Every Soul a Star by Wendy Maas

I was drawn into the soft charm of this book before even the first chapter. Several appealing quotes set the stage with the theme before introducing the three main characters.

Chapter 1 starts with Ally. She lives in a remote camping area with her parents and brother. Her parents have prepared years in advance for a lunar eclipse by buying and running a campground will bring a flood of campers to their location for a prime viewing of the eclipse.. Unlless it rains.

Chapter 2 introduces Bree. She’s an outstandingly beautiful girl who cultivates her looks and popularity. Shallow as that sounds, she’s not a “mean” girl.

Chapter 3 is written from Jack’s point of view: he’s a slightly overweight loner who’s on a field trip in order to avoid summer school.

If you’re not intrigued yet with the characters, it’s only because of my writing, not the author’s.

Ally, Bree, and Jack’s lives converge at the campground, Moon Shadow. Here, Ally and her parents have prepared for the campers who will arrive en masse on the day of the eclipse. Ally’s parents have not prepared Ally for the fact that her family will leave the campground in the care of Bree’s family. Ally and Bree are equally dismayed over the leaving/arriving. Ally is content in her homeschooled, camp-living life and dreads leaving as much as Bree hates the idea of giving up her popular, texting, model-career-pursuing lifestyle. They band together to first convince their parents to stay/go and have to accept that they will have to accept the inevitable change. They end up giving each other advice on how-to-thrive in their respective new lives. In the end, Bree feels her inner-geek surfacing, Ally starts paying attention to the state of her clothes, and Jack starts losing some weight. It’s not because of peer-pressure but peer help (and maybe the subtle realization that every soul is a star?)

How do I like thee, book? Let me count the ways:
1. Safe content
2. Appealing characters
3. Well-developed theme
4. Terrific introduction to astronomy for the uninitiated and under-appreciative.

1)Content: Jack has had several stepdads, but why there have been several is a mystery. They seem to have made positive contributions to his life. One of my favorite moral lessons was when an adult acted like a complete jerk and the children responded in a way the Church teaches: see the best in everyone. The tweens could have trashed him…but they chose instead to offer a reason for his behavior that put him in the best light… and moved on.

2) Characters: I lliked the characters and the supporting characters. It was believable and well-told. No Jekyll-and-Hyde turn-arounds but realistic growth for each character.

3) Theme: Every soul is a star. Every star shines. And every piece of the universe is a fascinating, interconnected mystery… appreciated by souls made in the image of God (OK: I added the part about God’s image.)

4) Astronomy: Prior to this book, astronomy was a class that we covered. My 2 tweens and I are more interested in the topic for the sheer joy of learning about it than we were before we read this.

I found it interesting that an Islamic character and a shrine to ancient Chinese astronomers make an appearance in the book. Yet, the Catholic Church which gave birth to the modern field of astronomy gets not even a cameo! Think about it. The book is a wonderful tribute to the mystery and lovely intricacies of space, and the Church that indisputably contributed so much data and effort to the modern study of astronomy gets… not a mention.

At the end, the author includes lists of internet sites and books to check out on astronomy! Guy Consomalgno, the chief astronomer of the Vatican, has a book mentioned in the bibliography: Turn Left at Orion. (see The Heavens Proclaim review on Treasure Chest). We’re checking that out first. Partly, because we’re already fans of Guy Consolmagno, and also because we’re a bit miffed over the lack of mention of the Church’s outstanding contributions. And last because it has excellent reviews on Amazon and looks to be an excellent beginner's book. Thank you, Guy and Wendy. We're going on an Astronomy tour. Just for fun.

Otherwise: I liked it! And so does Nancy…. !

SAFETY RATING: 3 Flags

Read more...

Aria of the Sea by Dia Calhoun

At first, I thought it was going to hit the sweet promise of the book, The Princess Academy…

Instead… it segued on into the feminist/new-agey camp...

Cerinthe is the admirable main character from a rural area of her kingdom. She was learning the healing arts on her island, but that turned into a trauma when the healer she trained under was absent when Cerinthe’s mother died of a terrible infection brought about by a cut she suffered after Cerinthe brought home a sharp piece of glass from the beach.

Cerinthe, inadequately trained, was unable to save her mother. Though she likely would have lost her mother regardless, this pain propelled her to seek the life of a dancer at the royal court… also, and not without coincidence… her mother’s dying wish.

Cerinthe is a determined and talented girl. She is up against the odds but possesses exceptional talent and grit. She needs it all to deal with the jealousy of the girls of more noble birth who train to dance alongside her in the castle.

And the magic is almost there.

