GIRLS SURVIVE Part 12

Okay, I got REALLY behind on these. These came out back in August and I read the four graphic novels, but not the two chapter books. 

So I don't remember much about them, but I'll try to recall what I can. 

This one is set in 2011 during an earthquake. I remember liking it, but that's about it. 

 

Blah, it's the Salem witch trials. I hardly ever like this topic. I don't remember liking it here. 

And the Titanic. Not a topic I dislike but definitely on the overdone side. 

I should have taken a few minutes to reread these before typing this. Alas. 

Okay, this one I remember better, mostly because I've never read another children's historical piece on the Hindenburg. 

I liked it. 

Okay, now on to the chapter books that I just read a few days ago. 

I enjoyed this book, but Chernobyl is such a big topic and shrinking it down to fit in such a small book didn't work very well. I liked it a lot, but was definitely left thinking it could have been four times as long. 

The same applies to this one. Tiananmen Square is another topic that's just plain too big for such a short book. 

I would definitely have read longer versions of all three of these topics, including the Hindenburg. 

These are the two brand new releases for this series, having just come out on the first. 

I had never heard of the Sandy Lake removal until this book. I'm very glad it was written by an Ojibwe author! I liked it as much as one can enjoy such a sad and depressing story. The characters were good, though I wished the sisters were developed a bit more. 

This one I really enjoyed. I give this series a lot of credit for touching on topics I've never read in any other series before. Even if I'm left wanting longer versions of the stories, at least they're being told in some way. 

Penny and her older brother are passengers on the Lusitania, which was bombed by the Germans during WWI. So this has some similarities to Titanic stories but also is totally different. Like they weren't underfilling the lifeboats. They couldn't actually reach them to get into them because of the angle of the ship's sinking. Penny is one of the most likeable characters in this entire series, as is her new friend Mary. 

Always pleased for more Girls Survive!

AMERICAN GIRL: Melody

 
Well, this has certainly been a long time coming. I intended to add Melody to my AG historical reviews years ago, but I never got around to finishing her mystery. And because I never finished Melody, I also never finished Julie, so I have not one but two AG mysteries I've never read! Time to fix that. 

I just finished rereading No Ordinary Sound. It's definitely a powerful book and it made me emotional a few times. I'll do a quick cast list before moving on to the plot synopsis. 

So we've got 9-year-old Melody, whose varied interests are singing, gardening, flower arranging, and cars. It's only mentioned a couple times briefly, but Melody is really into cars. Well, she IS from Detroit. Heh. 

Melody's mother is a teacher and her father is a factory worker. I'm not sure what exactly he does. He was a really good mechanic as part of the Tuskegee Airmen, but even in 1964 Detroit, better jobs for black people aren't plentiful. 

Melody's grandmother was a singer, who now teaches piano and voice lessons. Her grandfather owns a flower shop. 

Melody has three older siblings. Yvonne is in college down in Tuskegee, where both her parents went. Dwayne is supposed to go to college but wants to pursue a Motown career. Lila is the family scholar. She's good at math, science, reading and basically anything academic. 

Then there are Melody's cousins, two parents and their daughter. The mother Tish owns a salon and her husband Charles is a pharmacist. Thier daughter Val is Melody's best friend.

Her other best friend is named Sharon. Then we've got her rival Diane, who also sings.

We've basically got most of the book featuring the daily life of this extended family. Melody gets a solo in the fall church program. Yvonne comes home for the summer and is refused a job at the bank because she's black, so badass Melody marches in and closes her account, saying exactly why she's doing it. Yvonne ends up kicking ass in sales at their grandfather's flower shop, so he hires her. Dwayne struggles with his parents wanting him to go to college when he has Motown opportunities. He moves out right before an audition, which his group does well enough at to go out on tour. Melody's cousins move to Detroit from Birmingham due to all the race-based violence. 

