This Is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by James Ransome

This story follows a piece of rope's journey with a family as they move from South Carolina to New York City during the Great Migration of many African American families in the 20th century and how a piece of rope becomes the red thread running through a family and binding them together for three generations.

This is the Rope is narrated by an unknown little girl (perhaps Woodson as a child), whose grandmother finds a length of rope under a tree in South Carolina and at first, uses it as a jump rope.  Later, as a young married woman with a daughter of her own, the rope is used to tie her family's belongings to the top of their car as they make their journey from South Carolina to New York City.

The city is noisy and crowded, but the rope is again put to use.  First, to dry the flowers grown in a window box. later as a clothesline to dry diapers.  And when the narrator's mother is old enough, the rope is tied around a pull toy for her.  Then, it becomes a jump rope again, when her mother makes friends with the other kids on the block.  But, the rope disappears for 10 years after her mother's brothers used it for a game.

But the rope was found and once again, used to tie belongings to the top of the car when the narrator's mother goes to college.

Later, the narrator's father teaches her how to make a knot with the rope and when her mother becomes a turner, the rope is once more a jump rope, coming full circle. But the rope still has one final task when it is used to hang the banner in the park announcing the family's reunion.

After its long journey and varied uses over time, the rope gets old and threadbare and so it is returned to the grandmother - a reminder of her past and how far the family has come since she jumped rope under a sweet smelling pine tree in South Carolina.  And so, a new rope was given to the narrator - a new rope for new uses and new memories.

I have read This Is the Rope several times now and each time it has brought tears to my eyes.  It never ceases to amaze me how well Woodson can tell a story using such sparse language,  and once again, she has given us a beautifully written, eloquent book.

The story is enriched by the stunningly beautiful oil paint illustrations of the very talented James Ransome.  Ransome gives a sense a country and rural life in his choice of orange and yellows predominantly for the South Carolina illustrations, but using bolder colors for the city infusing the illustrations with the sense of hustle and bustle, buildings and crowded streets.

This Is the Rope really struck a cord with me and I am sure that it will probably resonate with almost everyone who reads it, simple because so many have a treasured object like the rope that connects and recalls our family's past.

This book is recommended for readers age 6+

This book was borrowed from the NYPL

Siege and Storm, Book Two of the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

Siege and Storm, Book Two of the Grisha Trilogy starts shortly after the first book, Shadow and Bone ends.  Alina and Mal have been on the run since escaping the chaos of the Fold.  Alina is wracked with guilt over the Darkling having forced her to kill so many innocent people and destroy the towns they lived in, not to mention the ones she killed in the Fold escaping the Darkling.

After crossing the True Sea, and now, hiding the fact that she is the Sun Summoner, Alina and Mal are living quietly in a boarding house in Cofton, trying to come up with a plan to use her power and defeat the Darkling.  There had been rumors that the Darkling had survived what happened in the Fold, and these turn out to be true.  Returning to heir room one day, Alina and Mal are meet by the Darkling.  And as Alina quickly learns, the Darkling has a terrible new power - the ability to create a shadow creature, almost like the Volcra from the Fold, but with a more human shape and it does not fear light.

Slipping into unconsciousness after a shadow creature bits her shoulder, Alina finds herself held captive, away from Mal, on a ship crossing the True Sea to return to Ravka.  The captain of the ship, Sturmhond, seems to be nothing more than a very charming mercenary doing the Darklings bidding in exchange for a nice sum of money, and turning a cold eye on the things that are happening on his boat. But when he stops the Darkling from hurting Alina, she hopes that maybe she will have an ally.  Unfortunately, Sturmhond quickly dashes that hope.

But Alina and Mal are in for some real surprises in Siege and Storm.  And so it the reader.

Alina has seen what happened to the Darkling in his thirst for power, but will that be a lesson she remembers in her quest to destroy him and the Fold he created?  The Darkling forced her to wear the first amplifier to strengthen her power.  One amplifier is usually all a Grisha can handle, but Alina isn't just any Grisha, she is the one and only Sun Summoner.  Will she be forced to wear more by the Darkling or choose to do so herself?  Is Alina the saint that the people think she is or is she heading down the dame power path as the Darkling?

