MOONWALKING: A Middle-Grade Review

There is a lot to like about Moonwalking (MacMillan, 2022) co-authored by Zetta Elliott and Lyn Miller-Lachmann. This middle-grade verse novel set in New York City in 1980, alternates between the POV of the two protagonists. Pie Velez is a math whiz and graffiti artist, and his most unlikely friend, JJ Pankowski, is a punk rock fan and one of the few white kids at their school. 

When I read books that I plan to review I record some of my favorite passages. Here are a few that I noted.

From Pie's second poem, "Bomb."

.... I never knew mist

wrapped in metal could be

light as air and dark as night

or brighter than a neon sign

I shake the can and

the seed of a rainbow clatters

inside before blooming in my palm

and climbing across the wall

                             ...... 

tags spread like wildfire

we write in code on concrete

words most folks can't read

signs that wow

warn

and won't be ignored

WE ARE HERE  (p.8)

From one of JJ's poems entitled, "Three Chords." In this scene when the reader is just getting to know JJ, he's learning how to play his uncle's guitar.

Joe Strummer said  

you don't need talent 

you don't need skill 

       all you need is a loud voice

        an electric guitar

        three chords

        and a story. (p. 15)

Clearly, both boys yearn to express themselves. 

JJ finds refuge in a school that is so crowded no one notices him. This is an excerpt from the poem, "Invisible Me."

They're a team

I won't go out for.

A party for which I don't beg

an invitation.

A universe

I dare not disturb. (p. 25)

Pie struggles with his mother's mental illness, being bullied by neighborhood kids who call her loco, and his dreams of being an artist. JJ's father lost his job and they have to cram into his grandmother's apartment; he doesn't fit in at school and he misses his sister who moved out. 

Slowly, the boys get to know one another and learn to appreciate each other's art. JJ gapes at "Pie murals on subway cars and buildings." Pie invites him to eat lunch in the quiet art room. JJ makes him a mixtape and the boys bond. But when JJ joins him to tag some buildings, the police show up and their encounter becomes a test of their friendship.  

This poem excerpt is from"Tag--I'm It" From JJ's POV:

all I could think about was how    through it all JJ   said nothing

did nothing    just kept his head down      to keep himself safe

Andres was right    no mixtape's gonna change    the system

'cause when it comes to      playing tag with cops

they only ever    try to catch

                    someone like me. (p. 146)

The ending is not your typical "two-different-kids-become-friends" and live happily ever after. But, it satisfactorily concludes the book. I loved the imagery in the poems and the way each character was deeply shown and how the boys helped each other through difficult times.

The main thing that I didn't like was how JJ discovers that his sister is a lesbian and that is why she left home. I thought that was a peripheral subplot that didn't add to the boys' friendship story.  Christian parents, grandparents, and teachers should be aware that this subject material is included in the novel. 

I wrote an email to Lyn Miller-Lachman stating my concerns and she responded: "Thank you for your note and your thoughts. I’m glad you appreciated the poetry and the story of MOONWALKING....The reason for including that thread is to show JJ’s growing realization that the world is more complex than he had believed—one more for his list of 'things that make no sense.' However, this crisis also shows him that he has choices, and he chooses to maintain his relationship with his sister, just as later on he will do what he can to maintain his friendship with Pie in the face of Pie’s anger. If you do include a note to potential readers who are Christians, I could see this as a discussion prompt: What would you do if you found out someone close to you—a family member—was having a same-sex relationship? Would you cut all ties to that person, or would you maintain the connection?”

                                                ****

What do you think, readers? Are you interested in reading this book? Why, or why not?

Congratulations to Gwen McCluney who won EVICTED! and to Hewi Mason who won A Planet Like Ours.

Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe: A Review and ARC Giveway

Introducing Jo Hackl

Over two years ago I had the pleasure of sharing Jo Hackl's path to publication. (Both Part I and Part II are great reading; Jo shared how she came up with the ideas for the book and the process of acquiring a publisher). Jo and I have been friends through SCBWI-Carolinas for over ten years, and now that her hometown of Greenville, SC is also mine, I proudly claim her as my critique partner also.

It is with great joy and pride in her publishing accomplishment that I share my review of Jo's debut middle grade novel, SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF MAYBE. 

Review

Read these opening paragraphs and hear voice oozing out of every sentence:

Turns out, it's easier than you might think to sneak out of town smuggling a live cricket, three pocketfuls of jerky, and two bags of half-paid-for-merchandies from Thelma's Cash 'n' Carry grocery store.

The hard part was getting up the guts to go.