There are several incidents of racism throughout the book. Yvonne's failure to get hired at the bank, as I mentioned. Dwayne and Melody being profiled when they're just trying to shop. The cousins having trouble finding a home to buy because of racists in the neighborhoods. All of the men struggle with job-based racism. 

Inspired by MLK, who she got to hear speak, Melody finally figures out which song to sing for the fall program. She practices and earns the respect of Diane, her now former rival and new friend. 

Sadly, then the Birmingham church bombing happens, and Melody is profoundly affected by this incident and the death of four little girls. Medically, it would have to be coincidence, but she develops laryngitis the same day she learns of the bombing. After she recovers, she freezes on the steps of her church and can't go inside. She loses her voice again, not from medical reasons, but because she's so utterly freaked out by the bombing that she's terrified of her own church and overwhelmed by her feelings. 

With the help of her friends and family, Melody regains her voice and is able to sing for the four little girls who no longer can. 

I really enjoyed this book and all of the characters. It can be hard to read at times, but that is how historical things are. It's important to tell these stories and not shy away from the truth, in hopes that someday we'll be better. I really wish I could say things were a lot better now than in 1964, but the same problems still exist in ever-shifting forms and that's what makes these stories hard for me sometimes. 

Melody's second volume is mostly more light-hearted. On her New Year's Day tenth birthday, the pastor encourages his congregation to help make positive changes in their community in the new year. Melody eventually decides to help clean up her neighborhood park. She and some of the other kids form a Junior Block Club and set to work on their project, which takes up most of the book.

Val's family finally gets a house. 

Everyone participates in a protest against the store that profiled Dwayne and Melody in the first book. 

Melody sings backup for her brother on his first song to be recorded on vinyl. 

Melody, her mother and grandfather, and Val all take a trip to Alabama to visit the old family farm, which Melody has never seen. It's mostly gone, but there are memories. Then they visit her grandfather's older sister and it's there that they learn Yvonne has been arrested. She's been working with the Freedom Summer campaign to help black people get their chance to vote. Naturally, groups like the KKK don't like that. Three students were murdered and the book references that incident, though they're still missing in the events of the book. It's mentioned in the notes at the end though. Yvonne broke her wrist during the arrest, but her mother and grandfather got her out of jail. She doesn't want to stop working for the cause though, so she'll be getting right back to it. 

This one was good, too, but not the emotional roller coaster of the first book. 

I really want to like this. I do and I don't from different points of view. 

Melody accompanies Val and Tish to a meeting of the Fair Housing Committee on Belle Isle, a big island in the Detroit River. There she meets Leah Roth, a 14-year-old Jewish girl whose mother is also on the committee and friends with Tish. Melody is instantly wowed by Leah because she's very fashionable, but she's also nice. Val isn't a fan, though she won't say why. 

Melody starts a friendship with Leah, though it causes a rift between her and Val. Val won't ever give a concrete reason as to why she doesn't like Leah. Her excuses have a million holes. I think it's basically because she doesn't want to share Melody, but she already shares Melody with Sharon and Diane, so what's one more person? The whole Val doesn't like Leah plotline was pretty weak. 

Melody meets Leah's grandfather, a Polish botanist who was trapped in the ghettoes during the Nazi invasion. He managed to get to the US with a clipping of a rare lady's slipper orchid, but his ill treatment ruined his health forever. He's only 68 but he isn't doing very well, and Leah is very upset about his health. She's found a doctor in New York who might be able to treat him, but it's expensive and her grandfather isn't willing to try. 

There's a flower show at the conservatory on Belle Isle and Melody's grandfather is taking part. The guy in charge comes across as racist, so of course when some rare orchids are stolen, this asshole points the police to Melody's grandfather because he'd caught the two of them in the orchid room and been pissed about it. 