A lot goes on in Siege and Storm.  New, important characters are introduced, more motives are revealed.  Sturmhond is kind of a fun guy, cocky, confident and a little on the hyperactive side.  He isn't a loved foil for Mal as far as Alina is concerned, at least not yet.  But quite frankly, Mal has become kind of a drag, jealous and possessive in a most unattractive way.

The Darkling isn't in this volume as much as he was in Shadow and Bone, which made for not a lot of action.  Too bad, because despite this being a good book, it has some second book slump going in in the mid part of the story.  So slumpy, I put it down for a few days.  I also felt that Alina often sounded more like a spoiled brat than a former orphan who discovered she has a wonderful power that can be used to help the people of Ravka.

I am sorry to say that I do not think this is a good stand alone novel.  You need to have read the first book to appreciate this one.  Still, if you like Shadow and Bone, you will most likely like Siege and Storm.  And all in all, I would still recommend this trilogy and I am looking forward to reading the third and final (?) volume of the Grisha saga.

This book is recommended for readers age 13+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

This is book 4 of my 2013 YA/MG Fantasy Reading Challenge hosted by The Book Cellar
This is book 2 of my 2013 Dystopia Reading Challenge hosted by Blog of Erised

The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

The Watsons, Pa and Momma, Byron, 13 and still in 6th grade, Kenny, 10 and in 4th grade, and Joetta, 5 and in kindergarten are an African American family living in Flint, Michigan.  Byron, or By, and his friend Buphead have both been left back more than once and are now the school bullies.  Kenny, on the other hand, is good student and advanced reader who gets taken around to other classes to read to them.  And Joetta - well, she can be a little adorably officious but she does really love her brothers.

By has been in all kinds to trouble in and out of school lately, and now he has even taken to playing with matches in the bathroom upstairs.  His parents are already at their wits end with him, so when he has a chemical straightener put in his hair without asking for permission,  they decide that By need to spend the summer with his grandmother down in Birmingham, Al.  After all, strict, no nonsense Grandma Sands raised her daughter good and proper, maybe she can do something with Byron.  And she lives in a quiet part of Birmingham, not near any of the trouble has been happening there between blacks and white.

But what happens when the Watsons get to Birmingham, is anything but what they expected?

Narrated in the first person by Kenny, The Watson go to Birmingham - 1963 is the story of one family at a pivotal moment in the history of the US and the Civil Rights Movement and the impact that moment has on them.  The majority of the book takes place in Flint, MI and Kenny tells us all about his family, his friend Rufus and getting the Brown Bomber, a dull brown 1948 Plymouth, ready for its road trip.  Much of this heartwarming story is told with humor, but there is a serious side to it as well.  The bombing of the church Grandma Sands belongs to, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, changes the Watsons forever.

This past Sunday, September 15, 2013, marked the 50th anniversary of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing that killed 4 little girls.  Christopher Paul Curtis dedicated The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963 to their memory and this year, President Obama signed a bill that posthumously awarded these four girls a Congressional Gold Medal.

Denise McNair, Carol Robertson, Adie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley

On Friday, September 20, 2013 the Hallmark Channel is presenting the premiere of the movie version of The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963 at 8/7c.  This looks like it is going to be a great production of a great novel and I am really looking forward to seeing it.

The Watsons go to Biormingham - 1963 is recommended for readers age 8+

This book was purchased for my personal library

This is book 5 of my 2013 Award Winning Reading Challenge hosted by Gathering Books

The 2013 Cybils Judges have been announced and guess who made the cut?

Yesterday was an exciting day in the world of Cybils.  All of the judges in the differenct catagories were announced and I am going to be a Round 2 judge of Middle Grade Fiction.  This is my first year as a Cybils judge and I am happy to be a part of this exciting event.  Here is rest of the Middle Grade Fiction panel of judges:

