This YA book was not what I was expecting! At least not when it started. I'd seen it on shelves for years, but I think I was expecting a haunted orphanage, third-person sort of fairy tale. When I began reading, I wasn't prepared for as lovably flawed of a narrator as Jacob Portman, a wealthy … Continue reading Book Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Spirited little Rachel Kalama’s life changes for the worst when, in 1890s Hawai’i, she is discovered to have leprosy. The disease breaks up the Kalama family as it makes them anathema, which no one in their community wants to touch. Young Rachel is deported to the secluded island of Moloka’i, never to be permitted to touch … Continue reading Book Review: Moloka’i by Alan Brennert
When author Mary Ann Shaffer passed away, her niece, Annie Barrows, took up the mantle of completing the novel her aunt had been researching and writing. The resulting product of their joint efforts is this delightful little story, entitled The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. We meet a variety of characters, including our lovable … Continue reading Book Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden is one of my all-time favorite novels. It is the story of a young, poor Japanese girl who is sold into a geisha district, and grows to become one of the topmost successful geisha. Beginning in the Great Depression, this is a work of historical fiction spanning across … Continue reading Book Review: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
This is one of my favorite DA reading experiences. Piper lives with her father, a preacher, and her brother and sister. There are many Japanese Americans in her neighborhood and school, and her church is mostly Japanese. But after Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, life begins to change for Piper, as now she is considered suspicious … Continue reading Book Review: Dear America: The Fences Between Us, The Diary of Piper Davis (Seattle, Washington 1941) by Kirby Larson
It is 1941, and just as Amber Billows and her family are beginning to adjust to their new life in Washington, D.C. (after having moved between multiple other cities), Amber's father, a quirky Harvard-educated reporter, announces that they are moving yet again, this time to the virtually unheard of U.S. territory of Hawaii. Amber is quick … Continue reading Book Review: Dear America: Early Sunday Morning, The Pearl Harbor Diary of Amber Billows (Hawaii, 1941) by Barry Denenberg
Maddie Beck and her mother live in a boarding house on Long Island, New York, while her father, a naval officer, is stationed overseas in the Pacific. Out of devotion to her father, Maddie makes friends in her new town and, with her new beau Johnny, starts a group for young people to help with … Continue reading Book Review: Dear America: My Secret War, The World War II Diary of Madeline Beck (Long Island, New York 1942) by Mary Pope Osborne
This book is most unlike the other books in the series. As it begins, Julie is a privileged, well-to-do Jewish girl in Vienna, the daughter of a successful doctor, when Hitler annexes Austria and her world is turned upside-down. After witnessing the heinous atrocities committed by the Nazis upon their Jewish neighbors, Julie's father sends … Continue reading Book Review: Dear America: One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping, The Diary of Julie Weiss (Vienna, Austria to New York, 1938) by Barry Denenberg
C.K. BROOKE 