In this book we follow one day’s adventure for two Palestinian children on a curfew free day as they travel from their home in Bethlehem to Jerusalem. Thirteen year old Hayaat and her best friend, Samy, are on a mission. Hayaat is convinced if she could get some soil from her grandmother Sitti’s ancestral home it would save her life.
A remarkable young adult author whose earlier book RED KAYAK was a must-read recommendation from me, has done it again in her latest BLINDSIDED by Priscilla Cummings (Dutton, 2010, $16.99. July 2010). In this story we meet 14 year old Natalie. She’s a typical young girl does well in school and has many friends. Her life is turned upside down, when on a recent visit to the eye doctor she is told she will soon be blind.
After the news is accepted, Natalie’s family arranges for her to attend a School for the Blind. Her eyesight at this point is still functioning on a limited basis and the family feels this will help Natalie when all of her sight is gone. Initially Natalie is withdrawn and tries to weather this new school without any companionship. She starts out as a single but son is assigned a roommate.
One of America’s premier authors for young readers, who took them into Terabithia and then into the mills in early New England, now takes young readers to the conflict in Bosnia. In Katherine Paterson’s latest book, THE DAY OF THE PELICAN (Clarion books, 2009, $16.00), we first meet Meli Lleshi on the day she draws a picture of her teacher with his pelican nose. From that day on serious problems begin, and Meli blames herself for the trouble.
If you are ever interested in a study of Alaska, at any level beyond say Grade 6, than may I recommend an amazing book, THE GREAT DEATH by John Smegler ( Henry Holt, 2009, $16.99). This book of only 166 pages follows two young Alaskan native girls at the beginning of the twentieth century who are fleeing a pandemic of measles, smallpox and influenza. Some light-colored strangers with red spots on their bodies came to their village. Very quickly disease and death spread everywhere.
Books come in all sizes and lengths! And the book for all the little wiggly nerds is here. I absolutely guarantee they will be totally enchanted, enthralled, amused and educated by Bill Bryson’s A REALLY SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING (Delacorte Press, 2009, $19.99). This oversized 169 paged volume immediately piques the interest of a young reader by opening, “This is a book about how IT happened– in particular, how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something.”
WE TROUBLED THE WATERS Poems by Ntozake Shange, Paintings by Rod Brown (Amistad An Imprint of HarperCollins 2009, $16.99) arrived yesterday and my mind is still mulling over the message found here.
The first image to hit the reader comes from the title page. Minimum amount of text giving pertinent data about the book at the top of the two page spread. One’s eyes instead are drawn immediately to the body of a black man floating the stream on the bottom half of the page. No words other than the book data. What a shocking sight. It helps set up the reader for what is to come.
For any middle school or even high school teacher who has to teach about the Holocaust, may I recommend a book from 2008, This very short book would help answer students who ask “How could this happen?” T4 A NOVEL takes today’s reader back to Germany in 1939. Hitler has issued T4 order to kill any mentally or disabled person. The government soon realizes the populace will not allow simply massacring these people. So, they get medical doctors to vouch that the disabled with be compassionately housed in institutions.