Melody and Val go to the party that night determined to look for clues to clear Poppa's name. Leah and her grandfather are also in attendance, because he's giving a talk about orchids. He's brought his very rare orchid and Leah is all worked up about it. She ends up knocking it over, the conservatory guy tries to rescue it, another guy tries to steal it, and both Leah and Melody try to stop him. Everyone gets carted off to the police station, where Leah's story comes out. The thief is related to the man that helped Leah's grandfather get to the US with the rare orchid. He's an unscrupulous plant dealer. He sees how Leah cares about her grandfather's help and it's him that shows her the article about the doctor in New York, trying to get her to help him steal orchids so they can split the profits. She assisted him in the theft of the first ones from the conservatory, but she tried to stop him from stealing the lady's slipper. Her grandfather basically tells her he's lived a full life and he's ready when the time comes, so she needs to accept it. Melody's grandfather's name is cleared. 

From a character standpoint, I really liked this. Leah is likeable when she's not being a thief. Her grandfather is awesome. I liked how they told about Jewish people helping black people with civil rights issues. All of that was done well. Val is out of character and her storyline really doesn't add anything to the book, so it felt unnecessary, but everything else character-wise was good. 

Oh, one thing that I didn't like. This book is clearly set a year after her second book. Melody turned 10 in that book, yet she's said to be 10 here. She isn't. She's 11. Work on your math better, author.

As a mystery though, this is terrible. It was very apparent from the second time you saw this red-haired thief that he was gonna be the bad guy and that Leah was involved. Once Melody learned the grandfather's story, it was equally apparent what Leah's motivation was. It was too obvious. 

Overall, I enjoyed Melody's books a lot and I'm glad I finally got around to finishing them. 

GIRLS SURVIVE Series: Part 4

My post for part 3 of this series got stuck back in January, even though I didn't finish it until much later:
http://redblackandwhitebookreviews.blogspot.com/2020/01/girls-survive-series-part-3.html

I also started writing this in July and got sidetracked. Again. I need to stop doing this.

These newest four Girls Survive just released. I think they were supposed to be August 1st, so once again, they came out early.

Amazon's shipping has been terrible. They've switched to UPS Mail Innovations for certain packages and they take eons to arrive. I get it, pandemic, yeah, but I'm a Prime member and that's not cheap, so I miss the method of shipment I'm used to my money paying for.

Long story short, I only have two of the four books so far. The other two are poking along verrrrrrrry slowly. So for the first time, my review is going out of chronological order.

We begin with Rebecca, whose story was based on the women who helped the Revolutionary War by being heroic messengers. This one was simple, but it was also enjoyable. I liked it a lot.

Maribel's book takes place during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Maribel is a Hispanic girl with ADD. Back in those days, things like that weren't diagnosed, so it's not discussed in the book in plain language, but the signs are there, and the author addresses it at the end.

Maribel and her family are evacuated from their home and live with friends for three weeks, mostly not believing there's any danger from the volcano. Tired of her family being upset, Maribel decides to sneak back to her home and retrieve some possessions she thinks will help. Naturally, the volcano erupts while she's there and she has to fight her way to safety.

I really liked this one, because this is something I didn't know much about. It went by quickly, as this series tends to do, but it was well-written.

If you've never heard of the Great Molasses Flood, it's about exactly what it sounds like. In Boston in 1919, a giant tank of molasses exploded and the ensuing wave killed 21 people and injured many others. It sounds silly, but it was real and would have been pretty terrifying. 

The events of the book happen very fast. Leah is an orphan who lives with her uncle, who works for the company that owns the tank. Her dream is to go west. She goes to school, having a couple run-ins with a female classmate named Francesca, who's sort of a rival. Throughout the day, the girls become slightly friendlier, but they're outside when the tank explodes and that throws them into a life and death situation together. First they're in the wave itself, then they're trapped in a crawlspace with the level of molasses slowly rising. Both sustain injuries and struggle to find a way out. They end up being rescued and taken for medical assistance. The girls end up fine, but Leah learns later that her uncle was killed in the flood. When she goes home, she discovers that the can she thought held their vacation fund was money he had been saving for her future, so she can actually go west and live her dream. Francesca comes to find her and offers her a place to stay with her family until school ends and Leah can buy a train ticket west. 

