Author: Loree Burns

A PLACE FOR BUTTERFLIES
By Melissa Stewart
Illustrated by Higgins Bond
Peachtree, 2006

Category: Picture book, non-fiction

This is the first year in many that my kids and I did not capture a monarch caterpillar, feed it milkweed leaves, marvel at its chrysalis, cheer at its hatching as a butterfly, and release it—with all our best wishes—to begin its migration to Mexico. Milkweed plants were plentiful and I am sure there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of monarchs crawling and munching within a mile of our home. But this fall was busier than ever and somehow our monarch ritual got lost in the chaos. Bummer.

I didn’t realize how much I missed the tradition until my husband sent me this article about the arrival of the monarchs in their winter home. I was struck, as I am every year, with the journey the monarchs make from my backyard in the northeastern United States all the way to Mexico. Thousands of miles on wings as delicate as tissue paper, back to a place they have never even been. It seems impossible.

Today I pulled out Melissa Stewart’s A PLACE FOR BUTTERFLIES in homage. This beautiful picture book uses butterflies to introduce—in a simple but concrete way—some of the major environmental issues of our time. Sidebars on each double page spread relate the story of an endangered butterfly species and the steps we humans can take to ensure their survival. Higgins Bond’s illustrated butterflies are lovely, and her monarchs will tie me over until spring when the grandsons and granddaughters of the monarchs resting peacefully in Mexico (even as I type) arrive back in my yard. I will not forget them next year!

YELLOW STAR
By Jennifer Roy
Marshall Cavendish, 2006

Category: Middle-grade novel

This has been a week for reading heartbreaking novels.

YELLOW STAR is written in verse, a fact which, I am sad to admit, would normally have kept me from reading it. I am, quite simply, a chicken when it comes to poetry. (I must get over this.) Luckily I hang out with cool book people who are not chickens, and they insisted I read this book. I am glad they did. (Thank you Jane and Beverly!)

YELLOW STAR is a Holocaust story. The narrator, four year-old Syvia Perlmutter, is forced into the Lodz ghetto with her parents and her older sister when the German Nazis invade Poland in 1939. There is very little food, no school and a fence that keeps the Jews in the ghetto not only separated from the rest of the world but at the mercy of their Nazi captors. As children all over the ghetto are taken from their families and loaded onto trains bound for Heaven-knows-where, Syvia’s family manages to hide her and keep her with them in the ghetto.

The book is based on the experiences of author Jennifer Roy’s aunt, the real Syvia Perlmutter. She was one of a quarter million Jews forced into the Lodz ghetto in 1939, and one of only twelve ghetto children to leave it alive when Poland was liberated in 1945. Her story, told through the eyes of the fictional Syvia, is startling and harrowing and important.

As for the verse format, don’t let it scare you. This book reads like narrative fiction and is accessible to even a chicken like me.

EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS
By Deborah Wiles
Harcourt, 2005

Category: Middle-grade novel

This is one of my all-time favorite works of fiction. I have read EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS several times now and never, not once, have I done it without crying. I can actually feel my heart break as I read. But it is the sort of heartbreak that is mostly healed by the end of the story, leaving only the tiniest scar to remind me of this beautiful novel and the way it has touched me.

EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS is the story of Comfort Snowberger, “explorer, recipe tester and funeral reporter”. As a daughter of the Snowberger Funeral Home Empire, Comfort knows death. But when death hits closer than ever before, and at the same time as her best-friendship with Declaration Johnson hits a rocky patch, Comfort must come to terms with an entirely new level of grief.

This is an incredibly good book … do read it if you can!

UNBOWED
By Wangari Maathai
Knopf, 2006

Category: Adult memoir

“Trees are living symbols of peace and hope. A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded, and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance.”

These are the words of Wangari Maathai, who knows an awful lot about trees. She has, after all, nurtured the planting of thirty million in her native Kenya. UNBOWED is the story of those thirty million trees and how they changed many landscapes in Kenya—physical landscapes, economic landscapes, and political landscapes. It is the story of a passionate woman—perhaps one of the most courageous of our time—and her struggle to protect the environment, promote democracy and foster peace. It is a story of hope and of triumph.

