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books

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson

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One of my most cherished memories from my childhood is reading The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin with my mother. We kept a little notebook, sized for little hands, where I would write down all of the clues from Mr. Westing’s will and everything else that was revealed along the way. I still remember the way I felt when I put the clues together into a a very big clue that led me to the big reveal – before Turtle herself had figured it out! I loved the wordplay and the puzzles and the fact that Raskin made solving this one achievable for a kid like me.

The Westing Game likely wasn’t the first mystery I read, but it certainly spurred my lifelong love for them. I still get a thrill every time I figure out a mystery on my own, whether it’s in a book, a game, or a play. Of course, nothing quite matched the magic of that first experience with The Westing Game.

Enter Varian Johnson and The Parker Inheritance. I was lucky enough to see Johnson, a local Austin author, speak at an event recently, which convinced me to finally pick up my copy of The Parker Inheritance and give it a read. I was so delighted the whole way through. The Parker Inheritance is a mystery predominantly based on puzzles and riddles contained within a letter from an eccentric individual who has recently died, much like Raskin’s Newbery winner from 1978. Reading it brought back the joy I experienced when reading The Westing Game, but this is no imitation. Johnson has created a unique mystery that feels fresh and modern, one that kids will love trying to solve alongside his protagonists.

Candice Miller and her mom – recently separated from her dad – are staying in Candice’s grandmother’s old home in Lambert, South Carolina while their home is renovated. Candice’s grandmother died a short while ago, but she was infamous in Lambert for digging up historic tennis courts to try and find treasure underneath (none was found). She lost her job as assistant city manager because of it.

When Candice is exploring the attic, though, she finds a letter addressed to her grandmother, a letter that explains why she would have done such a seemingly inexplicable thing as dig up a treasured community space in the middle of the night without any permission or authorization. The letter tells of an old injustice done upon the family of a young woman named Siobhan Washington, and how the letter writer planned to visit justice upon the culprits. The letter writer has hidden a great treasure somewhere within Lambert for the person who can find it, and everything needed to figure out the mystery is contained within the letter itself. Candice’s grandmother tried and failed; Candice is determined to finish the job.

After a rocky start, she teams up with Brandon Jones, the boy across the street, and the two set about solving the mystery involving a Black family (the Washingtons) who lived in the segregated town of Lambert in the 1950s. Johnson’s novel tackles the racism Siobhan and her family experienced then as well as the racism Candice and Brandon (who are also Black) experience even now, pitching everything perfectly to a middle grade audience. The Washingtons’ story is heartbreaking, full of twists and turns and surprises that are revealed slowly as the kids figure out the series of clues. Johnson peppers the book with flashbacks, first to the patriarch of the Washingtons when he was a child of sharecroppers in the early 1900s, then to the events of the 1950s, where the bulk of the story takes place, and finally to the decades afterward, where readers learn about the rippling effects of everything that happened.

The Parker Inheritance is such a fun book that doesn’t sacrifice depth. Candice and Brandon are well-realized characters that readers will root for, and their sadness and horror and anger at discovering what happened to Siobhan and her family will mirror young readers’. Readers will be able to follow the clues as Candice and Brandon discover them; some may even figure out some vital information before they do! Johnson’s story has a lot to say not only about the ingenuity of kids, but also about racism, human nature, forgiveness, and revenge. The later chapters focusing on the decades after the tragedy of the 1950s were my favorite: bittersweet and lovely and ultimately hopeful. This is a book that can be read on multiple levels; the luckiest readers will understand it on all.

Personal copy

Books That Are Helping Me Right Now

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On December 23, my grandma passed away peacefully. I was there with her, along with my mom, as well as two of my mom’s friends. She was 83, and up until two weeks prior, had still been working and driving and never needed any help getting around.

To say it happened swiftly and shockingly is an understatement. 

