general youth fiction

HOME SCHOOL BOOK REVIEW

Book: Summer of the Wolves

Author: Polly Carlson-Voiles

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-0-547-74591-6

Related website: www.hmhbooks.com (publisher)

Language level: 2

(1=nothing objectionable; 2=common euphemisms and/or childish slang terms; 3=some cursing or profanity; 4=a lot of cursing or profanity; 5=obscenity and/or vulgarity)

Reading level: Ages 10-14

Rating: 5 stars (EXCELLENT)

Reviewed by Wayne S. Walker

Disclosure:  Any books donated for review purposes are in turn donated to a library.  No other compensation has been received for the reviews posted on Home School Book Review.

For more information e-mail homeschoolbookreview@gmail.com

     Carlson-Voiles, Polly.  Summer of the Wolves (published in 2012 by Harcourt Mifflin Books for Children Group, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 222 Berkeley St., Boston, MA  02116).  Annika (Nika) McNeill is a twelve-year-old girl who lives in Pasadena, CA.  Her brother Randall is seven.  Their dad Sean had died some years before while serving overseas in the military, and their mother Kate had moved them from Minnesota to California.  Then she was killed in an accident about a year and a half before the story opens.  Nika and Randall have been living with a foster mother named Meg, but Meg develops heart problems, and the social worker makes arrangements for them to spend the summer with their father’s older brother, Uncle Ian McNeill, age 42, who lives on Little Berry Island in Anchor Lake near Red Pine, MN, where he is engaged in a study of wolves, in hopes that things will work out for them to stay with him.

     Uncle Ian’s cabin is very small, so Nika lives with his landlady, “Aunt Pearl,” on the same island, and Randall is to stay with the Camerons, who live on neighboring Big Berry Island and have three boys named Thomas, Gideon, and Jasper.  While Ian and Nika are out in the wilds doing research on the wolves in Ian’s study, they find a wolf pup, which Nika names Khan, the sole survivor of an illegal wolf kill.  Nika is to help Ian raise Khan in preparation for the pup’s eventual inclusion in a nature preserve.  Nika makes friends with Thomas, and together they find another wolf, which they name Luna.  The she-wolf has apparently escaped from captivity, and they start feeding her.  Unfortunately, there is a man in town named Bristo who is out to kill all the wolves he can.  Nika is still feeling lonely after the death of her mom and missing her friends in Pasadena.  She wants to go back to California and maybe even take Khan with her as a pet.  Is that possible, or would it be too dangerous?  And what will happen when Bristo finds Nika and Thomas feeding Luna?

     It is no secret that in many popular contemporary books for middle grade and young adult readers I have found a number of objectionable elements, but not so with Summer of the Wolves.  It is a well-written book that has an interesting story and is easy to read.  One mention of “skunks’ butts” is found, though no cursing or profanity occurs, and there are a couple of references to something that happened over 100,000 years ago and to rocks that are 2.7 billion years old.  Nika does make a couple of rather serious errors in judgment, such as when she almost loses Khan while taking him out for a walk without a leash after being told not to do so and when she and Thomas use wire cutters to let animals escape out of Bristo’s cages.  However, she learns from these mistakes, and appropriate consequences are meted out.  Kids who like wild animals and nature-lovers will especially enjoy the book, but anyone can appreciate seeing how Nika learns to deal with her loss and work out her difficulties.  It gets two thumbs up from me.

HOME SCHOOL BOOK REVIEW

Book: The Year of the Book

Author: Andrea Cheng

Illustrator: Abigail Halpin

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-0-547-68463-5

Related website: www.andreacheng.com (author), www.theodesign.com (illustrator), www.hmhbooks.com (publisher)

Language level: 2

(1=nothing objectionable; 2=common euphemisms and/or childish slang terms; 3=some cursing or profanity; 4=a lot of cursing or profanity; 5=obscenity and/or vulgarity)

Reading level: Ages 6-9

Rating: 4 stars (GOOD)

Reviewed by Wayne S. Walker

Disclosure:  Any books donated for review purposes are in turn donated to a library.  No other compensation has been received for the reviews posted on Home School Book Review.