Until midway as the modern, new-agey flavor takes hold….

Cerinthe, who prays to the Sea-Goddess, (one of several Greek-like Gods of Cerinthe’s world), finds herself working as a laundry-maid, elevated to royal dancer, and eventually following her true vocation as healer.

The setting for the story is very real and medieval-like….But of course, all priests Cerinthe encounters are… priestesses. They follow Catholic-like ceromonies…sans any men… and Cerinthe’s nemesis ends up dancing for them…. Entirely naked… in a “sacred” ritual. It is a very “holy” ritual… which explains why the man watching the “sacred, holy” ritual and excitedly stroking the swan in his arms doesn’t… ummmm… get too carried away? And…the priestess (?), who was so honored by the lovely, sacred, naked dance, is poised to kill the girl, who was using the sacred dance for her own purposes and not to honor the almighty goddess after all. But the priestess kindly only uses the big knife to scar the back of the girl… not to kill her even though she could…. Not to worry… this all relates back to “finding the divine within… blah… blah… blah….”

Back to the school… where a very talented girl who must dance to support her family kills herself because she really wants to be a singer and cannot pursue her dream. And Cerinthe walks away from her ignorant and suddenly angry boyfriend who expects her to marry him and bear children… and, of course… give up her goals….

Back to the potentially charming story… Oh yeah, I thought it rather lost it at this point. Which is just as well since Cerinthe’s nemesis is really such a nasty girl with no redemption in sight though not so our fiery feminist hero. It’s almost too much caricature without characters…

I see it got lots of good press. It makes sense that it's popular with this present culture; it didn't appeal to me.

SAFETY RATING: DaVinci Pile

Read more...

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

This is the one. It’s the latest family-favorite. If you haven’t discovered it yet, I’m nearly certain this is the one you want to make sure to find at the library next visit. As in tomorrow.

Esperanza refers to hope rising. It’s a lovely theme for a lovely story.

Esperanza’s father owns a huge ranch in Mexico, and she has always known a rich and comfortable life with a loving family and beautiful home... until the night before her 13th birthday when her father and his companions are killed by bandits out on the farther edges of their ranch.

Thanks to her corrupt and selfish uncle(s), one of whom wants to marry Esperanza’s mother, Ramona, they are forced to flee to the United States. Their former servants help them obtain work in the fields. The challenge of adjusting to all this is as great as it seems. And great is Ramona's character. Esperanza soon gets a chance to show her mettle and rise to the occasion of being her mother's daughter.

Though it is not a Catholic story per se, the Faith is part of the background and respectfully treated by an author who seems to grasp the depth of it. For example, when Esperanza and her mother travel to America, her mother, formerly a great and rich lady, treats the poor, widowed woman on board as a friend while Esperanza struggles with the unaccustomed dirt and grime of travel amongst the poor. The woman, a Catholic mother caring for several children, gets off the train and gives money to a crippled beggar while the rich and well-dressed walk on by. Esperanza's father paid just wages and treated his workers well before his untimely death.

There is no dearth of uplifting messages here. She's a gifted author. Your whole family could listen to this aloud. I've been meaning to read this book for awhile, and I'm sorry I waited. Don't do as I did. Do what I say. Read it!

SAFETY RATING: 3 Flags

Read more...

Tru Confessions by Janet Tashjian

Truly, truly, I did not want to put this book in the DaVinci pile.

Trudy writes in a fun stream-of-conscience style into her journal. She’s a lively, witty, and engaging middle-schooler.

She’s also a twin. Her brother, Eddie, has special needs and this journaling story reveals and deals with Trudy’s worries, experiences, and responsibility in caring for and loving her brother. And also overcoming her own fears about growing up while he does not and her guilt in being the twin without special needs.

Trudy’s dad is in the Peace Corps, which he joined shortly after the birth of the children. While the pressure of parenting a child like Eddie played a part in his departure, Trudy’s mom is appropriately tight-lipped about the details. And Trudy sums things up perfectly when she comments,” Charity begins at home.”

Trudy engages in questionable behavior that calls for more discussion. For example, she jokes about stealing answers to a math quiz, breaks the security on her mom’s computer, and uses her brother’s disability by sending him in to shoplift items she likes. None of these issues were addressed adequately in the book.

The mom shows remarkable sense when she makes Trudy apologize for pushing a boy off a bench who had been cruelly mocking her brother. Trudy didn’t feel sorry, but thanks to her mom, she did take the high ground.

Where the book lost me was when Trudy wrote a story about a séance and the channeling woman was supposed to be channeling a dead relative because, for example, she played the piano during the séance, and she doesn’t actually know how to play. To clinch the problem, shortly thereafter, Trudy gives a Ouija board as a birthday gift.

