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Monthly Archives: January 2016

Jump Back, Paul by Sally Derby

08 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by truebooktalks in Children's Books, History, Non-Fiction

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Children's books, History, Paul Laurence Dunbar

jump back

This well-researched, excellently written biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar will be one that middle school and high school libraries will definitely want in their collection. Along with Dunbar’s life story, Derby also gives the reader a sampling Dunbar’s poetry.  She tells the reader how to read the dialect poems so that the words sound like actual speech.

The facts about Dunbar’s life are delivered in a chatty style that make the reader feel as if Derby were talking directly to him or her. She even uses the first person pronoun, “I” at times to make the reader think that she has first-hand knowledge of what she is telling him about Dunbar.  Sean Qaulls completes the book with his pen and ink sketches for the book.  I loved the use of pen and ink as the medium for the drawings since the book itself is about a man whose life was using pen and ink. Derby presents us with a chronology of events that affected Dunbar’s life.  She includes extra notes and information about each chapter, a bibliography for those who want to know more about him, and an index for the researcher.

I suppose that Derby could not cover everything about Dunbar’s life, and perhaps some of the facts, such as his alcoholism and drug addiction, might be difficult for younger readers to fully understand.  However, I think she paints his wife, Alice, as more of a villain than she actually is.  Her parents were upwardly-mobile blacks and were very upset that she had married a man with such dark skin. Dunbar’s mother was upset that he had chosen Alice over her and that Alice was very light in color.  I believe that both sides had a great deal to do with their separation, and I think it was especially sad that Alice did not receive any communication from his mother when he became very ill.  Alice had asked a family friend that she be notified if he got worse because she wasn’t on good terms with his mother; however, that friend suddenly died shortly before Dunbar passed away.  None of this changes my opinion about the quality of this book.   I still highly recommend it for upper elementary and high school readers.

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Forbidden by Eve Bunting

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by truebooktalks in Ghost stories, Historical Fiction, Young Adult

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Fiction, movie material, teen readers

forbiddenBunting has told us a chilling tale based on events that really happened off the coasts of northwestern Scotland. In the story, Josie Ferguson goes to live with her father’s brother and his wife in an isolated village that people from other towns have little to do with.  Her relatives are emotionally cold to her, but they have accepted the responsibility to care for her until she reaches eighteen – not out of any sort of love, but because they will get money for doing so.

A young man named Eli shows up at her uncle’s home and she is drawn to him because he has a way of dealing with the family’s dog – a dog that had bitten her when she tried to go outside one night. Eli takes her to his aunt’s home to get the bite treated before it can get infected.  His aunt, rather cryptically, tells her that she cannot get emotionally involved with Eli because he is a “reporter” and is “forbidden.”

She manages to isolate the dog one day when her aunt and uncle are out on their fishing boat and goes into town to see if she can find at least one sympathetic ear.  She finds that the townspeople are as strange as her aunt and uncle, and that they have  some sort of secret which ties them together.

The entire town engages in “wrecking,” the practice of stripping wrecked ships of all saleable items that can be saved from ships that have been wrecked on the rocks of the firth.  Technically nothing can be salvaged as long as an animal or a man from the wreck was still alive.   That did not stop the “wreckers;” they just made sure that no one was breathing.

Josie finds out that her uncle and aunt are tied into the wreckers, and they actually lead ship to their destruction, but with Eli’s help, she manages to escape their grasp before she must take part in “wrecking.”

This is a fantastic ghost story, one of the best I have read lately.  The setting reminds me of Wuthering Heights, but the plot is different.  I think teen readers will greatly enjoy this tale.

 

 

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