 perfect game as called by Vin Scully. You can read the transcript of the inning here, or listen to it in your browser here. I definitely think Gratz nailed it.

In the first story, Gratz has also written one of my favorite descriptions of New York City - and coincidentally, Felix Schneider is hanging around the neighborhood I work in when he says:

Felix found it easy to lose himself in Broadway's foot traffic, to be swept up by the rush and hurry of Manhattan, to hear the clatter of iron horseshoes on cobblestones and the catcalls and insults of the city's famously rude cabbies like a lullaby. On Broadway Felix was not a poor German Jew from Bremen walking the streets of a strange metropolis. Here, he was a New Yorker.

This isn't just a book for baseball fans - while baseball is the theme of these stories, for most of the stories the sport is window dressing. This is a collection to be read by fans of historical fiction, short stories, and just all around beautiful writing as well. Another book that is going on my early "Best of 2010" list.

Review: A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper

Found via: BBYA 2010 nominations

BBYA's annotation for this title is "Not even a small island nation populated mostly by royalty can keep neutral in the events leading up to the Second World War." The bit about WWII is what made me pick this up - I'm still a sucker for WWII literature (it all started with Anne Frank's diary, way back in elementary school) and this sounded like a different spin on it.

This isn't, however, your usual WWII book. For one thing, it doesn't take place in Europe proper, but rather a small (fictional) island nation in the Bay of Biscay, called Montmaray.

Montmaray has a storied past, with the royal family's history filled with noble warriors. The island once had a thriving population - but in 1936, the island has a handful of villagers (most of them elderly), a mad king, and three princesses. The crown prince spends most of his time at school in England along with Simon, the son of the royal family's housekeeper (who spends most of her time doting on the senile king rather than keeping house) and the object of Sophie's, our narrator, affections.

As Sophie relates in her diary, the story spans the end of 1936 and into the beginning of 1937. The island is so isolated that news from Europe comes in fits and starts. They know trouble is brewing in Spain thanks to Franco and his fascists, and Sophie's scholarly cousin, Veronica, has heard rumors of the terrible things Hitler does to his enemies in Germany. Trouble in Europe means that should anything happen on the island, opportunities for help will be few and far between.

While Montmaray was once a key player in European politics, it is now an unimportant backwater that rarely receives visitors - so it is a surprise when a pair of Nazi scholars take up residence in the village, allegedly looking for the Holy Grail, or at least information about it, on Montmaray. After one of the Nazis is accidentally killed, and then the family dog bites a chunk out of the leg of their commanding officer, it begins to look like the family's days of safety in Montmaray are numbered.

I have to say, I don't always quite "buy" the diary novel format. Maybe I'm just a terrible diary keeper, but it seems unlikely that a person could take down a story in such detail as to include lengthy conversations. However one thing I did like about this stories use of the format is how Sophie's use of the diary changed from the beginning of the story through the end. The diary is a gift from Sophie's brother, and initially she uses it to talk about how much she likes Simon and wants to go to Europe to make her debut in society and wear lots of pretty dresses. She also shares her frustration that her cousin and best friend Veronica doesn't share such ambitions - while Sophie is writing her musings in her diary, Veronica spends her days in the library researching and writing her own Brief History of Montmaray. Veronica notes that it is good Sophie is recording the events of life on Montmaray in her diary, as such a book will be invaluable to future historians. That makes Sophie reconsider some of her silly musings, and while her feelings for Simon are still present throughout the story, Sophie begins to become much more serious about writing about life on the island. It's a subtle way of showing how Sophie must grow up in the face of unprecedented adversity.

While Montmaray and its royal family are completely made up, the book still closely follows the political upheavals of the 1930s. The author has included a historical guide on her website, with plenty of links to Wikipedia, so readers can find out more about the people, places, and literature mentioned in the story.

Review: Flygirl by Sherri L Smith

Found via: BBYA 2010 nominations

I absolutely love books that take one subject and explore it through multiple lenses. Flygirl isn't my first exposure to the Women Airforce Service Pilots program, and it's certainly not the first book to look at a woman trying to make it in a "man's world," especially during World War II. Flygirl gains its complexity through its protagonist, Ida Mae Jones, who is not only a young woman eager to serve her country in its time of need, but is an African-American woman in the precarious position of "passing" in rural Texas.

Smith does an excellent job conveying the multiple hardships Ida must endure, from flight instructors that don't believe women have any place in airplanes ("the kitchen's much safer" one repeatedly reminds the pilots) to dangerous airplanes, to having to treat her dark-skinned mother like the family help when she comes to visit Ida at Christmas. Ida knows she's constantly in danger - either from poor equipment or having her race discovered - yet she keeps pushing through in an inspiring adventure that teaches on multiple levels.

