Book of the Week: Drum Roll, Please

by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

Published by HarperCollins, 2018
320 pages
ISBN: 978-0-06-279114-6

Ages 10-13

Melly feels her world rocked in more ways than one in this novel steeped in authentic middle-school turmoil. Immediately before leaving for Camp Rockaway with her best friend Olivia, Melly’s parents announce their impending divorce. Still trying to absorb this news, Melly is plunged into the camp routine. A drummer, she is assigned to a band with three other young musicians, one of who is Adeline. In need of a friend and listening ear, Melly confides in Adeline about her parents’ divorce and is surprised to realize that she’s developing a crush on her new friend. (Olivia, meanwhile, has been neglecting Melly in favor of spending time with a cute boy in her own band.) With Adeline’s help, Melly learns to communicate her feelings about the divorce through a song for her band’s final performance. With a romance perfectly suited to preteen readers, the narrative deftly touches on issues of consent and leaves Melly excited about future self-discovery. The well-drawn music camp setting provides a unique backdrop for this touching portrayal of one girl’s growth over two momentous weeks. (MCT) ©2018 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: The Night Diary

by Veera Hiranandani

Dial, 2018

272 pages

ISBN: 978-0-7352-2851-1

 

Ages 10-13

When Nisha and her twin brother Amil turn twelve, Nisha receives a notebook from her family’s beloved cook, Kazi.  She uses it as a diary, writing entries in the form of letters to her mother, who died when the twins were infants. Observant, sensitive Nisha is an excellent writer, but anxiety makes it difficult for her to speak. India has recently been freed from British rule, and when tensions among Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs erupt in her hometown of Mirpur Khas, Nisha fears for her family’s safety. Nisha and Amil’s mother was Muslim, but their father and grandmother are Hindu, putting them at great risk when their part of India becomes Muslim Pakistan. Nisha observes that her “childhood would always have a line drawn through it, the before and the after.” Forced to leave their comfortable life—and Muslim Kazi—behind, the family flees on foot, setting off across the desert for the “new India” with only a few jugs of water in hand. They encounter many dangers on their harrowing journey, only to arrive at a place that is not home, and where they have nothing but one another. Nisha’s diary entries effectively communicate not only the profound pain of loss and separation faced by this family during a tumultuous period of Indian history, but also the comfort of learning how to express love and gratitude for one another. (MCT)  ©2018 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: The Patchwork Bike

by Maxine Beneba Clarke
Illustrated by Van Thanh Rudd 

Published by U.S. edition: Candlewick Press, 2018
36 pages

ISBN: 978-1-5362-0031-7

Ages 5-8

A girl enthusiastically describes her antics with her brothers, with riding the bike they built themselves her favorite of all they do. The bike is comprised of found objects: “handlebar branches that shicketty shake … tin can handles and wood-cut wheels…and a bell that used to be Mum’s milk pot.” That it is handmade out of economic necessity, sometimes requiring repairs relying on more ingenuity, is something that readers and listeners can infer, but it has no relation to the siblings’ pleasure and delight, which is absolute. Set in a village on the African continent, “at the edge of the no-go desert,” under the “stretching-out sky,” the story featuring a Muslim family celebrates creativity, imagination, and universal joy in play. The fresh, playful use of language is perfectly suited to its theme. The same is true of the acrylic-on-recycled cardboard art, in which the use of shadow and light suggests the hot sun on every page. Informative notes from both author and illustrator speak more to the story’s themes, and intentional connections the artist made between the African setting and characters and African Americans in the United States, including a “BLM” license plate. ©2018 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: Hearts Unbroken

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Published by Candlewick Press, 2018
289 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8114-2