My grandma was like a parent to me. I lived with her and my grandfather from the time I was in kindergarten until I graduated high school. This loss has been, and continues to be, like that of losing a parent.

Christmas was a lot sadder this year, though we all did the best we could. We knew we’d all be getting back together again in a few days to plan, and then attend, a funeral. 

I did a lot of driving back and forth the second half of December, between my home and my mom’s, about an hour and a half away. I quickly realized being in silence was the furthest thing from helpful for me. I also realized that trying to rush any feelings or grief, trying to wrap up any loose ends or be fully available for anyone else at the drop of a hat, simply wasn’t possible. 

I needed instead to give myself space to breath and space to feel.

The day before she died, I had a suspicion that there wouldn’t be a miracle. She wouldn’t want any intervention, and she’d certainly have been angry to know what state she was in at the end. I prepared myself both by giving myself said space and by seeking out books which might be helpful in the immediate days and weeks following her passing. 

I’m not religious. I tried a number of areas of belief and nothing’s quite gelled with me. I have, however, found yogic philosophy and Buddhist philosophies to align closest to my mindset, both as we are here as people, as well as in what might lie for us after death. I wanted a book or two that would come at loss from these perspectives, as I am comfortable there, as well as comfortable navigating the areas which don’t resonate with me in some way. 

I got a number of great recommendations from fellow readers, as well as from those who aren’t necessarily readers but who have themselves experienced big loss. Here’s what I picked up and what’s been especially helpful for me. 

24/6 by Tiffany Shlain

What would a book about unplugging from the online world for a day have to do with grief and loss? I wouldn’t have ever expected this book to me what helped me in those most tender moments during my driving, but it did.

Shlain’s book is about her family’s practice of a tech Shabbat. Each Friday evening, the entire family unplugs and shuts down all technology so they can focus on doing things that require no tech. This means planning out travel routes prior to Friday night to print directions or making use of an old-school map if they forget or choose to travel elsewhere. It means no cell phones but reliance on a landline in the event there’s an emergency. 

About 2/3 of the way through the book, though, Shlain — who performs the audiobook herself — starts to talk about losing her father. She talks about how important having time with her husband and kids without the noise of the rest of the world was. This hit me so hard, and it was a powerful reminder to be there with my grandmother in the hospital.

The discussion of grief and loss here was surprising, and it tapped something deep in me. Both because I felt everything Shlain was talking about and because it reminded me how precious or time really is and how saying no to screens for a measly 24 hours can really and truly make an impact on your relationships.  

Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying by Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush

Christmas week had something in the air, as Ram Dass passed the day before my grandma did. I began to dig into his teachings earlier this year, thanks to my 500-hour teacher training modules, and it felt right to pick up this book. 

This isn’t a typical narrative nonfiction title. Instead, it’s a series of conversations held between Bush and Dass about what happens after we die. Dass, whose life was completely changed after a stroke, had done a lot of thinking about death and what comes after, and Bush talks with him about our spirits and where they go once we leave our bodies. 

We fear death because we don’t know it, and Dass walks through getting to know what death is and how to come to peace with the fact it happens to us all at some point, as well as to everyone we love. He talks about how to sit with the dying, as well as how to grieve, and I found so much comfort in how my grandmother’s death happened, as well as the choices we made as a family afterward. 

I love the idea that death is the beginning of a new type of relationship. There’s something extremely comforting in that, and it’s been a rock in my grieving. I can feel and experience the sadness, but I can also have a relationship with my grandma in a new and different way. I can’t call her on the phone or hear her laugh again, but I can see her in many new, different ways and that will never go away until I do. 

True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom In Your Own Awakened Heart by Tara Brach

I’ve read Tara Brach before — her Radical Acceptance is a great primer for Buddhist teachings for those who have no knowledge of them. But I picked this one up because it seemed like a good one to pair with the Dass book and I wasn’t wrong. I popped this on audio and listened during my drives.