2013 Middle Grade Fiction Judges

First Round

Mark Buxton
http://buxtolicious.blogspot.com

Jennifer Donovan
http://books.5minutesformom.com
@5M4B

Heidi Grange
http://geolibrarian.blogspot.com
@GeoLibrarian

Deb Marshall
http://mylibrarynotebook.blogspot.ca/
@debamarshall

Jennifer Rumberger
www.jenniferrumberger.com
@j_rumberger

Julie Williams
http://readingbythepond.blogspot.com/
@JulieWilliams89

Karen Yingling
http://msyinglingreads.blogspot.com
@msyingling

Second Round

Alex Baugh
http://randomlyreading.blogspot.com
@randomlyreading

Kathy Burnette
http://www.thebrainlair.com
@thebrainlair

Melissa Gaynor
http://sweetonbooks.com
@sweetonbooks

Michael Gettel-Gilmartin
http://middlegrademafioso.blogspot.com
@MGMafioso

Kyle Kimmal
http://theboyreader.blogspot.com@theboyreader

You can meet the rest of the judges in the different catagories HERE

What the Witch Left by Ruth Chew

One boring rainy afternoon, Katy and her friend Louise are hanging out in Katy's bedroom when Louise becomes curious about what is in the chest of drawers stored there.  The first three drawers yielded not really interesting, but the bottom, fourth drawer was locked and Katy, as explained to Louise, she was not allowed to open it.  The things in the bottom drawer belong to her mother's Aunt Martha, whom Katy has never met.  But, curiosity gets the best of the girls, and off they go off to fetch the key.

Inside they find a bunch of ordinary looking items - a mirror, a bathrobe, an old dented metal box with a fruitcake painted on it, a pair of boots and some flesh colored gloves.   But are they really ordinary?

When Katy put the gloves on, she notices that, oddly enough, she couldn't see them on her hands.  But before she had time to take them off and put them back in the draw, her piano teacher arrives.  Still wearing the gloves, Katy's piano playing goes better than usual, even her teacher is impressed.  Later, when Katy isn't wearing the gloves, her piano playing was just a bad as ever.  Likewise, without the gloves, Louise is just a girl who draws well, but when she wears the gloves, she becomes a masterful artist.

Concluding that the items in the drawer are truly magical, the best friends continue to be drawn to it, especially when they start getting perfect spelling tests while wearing the gloves.  All that sounds pretty good, but. needless to say, soon the gloves lead to all kinds of school problems for the girls, including pandemonium in the auditorium when Louse wears the bathrobe in a school play and all you can see of here is her head floating through the air.

Over Thanksgiving break, Katy and Louise decide to try out the boots.  Called Seven League Boots, the girls calculate that each step in these boots equals 21 miles.  So the girls decide to so south where it is warm for a day of swimming.  And sure enough, in no time they find themselves in Mexico, meeting a young girl named Pilar and her donkey.  Pilar and her grandmother weave place mats to sell in the market to tourists.  Wearing the magic gloves, Katy and Louise spend part of their day helping her weave her mats, and because Louise's artistic talents are enhanced by the gloves, she makes mats with an unusual design to them.

But when the girls return home to Brooklyn, they discover the gloves are missing and they must return to Mexico the next day.  They find the gloves and teach Pilar how to do the new place mat design, which have been a hit in the marketplace.

The girls have lots of adventures with the items in the bottom draw, until...well, you'll just have to read the book to find out.

I loved this slow-paced, magical story.  But, how could I not love a book that not only takes place in Brooklyn, but near Church Avenue, my old stomping ground.   I do, however, think What the Witch Left is a nice companion chapter book for kids who are just starting to get into Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House series.   And, in a day and age when kids can't wait to read books like Harry Potter, it is a perfect introduction to books about magical worlds and fantasy and to spark the imaginations of young readers and prepare the way for the kind of magical world Harry lives in.

The story is well-written, and there are no real scary bits in it.  I did find that What the Witch Left held up very well over time, although I don't think children go out to play without supervision any more quite the way that they do in this book.  Given that the book was published about 40 years ago, it might be a nice book to read with a parent or grandparent who has fond memories of reading it when they were young.

One nice thing worth mentioning: the dustcover illustration has been redone for this new edition, but underneath the DJ is the original illustration from the 1973 edition of What the Witch Left, seen here

This book is recommended for readers age 7-10
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

Thank You, Roald Dahl

I started Randomly Reading to talk about those books I picked up at random to read.  And I knew that my muse for it would just have to be Matilda.  Like me, she really loved to read, book after book after book.