For more information e-mail homeschoolbookreview@gmail.com

     Cheng, Andrea.  The Year of the Book (published in 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 222 Berkeley St., Boston, MA  02116).  Can reading books help someone to make a friend?  Anna Wang is a fourth-grade Chinese-American girl.  She lives with her father, who is an ABC (American-born Chinese), and manages a Quick Stop store; her mother, who was born in China, works as a cleaning lady in a high rise building, and is studying to be a nurse; and her third-grade brother Ken.  Her best friend in Ms. Simmons’s class is Laura, who can never seem to make up her mind whether she is best friends with Anna or with snooty Allison and Lucy.  Anna likes to sew cloth lunch bags and to read books like My Side of the Mountain and A Wrinkle in Time.

     The episodic chapters of this generally pleasant story examine Anna’s relationships with her family and friends and cover about a year in her life, beginning with going to school where every day she talks to Ray the crossing guard, through Halloween, Thanksgiving, winter break, Christmas, the New Year, and spring break, down to the end of the school year.  She really wants Ms. Simmons to be her teacher next year too.  She even uses a lesson on “persuasive paragraphs” to write a letter to Mrs. Robinson, the school principal, asking if Ms. Simmons can “loop” and teach the same group for two years.  Will Anna and her friends be promoted to fifth grade?  And if so, who will her new teacher be?

     When Anna tries to teach her friends how to say “thank you” in Chinese, which is xie xie, they pronounce it shee shee instead of shieh shieh, and Anna adds, “What they don’t know is that in Chinese, shee shee means you have to pee.”  Many parents will have no problems with things like this, but a few might wish to be forewarned.  Also, Laura’s family is having problems.  She says that she has to listen to her dad “shouting and breaking stuff.”  Later she says that her “mom and dad are always fighting.”  Eventually, it’s said that her father doesn’t want to live there any longer, and for a time line assignment at school, Laura writes, “2008, my parents split up.”   Many modern children’s writers apparently feel that they just have to include dysfunctional families to make their books “relevant” for today’s kids.  By contrast, Anna’s home is a very loving and stable one.  It is especially gratifying to see the way Anna comes to terms with her Chinese ancestry and also learns to appreciate her family, as well as the growth of her friendship with Laura.  All in all, it was an enjoyable tale.  I have read two other books by author Andrea Cheng: Marika, about a Hungarian Jewish girl during the Holocaust, which I did not care for, and Only One Year, about a Chinese-American boy who is sent back to China to spend a year with his grandparents, which was very good.

HOME SCHOOL BOOK REVIEW

Book: The Pearl

Author: John Steinbeck

Illustrator: Jose Clemente Orozco

Publisher: Penguin Books, republished in 2002

ISBN-13: 978-0142000694

ISBN-10: 0142000698

Language level: 1

(1=nothing objectionable; 2=common euphemisms and/or childish slang terms; 3=some cursing or profanity; 4=a lot of cursing or profanity; 5=obscenity and/or vulgarity)

Reading level: Teens and adults

Rating: 3 stars (FAIR)

Reviewed by Wayne S. Walker

Disclosure:  Any books donated for review purposes are in turn donated to a library.  No other compensation has been received for the reviews posted on Home School Book Review.

For more information e-mail homeschoolbookreview@gmail.com

     Steinbeck, John.  The Pearl (published in 1947 by The Viking Press; republished in 1992 by  The Penguin Group USA Inc., 345 Hudson St., New York City, NY  10014).  Kino, a young and strong but poor pearl diver, and Juana live with their baby son Coyotito in a small fishing village outside the city of La Paz, Mexico (which according to Wikipedia is in Baja California Sur on the Gulf of California).  Coyotito is stung by a scorpion, but as Kino has no money to pay the doctor, the boy is refused treatment.  He recovers, thanks to Juana’s ministrations, but the next day Kino finds a huge pearl, which he calls “the pearl of the world.”  By selling it, he can get the money to pay the doctor, but he also dreams of buying a rifle, marrying Juana, and getting Coyotito an education, things that he has never had money for thus far. However, his dreams blind him to the greed that the pearl arouses in him and his neighbors.

     Soon, the whole town knows of the pearl, and many people begin to desire it.  That night Kino is attacked in his own home.  The next day, he takes the pearl to the pearl buyers in the town, but they refuse to give him the money he wants so he decides to go to the capital for better price.  Juana, seeing that the pearl is causing darkness and greed, sneaks out of the house later that night to throw the pearl back into the ocean, but Kino catches her. While he is returning to the house, Kino is attacked again by several unknown men and the pearl is lost in the struggle.  Juana finds it and gives it back to Kino.  When they arrive home they find that their canoe is damaged and their home is burning down, so they determine to walk to the capital but soon find that they are being tracked by men who are hired to hunt them.  Will the family be able to escape?  And what will happen to the pearl?