Age 13 and older

Lou starts senior year feeling protective of her little brother Hughie, an incoming freshman, but Hughie fits right in among theater kids. Lou joins the school paper, and soon is crushing on a fellow journalist, Lebanese American Joey. Burned by her last boyfriend’s unexpected racism, she is hesitant to tell Joey that she is Muscogee Creek, even after it’s clear he likes her, too. Meanwhile, inclusive casting of The Wizard of Oz at their predominantly white suburban Kansas high school has a parent group up in arms: the actor playing Dorothy is Black, the Scarecrow is a Latinx student, and Hughie is the Tin Man. The administration, and staff on the paper, face pressure not to support the play, while anonymous racial slurs are sent to the three actors. Racism and school politics, social relationships and romance converge in this lively, illuminating novel. Lou is appealing and fallible, self-absorbed and genuinely caring; her relationships, with Joey and with extended family members and friends, are wonderfully realized. Coming to terms with her anger at what is happening, and her own missteps (including mis-assumptions about Joey because of his Arab heritage, and blindness to her economic privilege), Lou discovers Hughie is torn about his role after reading Oz author L. Frank Baum’s hateful writings about Native peoples in a story that explores difficult truths and hard decisions even as it entertains. ©2018 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: A Big Mooncake for Little Star

A Big Mooncake for Little Star

by Grace Lin

Published by Little, Brown, 2018
32 pages
ISBN: 978-0-316-40448-8

Ages 3-6

Little Star’s Mama takes the Big Mooncake out of the oven and lays it onto the night sky to cool. “Can you remember not to touch this Big Mooncake until I tell you to?” Little Star says yes, and she does remember until the middle of that night. Then all she can think about is that Big Mooncake. “Pat Pat Pat.” She tiptoes out and takes a tiny nibble. Trailing crumbs, she flies back to bed. But the next night she does it again. And again the night after that. Slowly the Big Mooncake gets smaller, it’s shape gradually changing from round to crescent to nothing at all. Grace Lin’s enchanting original story inspired by the Chinese Mid-Autumn (Moon) Festival features luminous gouache illustrations in beautiful black and gold showing Little Star, Mama, and the deep night sky in which the Big Mooncake wanes, crumbs sparkling as stars. ©2018 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: Blood Water Paint

by Joy McCullough

Published by Dutton, 2018
289 pages
ISBN: 9780735232112

Age 14 and older

In early 17th-century Rome, Artemisia Gentileschi, 17, has surpassed her father’s skill as a painter but gets no credit for her work because she is a woman. Artemisia’s late mother told her about the Biblical figures of Susanna and Judith, wanting Artemisia to understand the struggles of the two women—the things they suffered simply for being women—as well as their courage and bravery, none of which Artemisia sees reflected in the work of men who’ve painted them. When her father hires Agostino Tassi to tutor her in perspective, Artemisia is happy to learn from a better teacher, and their mutual attraction leads her to believe he may propose. Then he rapes her. Artemisia makes the decision to publicly charge him. The burden of proof placed on her by the court is emotionally and physically brutal, and it is visions of Susanna and Judith that she draws upon for strength. This extraordinary, enraging, astonishing story based on true events is told primarily in verse, with stories about Judith and Susanna interspersed in prose. McCullough’s research included over 300 pages of transcripts from the 1611 trial. Artemisia won her case (although the sentence for Tassi was laughable), but her true triumph, more fully documented in an author’s note, is in what came next: A career as a painter—more than 50 of her works survive. “I will show you / what a woman can do.” ©2018 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: Small Spaces

by Katherine Arden

Published by Putnam, 2018
216 pages
ISBN: 978-0-525-51502-9

Ages 9-12

Ollie, 11, stays up late one night reading a book called Small Spaces. Published in 1895, it tells of a woman whose husband made a deal with the devil to bring his brother back to life. The next day, Ollie’s class takes a field trip to a local sustainable farm. The farm’s history has elements that match the story—long-ago disappearances and rumors of ghosts—while the owner turns out to be the woman Ollie got the book from under strange circumstances, although the woman shows no signs of recognizing Ollie. On the way back to the school at the end of the day, the bus breaks down on a darkening road. Heavy mist and no cell service send Ollie’s teacher in search of help, while the driver, with an eerie smile and flicking red tongue, tells the kids, “At nightfall, they’ll come for the rest of you.” With two of her classmates, Ollie bolts from the bus in fear. Ollie, who's been a loner since her mother’s death months before, has been dismissive of Coco, who cries a lot, and Brian, a jock, but the three work together to evade capture from whatever is out there, coming up with a plan to save their classmates. This genuinely scary novel features terrific character development, which is why it also succeeds as a satisfying, surprisingly warm story about family, loss, and friendship. ©2018 Cooperative Children’s Book Center