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Rhapsody in Books Weblog - Books & Literature
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Review of “Going Home” by Tom Lamont | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Going Home is an often poignant story about fathers and sons, and about coming of age, although the “boys” who are coming of age are in their thirties. The metamorphosis from boys to men for long-time friends Téo Erskine and Ben Mossam followed the death of their girl pal Lia Woods. Lia, the single mother…
Kid Lit Review of “His Fairytale Life: A Book About Hans Christian Andersen” by Jane Yolen | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Jane Yolen is a folklorist who has been called “the Hans Christian Andersen of America.” Thus it is fitting she takes a look at the life of one of the greatest fairy tale writers of all time. Anderson had no schooling until he was in his teens, and had to attend school with three- and…
Review of “Slow Dance” by Rainbow Rowell | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Like Eleanor and Park, Rowell’s appealing young adult romance from 2013, Rowell again sets a love story in Omaha, Nebraska, with a female protagonist who is in some ways similar to Eleanor. Shiloh is an adult - 33, divorced, with two kids under six years old, and living back home with her mom, but the…
Kid Lit Review of “The Crane and the Keeper” by Meeg Pincus | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This stunning book tells the amazing true story of how a zookeeper taught a rare white-naped crane who thought she was human learn to breed, enabling her to help save her species. “Walnut” was hand-raised by humans after poachers stole her parents from the wild. Walnut ended up imprinting on her humans. As we learn…
Kid Lit Review of “Rebellion 1776” by Laurie Halse Anderson | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This middle grade story begins in Boston in 1776, with 13-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper serving as a kitchen maid for a loyalist judge. When the Patriots drive out the British, the judge leaves, and Elsbeth then begins working as a maid for the large family that moves into the same home. Elsbeth’s father, a sailmaker, goes…
Review of “Doggone Bones” by Carolyn Haines | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Doggone Bones, the 29th book in the Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series set in Sunflower County, Mississippi, fits solidly into the Southern cozy mystery niche, with a little spice and violence to add some kick to the mix. Sarah Booth (addressed by both names) lives in Zinnea with her partner Coleman Peters, who happens to…
Kid Lit Review of “The Girl Who Tested the Waters” by Patricia Daniele | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911) was a pioneering environmental chemist, ecologist, and perforce a feminist, because she dared to want to pursue a career in science at a time when women were generally not welcome in higher institutions of learning. She was sickly as a young girl, and so was home-schooled by her parents. When she…
Review of “When the World Tips Over” by Jandy Nelson | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Jandy Nelson is such a talented and interesting writer. In this book, for example, you may think you know who the protagonist is, (i.e., the main character who drives the story forward), but your evaluation will change over the course of the book. The first narrator we meet is Dizzy Fall, a 12-year-old 7th-grader at…
Review of “I Would Die For You” by Sandie Jones | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This psychological thriller takes place in two times periods. The “present” time is 2011, set in California, and the previous time is 1986 in London. In 2011, Nicole Forbes was living in the San Diego area with her husband Brad and 8-year-old daughter Hannah. A young woman knocked on Nicole's door asking her about her…
Review of “Malcolm Lives!” by Ibram X. Kendi | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
There are a lot of misconceptions about Malcolm X, spread in part by a white power establishment terrified - as it has been since the beginning of the American Republic in fact - by any suggestion of Black militancy. Whites turned to MLK, Jr. in the 1960s in part because they believed (not entirely accurately)…
Review of “Nothing But the Bones: A Novel” by Brian Panowich | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This is the author’s fourth gritty noir crime novel set in fictional McFalls County, Georgia. The area is run by a local crime boss, Gareth Burroughs, by his own rules, with his own interpretation of justice and morality. The story begins in 1989 and ends in 2007, over a time span in which we follow…
Review of “A Stranger in the Family” by Jane Casey | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This is the 11th novel in the Maeve Kerrigan crime series, which is one of my favorites. Jane Casey’s writing is a cut above the usual offerings in this genre. It begins with the disappearance, 16 years earlier, of nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall. The case was never solved, but becomes relevant again when Rosalie’s parents, Helena…
Review of “Epic FACTopia!: Follow the Trail of 400 Extreme Facts” by Rose Davidson | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This is totally the book you want to include on your road trip with your middle grader . . . unless if course your goal is peace and quiet. Because kids will not be able to resist sharing all the incredible and fascinating factoids in this book. In truth, adults won’t be able to resist…
Review of “Love and Other Paradoxes” by Catriona Silvey | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