     This novella, which was first published as a short story “The Pearl of the World” in Woman’s Home Companion in 1945, explores man’s nature as well as greed and evil and supposedly illustrates our fall from innocence.  It is said to be a retelling of an old Mexican folk tale.  That the doctor has performed clumsy abortions and had a mistress is mentioned.  There are references to drinking wine and smoking cigarettes as well as to both “God” and “the gods.”  Kino and Juana are not married but, of course, are living together and have a son.  The story exhibits Steinbeck’s typical pessimistic cynicism leading to the conclusion that if something good ever happens, you had better watch out because it is just setting you up for something really bad.  Someone has suggested that it bares “the fallacy of the American dream–that wealth erases all problems.”  I don’t agree that the American dream is that wealth erases all problems, although some might think that, but I do agree that we must learn that wealth is not the ultimate answer to man’s greatest needs and presents some serious problems.  All in all, it is not too bad of a book.

HOME SCHOOL BOOK REVIEW

Book: Home to Holly Springs

Author: Jan Karon

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2007

ISBN-13: 978-0-670-01825-3 (hard cover)

ISBN-13: 978-0-13-311329-0 (paperback)

Related websites: www.mitfordbooks.com (series), www.penguin.com (publisher)

Language level: 5

(1=nothing objectionable; 2=common euphemisms and/or childish slang terms; 3=some cursing or profanity; 4=a lot of cursing or profanity; 5=obscenity and/or vulgarity)

Reading level: No younger than age 16

Rating: 3 stars (FAIR)

Reviewed by Wayne S. Walker

Disclosure:  Any books donated for review purposes are in turn donated to a library.  No other compensation has been received for the reviews posted on Home School Book Review.

For more information e-mail homeschoolbookreview@gmail.com

     Karon, Jan.  Home to Holly Springs (published in 2007 by  Penguin Books, a division of The Penguin Group USA, 375 Hudson St., New York City, NY  10014).  Seventy-year-old Timothy Kavanaugh, the now retired Episcopalian minister of Jan Karon’s beloved Mitford series, who lives in Mitford, NC, with his wife, the former Cynthia Coppersmith, and their adopted son Dooley, receives a mysterious, unsigned letter postmarked Holly Springs, MS, which simply tells him to “Come home.”  Cynthia has broken her ankle and Dooley is in college, so Tim hops in the car with his huge dog Barnabas and drives alone to Holly Springs,  where he was born and raised but hasn’t been back in forty years.  There he looks for long-lost friends, confronts the ghosts of the past, and wrestles with the demons of his upbringing.  But will he ever find who wrote the note and what it is all about?  And if he does, what will he do about it?

     I read and enjoyed At Home in Mitford, the first of Karon’s Mitford series, but have not read any of the others which follow.  However, when my wife bought this book, the first in Karon’s new Father Tim series, I decided to read it.  While set in time subsequent to the last Mitford novel, it covers the early days of Tim and his family in Holly Springs via numerous flashbacks and reminiscences. USA Today says, “This is Karon’s most emotionally complex novel.”  One could take “emotionally complex” as a synonym for “morally ambiguous.”  At Home in Mitford, and I am told the other Mitford novels, have a certain light-hearted charm.  Most reader-reviewers of Home to Holly Springs liked it, but a significant number of people who loved Mitford did not like this book because of its psychological nature, uneven narrative, lack of charm, tedious detail, and especially the stories of teenage sex, unwed pregnancy, attempted rape, and adultery.  My wife was among those who did not care for it as well as the Mitford books.

     Jan Karon is a good writer, and I found that the book has an interesting plot line, although it does drag a little at times.  There are many positive aspects to it.  However, one’s final decision about the book might hinge on how one views Tim’s reaction to learning about his father’s adultery.  Does he feel that it’s something in the past that can’t be changed and he simply goes on from there without necessarily condoning what happened?  Or does he come to believe that maybe the fact that his father found someone with whom he could show the love that he never gave Tim’s mother is just one of those facets of life and he shouldn’t be judgmental?  I would like to think that it’s the former, but my wife concluded that it might have been the latter.   Aside from this, there are a few instances of drinking whiskey.  As to language, in addition to some common euphemisms and childish slang terms for body parts and functions, several references to the “s” word that was written on the water tower are found, although the word itself is never used, the words God and Lord are uttered a couple of times as interjections, and the “d” word modifies “Yankees” once and is part of the name of a mule owned by Tim’s childhood friend mentioned a number of times.  The worst for me is that someone is said to be “white a**,” or to “kick a**,” or to be “bad a**,” or to be “hard a**,” or to be a “pain in the a**,” or to be a “rat’s a**,” or to say “my a**.”  Karon may have chosen such language because she thinks that it makes her characters sound “authentic.”  I think that it just makes them sound annoying.  I like the fact that Tim is always acknowledging God and His grace, and the story does have a happy ending, but I think that it could have been told in a much better way.