Sigh. I know Rome is currently forced to train more exorcists as secularized Europe delves more deeply into the occult whilst simultaneously rejecting their Christian heritage. By the time some people figure out the spirit of Dear Old Uncle Ed isn’t so benign, it’s sometimes too late to turn back.

I’d turn my back and my children’s on anything that portrays the occult as harmless or a joke. That’s the message here. May the readers and the author be protected in their ignorance.

SAFETY RATING: DaVinci Pile

See: Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2116

Read more...

Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City by Kirsten Miller

My older tweens devoured this book, but I couldn’t muster as much enthusiasm. I thought it was like a CD of a good song that had one too many scratches to fully enjoy.

The essential story: Ananka wakes up one day to find a hole opened up across the street from her New York apartment. Exploring, she discovers the hole appears to lead to more tunnels and rooms.

After the police end her exploration, she discovers a book that indicates a Shadow City exists beneath the actual City of New York. She also encounters a mysterious girl, Kiki. She follows her, and eventually gets sucked into Kiki's plan to explore the Shadow City, which she has discovered as well.

Kiki recruits Girl Scouts who quickly become ex-Girl Scouts as they pool their special talents and steal into an office, gain a map of NYC underground, learn to pick locks, set explosives, and create a rat-repellant device, all in order to tackle the underground city.

They explore, map, and hunt for treasure before the plots turns when Kiki looks to be on a mission with a different purpose.

It’s apropos that the title is “Shadow City” in that the book has an inclination to the darker side. The book, “Gotham City,” that Ananka finds which tells her about the Shadow City is dark with descriptions of the criminals that populated its dank interior. The girls at Ananka's boarding school are horrid; words like but-, cra-and hel- are used as casually as the girls break laws to pursue their goals. My least favorite, “Oh my Go…” unsurprisingly makes its appearance. When 2 of the girls engaged in spying, note young twin girls fighting at home, they casually observe the evil capability of the one who tries to strangle the other, who literally turns blue, while the parents ignore the fight.

In the end, Kiki turns out to be a character with good intentions. After getting the background on her life story, you can understand why she might aspire to be “dangerous,” a goal she mentions early in the book. The “dangerous” description is telling, though. There is a consistent subterranean, shall we say, theme of the whinier side of modern feminism. Characters complain that magazines won’t make fishing waders in girl sizes, girls tend to blend in because they are ignored, and “many people will say anything in front of a girl – as if she couldn’t possibly understand.” So, no wonder one chapter is titled, ”Sugar and Spice and not very nice.” I don’t care for the underlying message. I’m sure the author and I would disagree about how the oppression of women in modern-day America manifests itself. And we definitely disagree about the cure: to embrace being “dangerous,” butt-kicking, law-breaking ex-Girl Scouts.

Other cringe-worthy aspects: Ananka watches, not just movies, but R-rated ones while her oblivious (and consistently disengaged) parents sleep. A character refers to people who believe good stories come with a moral as “dimwits.” Oh, and Ananka is interested in the illustrated book, “A Man’s Body.” Let’s just say, it wasn’t a necessary tidbit to know in order to enjoy the story. Ananka runs into a library pervert whom she handles with remarkable and amusing aplomb, but it’s yet another dark note.

It is geared to mid-tweens; I'd stick to older if at all.

SAFETY RATING: 1 Flag

Read more...

The Sorta Sisters by Adrian Fogelin

It’s sorta sweet.
It’s sorta artistic.
It’s sorta scientific.

How so? Anna and Mica become pen pals through Anna’s neighbors, Ben and Cody, who meet Mica while visiting their Aunt. Mica, a homeschooled girl of a marine biologist, writes to Anna, a foster child of a biology teacher, and a story unfolds which includes their letters of correspondence. We see added treats of lovely pictures drawn by the author/artist of the various shells, feathers, rocks and items of scientific interest the girls send each other in their letters.

Mica's a rather lonely girl who struggles socially when she returns to school. Her mother left her and her father when she was young. Mica has taken on responsibility for her father because he struggles with alcoholism. Anna’s parents died when she was young and she was moved around in the foster system until landing with Miss J, a good match who is in the process of adopting her.

As grim as the circumstances sound, the girls’ issues are dealt with gently and without the too-much-information syndrome found in many tween books. In the finale, Mica’s father takes responsibility for his drinking, and checks himself into a clinic. Mica gets to meet Anna at this point because the father requests she stay there while he gets his act together.