Brach’s book is about the ways we find refuge when life gets hard. We can find true refuge, which requires getting real with your experiences, your emotions, your actions, and your thoughts. We can also find false refuges, which are tools we use to feel better but don’t actually help us feel better (think: alcohol, eating, etc). Through meditations, examples, and practices, Brach digs into how we can cultivate the true refuge within us.

The idea of letting what is be is simple, conceptually, but in practice, it’s hard as hell. This was a reminder that that’s important to do, though, as it’s a practice in understanding suffering and non-attachment. Being able to get radically present with anything, especially grief, is a hard-earned gift but it’s been a buoy to me.

Other Books On My Pile

I haven’t gotten to everything I want to read, and chances are good that I’ll seek out more books as the rawness begins to smooth a bit more. Here’s what’s on my pile — if you’ve got other recommendations akin to these, I’d love to hear them. I’d prefer not to read about the dying process or memoirs about loss but rather, the deeper philosophical/spiritual side of things.

*When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Hard Times by Pema Chödrön

*Yoga for Grief: Simple Practices for Transforming Your Grieving Mind and Body by Antonio Sausys

*It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand by Megan Devine

Novels-in-Stories

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In the latest issue of Publishers Weekly’s Global Rights newsletter, I was thrilled to see that Traci Chee will have a new novel out next year, and that it’s historical fiction about Japenese-American teens in internment camps during World War II. According to PW and the publisher, it is a “novel-in-stories” told from the perspective of fourteen Nisei, or second-generation Japanese-American citizens. Not only is this topic in desperate need of further exploration, particularly in such times as these, I’m also fascinated by the whole idea of a novel-in-stories, which basically means the book is made up short stories that connect to each other in some way, working separately but telling a bigger story when taken as a whole. I read another book like this earlier in the year: Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton, which I loved in equal parts for its fascinating sci fi storylines as well as the novel made up of short stories conceit. It was so fun to pick out how each story connected to the others, sort of like searching for easter eggs in a book.

This literary technique is also often called “linked short stories,” and there are a bunch in adult fiction that get lots of critical love and have become modern classics – think There There by Tommy Orange, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. In my search for books for teens that do this, I was pleasantly surprised to find a pretty good number across a pretty wide range of topics and genres. Some of them would be considered “old” by teens reading today (originally published in the 90s), but most are still in print and have been reprinted with fresher covers. The more recent ones, such as those by Sedgwick, include books I had heard of (award winners!) but hadn’t realized they were novels-in-stories. Are you a fan of this technique? I think it’s my new favorite.

 

One Death, Nine Stories edited by Marc Aronson and Charles R. Smith, Jr.

Nicholas, Kevin. Age 19. Died at York Hospital, July 19, 2012. Kev’s the first kid their age to die. And now, even though he’s dead, he’s not really gone. Even now his choices are touching the people he left behind. Rita Williams-Garcia follows one aimless teen as he finds a new life in his new job-at the mortuary. Ellen Hopkins reveals what two altar boys (and one altar girl) might get up to at the cemetery at night. Will Weaver turns a lens on Kevin’s sister as she collects his surprising effects-and makes good use of them. Here, in nine stories, we meet people who didn’t know Kevin, friends from his childhood, his ex-girlfriend, his best friend, all dealing with the fallout of his death. Being a teenager is a time for all kinds of firsts-first jobs, first loves, first good-byes, firsts that break your heart and awaken your soul. It’s an initiation of sorts, and it can be brutal. But on the other side of it is the rest of your life.

With stories by Chris Barton, Nora Raleigh Baskin, Marina Budhos, Ellen Hopkins, A.S. King, Torrey Maldonado, Charles R. Smith Jr., Will Weaver, and Rita Williams-Garcia.

 

Pick-Up Game: A Full Day of Full Court edited by Marc Aronson and Charles R. Smith, Jr.