What could be more fun than a good time-travel romcom? The book begins in 2006. Joe Greene, 20, came from Scotland to study at Cambridge, hoping the experience would “turn me into the poet I’m supposed to be” because of all the great poets who went there in the past, such as Byron. But so…
Poetry Month Kid Lit Review of “Vivid: Poems & Notes About Color” by Julie Paschkis | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Did you know that the yolk of an egg turns a deeper yellow if a chicken eats more yellow plants? Or that in the 1920s pink was considered a color for boys, until the 1940s, when it switched to being associated with girls? How about the fact that in ancient times, purple dye was made…
Review of “Leave No Trace” by A. J. Landau | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Leave No Trace is a fast-paced thriller with heart-pounding action starting on the very first page. It takes place at different national monuments across the U.S., with epigraphs before each chapter telling you some of the history and facts regarding each of the monuments. It begins with a bombing at a tourist-packed the Statue of…
Review of “The Frozen River” by Ariel Lawhon | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This fictional account was inspired by the real story of Martha Ballard, a midwife in colonial Maine who, between 1785 and 1812, delivered hundreds of babies, and kept a diary to boot. In fact, that diary was the basis for Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Martha, A Midwife’s Tale. Arial Lawhon covers…
Kid Lit Review of “How Do You Eat Color?” By Mabi David | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
A small boy and girl along with their pet chameleon go through the day exploring the tastes and smells of differently colored fruits and vegetables. The lyrical text, combined with brightly colored illustrations by Yas Doctor, encourages readers to reimagine fruits and vegetables in different sensory ways. What feelings does the taste of each food…
Review of “The Jackal’s Mistress” by Chris Bohjalian | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This Civil War story that begins in September, 1864, is based on a true one, but with a non-historical romance woven into the real life events. Libby Steadman, 24, was operating a gristmill in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, an area that had changed hands several times between the Rebels and the Yankees. She was…
Review of “The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Hidden History of Math’s Unsung Trailblazers” by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Note: This review is by my husband Jim. This book is devoted to the development of significant and important mathematical concepts, the full history of which has been long neglected or forgotten in the interest of promulgating a Eurocentric perspective. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the persons involved were women, who, in spite of their…
Review of “Let Us Descend” by Jesmyn Ward | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Inferno is the first book of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century 3-part narrative poem The Divine Comedy. Inferno describes the journey of a fictionalized version of Dante downward through the circles of Hell. He is guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil, who says to Dante in Canto IV, "Let us descend now into the…
Kid Lit Review of “Thread by Thread” by Alice Brière-Haquet | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This book employs the metaphor of knitting by a family of mice to represent the process of creating a home, and to present a scenario in which that home and the lives led in it come unravelled for any reason. When that happened to the mice, they had to run to safety and seek shelter…
Review of “The King’s Messenger” by Susanna Kearsley | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Susanna Kearsley once again expertly creates historical fiction made more riveting by couching the story in an intriguing romance. This time she takes us to 1613 London and the court of King James I of England. Rumors have been spreading about the cause of the untimely death the previous winter of the King’s son and…
Review of “One Little Goat” by Dara Horn | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Nota Bene: This is a very long review for a middle grade graphic novel, or indeed, any novel, because award-winning author Dara Horn incorporates so many layers of meaning in her books they end up being like ten books in one, at least! And every one of those layers adds to the delight of the…
Kid Lit Review of “Crowning Glory: A Celebration of Black Hair” by Carole Boston Weatherford | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator Ekua Holmes celebrate the beauty and variety of Black hair through rhyming verse and gorgeous collage art. Although the book begins with the moment in 2019 when Black women won five major beauty pageants (Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Universe, Miss World, and Miss Teen USA), Weatherford goes on…
Kid Lit Review of “They Call Me Teach: Lessons in Freedom” by Lesa Cline-Ransome | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
In an Author’s Note at the end of this book, Cline-Ransome explains that anti-literacy laws for slaves were enacted as early as the 1700s in America, writing: “Stemming from a fear that reading and writing could lead to rebellion and uprising against planation owners, reading, or even teaching enslaved people to read, became an illegal…
Review of “The Last Devil to Die” by Richard Osman | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This is the fourth entry in the “Thursday Murder Club” series, cozy mysteries set in a luxury retirement community that are quick-paced and witty with any number of laugh-out-loud moments. Elizabeth Best, a onetime spy; Joyce Meadowcroft, a retired nurse; Ibrahim Arif, a former psychiatrist; and Ron Ritchie, who was a well-known union organizer, reside…