Cautions (slight): the word “butt” enters the lexicon as a casual word. There are 2 matter-of-fact references to evolution including the assumed descent of humans from the trees. The mentions are brief but give no hint that there might be a bigger story or questions about the whole mechanism of evolutionary progress. When Cody, a young male character, looks in Anna’s window, they verbally spar about “what if she was naked.” It’s refreshingly appropriate in that they comment on how yucky that would be. Which makes you kind of wonder why later in the book when he looks through the window again, he needs another joke: “Still not naked?” Slow learner, I guess.

SAFETY RATING: 2 Flags

Read more...

East by Edith Pattou

This is a book you almost don’t want to start right before school. It’s going to be hard to put down and concentrate on your schoolwork.

Edith Pattou took the fairy tale, “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” and created a fantasy novel from it. In a clever twist, she sets it in a very specific time and place: Norway in the 1600’s. Rose, the girl who rides the east, west, north and south winds in the fable, knows nothing of the world of trolls and enchantment until the White Bear comes to ask her to come with him.

He has been enchanted. Rose almost breaks the enchantment, but tragically for him, her curiosity got the better of her, and she lost the opportunity to break the enchantment. Now the White Bear is turned back to a man but is snatched away by the Troll Queeen to be her husband.

Rose must follow, help release him, and together they also try to help the other “softskins” who have been enslaved in the Ice Palace far, far North. This time, Rose is aided by people who represent the 4 winds.

While there is a sad scene in which Rose discovers that the trolls leave sick and old humans exposed to the elements in a big killing area, it is an effective illustration of their cruelty, something that helps Rose recognize how urgent it is to rescue the ex-White Bear.

SAFETY RATING: 3 Flags

Read more...

The Castle Corona by Sharon Creech

Long ago and far away….
Um… I just wanted to start that way because this is a story about castles, queens, and kings.

I was wary about giving Susan Creech another try since I just banished one of her books to the DaVinci pile, but I’m glad I gave this one a chance. It’s a fine little medieval tale, and even on high-alert, I didn’t find any major objections…

It's a fun tale overall of a royal family, 2 peasant children, and a couple hermits. It begins with a theft. Someone has stolen a pouch with 2 medallions. Two peasant children, Pia and Enzio, find the pouch. They wear the medallions under their garb; therefore, when the king’s soldiers ride through the village and grab them both, they believe they are heading to the dungeon.

In fact, they are being taken to Castle Corona to be food-tasters for the king. The king’s life is in no real danger, but he is a bit uneasy with a thief about. While at the castle, the prince falls for Pia, the thief is discovered, and the mystery of the medallions is solved.

It’s an interesting character study. The royal children are questionable heirs due to failings such as shallowness, aggressiveness, and vanity. The Queen has grace and thoughtfulness on her side, and we see she acquired these by virtue of adversity, unlike her insulated offspring. The King is a gentle ruler. It all wraps up smoothly as a satisfying-enough tale.

Teaching Moment: The book fails to reach any depth because despite being in the medieval period, the only glimpse of the richness of the Catholic faith is a wooden cross offered to the Queen’s hermit to put on the wall. The hermits are acquired by the royals for “enlightenment and wisdom.” These are noble but vague concepts more in keeping with spirituality-lite than what would actually have been a pursuit of holiness for a medieval hermit with wisdom and enlightenment being the side effects.

See Catechism of the Catholic Church
Wisdom as Gift of Holy Spirit: 1831
Meditation: 2705 2708

Safety Rating: 3 Vatican Flags

Read more...

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

This book swallowed my child. Really. She all-but-disappeared once she got her hands on this story.

It is kind of appropriate since the premise of this book is that Meggie’s father, Mo, is such a magical storyteller that his voice can read characters out of the story and into the present. He can also read people into a story.

Of course, things aren’t simple as it sounds. He doesn’t have control over this extraordinary ability. He accidentally read Meggie’s mother into the intriguing world of Inkheart, a place with fairies, trolls, giants, and castles. He also read characters out of that world into his: like Dustfinger, a good-hearted man who was a fire-eater in his own world, a place he longs to return to. He also read out characters like Capricorn and Basta, wicked men with no inclination to go back to their own world. They sense the potential for wreaking more havoc in ours.

This was one of our favorite read-alouds. I know most book-lovers have already discovered this one, but in case you haven’t yet, you’ll be glad.

We also enjoyed Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord. I was more reserved about her novel The Dragon Rider because friendly dragons and fractured fairy tales seem more harmful to me after reading Michael O'Brien's Landscape with Dragons (I recommend this resource to all book-loving parents.)

Safety Rating: 3 Vatican Flags; High-Readability

Read more...