It’s one steamy July day at the West 4th Street Court in NYC, otherwise known as The Cage. Hotshot ESPN is wooing the scouts, Boo is struggling to guard the weird new guy named Waco, a Spike Lee wannabe has video rolling, and virgin Irene is sizing up six-foot-eightand-a-half-inch Chester. Nine of YA literature’s top writers, including Walter Dean Myers, Rita Williams-Garcia, Adam Rapp, Joseph Bruchac, and Sharon Flake reveal how it all goes down in a searing collection of short stories, in which each one picks up where the previous one ends. Characters weave in and out of narratives, perspectives change, and emotions play out for a fluid and fast-paced ode to the game. Crackling with humor, grit, and streetball philosophy, and featuring poems and photographs by Charles R. Smith Jr., this anthology is a slam dunk.

 

What Hearts by Bruce Brooks

This searing collection of four interrelated stories offers a deft portrait of a young boy whose sharp intellect and uncanny ability for forgiveness help him survive when his mother’s emotional instability continually lets him down.

 

 

 

We Are Not Free by Traci Chee (forthcoming June 2020)

From New York Times best-selling and acclaimed author Traci Chee comes We Are Not Free, the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei,  second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.

Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco. Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted. Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps. In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.

 

Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton

Set in our world, spanning the near to distant futures, Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful is a novel made up of six interconnected stories that ask how far we will go to remake ourselves into the perfect human specimens, and how hard that will push the definition of “human.”

This extraordinary work explores the amazing possibilities of genetic manipulation and life extension, as well as the ethical quandaries that will arise with these advances. The results range from the heavenly to the monstrous. Deeply thoughtful, poignant, horrifying, and action-packed, Arwen Elys Dayton’s Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful is groundbreaking in both form and substance.

Kimberly’s review

 

Life is Funny by E. R. Frank

From the outside, they’re simply a group of urban teenagers. But from the inside, they’re some of the most complex people you’ll ever meet. There’s Eric, fiercely protective of his brother Mickey-but he has a secret that holds together his past and future. Sonia, struggling to live the life of a good Muslim girl in a foreign America. Gingerbread and Keisha, who fall in love despite themselves. Life Is Funny strips away the defenses of one group of teenagers living today, right now-and shows their unbearably real lives.

 

Whitechurch by Chris Lynch

In the sleepy town of Whitechurch, three friends reach a crossroads that will change their lives–and their relationships–forever. There’s Pauly, the troublemaker everyone is scared of–everyone including himself. Then there’s Lilly, Whitechurch’s sweetheart. Pauly’s her boyfriend, but Pauly’s best friend Oakley is the one she talks to . . . and what she really needs is someone who truly understands her. And finally there’s Oakley, the reliable one, the one who’s always there to pick up the pieces. Because he knows that if he ever stopped putting things back together, he might lose the two people he loves best. When one friend starts to go off-balance, how long can the ones who love him stay with him?

Set against the backdrop of the small town America nobody likes to talk about, Chris Lynch’s Whitechurch is a tautly written collection of stories about what happens when an intense triangular friendship begins to break apart.

 

145th Street by Walter Dean Myers

A salty, wrenchingly honest collection of stories set on one block of 145th Street. We get to know the oldest resident; the cop on the beat; fine Peaches and her girl, Squeezie; Monkeyman; and Benny, a fighter on the way to a knockout. We meet Angela, who starts having prophetic dreams after her father is killed; Kitty, whose love for Mack pulls him back from the brink; and Big Joe, who wants a bang-up funeral while he’s still around to enjoy it. Some of these stories are private, and some are the ones behind the headlines. In each one, characters jump off the page and pull readers right into the mix on 1-4-5.

 

A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck

Each summer Joey and his sister, Mary Alice—two city slickers from Chicago—visit Grandma Dowdel’s seemingly sleepy Illinois town. Soon enough, they find that it’s far from sleepy…and Grandma is far from your typical grandmother. From seeing their first corpse (and he isn’t resting easy) to helping Grandma trespass, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry—all in one day—Joey and Mary Alice have nine summers they’ll never forget!

