Bibliography
Cushman, Karen.
Catherine,Called Birdy. New York:
Clarion/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994.
Plot Summary
Fourteen-year-old
Catherine lives in Lincoln, a shire of England. In an effort to refine her
manners and make her more educated, her brother, Edward, has her to keep a
journal for a year. Since her father is
a minor knight, she is part of the nobility and must abide by the restrictions of
her somewhat lofty class, much to her chagrin.
She undergoes extensive training on being a docile lady: spinning,
embroidering, brewing medicines, all of this with intention of making her a teen
wife to increase her family’s financial holdings. What she longs to do is gather apples,
partake in the village festivities, and rollick with her friend Perkin and his
goats.
When her greedy father puts
together an assembly line of repulsive suitors, Catherine hatches plot after
hilarious plot to run them off. After
pulling every prank imaginable, from blacking out her teeth to setting a would-be
husband on fire, she meets the one suitor she cannot dispel, Murgaw/Shaggy
Beard. The negotiation of her marriage to
a hairy man three times her age, the love affair blossoming between her
favorite uncle and best friend, and her mother’s difficult pregnancy all
threaten to smother Catherine’s free spirit.
A twist of fate delivers Birdy from Shaggy Beard, and she is betrothed
to his son instead. Little Birdy learns
that it is not always necessary to beat your wings against the cage, and that
circumstances do not have to change who you are inside.
Critical Analysis
England in the 1200s is
a far cry from modern times, so this novel would be most appropriate for intermediate
level or above. Students will fall in love with the spunky Ms. Birdy. She is commissioned by her big brother to
journal, and like her, teens and tweens will undoubtedly relate to being cajoled
into doing a writing assignment in their leisure time. The main character tells cheeky jokes by the
boatload – the reader feels as if s/he is on a tour of the shire, peeking into the
secret affairs of neighbors who sneak off to the haystacks together or get
caught in compromising situations. Birdy
is quite the prankster; all of her half-baked schemes to repel bachelors by making
herself unattractive or undertaking jobs that she is horrible at will keep
readers in stitches. Birdy learns that
people are not always as they appear – the father and brother who once repulsed
her with their loud, chauvinist ways reveal themselves to be tender and heroic
at times.
Review Excerpts
1995 Newberry Honor
1995 Golden Kite Award
1996 American
Booksellers Book of the Year Nominee
1996 Dorothy Canfield
Fisher Children’s Book Award Nominee
1997 Young Reader’s
Choice Award Nominee
School Library Journal, 1994: This unusual book provides an insider's look at the life of
Birdy, 14, the daughter of a minor English nobleman. The year is 1290 and the
vehicle for storytelling is the girl's witty, irreverent diary. She looks with
a clear and critical eye upon the world around her, telling of the people she
knows and of the daily events in her small manor house. Much of Birdy's energy
is consumed by avoiding the various suitors her father chooses for her to
marry. She sends them all packing with assorted ruses until she is almost wed
to an older, unattractive man she refers to as Shaggy Beard. In the process of
telling the routines of her young life, Birdy lays before readers a feast of
details about medieval England. The book is rich with information about the
food, dress, religious beliefs, manners, health, medical practices, and
sanitary habits (or lack thereof) of the people of her day. From the number of
fleas she kills in an evening to her herbal medicines laced with urine, Birdy
reveals fascinating facts about her time period. A feminist far ahead of her
time, she is both believable and lovable.
Connections
The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman
Castle Diary:
The Journal of Tobias Burgess by Richard Platt
Bibliography
Yelchin,
Eugene. Breaking Stalin’s Nose. New
York: Henry Holt & Company. 2011.
Plot Summary
A young,
ten-year-old Sasha Zaichik shares a communal apartment with over 40 people and
his father in Communist Russia. He
admires his father, a decorated state security officer serving at the pleasure
of infamous USSR dictator, Joseph Stalin.
Stalin, much like Adolf Hitler, has completely brainwashed the people of
the Soviet Union. They believe that he is
their protector, provider, and bright future, and that under his tutelage,
everyone is equal as a part of the Communist “we.” Sasha is enthralled with everything
Communist, and his fondest desire is to become a Young Soviet Pioneer to serve
his country like his father, who he deeply admires.