 It happened like this: There I was in Thelma's produce section, running my fingers up and down a bundle of collards. Collards never did make for good eating, but I was wondering if maybe they were some kind of sign that it was time for me to skedaddle. Collards always reminded me of Mama. She used to make me drawing paper out of collards, sumac seeds, dryer lint, and newspaper Daddy chopped up in his wood chipper. She plunked things in her paper the way other people stuck things in scrapbooks. Thread from the hem of her wedding dress, a four-leaf clover, Daddy's first gray hair. Mama's paper held so much life, it made my drawings pop off the page.

That was the kind of Mama and Daddy I used to have.  (p.1-2)

Who wouldn't keep reading after a hook like that?

Soon the reader discovers that Cricket is on a quest to find Mama who ran off and left her with Aunt Belinda. Taking a cricket who she names Charlene, a little bit of food, her father's pocketknife, a doogaloo, and a small notebook full of Mama's paper, she sets off. 

By nightfall she gets to the woods near her family's property. Here is a setting description that I used in my writing classes this summer: "The woods smelled like a hundred and fifty years of dark. A goose-bumpy ghost-town kind of dark."(p. 19)

She climbs into the tree house that "smelled like cedar, clean and wild," which her father built before he died. There, she reviews a letter addressed to her mother indicating her Grandmother's tombstone was to be placed on March 1-- in exactly eleven days. On it her mother had scrawled before, "I'm off looking for my birds." This brings back memories of all the times her mother left to find the "Bird Room" so she could prove it was real. 

With her few supplies, Charlene to keep her company, hope, and a pocketful of clues, Cricket begins her quest--but first she has to learn how to survive living outdoors. 

Like all good stories, Cricket's search has several twists and turns that test her gumption:  raccoons steal her food, snow, and a copperhead bite. The last is too much for her to deal with alone and she seeks help from Miss V., an eccentric woman who provides more answers about her mother and the bird room than Cricket could have dreamt of. At the same time that the story moves forward, the author provides bits and pieces of backstory that help put the puzzle pieces together. 

SMACK DAB is not only a story of outdoor survival or putting puzzle pieces together. It is also a story of a young person coming to grips with her mother's mental illness. Beautifully woven into the text is Cricket's slow realization that her mother's behavior was eccentric, unexplainable, and unstable. Like Laura in CRAZY by Linda Phillips, Cricket begins to see a different picture:

What about all the sharp looks in the grocery store? The looks at Mama. The looks at me. 

If my mama was crazy, just what exactly did that make me? 

The floorboards felt like they were shifting. Nothing felt solid. I grabbed hold of the wall. 

Is this what going crazy feels like? (p. 141)

After I finished reading SMACK DAB I told Jo, "When I grow up I want to be like Cricket." Readers young and old will be inspired by Cricket's courage and spunk--as well as her love for her mother and the truth. And of course, also for her love for the outdoors.

Trailer

Just in case my review didn't sufficiently entice you, here is the trailer:

Giveaway

I took this picture when Jo hand-delievered
the ARC to my house!

Please leave your name and email address (if you don't think I have it) in the comments for my gently read autographed copy of this ARC. Winner will be drawn on July 13. Jo, our expert for the summer issue of Talking Story is also giving away a personally autographed copy too (anyone see an outdoors theme here?). Share this post on social media (and tell me what you do) and I'll enter your name twice. 

The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples- An Audio Book Review and Giveaway. Part I

Thanks to so many of you who visited last week's blog on Joyce Hostetter's cover reveal of DRIVE. The post had  1067 opens--which makes it the third most viewed post on my blog!

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If you are a secret Italophile or dream of touring Venice, Florence, and Pompeii like I do, then this book is for you. Although the talented author, Sir David Gilmour, says that this is not an academic work and is suitable for tourists and amateur historians, the depth and breath of this work is stellar. Almost 20 hours of audio (480 pages) provide the listener with everything you ever wanted to know about "the peninsula." As mentioned before when I review audio books, most of this material is paraphrased.

Audio book provided by Tantor Media. 

The author opens with the geography of the peninsula providing insight into the role the mountain ranges and rivers (which are less navigable then France or England) to the country’s agriculture and economy. 

From there he delves into mythology as well as ancient Italy including Cicero, Anthony, and other political leaders in the years before Christ. Immigration from other countries brought a variety of peoples to the peninsula including Greeks and Celts.

The Roman Empire was brutal in conquest but granted privileges of Roman citizenship, protection, tax advantages, and the right to stand for office. Around 91 BC the army was the chief agent of the process of Romanization of Italia with the hopes of creating a peaceful, united country. In fact, Italy was a land of city states, not a federation with a national ethnic identity. Empire building was the priority resulting in slavery, corruption, crucifixions, and commonplace murders.