This book originally had a different cover. This one here on the right. Leah had longer hair and the title was different. I guess they must have decided "Braves the Wave" sounded a little stupid. 

I liked this one, but the super fast pace made it less interesting than others. It was okay, but I felt like I didn't have time to get invested in the characters much, though I did like both girls. 

Oh, man. This one hit me hard. 

Tara and her mother are vacationing in Thailand, because her mother's parents were Thai immigrants. They're there on their third day when the tsunami hits. 

I'm not sure if the story was hard because Tara and her mother are close, just like I am with my mom, and they're separated. You spend a lot of the story wondering if her mom's okay. (She is. Whew.) It also might have been hard because we survived a hurricane together. Nothing as powerfully devastating as this tsunami, but it was terrifying regardless. Some of the incidents in the book brought things back. It ends on a bittersweet note, because Tara and her mom are safe and return home, but you never learn the fates of other characters in the book. Still, I think it's one of the strongest of this entire series. Very powerful. 

GIRLS SURVIVE Series Part 2

Finally back with another review! I wish I was more consistent with these, but alas.

The Girls Survive series just released another four books. These actually came out a couple weeks before they were originally supposed to, so that was a pleasant surprise.

I'm going in chronological order again, so we're starting with the book set during the Civil War. This was written by the same author that did Ann and Noelle's books from the first batch of four.

Our main character is a 12-year-old free black girl named Charlotte who works for Elizabeth Van Lew, who was a real person. Miss Van Lew freed all her father's slaves upon his death and even tracked down their families and freed them, too. Fictional Charlotte is one of those she found and freed. Charlotte came to live with Miss Van Lew and work for her, along with Charlotte's older cousin Mary, who is also based on a real person.

The story is set in Richmond in 1864 and quickly jumps into the action with Charlotte learning Miss Van Lew and a lot of her friends are spies. Or "patriots," as Miss Van Lew insists. The story, like all of these books, is very fast-paced because the books are so short, so Charlotte starts off her own spy career the very next day after she discovers that little secret. Her adventures culminate in her risking everything to see her cousin Mary for a few moments, which thankfully turns out advantageous when it could easily have gotten everyone involved killed. The book ends on an open, but hopeful note.

I like this one the best of this author's three. I liked all the characters and it was cool to learn that so many of them were based on real historical figures.

I've gotta be honest, I didn't know how well I was going to do with Carrie's book. For those that didn't know, I'm a Hurricane Michael survivor. Not that things were that devastating, because I don't believe anything compares with the Galveston hurricane's level of loss of life, but still. It's still fresh.

It's 1900. Twelve-year-old Carrie's a bit of a flighty character. She seems on the shallow side, being really into clothing and hairstyles and she's obsessed with her best friend's older sister to the point of almost insulting said best friend. She was supposed to go to her best friend's house for a sleepover on the day of the hurricane, but Carrie's shallowness is eclipsed only by her mother's social-climbing, so Carrie's stuck at home babysitting her younger brother.

And then it's all boom, hurricane action. The water's rising. Let's go upstairs! The roof is caving in. Let's throw a chunk of it out the window and use it as a raft! Carrie does some pretty epic heroics. I'm not sure I really buy her being able to lift a chunk of roof big enough to float her and her brother on out a broken window. It's not like the water level was that high and she just directed it out the window while it was floating, which seems more believable. Then she does a daring rescue and she, her brother and the boy she saved wait out the hurricane on their roof raft, because Carrie managed to wedge it up against a couple trees.