Wangari Maathai was in Massachusetts last week to discuss her Green Belt Movement and I was able to meet her, briefly, while she signed my copy of UNBOWED. She is the sort of woman who makes one proud to be human. I am in awe of her conviction and her bravery, and I will treasure her book always.

THE HIGHEST TIDE
By Jim Lynch
Bloomsbury, 2005

Category: Young Adult/Adult Novel

Flotsam and ocean conservation provide backdrop for THE HIGHEST TIDE, so how could I resist it? The protagonist, thirteen year-old Myles O’Malley, is an avid beachcomber with a penchant for Rachel Carson and a crush on the girl next door. During one unforgettable summer, Myles must contend with alarming changes in his parents, his best friend (an elderly psychic) and the Puget Sound tidal flats he has grown up exploring. Myles’ coming-of-age story is vivid and compelling; Jim Lynch’s writing is flawless. I highly recommend this book … even if you aren’t into flotsam.

I have an interesting connection to THE HIGHEST TIDE. While researching TRACKING TRASH in 2005, I interviewed Alan Rammer*, a marine conservation specialist with the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. During the course of our conversations, Alan mentioned that he had consulted with another author, whose debut novel would feature some of the debris I was writing about. The author was Jim Lynch, of course, and the novel was THE HIGHEST TIDE. I read the book as soon as it hit the shelves in late 2005. When it was released in paperback earlier this year I bought it and I re-read it. This hard-core library girl with a towering To Read stack cannot offer any higher praise than that.

*Literary trivia: Alan Rammer appears in THE HIGHEST TIDE (in the form of character Professor Kramer) and in TRACKING TRASH (in a picture in Chapter 4). Useless trivia, perhaps, but pretty cool nonetheless.

FLOTSAM
By David Wiesner
Clarion Books, 2006

Category: Picture Book

Lately I have been reading trashy books. That is, I have been reading books about trash. In most cases, the books in question are related in some way to my upcoming TRACKING TRASH: FLOTSAM, JETSAM, AND THE SCIENCE OF OCEAN MOTION.

Take, for example, the picture book FLOTSAM, by two-time Caldecott winner David Wiesner. I first heard about this book a year ago when my editor at Houghton Mifflin observed that their new catalog featured two books with the word flotsam in the title: my own and Wiesner’s. I was intrigued, of course, and thrilled to have something—anything—in common with the amazing David Wiesner. (His TUESDAY and SECTOR 7 were great hits with my boys when they were young.)

FLOTSAM is the story—told entirely with illustrations—of a curious boy at the beach. The boy is examining a crab with his magnifying glass (if you are surprised he has brought a magnifying glass to the beach, wait until you see his microscope!) when a rogue wave crashes over him, dumping him, the crab, and a strange black box up shore. The black box turns out to be an underwater camera and what the boy finds when he develops the film inside it is marvelous and mysterious and classic David Wiesner.

This is one trashy book you don’t want to miss!

TALES OF THE CRYPTIDS,
Mysterious Creatures That May or May Not Exist
By Kelly Milner Halls, Rick Spears and Roxyanne Young
Darby Creek Publishing, 2006

I am always on the prowl for books that will excite my eight-year-old sons, particularly if they don’t have to do with underpants or wizards. With apologies to Dav Pilkey and J.K. Rowling, both of whom write fantastic books, I need a little variety. And so I was ecstatic to find TALES OF THE CRYPTIDS on the new non-fiction shelf in the library children’s room. So ecstatic, in fact, that I kept the book hidden in my office until I had a chance to sit down and read it myself. It is fabulous, fabulous, fabulous (that’s one for each of the book’s three co-creators).

This meaty middle-grade non-fiction title takes readers on an adventure in cryptozoology. “Crypto-What?” asks the opening chapter title. Cryptozoology, “the study of and searching for legendary animals—called cryptids—to find out if there’s any possibility that these mysterious animals people say they’ve seen really exist.” From Bigfoot to the Loch Ness Monster to prehistoric cryptids you may never have heard of, this book tells readers what is true, what is not, and what scientists just can’t be sure about.

In addition to being plain interesting, the book is designed well and is illustrated with a nice blend of photographs and drawings. The authors include a “Reality Index” to help readers tease hoaxes from reality as well as a thorough bibliography of books, articles and web sites for readers who want to continue their cryptid studies. I love that the authors had the courage to turn an objective eye to a fabulously interesting topic that happens to be fraught with doubt and disbelief. The result is a book that helps young readers to realize that all scientific investigation, cryptozoology included, requires a careful balance of skepticism and open-mindedness.

Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

A WEEK IN THE WOODS
By Andrew Clements
Scholastic, 2003

The boys and I just finished reading this book together and we are in agreement: three thumbs up. The opening of A WEEK IN THE WOODS was solid and enjoyable. That’s where readers meet Mark Robert Chelmsley, a rich (really, really, really rich) fifth-grader who just moved to a new town and landed in the science class of Mr. Maxwell, a passionate and principled fifth grade teacher. As I said, this beginning was solid and enjoyable. It was the second half of the book, however, that grabbed our collective imaginations and would NOT let go.

Mr. Maxwell and Mark were clearly at odds and we, my boys and I, guessed that there would be a showdown at some point. We even suspected it would happen at A Week in the Woods, the fifth grade hands-on camping experience that Mr. Maxwell has organized for fifteen years. But we didn’t realize how wrapped up in it all we would become, or how hard it would be to put A WEEK IN THE WOODS down and do the things we had to do … like go to bed and go to school and go to work. The fact that we put some of these things off (mostly bedtime!) is a sure sign of a good read. I can’t tell you much more, because it would spoil A WEEK IN THE WOODS for you. But I can tell you that this is our favorite Andrew Clements book to date, three hands down.

AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES
By John Green
Dutton, 2006

I’m not a very trendy book reader. Mostly I read whatever falls into my hands or catches my eye. And as anyone who reads this blog knows, I am fascinated by the ways in which books happen to fall into my hands and catch my eye, by the strange and wonderful connections these chance encounters represent. All this, of course, is my long-winded way of acknowledging that it is unusual for me to have read a book as trendy and “in” as AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES. And yet, I did.

First of all, I owe my slip into coolness to my friend Jane, who is much more saavy than I and who also happens to direct one of the coolest libraries around these parts. Jane scored me the library copy of AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES the moment it arrived.

Second of all, I enjoyed John Green’s first book, the Printz Award-winning novel Looking for Alaska. (Which, by the way, only ended up in my TO READ pile because of another saavy friend, Eric Luper.)

Thirdly, there has been a great deal of cyber-hoopla in kidlit blogland regarding Mr. Green and his new book. He seems to have visited all the cool blogs I follow.

Fourthly, when I got the book in my hands, I was drawn in by the clever and attractive cover and the premise: a teenaged boy who is plagued by girls named Katherine. (“ … not Katies or Kats or Kitties or Cathys or Rynns or Trinas or Kays or Kates or, God forbid, Catherines. K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. He had dated nineteen girls. All of them had been named Katherine. And all of them—every single solitary one—had dumped him.”)

And so I can add my quiet endorsement to the many, many endorsements already out there. AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES is a fantastic young adult novel. Read it and be cool!

THOSE WHO SAVE US
By Jenna Blum
Harcourt, 2004

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of meeting Jenna Blum at my local library. What a lovely woman! She stood in the front of a packed room and told us what drove her to write THOSE WHO SAVE US, her haunting and incredibly poignant first novel. (The driving forces: her German/Jewish background, trips she took to Germany with her mother, and her work for Steven Speilberg’s Shoah Foundation.) And with that briefest of speeches, Ms. Blum asked us–her audience–why we were there. “What you have to say is much more interesting to me than anything I have to say,” she told us … and then gave us the floor. There were questions about her characters, their actions, her experiences in Germany, her thoughts on Germans living in America today, her educational background, and her writing process. Ms. Blum answered all these (and more) with an enthusiasm and honesty that endeared her—as if her novel had not already—to everyone in the room. This is a woman who is not only very good at what she does, but seems to take great joy from doing it.

THOSE WHO SAVE US is the story of Anna, an Aryan German woman caught in a bad place at a very bad time … Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II. To protect her daughter, the illegitimate child of a Jewish doctor, Anna does what she must. It is also the story of Trudy, Anna’s daughter, who grows to adulthood believing herself the daughter of a Nazi officer. Mother and child must come to terms with their past, their present, and, most importantly, with each other. There are scenes in this book I will never forget, which is, I think, why books like THOSE WHO SAVE US are so important. Not a one of us should ever forget.

I highly recommend this book.