 

Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb

“If she dies, I’ll die,” are the words 15-year-old Mia Perlman writes in her journal the night her mother is diagnosed with cancer. Twelve days later, Mia’s mother is dead, and Mia, her older sister, and their father must find a way to live on in the face of sudden, unfathomable loss.

For Mia, this means getting through a funeral led by a rabbi who belongs in Las Vegas; dealing with a social worker who appears to have been educated at the local beauty academy; sharing “healthy heart” meals with her father, who seems to be seeing her for the first time; trying to relate to her sister, whose idea of fun is solving quadtratic equations; and developing a crush on Cancer Guy, who is actually kind of cute. But mostly it means carrying the image of her mother with her everywhere, because some kinds of love never die. Still, even in grief there is the chance for new beginnings.

 

Blue Skin of the Sea by Graham Salisbury

Eleven interlinked stories tell the tale of a boy coming of age in Kailua-Kona, a Hawaiian fishing village. Sonny Mendoza is a little different from the rest of the men in his family. Salisbury explores characters like Aunty Pearl, a full-blooded Hawaiian as regal as the queens of old; cool Jack, from L.A., who starts a gang and dares Sonny to be brave enough, cruel enough, to join; mysterious Melanie, who steals his heart; and Deeps, the shark hunter.

But the most memorable character is the sea itself: inviting, unpredictable, deadly. Mendoza men are brave men, but Sonny’s courage is of a different kind. Why can’t he love and trust the water as the men of his family are meant to do?

 

The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick

A bold, genre-bending epic that chronicles madness, obsession, and creation, from the Paleolithic era through the Witch Hunts and into the space-bound future.

Four linked stories boldly chronicle madness, obsession, and creation through the ages. Beginning with the cave-drawings of a young girl on the brink of creating the earliest form of writing, Sedgwick traverses history, plunging into the seventeenth century witch hunts and a 1920s insane asylum where a mad poet’s obsession with spirals seems to be about to unhinge the world of the doctor trying to save him. Sedgwick moves beyond the boundaries of historical fiction and into the future in the book’s final section, set upon a spaceship voyaging to settle another world for the first time. Merging Sedgwick’s gift for suspense with science- and historical-fiction, Ghosts of Heaven is a tale is worthy of intense obsession.

 

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar, even though you’ve never been there before, or felt that you know someone well, even though you are meeting them for the first time? It happens.

In a novel comprising seven parts, each influenced by a moon – the flower moon, the harvest moon, the hunter’s moon, the blood moon – this is the story of Eric and Merle whose souls have been searching for each other since their untimely parting.

 

What’s in a Name by Ellen Wittlinger

As if the students of Scrub Harbor High don’t have enough to worry about: Christine is quickly losing her friend Georgie to Ricardo; Nelson can’t connect with Shaquanda; Adam’s role as the new kid is tougher than he thought; and O’Neill’s controversial poem has electrified the school while making life unbearable for his football-star brother, Quincy. But now a group of Scrub Harbor citizens are trying to change the town’s name to the “classier” Folly Bay, and their crusade has filtered down to their kids. Suddenly, the school is divided into the rich-kid “Follys” and the poorer “Scrubs,” with everyone else caught in the middle. How can you answer the question “Who am I?” when your town can’t even make tip its mind? Will anyone emerge from the battle intact?

In ten interlocking stories, Ellen Wittlinger addresses the rarely discussed issues of class and identity that inform so much of teenage life. “What’s in a Name” is a bold report from the cutting edge ofteenage concerns.

 

See You In August!