The barbarian and Byzantine period which stretched from 330-1453, was colored by the presence of foreign rule, the memory of the pagan past, and the overwhelming force of the Catholic tradition. This era was marked by wars over territories, vying emperors, the territorial dominion of popes, and struggles for power and control between popes and emperors. Secular rulers who disobeyed the pope were commonly excommunicated. One example was Emperor Henry 4^th who dismissed Pope Gregory and called him a false monk. In retaliation, the pope excommunicated the emperor and encouraged subjects to rebel. Although Gilmore didn’t spend much space on origins of papacy, he did comment that the papacy “didn’t care about religion until the reformation.” 

In Gilmour's opinion, Italy's system of city states was predestined to fall. Although the town centers were well preserved, small towns that were close together led to suspicion, anxiety about spies, and large predatory neighborhoods. Fears led to alliances and endless progression of little wars and "endemic factionalism." 

Conflicts with the Hapsburg Empire during the Middle Ages was a history of wars, conquests, divided republics and states. Italy tried to be a great nation and made alliances with France, Prussia, and Austria in attempts to be great.  

At the end of the 18th century, Napoleon led several campaigns to conquer Italy. Although Napoleon successfully carried off many works of art, he was  unsuccessful in conquering the country. Instead, Italy became more unified because the people were disillusioned with his unmet promises. 

Gilmour discusses the origins of words and organizations. The word ghetto was used in Venice to put Jews and other races in separate parts of the city for their protection. Jew wore particular clothing, but were bankers and doctors in a city known to be tolerant of various ethnicities. Caesar led to the Russian word Czar. The International Red Cross was founded because Henry Dunant’s reaction to a bloody battle in Solferino, Italy in 1859.

Gilmore incorporates Italy’s long history of love for written, visual, and musical arts. Virgil’s poetry had impact on Dante and Milton. In fact, Virgil’s description of the Italian countryside has had an enduring visual impact. Over time, art was often a window into politics. 1848, Italian operatic tradition gained a reputation no one would have predicted. The re-emergence of Italian opera was accomplished almost single handedly by Rossini.  

It is difficult to review a book of this length all in one post. Leave a comment this week as well as next when I post Part II and I'll enter your name twice. I'll pick a winner on January 12th. 

Leonardo the Florentine- A Review and a Giveaway

If you have a middle school reader who enjoys history and art, then this novel which fictionalizes the early life of Leonardo da Vinci will be just the book for him or her. 

This is the first in "The Life and Travels of da Vinci" series and it is obvious that the author, Catherine McGrew Jaime, has researched well a beloved topic. She expertly interwove facts about Leonardo's tense relationship with his father, his apprenticeship to master Verrocchio, Florence's architectural details, and information about the Medici family into a quick-reading narrative. 

In this section, Leonardo has lived in Florence for only six months. He grabbed his drawing utensils--sketching paper and a charcoal stick.

What he really wanted to do was to draw--to draw the buildings that he was seeing here, and to put some of this amazing architecture down on paper where he could study it in the evenings. He had seen a church before he came to Florence, certainly, and yet he had never imagined this many churches in one location before. Church spires punctured the sky above Florence at every block. (p. 53)

When Leonardo wasn't busy helping Verrocchio mix paints, create colorful banners, jeweled robes, and beautiful blankets for the Medici family; or run errands for him, he learned Latin and hovered around other workshops. Alongside Antonio Pollaiuolo, he helped perform autopsies and studied muscles and joints. Other times he visited Paolo Toscanelli, a famous mathematician and mapmaker where he learned elements of astronomy, geography and optics.

At twenty-years-old, six years after being apprenticed to Verrochio, Leonardo was accepted into the Painters' Guild and given the title, Maestro (Master). Although he was entitled to open his own workshop he stayed another five years so he could continue to learn from Verrochio. 

Once on his own, he began receiving small commissions. Although he was a masterful painter, inventing and science were his first loves. Even when money was tight, he "continued his scientific and mechanical work, with designs for screws, drills, mills, and machines for waterworks." (p. 148)  Eventually Leonardo got tired of Florence and decided to apply to the Duke of Milan for work. He wrote a letter to the duke suggesting his defensive plans could be a help to him, packed his belongings, some of his favorite drawings, and his prized silver lyre. With only a few coins to his name he started out on the two hundred mile journey that would take him to his next adventure.

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For the next chapter in Leonardo's life, you'll have to read Leonardo: Masterpieces in Milan. If you wish to enter the drawing for this book, please leave me a comment by 6 PM July 1. Make sure you leave your email address if I don't have it. Follow my blog or share this on social media and I'll enter your name twice; just make sure you tell me what you do. 

You might also want to check out Catherine's overview of Da Vinci's life in her book, Leonardo Da Vinci: His Life and His Legacy.