One night, a group of secret police ransack
Sasha’s apartment and arrest his father, declaring him an “enemy of the
people”. Knowing his father’s
dedication, he insists that the arrest was mistaken – they were actually
reported by a neighbor who coveted their large unit – and is certain that great
Stalin will free his dad and punish the fools who made the error. Turned away by family for fear of punishment,
Sasha lives in a basement and returns to school, still excited about the Young
Pioneer induction ceremony.
When charged
with the honor of carrying the Soviet banner, he accidentally knocks over a
bust of Stalin with one of the poles, chipping the nose off the statue. A savage witch hunt ensues amongst the
student body. Finklestein, an ostracized
Jewish child who wants to be united with his jailed parents, takes the blame
for damage. Sasha is given a
proposition: he can be a spy for the
Communist police reporting on his classmates’ anti-Party activity, or be
banished to an orphanage. After seeing
how harshly the Soviets deal with Finklestein and Vovka’s families, as well as
his own, he refuses the offer, renounces his dedication to the Party, and
visits his father in jail.
Critical Analysis
Sasha is
only ten years old, and it shows in his innocent, unshakable admiration for his
father, and dedication to his countrymen. For example, he initially thinks that
the neighbors who reported his father were being kind by cleaning up the things
the police ransacked, when in actuality, they were packing the Zaichicks up to
make room for themselves! Sasha also
feels fortunate when he is given a carrot, failing to realize that Stalin’s
food rationing policy is leaving people hungry, or that sharing an apartment
makes citizens easier to control.
The
capitalist children whom he pities are really well-fed, while it is he who is living in pitiful conditions.
He begins as loyal and eager to please, but later develops discernment and a
heightened sense of justice as the Communist system fails him more and
more. When he learns that some of the
most dedicated followers have been executed by the secret police and watches as
even his peers are jailed as “enemies of the people” for the smallest
infractions, he begins questioning his beliefs about the teachers and leaders
he once trusted. By the story’s end, he has abandoned his most cherished wish
and discovered how Communism caused his mother’s demise.
Review Excerpts
2012
Newberry Honor
2012 ALA Notable Books for Children Award
Kirkus Review,
7/20/2011: Yelchin’s
debut novel does a superb job of depicting the tyranny of the group, whether
residents of a communal apartment, kids on the playground, students in the
classroom or government officials. It’s the readiness of the group to create
outsiders—bad ones, “unreliables,” “wreckers”—by instilling fear in everyone
that chills. Not many books for such a young audience address the Stalinist
era, when, between 1923 and 1953, leaving a legacy of fear for future
generations. Joseph Stalin’s State Security was responsible for exiling,
executing or imprisoning 20 million people.
Sasha is 10 years old and is
devoted to Stalin, even writing adoring letters to Comrade Stalin expressing
his eagerness at becoming a Young Pioneer. But his mother has died
mysteriously, his father has been imprisoned and Sasha finds he has important
moral choices to make. Yelchin’s graphite illustrations are an effective complement
to his prose, which unfurls in Sasha’s steady, first-person voice, and together
they tell an important tale. A story
just as relevant in our world, “where innocent people face persecution and
death for making a choice about what they believe to be right,” as that of
Yelchin’s childhood.
Connections
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
Young Reader’s Choice Award
Number the Stars by Lois
Lowry
1990 Newberry Medal Honor
Esperanza Rising by Pam
Munoz Ryan
2002 Pura Belpre Award
2001 Jane Addams Children’s Book Award
Bibliography
Garcia, Rita. One Crazy Summer. New York:
Amistad, 2012.
Plot Summary
In a story set during
a pivotal time in history -the Civil Rights Movement- eleven-year-old Delphine has
assumed the responsibility of caretaker for her two younger sisters, Vonetta
and Fern. Their mother, Cecile, was never really interested in motherhood, and
abandoned the family shortly after giving birth to her third daughter. Cecile fled to California, in an effort to
escape the responsibilities she never really wanted, and continue to build her
own selfish identity, uninterrupted.