Review: Tropical Secrets by Margarita Engle

After a positive experience with Because I Am Furniture, when I discovered I'd picked up another novel-in-verse format, I didn't immediately groan. Hey, maybe the genre really has grown since I first discovered it in high school, and the poetry really can work!

Mmm, maybe not.

Tropical Secrets follows four people in late 1930s-early 1940s Cuba: Daniel, David, Paloma and El Gordo (Paloma's father). The story begins in June 1939, when Daniel flees Germany after crystalnacht. He leaves his parents behind in Germany with the promise to meet again in New York City - but Daniel's ship is turned away from New York, and several other potential ports; the only place that will accept a boat full of German Jewish refugees is Cuba.

In Cuba, Daniel meets Paloma, a local girl, and David, himself a Jewish refugee, though one that's been in Cuba for years. El Gordo makes occasional appearances as a local criminal who sells visas to the desperate refugees: if they can't afford his prices, they are sent back on the boat, sent directly back to the horrors of Germany.

The problem I have with this being a verse novel is that the poetry just never felt compelling - really it felt like chopped up prose. No poetry doesnt have to rhyme or anything, but isn't the point of poetry that it can convey feelings/images/"things" that prose just can't do (or would take hundreds of more words to)? This felt like basic prose sentences were chopped up and called poetry with very little re-dressing. It ends up being an extremely sparse novel when there is room for so much more.

This does, however, share a very interesting part of history, as many Jewish refugees did end up in Cuba. Nazi spies were sent to the island to stir up anti-semitism against the refugees so they would be sent back to Germany and end up in the concentration camps. Bonus points for that, but not enough for me to recommend the novel without hesitations.

Review: Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher

My first book of 2009! That I read several days ago...I do my blogging in spurts. I'll spend a couple of days reading and working, and then use my days off to catch up on all of my blogging. Not the most sustainable method of blogging, but it's what I've got.

Ten Cents a Dance is a heartbreaking and in some ways terrifying story of a teenaged taxi dancer during WWII. Ruby Jacinski has lived her whole life in Chicago's Back of the Yards. After her single mother is no longer able to work in the physically demanding meat packing plant, Ruby quits school and takes up at the plant in her mother's place. She works in the least glamorous place imaginable - packing jars of pickled pigs feet (bleck!).

Whenever she can convince her mother to let her out of the house, however, Ruby loves to go with her best friend from the neighborhood to dance halls. Ruby is an excellent dancer, and her moves, good looks and spunk attract the attention of one of the neighborhood's bad boys, Paulie Suelze, who suggests she start working at the Starlight Dance Academy, where she could pull down as much as $50 a week. Compared to her $12 a week salary at the meat packing plant, Ruby jumps at the chance.

Of course, the Starlight Dance Academy isn't the sort of place Ruby's mother wants her working, even before Ruby realizes how seedy the joint is (she originally believes it's a very elegant and respectable establishment), and so begins Ruby's balancing act. She must keep her mother and younger sister believing that she's a telephone switchboard operator. As a dancer at the club, she has to balance the needs and desires of a diverse client base in order to keep raking in the generous tips and free after work meals that pad her regular pay check. On the one hand she has an extremely generous but rather straight-laced and racist benefactor, and on the other she and a friend have been entertaining a pair of Filipino gentlemen who may not have the most money but can dance and enjoy going to hopping jazz joints. There are the other women at the Starlight who are all vying for the same pool of men in order to keep earning money. And then there's Paulie, who starts dating Ruby behind her mother's back (another secret she has to keep from her family), who doesn't seem to care about what Ruby does at work, but is increasing the pressure on her to be "sweet" to him in the backseat of his car.

In short, it's a tangled web that Ruby falls into. She fights racism, attempted rape, pressure for sex, family loyalty, balancing work and home life, having a socially unacceptable job - and all of this against the background of the beginning of World War II and Chicago's ethnically divided neighborhoods.

There was a lot going on in this book (just look at all the tags this one fits under), but Fletcher handled all of it wonderfully, in part because she didn't try to give everything equal significance. For example, a lot of the racism happened on the periphery or in the background, as there were some jazz clubs that Ruby and her Filipino date couldn't get into because of his ethnicity, and a lot of the women at the Starlight carelessly threw around racial slurs when referring to the different types of men who might patron the establishment (the worst of it happens after Pearl Harbor).

At some points, Ruby is painfully naive, but it added to the weight and the heartbreak of the story, especially because Ruby tries so hard to be tough and worldly.

The author's note at the end of the book gives some fascinating insight into the creation of the book, from Fletcher's inspiration to the extensive research she put into the book (she really wanted to know exactly where all of the various ethnic neighborhoods were and what people of different groups thought of each other).