Review of “The Outsider” by Jane Casey | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This novel showcases Rob Langton, DS Maeve Kerrigan’s ex, who was on his third major investigation as an undercover policeman, currently identifying as Mark Howell and reporting to Opal Gilroy. His job was to infiltrate the Carter crime family, which he was able to do after serendipitously saving patriarch Geraint Carter’s life following a heart…
Review of “Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation” by Bennett Parten | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This outstanding new look at Sherman’s campaign from Atlanta to Savannah in late 1864 and its aftermath is told from the perspective of what happened to the self-emancipating slaves who attached themselves to Sherman’s army. The march, which became the biggest liberation event in American history, was, Parten maintains, a watershed moment in shaping the…
Kid Lit Review of “The Last Zookeeper” by Aaron Becker | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This wordless flight of fancy by Becker tells the story of NOA, a giant robot struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape. As his world becomes more environmentally ravaged and the seas rise, threatening to drown all life, he constructs an ark to save all the pairs of animals he can gather. NOA goes around…
Review of “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story” by Michael Lewis | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Note: This review is by my husband Jim. In The Premonition, Michael Lewis chronicles the story of how the American health care system combatted COVID, how it ultimately failed, and how it could have done much better if it had followed the advice of a group of extraordinarily dedicated, resourceful and conscientious people who understood…
Review of “The Bullet That Missed” by Richard Osman | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This is the third entry in the “Thursday Murder Club” series, cozy mysteries set in a luxury retirement community that are quick-paced and witty with any number of laugh-out-loud moments. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron reside in Coopers Chase Retirement Village, and meet every Thursday for a “Murder Club” to look at old police files…
Review of “Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel” by Shelby Van Pelt | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Tova Sullivan is a 70-year-old widow in a small town near Puget Sound in Washington state, where she works at night as a cleaner at the aquarium in (fictional) Sowell Bay. It keeps her busy since her husband died, and helps her cope with the mysterious loss, many years before, of her 18-year-old son Erik…
Review of “What Cannot Be Said” by C.S. Harris | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Note: There are necessarily spoilers for previous books in this series. Although this is the 19th book in this series, C.S. Harris does an outstanding job of providing enough background in every book - without making it seem tedious or out of place - so that any of the books could be read as standalones,…
Kid Lit Review of “The Dictionary Story” by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Oliver Jeffers, a master of thinking outside the box, teams up with Sam Winston for this amazingly creative story about a dictionary who “had ALL the words that had ever been read, which meant she could say All the things that could EVER BE SAID.” But she didn’t tell a story like all the other…
Review of “Death at the Sanatorium” by Ragnar Jónasson | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This is a novel written in a style reminiscent of Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie from best-selling writer of Nordic Noir, Ragnar Jónasson. Moving mainly between 1983 and 2012, the story begins with a murder in the earlier time period in a sanatorium originally opened to treat tuberculosis. Protagonist Helgi Reykdal, like the author, is…
Review of “Out in the Cold” by Steve Urszenyi | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This is the second in a series of international espionage thrillers featuring Special Agent Alex Martel. She was formerly with the FBI on loan to Interpol, and is now working as a CIA contractor on the elite team of Caleb Copeland, a paramilitary operations officer who heads CCT, the Advance Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation Team within…
Review of “The Wheel of the Infinite” by Martha Wells | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This absorbing fantasy follows the journey of Maskelle, in her mid-forties, who is “the Voice of the Ancestors.” This meant she was a very high functionary of the Infinite, a religious order guided by ancestral spirits. She has been called back to the Capital by the Celestial One, the supreme head of the order, for…
Review of “An Insignificant Case: A Novel” by Phillip Margolin | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
This stand-alone crime novel features Charlie Webb, supposedly a “third-rate” lawyer in Portland, Oregon who gets by handling minor legal matters for friends along with some court-appointed cases, one of which he gets as the story opens. He was assigned to defend Lawrence Weiss, a.k.a. Guido Sabatini, who admitted to stealing back a painting he…
Kid Lit Review of “The People’s Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art” by Cynthia Levinson | Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Ben Shahn, born in Lithuania, emigrated to America with his family when he was eight years old. He had began to draw from the time he was a young boy. But he didn’t want to make just “pretty” pictures; rather, he had important stories he wanted to tell through art. The author writes: “Justice had…