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books

A Pair of Mock Printz Reviews

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I’ve been reading steadily for my workplace’s Mock Printz challenge this year. So far, the crop of books we’re considering is much stronger than last year’s; I think we might have a difficult time narrowing down our list to a reasonable length! The two books I review in this post both feature extraordinary female artists who actually exist/ed, and both books will encourage young readers to learn more about these talented and important women and their work.

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough

This is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s about Artemisia Gentileschi, a real painter from 17th century Rome who was raped as a teenager by a painter her father hired to tutor her. She  chose to prosecute her rapist, participating in the trial – an even more rare and difficult thing then than it is now. The transcripts of the trial survive to this day. Blood Water Paint is mainly a verse novel, but McCullough skillfully threads prose sections featuring Artemisia’s mother, who died when she was a small child, telling her the stories of Biblical heroines Susannah and and Judith throughout. The real Artemisia painted these two women many times, in ways that show their strength and autonomy rather than their victimhood or vulnerability. The technique is successful, placing Artemisia in a context where she believes she, too, can choose to embrace her power where she can find it.

The book is not all about the rape, though. It’s also about art, specifically painting, and about Rome in the 1600s and how women and girls navigated the limited paths available to them. Artemisia’s voice is young, sometimes naive, but never oblivious. She’s intelligent, angry, unsure, and enormously talented. McCullough never makes her too “modern;” she was really as remarkable as the book makes her out to be. McCullough’s verse is a just reflection of Artemisia’s artistic ability: technically excellent, expressive, and innovative. Readers who finish the book wondering what happened to Artemisia afterward will be happy to know that she lived a long time, that she continued to paint, and that her work hangs in museums all over the world.

 

Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide by Isabel Quintero and Zeke Peña

I had never heard of Graciela Iturbide, an accomplished photographic artist from Mexico. Her work is interesting and arresting, in particular her project featuring the women of Juchitán, an indigenous Zapotec city in Oaxaca, Mexico that is traditionally matriarchal. (You can learn more about the project from this Smithsonian article.) Her photography as a whole explores cultural identity, whether it’s that of indigenous peoples in Mexico or Mexican-Americans in an East Los Angeles barrio. Her photographs are often described as magical or surreal by those who view them, but Iturbide herself rejects this label: the images she presents are stark reality, intentionally so. A couple of her most famous photographs are Mujer Ángel and Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas.

Quintero’s words used to describe Iturbide’s life and her work are poetic, a good match for the few reproductions of Iturbide’s photographs that are included. Peña does a fine job of reproducing some of these photographs with his own art, but they pale in comparison to the real thing. When his art is used to depict Iturbide’s life, it’s more successful, though as a biography, the book is pretty slight. This should send teens straight to the internet (or even the many museums and galleries that feature her work) to look up more of Iturbide’s photographs.

 

 

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

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I don’t read a lot of verse novels, but I really should: they’re fast reads (despite a hefty page count for many), immediately give me a sense of the narrator’s voice, and offer a new way to tell sometimes old stories. In the case of Xiomara in The Poet X, hers is a story that has been told before in that it’s a story about coming of age, about finding your voice when others try to silence you. At the same time, it’s a story not told often enough – that of a young girl of color finding her way in this country.

Xiomara is the fifteen year old daughter of Dominican immigrants, a girl whose curves developed early and whose devout Catholic mother forces her to adhere to a strict code of behavior. This code of behavior has no room for dating and boys, but it also has no room for poetry, the only outlet Xiomara has for expressing herself. She tells her story in poems, a story that includes falling in like with a Trinidadian boy from her school, her struggles with and questions about the religious faith she was raised with, and her talent for both writing and performing her poetry. When Xiomara learns about a poetry club at school, she decides to join, letting her mother believe she is going to confirmation class instead. Even as Xiomara starts to blossom in this area of her life, as she’s drawn out by a trustworthy teacher, a dependable friend, and a kind boy who treats her as a person and not as a body, her home life closes in: these secrets Xiomara keeps cannot remain secret forever.

Acevedo’s writing is so good; it’s no surprise that she’s won awards for her poetry (written and performed). Xiomara tells her story in short poems of no more than 2-3 pages each. Often the title of the poem doubles as its first line; sometimes the titles refer to each other, creating a deliberate contrast, as when Xiomara shares the draft of an assignment in English class and then shares the final version on the next page. Sometimes the poems are in Spanish or Xiomara quotes her mother in Spanish, though a translation soon follows. Xiomara tells her story mostly in free verse, but she also sometimes experiments with haiku and unconventional spacing or line breaks. Each poem furthers the story while also giving us more of Xiomara’s voice, and the resultant package is one of beauty, depth, and intensity. This is a stellar example of the verse novel format.