When I was teaching in public school in the Bronx, I used a passage from Matilda to try to instill a love of reading in my 4th grade students and one of my first assignments was for them to read this passage and tell me in their own word why they read.  Their answers were, to say the least, enlightening.  Some never read, some read only what they had to for school, and maybe one or two would sometimes read for pleasure.

So their first assigned book was a Roald Dahl story and I was always surprised, not because they suddenly became voracious readers, but because they actually read and liked the Dahl book they picked and I thought that was a good start for kids who didn't read because, like most kids, they like playing games more.

So, thank you, Roald Dahl, who knows how many readers you created besides Matilda.

But Dahl's books are also about empowering kids and what better example is there than the wonderful scene from Matilda the Musical of the kids performing a song from the play called Revolting Children as performed during the 2013 Tony Awards:

I loved it!  And if you get a chance Matilda the Musical, I hope you love it, too.

Jasper's Story: Saving Moon Bears by Jill Robinson and Mark Bekoff, illustrated by Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen

I have to be honest and confess that until I read Jasper's Story I had never heard of a Moon Bear.  Moon Bears, like the panda, are native to Asia and are, sadly, captured and put into extraction cages so that the bile produced by their liver can be extracted and used to make herbal medicine.

Jasper's Story is about one Moon Bear, who was rescued from its captivity and brought to the Moon Bear Rescue Centre in Chengdu, China.  In this lovely picture book, Jill Robinson, founder of the centre, shows how, little by little, Jasper is slowly introduced to the people who will care for him and nurse him back to good health and how, as he becomes used to his new den, he is able go out and play with the other rescued bears.  In fact, Jasper seems to have quite a playful side to his personality.

Jasper's life as an extraction bear is given coverage, and there are some illustrations of the small, confining cages that he was kept in, but much to Jill Robinson's credit, this is done skillfully and tastefully so that it doesn't scare or upset young readers.  Robinson focuses most of Jasper's Story on the time that Jasper spends at the rescue centre, his recovery and his newly gained freedom.

Teaching young readers about the exploitation and mistreatment of animals can be a real slippery slope for writers, but Robinson has done an exceptional job of it in this picture book for older readers.  In addition, Jasper's Story has been realistically illustrated by Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen in rich earth and sky tones that betrayal his own love of nature and wildlife.

Jasper has become the face of successful moon bear rescue and efforts to stop bile extraction in Asia.  There is also interesting and informative back matter about Jasper in particular and moon bears in general, written by Robinson, van Frankenhuyzen and Marc Bekoff, an animal behavior specialist and Professor Emeritus that shouldn't be missed.

Jasper today

This book is recommended for readers age 7+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

Nonfiction Monday is hosted this week by Wendie's Wanderings

This is book 10 of my Nonfiction Picture Book Reading Challenge hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy

Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Wedding by Lenore Look, illustrated by Yumi Heo

Uncle Peter, "the coolest dude" and "a girl's best buddy," is getting married and everyone is happy about it except Jenny.  Why should she be happy?  After all, she was always Uncle Peter's special girl until Stella came along.  So instead of a Saturday movie like always, it is Uncle Peter's traditional Chinese wedding day.

As everyone looks at the traditional good luck presents from the bride's family, Jenny looks on with a sad face and as the children accompany Peter for good luck when he goes to pick up his bride, Jenny is squished in the car and unhappy.  After finally offering enough tokens to her family to show how much he loves their daughter, beautiful Stella comes down in her good luck red wedding dress with the good luck dragons and phoenixes on it.  

Everyone is smiling and laughing during family picture time, except you-know-who.

When it is time for the traditional tea ceremony, that little green monster Jealousy rears its head and Jenny decides to sabotage the tea.  Finally, it takes a wise mother to quell all the sadness in Jenny's heart over losing her best uncle.  Which is good since Uncle Peter and new Aunt Stella's wedding day is far from over and there is a lot more fun to be had.

I loved reading Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Wedding.  First of all, it is a wonderful read aloud that will most likely generated lots of discussion.  Secondly, Look deals very nicely with the feelings of jealousy a child might easily have when a favorite relative, and that would include one parent or the other,  gets married.  At the same time, she cleverly uses Jenny's jealousy issues for introducing the reader to all the traditions surrounding  a Chinese wedding.   And it all works and the result is a really delightful story narrated by Jenny herself.