The
girls’ lives are turned topsy-turvy when their father announces that they will
take a trip to California to meet their mother.
While the girls look forward to a fantasy trip to Disneyland to meet
Tinker Bell, they get a rude awakening when they meet their hostile mother and
discover firsthand the secretive little nuances of her Black Panther lifestyle. The girls end up learning many things about
their mother, the Black Panther lifestyle, and the past during one crazy
summer!
Critical Analysis
Delphine is a saucy, independent tween who has been robbed
of her childhood innocence and unfairly charged with the task of caring for her
sisters. To add insult to injury, once she arrives in California, she is
greeted by a mother who tells her that she and her sisters didn’t have to come. The prevailing theme here seems to be
discovery, as the girls learn more about The Black Panther Party, their family’s
past, and their strong bond of sisterhood.
Review Excerpts
2011 Coretta Scott King
Award Winner
2011 Newbery Honor Book
2011 Scott O’Dell Prize
for Historical Fiction
2010 National Book Award
Finalist
Junior Library Guild
Selection
Texas Library
Association Best Book for 2010
School Library Journal:
It is
1968, and three black sisters from Brooklyn have been put on a California-bound
plane by their father to spend a month with their mother, a poet who ran off
years before and is living in Oakland. It's the summer after Black Panther
founder Huey Newton was jailed and member Bobby Hutton was gunned down trying
to surrender to the Oakland police, and there are men in berets shouting
"Black Power" on the news. Delphine, 11, remembers her mother, but
after years of separation she's more apt to believe what her grandmother has
said about her, that Cecile is a selfish, crazy woman who sleeps on the street.
At least Cecile lives in a real house, but she reacts to her daughters' arrival
without warmth or even curiosity. Instead, she sends the girls to eat breakfast
at a center run by the Black Panther Party and tells them to stay out as long
as they can so that she can work on her poetry. Over the course of the next
four weeks, Delphine and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, spend a lot of
time learning about revolution and staying out of their mother's way.
Emotionally challenging and beautifully written, this book immerses readers in
a time and place and raises difficult questions of cultural and ethnic identity
and personal responsibility. With memorable characters (all three girls have
engaging, strong voices) and a powerful story, this is a book well worth
reading and rereading.—Teri Markson, Los Angeles Public Library
Booklist:
Eleven-year-old
Delphine has only a few fragmented memories of her mother, Cecile, a poet who
wrote verses on walls and cereal boxes, played smoky jazz records, and
abandoned the family in Brooklyn after giving birth to her third daughter. In
the summer of 1968, Delphine’s father decides that seeing Cecile is “something
whose time had come,” and Delphine boards a plane with her sisters to Cecile’s
home in Oakland. What they find there is far from their California dreams of
Disneyland and movie stars. “No one told y’all to come out here,” Cecile says.
“No one wants you out here making a mess, stopping my work.” Like the rest of
her life, Cecile’s work is a mystery conducted behind the doors of the kitchen
that she forbids her daughters to enter. For meals, Cecile sends the girls to a
Chinese restaurant or to the local, Black Panther–run community center, where
Cecile is known as Sister Inzilla and where the girls begin to attend youth
programs. Regimented, responsible, strong-willed Delphine narrates in an
unforgettable voice, but each of the sisters emerges as a distinct, memorable
character, whose hard-won, tenuous connections with their mother build to an
aching, triumphant conclusion. Set during a pivotal moment in African American
history, this vibrant novel shows the subtle ways that political movements
affect personal lives; but just as memorable is the finely drawn, universal
story of children reclaiming a reluctant parent’s love. -Gillian Engberg
Kirkus:
Each girl has a distinct
response to her motherless state, and Williams-Garcia provides details that
make each characterization crystal clear. The depiction of the time is well
done, and while the girls are caught up in the difficulties of adults, their
resilience is celebrated and energetically told with writing that snaps off the
page.
Connections
Elijah
of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
Newberry Honor Award
Coretta Scott King Award
The
Watsons Go To Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis
Newberry Honor Award
Coretta Scott King Award