When the storm is over, they make their way through the devastation and Carrie finds her mother, who says her father is also okay. He's helping with the rescue efforts. Carrie also runs into her teacher, who breaks the news that both Carrie's best friend and her beloved older sister are dead. Their entire family is dead. And Carrie freaks out because not only has she just learned she lost people, but she also knows she was almost dead, too, if she'd gone to the sleepover as planned.

The book ends on a hopeful note, as Carrie refuses to leave Galveston and says they should stay and rebuild because this is their home. William, the boy she rescued, lost most of his family, except his father and their dog, but he's staying as well.

Now to paraphrase Ann M. Martin for a second, what I didn't tell you was that Carrie was white and William was black. Remember the first four books that had prejudice shoved into each one? Some historical stories are meant for that. The Civil War. Pearl Harbor. Internment camps. Anything involving how Native Americans were treated. The Titanic one wasn't. This one isn't really either. The author explains that she liked the real life accounts she read of people helping each other regardless of their race during the Galveston hurricane, because Galveston was segregated. That's all well and good, but work it into the story naturally. There are a couple very heavy-handed mentions of Galveston being segregated and Carrie just treats it as the way it is rather than having any sort of emotion about it. It feels mechanical. Forced. Shallow. I like the character of William, but that whole angle could have been handled much better.

Next up: Triangle Shirtwaist fire. From a slightly triggering hurricane story to one of my worst fears: being stuck in something on fire that I can't get out of. Yay.

So Lucia, or Lucy as she prefers, is a 14-year-old Italian immigrant. She wants to go to college and be an astronomer, but her father says no. He was injured at his job, so their only income right now is from Lucy and her brother's jobs, plus laundry their mother takes in, and boarders that share the only bed in the house.

Lucy works at Triangle, along with her friend Rosie, who's a Russian Jew. Rosie and Lucy's brother Tony have mutual crushes but can't hope to be together due to their religious backgrounds. That's the snippet of prejudice tossed into this book. Also working at Triangle are Lucy's cousin Cara, Cara's fiance Frank, an Italian boy named Michael that has a crush on Lucy, and a girl from Michael's hometown named Marcella that likes Michael and naturally then hates Lucy.

All these characters are established over the course of the first four chapters, as well as unions and poor conditions at the factories.

Then we get right into the fire and it's all action until the end. It's all panic. Michael finds Lucy, but ends up having to save Marcella. Lucy tries to find Rosie multiple times and does catch a glimpse of her once, but can't get to her. Lucy finally ends up on the building's roof and is one of the few that were on the ninth floor that managed to escape. Lucy actually worked on the eighth floor, but went to nine to look for Rosie.

Lucy finds Marcella in the aftermath. Marcella tells her Michael didn't make it and neither did Rosie, who was on the fire escape that collapsed. Cara's fiance Frank didn't make it either.

This one was mostly well-written and I thought it captured a lot of the tension well, after establishing the characters and their world.

Only one moment I thought was a poor choice. Lucy's cousin Cara is sick and can't go to work, so she gives Lucy a note for Frank. Lucy's caught up in some drama with Michael over lunch and forgets to take the note to Frank. At the end, Cara is comforted by the fact that Lucy gave Frank her note and he knew how she felt at the end. Eeyeah, except he didn't get it, because Lucy was being a forgetful idiot. Not that Lucy tells her. She lies her ass off. This whole situation was unnecessary and puts Lucy in a bad light for absolutely no reason.

Other than that though, this one was good.

And now the Holocaust book. Technically, Kristallnacht. I always struggle through Holocaust books. They're painful to read. I've been to Dachau. It's something you never forget. But in the light of some things going on in this country today, things like this are even harder to read.

I'm going to be brief because this was indeed a struggle to read. It was good, but difficult. You know the ending, while seemingly hopeful, is ultimately going to be sad, though you'll never know for sure.

I love that these books are always in groups of four. The next set, due out in February, will be about a Cherokee girl on the Trail of Tears, a black girl on the Oregon Trail, one living through the 1918 flu epidemic, and a Chinese-American girl during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.