HOME SCHOOL BOOK REVIEW

Book: The Red Pony

Author: John Steinbeck

Publisher: Penguin Books, republished in 1992

ISBN-10: 0-1401-7736-1

Language level: 3

(1=nothing objectionable; 2=common euphemisms and/or childish slang terms; 3=some cursing or profanity; 4=a lot of cursing or profanity; 5=obscenity and/or vulgarity)

Reading level: Young adult (I would say age 16 and above)

Rating: 3 stars (FAIR)

Reviewed by Wayne S. Walker

Disclosure:  Any books donated for review purposes are in turn donated to a library.  No other compensation has been received for the reviews posted on Home School Book Review.

For more information e-mail homeschoolbookreview@gmail.com

     Steinbeck, John.  The Red Pony (published in 1945 by The Viking Press; republished in 1992 by Penguin Books, a division of The Penguin Group USA Inc., 345 Hudson St., New York City, NY  10014).  The Red Pony is an episodic novella.  Young Jody Tiflin lives on a farm in the Salinas Valley of California with his father, named Carl, his mother, their hired hand Billy Buck, and his dogs, Doubletree Mutt and Smasher, along with cats, horses, and other animals.  In the main story, Jody’s father gives him a red pony which he names Gabilan after the nearby mountains.  He forges a special bond with the hot-tempered horse, tending and training it in anticipation of the day he can ride.  But when Gabilan falls ill, will the pony survive?   And what will Jody do?    It was made into a 1949 motion picture of the same name starring Myrna Loy, Robert Mitchum, and child actor Peter Miles, with music composed by Aaron Copland.

     The four chapters were originally published as short stories in magazines from 1933 to 1937.  The first chapter, “The Gift,” first appeared in the Nov., 1933, issue of North American Review.  The second chapter, “The Great Mountains,” about Gitano, an old man who comes to die at the Tiflin ranch, first appeared in the Dec., 1933, issue of North American Review.  The fourth chapter, “The Leader of the People,” about Mrs. Tiflin’s father, who has a history of crossing the Oregon Trail and enjoys telling stories about his experiences, first appeared in the Aug., 1936, issue of Argosy.  And the third chapter, “The Promise,” about Jody’s receiving another promised colt, first appeared in the Oct., 1937, issue of Harper’s Monthly.  They were put together as a book in either 1937 or 1945.  Some editions of the book also include a short story titled “Junius Maltby,” taken from one of Steinbeck’s earlier works, The Pastures of Heaven, but this is omitted in the edition published by Penguin Books.   I had read Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in high school and did not like it.  I have seen portions of the movie version of his The Grapes of Wrath and did not care for it either.  Yet a lot of folks said that The Red Pony is different. 

     Perhaps it is, but only in degree, not in kind.  It still has that “life’s a bummer, then you die” sort of pessimism characteristic of Steinbeck.  We did this as a family read aloud and did not mind the death and disappointment because these things are part of life.  What was absent, however, was any feeling of comfort or hope for the future.  The reaction of rock musician Eric Clapton is interesting. He complained that “the book just made me want to commit suicide. The Red Pony, I could not believe this book. It broke my heart, and I thought there is no happy ending to anything.”  After doing some research to see why an author would write about a story like this, Clapton criticized those types of authors by saying that they are “alcoholic, damaged people with a poisoned viewpoint on life” and added that “as much as it was incredibly exciting and death-defying to read, it was not necessarily very good for the growth of one’s spirit.”  I never thought that I’d agree with a rock star!  In addition, there are references to drinking brandy and Jody’s lying.  In one scene, Jody is upset and shows a very cruel streak toward animals.  Also the “h” and “d” words are used occasionally, once by Jody himself and another time with the name of “God” before the “d,” and the name of Jesus Christ is used a couple of times as an exclamation, so I had some editing to do.  It is an interesting story, but I cannot say that I was overly fond of it.