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It’s high summer where Kimberly is and, well, attempting to be summer in the midwest where I am. We’re taking July to enjoy this weather, to enjoy a little rest and relaxation, and to read our eyes out in preparation for blogging our hearts out in August. I’ll be swinging by on Fridays to link to work elsewhere, but otherwise, we’ll see you next month and hope you enjoy some solid reading time this month.

 

 

 

Bookish 2019

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Around the same time I take stock of my past year of reading, I also look forward to the upcoming year. 2019 will see a lot of exciting books and book-related events that excite and intrigue me. Here are a few of them. What are you most looking forward to in your bookish life in 2019?

The His Dark Materials tv series

I’ve been looking forward to this BBC adaptation of all three books in Philip Pullman’s trilogy (my favorite books of all time) since it was announced in 2015. Production moved predictably slowly, with directorial and casting announcements stretching over years, but the end of 2018 brought the news that filming had wrapped on the first series of eight episodes, which includes the entirety of the first book in the trilogy, The Golden Compass (Northern Lights in the UK). Though I can’t find an official air date, I’m assuming (hoping!) that it will air sometime this year. HBO has secured the rights for American audiences.

I have high hopes for the quality of the series, especially as it compares to the very lackluster feature film from 2007. The tv series is produced by Bad Wolf and New Line Cinema, both studios with a good track record, and directed by Tom Hooper, who also directed such films as The King’s Speech and Les Miserables. It’s written by Jack Thorne, a co-writer of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage play (hopefully he chose to include the very important ending of the first book in this first series, instead of surgically removing it for minimal impact as the 2007 film did).

The casting choices are curious to me; I think the ones from 2007 were actually very good, and the choices for this new adaptation deviate pretty strongly. I can’t say I wholly approve, but I’m going to withhold judgment. Lyra is portrayed by Dafne Keen, who did a very good job as the child with Wolverine-like superpowers in Logan. James McAvoy and Ruth Wilson play Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter, and Lin-Manuel Miranda attempts to fill Sam Elliott’s very big shoes by taking on the role of Texan Lee Scoresby.

Fans have been waiting a long time for a high-quality screen adaptation of these books, and I’m hoping the BBC will do it right. Time will tell.

 

A new Ruth Ware mystery

Ruth Ware burst onto the adult mystery scene in 2015 with In a Dark, Dark Wood and has released one book a year since (and it seems like they just keep getting better!). I love that she writes standalones in a world of neverending mystery series that feel impossible to break into. I also love her complicated, nuanced female protagonists and detailed, twisty plots. Her novel for 2019 is called The Turn of the Key, and it’s about a woman who applies for a nannying gig that pays an impossibly high salary – and later ends up in prison awaiting trial for the murder of a child. While I’m generally not a fan of mysteries featuring murdered children, plot synopses never do a Ruth Ware novel justice, and I anticipate this one will be just as good as her others.

 

A fourth Wayward Children novella by Seanan McGuire

While I think this series of novellas has been uneven (I didn’t care for the third book at all), I can usually count on McGuire to write an intriguing, weird, and unsettling entry in her Wayward Children series each year. In an Absent Dream tells the story of Katherine Lundy, the 80-something woman who looks like an eight year old girl. It follows her time in the goblin market after she discovers her own door, and how she found her way back to Miss Eleanor’s Home for Wayward Children. I’m counting on the fact that this book will be just as strange as the others.

 

A sequel to Mirage by Somaiya Daud

Mirage was one of my favorite reads of 2018, and I’m so happy to see that there will be a sequel, though it doesn’t yet have a more specific release date than 2019. It’s called Court of Lions and will chronicle the further adventures of Amani, the girl forced to serve as the body double for the hated princess Maram, half-Vathek and cruel daughter of the conqueror of Amani’s home moon. While Mirage didn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, it’s clear there is a lot more to come for Amani and Maram, and I can’t wait to read all about it.

By the way, I’m so pleased that we selected Mirage as one of our Cybils finalists in the Young Adult Speculative Fiction category this year. You can read my brief review from my year-end post here.