Acevedo’s treatment of the harassment Xiomara receives simply for being a girl that exists in physical space – especially one with well-developed curves – is particularly well-done. She’s harassed by the men on the street as well as the boys in school. She’s had to learn to stand up for herself, to protect herself against these men and boys and their words and hands, because no one else will do it for her. Acevedo also excels at portraying the relationship between Xiomara and her twin brother, Xavier, who is gay but must hide it from his parents, who at best would disapprove and at worst would subject him to the same (or worse) punishment that Xiomara receives for her many perceived transgressions. Xiomara’s Harlem neighborhood comes alive in her poems, too: the characters and the place they reside live and breathe.

Xiomara’s authentic voice, which includes some slang in both vocabulary and structure as well as a few pop culture references (Nicki Minaj and Drake, for example), will resonate with today’s teens, many of whom will find a welcome mirror in her story. Acevedo’s dedication reads, “To Katherine Bolaños and my former students at Buck Lodge Middle School 2010-2012, and all the little sisters yearning to see themselves: this is for you.” At a panel at the Texas Library Association, Acevedo explained a bit about Katherine, a girl in the English class she taught who had no interest in reading – until Acevedo was able to give her books where she could see at least a little of herself and her life. As librarians, we know these kids, and we know that the non-reader is just the reader who hasn’t been given the right book. The Poet X will be that book for many girls who haven’t found theirs yet.

Thriller Roundup

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I’m still on a huge thriller kick, seeking a book to match the love I’ve had for The Girl on the Train since I first read it two years ago. Paula Hawkins’ novel is one of the few mega-popular titles that I loved just as much as everyone else. Nothing has really impressed me that much since, but most of my choices are solid and a fun way to occupy a few hours. Here’s a rundown of the some of the recent ones I’ve read and enjoyed.

The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn

Anna is agoraphobic and fills her time with talking to people in her online support group, playing chess, watching old movies, drinking too much alcohol, and spying on her neighbors through the window. When she sees the woman across the street with a knife sticking out of her stomach, she tries to notify the police – but they don’t believe her. The woman’s husband presents a different woman as his wife, and their teenage son, whom Anna had met and formed a rapport with when he visited before, refuses to speak about much of anything. This is a psychological thriller very much in the vein of The Girl on the Train, featuring an unreliable narrator who witnesses a horrible crime but won’t be taken seriously by anyone involved. Finn takes his time developing Anna’s character, which can make the book seem slow at times. Before the event that caused Anna’s agoraphobia, she was a child psychologist with a husband and a young daughter. Now she and her husband are separated, and her daughter is with him, leaving Anna alone in the house. She helps other people in her online support group with their own agoraphobia, while simultaneously recognizing that she’s unable to help herself. The suspense builds slowly and deliberately, directing readers first at one suspect and then another, including Anna herself, and while many readers probably won’t be surprised by the ending, it’s executed well and quite satisfying.

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Ani FaNelli experienced something horrible as a teenager at Bradley School, a prestigious boarding school near Philadelphia. As an adult, she’s tried to reinvent herself with a high-paying job, fancy clothes, and an impressive and handsome fiance. She’s made herself into a hard person, and it’s easy to dislike her, at least initially. She comes across as a bully, invested too much in her own appearance, the appearance of others, and of course, wealth. But there are flashes of someone kinder underneath, and this person is revealed slowly over the course of the book as we learn exactly what happened to Ani in high school. There’s a twist to the story about halfway through the book, and it’s this twist, violent and shocking, that the world within the story actually knows about, and the one that Ani is preparing to talk about publicly for a documentary. This is less of a thriller and more of a psychological study of a woman and how different traumas can affect a person. There’s no big reveal near the end, but it’s satisfying in other ways. Knoll reveals, bit by bit, what happened to Ani and how she’s been coping (and not coping), so by the end, we have the full picture. In that way, it has a bit of a mystery element to it, but readers shouldn’t go into this one expecting another Gone Girl. It’s disturbing, yes, but in a very different way.

The Child by Fiona Barton

I was a bit disappointed by the first Fiona Barton book I read, The Widow. It’s difficult to say why without spoiling the ending, but the experience did give me lower expectations for her second book. Luckily, this one is pretty solid. When the body of a baby is discovered in a backyard, buried many years ago, it brings the lives of three women together: a mother, her grown daughter, and the journalist investigating the case, each with her own secrets and motivations. The identity of the child, and its relationship with the mother and her daughter, is teased out over the course of the book. The story is told from three different perspectives, each woman’s voice and personality distinct from the others, all of them arresting. This is a mystery with solid answers to its main questions: who is the child, and what (or who) is responsible for its death?  The path the story takes isn’t always predictable, but it does make sense – there are no twists simply for shock value. With good writing and a satisfying ending, I recommend The Child for anyone looking for an entirely female-driven mystery.

 

 

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

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Fantasy is my original genre love, but I haven’t been reading nearly as much of it as I used to. Not much has been clever enough to grab me. Thankfully, Melissa Albert is here to renew my interest with her creative and beautifully written take on a modern fairy tale.

Decades ago, Alice’s grandmother wrote a book called Tales From the Hinterland, a collection of short, dark original fairy tales that became a cult classic. It’s out of print and copies are hard to find – so hard to find that copies tend to go mysteriously missing or stolen, even once they’ve been acquired. Alice wants nothing to do with the book or its fans, until her mother is kidnapped by a group referring to themselves as the Hinterland. In order to find her mother, Alice must team up with a teenage boy who’s familiar with the stories. Together, they go looking for the Hinterland.

This book starts out completely realistically, as if it could be a contemporary story of a kidnapping and the intrepid teens who set out to solve it themselves. But there are early hints that the magic might be real – three ordinary objects left behind on a table that nonetheless indicate they are much more; a sighting of a woman on the street who looks normal but also strangely out of place in a way that’s difficult to explain; a readheaded man from a decade ago who hasn’t seemed to age. Figuring out how these elements all fit together makes for an enthralling, page-turning read.

The details are what make this story stand out. Albert sprinkles small excerpts and characters’ retellings of Tales From the Hinterland throughout her book, making the Tales seem real – like we as readers could hunt down a copy for ourselves, if were so (un)lucky. The tales themselves are lovely dark stories, inspired by Grimm and Perrault but still entirely Albert’s own thing. And every detail that Albert places in her story, aside from and complementary to the Tales, is important, too. They are clues to the larger mystery, the one beyond what happened to Alice’s mother: what the Tales really are and how much Alice’s story is intertwined with them.

This is a treat for any teen who loves contemporary fantasy, dark fantasy, retold fairy tales, and surprising endings. It’s skillfully plotted, beautifully written, and shows its influences clearly but still manages to be original and fresh. Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Monsters Beware! by Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado

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I really loved the first previous two books in this fun and funny graphic novel series. In this installment, our hero Claudette has tricked her way into being chosen as her town’s champion in the annual Warrior Games, along with her younger brother Gaston and her friend Marie. Unfortunately for them, the Sea Kingdom has plans beyond simply winning the competition – they want to revive the evil wizard, frozen in amber in a previous volume, and rule the whole land. The Sea Queen’s children are the titular monsters, who transform from innocent-looking kids into creatures that devour the other competitors while no one is looking.

Unlike the two previous volumes, Claudette doesn’t really seem to be the hero of this book. Much of the story focuses instead on Gaston and Marie, who know what’s going on well before Claudette does. She’s off the page being oblivious and refusing to pay any attention to the warnings her friends are giving her. This is Claudette being Claudette; it gets a bit tedious for adult readers but probably won’t bother child readers. Of course, she comes through in the end, but by that point, I felt like she wasn’t really that necessary to the story. It’s nice in that it gives Marie and Gaston their moments to shine, but it also feels strange in a series called “Chronicles of Claudette.”

While there is an undercurrent of seriousness to the story, it’s mostly funny. The monsters look like oversized sea crabs and crack jokes after every meal. Gaston loves to cook and takes it very seriously, opening the door for a lot of puns about food. The Warrior Games themselves are the biggest joke: since Marie is competing, her father decides that the games must be safe, and combat competitions are swapped for activities like churning butter and setting tables. And despite the fact that the monsters gobble up almost everyone in town aside from our intrepid three, the happy ending is never really in doubt. Rosado and Aguirre actually give us even more happiness than we might have expected, with a plot twist that is surprising but also makes sense in context.

The art is fantastic as always, perfectly matched to the text to tell the story. The whole book is colorful and fun and a lot of the humor comes through in the characters’ expressions and movements. There’s an interesting bonus section at the end that describes how Aguirre and Rosado added a piece of the plot to the story after it was already drafted, which will be a great read for kids who want to make their own graphic novel. While I don’t think this volume is as strong as the first two, it’s a great addition, and the whole series is a winner. They consistently tell fun, action-packed stories with characters who buck gender norms, and they feature caring friendships and families, including a disabled father. This is one of my favorite graphic novel series to recommend to middle graders who love adventure.

Finished copy provided by the publisher.