And you might think that Jenny did the charming oil, pencil and collage illustrations, which are really skillfully done by artist Yumi Heo to make them look like Jenny's perspective on things.

Wedding Envelope for Peter
and Stella

I loved the way each tradition was explained to make it easy for young (and older) readers, unfamiliar with Chinese wedding traditions, to understand and to appreciate their meanings.  I knew I had to read this book as soon as I saw it.  After all, my Kiddo just got engaged to her longtime boyfriend and will be having her own a traditional Chinese wedding in the near future and that is something new to us.

Both my Kiddo and her Peng Peng were born in the Year of the Dragon 1988 and that made his mother very excited - lots of luck there.  And I knew about Hungbau, lucky money put into a red envelope, because we had exchanged this year for Chinese New Year.

But there was much that was new to me here and much that I am looking forward to.  And that is the benefit of multicultural books - they teach you something new about different people and make you want to see, do and/or know more.

This book is recommended for readers age 4+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

Be sure to visit my friend Mia over at Pragmatic Mom has a wonderful China Crafts and Activities post for kids, including all kinds of information about red envelopes.

Reading is Fundamental offers an very useful PDF lesson plan for Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Wedding 

The Saturday Boy by David Fleming

Eleven year old Derek Lamb's father has been flying Apache helicopters in Afghanistan for most of Derek's life and just when it looked like he was finished, he was called back into service there.  Now, Derek is having a hard time in school, at home, and with his former best friend, Budgie.

To comfort himself, Derek reads and rereads the letters his dad has sent him over the course of Derek's young life - all 91 of them kept in his dad's old plastic Knight Rider lunch box.  Derek has read the letters so often he know which letters to read when he wants them to say exactly what he needs them to say.

Derek also has a fondness for comic books, and superheroes, like Zeroman and Dinoman, something he used to share with Budgie.  Now, though, Budgie has become pretty mean to Derek, making his life miserable every chance he can at school.

Derek's own lack of focus makes him an easy target for a bully like Budgie - which is how he earned the nickname Saturday boy.  Budgie and his mom found Derek waiting at the school bus stop in the pouring rain on Saturday morning.  And by Monday morning, everyone knew about it.

Budgie continues to be antagonist to Derek in school.  When the boys are back at school, after spending a fun (at least for Derek) day playing at Budgie house, Budgie humiliates Derek in front of the other kids, even letting him know that Derek is his archenemy.  Later, when Derek seeks revenge, it backfires.  Hurt and angry, Derek takes to magic markers and the boys' room wall to express his feelings about Derek, which earns him a trip to the principle's office, and a call home to his already stressed out, somewhat distracted mom.

Just when Derek's 11 year old life seems like to couldn't get any more difficult for him, he learns that his dad's helicopter has been shot down and his dad didn't survive.  Suddenly, everything changes for Derek.

I picked this book up to read rather reluctantly last Sunday.  I wasn't in much of a reading mood, but I had to read it for something.  It didn't take long to become riveted to Derek's story and I finished the book a few hours later.  What a surprise!  I loved it.

Engagingly told in the first person by Derek, it is exactly the kind of coming of age story I am most attracted to.  When I first started reading, I thought maybe Derek was a little slow, he seemed to miss social sures and other things, but his lack of attention, I think, is perfectly normal for kids who have a parent deployed in a war zone.  And in that respect, David Fleming is spot on with his depiction of Derek and his anxiety, his anger and his distractedness and, for that matter, of his mother, a nurse who loses herself in her job.

The Saturday Boy is funny, sad, realistic and compelling.  It's not about bullying per se, though Fleming skillfully gives the reader a nice look into the mind of a bully, making what he does understandable, but without condoning it.  Budgie is, after all, what Derek's father calls "a target rich environment," overweight, with a terrible nickname covering a really embarrassing first name.  Vulnerable to bullying himself, he recognizes Derek's vulnerability and attacks before being attacks.

The Saturday Boy is Fleming's debut and definitely one that you surely don't want to miss.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL