Category Archives: Historical

Review: Lion of the Sky by Ritu Hemnani

Book Review and Content, Historical, Middle Grade 8-12, Poetry, , , , , , , , ,
Lion of the Sky by Ritu Hemnani

Lion of the Sky
Ritu Hemnani
Balzer + Bray
Published May 7, 2024

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About Lion of the Sky

A historical novel in verse about a boy and his family who are forced to flee their home and become refugees after the British Partition of India.

Twelve-year-old Raj is happiest flying kites with his best friend, Iqbal. As their kites soar, Raj feels free, like his beloved India soon will be, and he can’t wait to celebrate their independence.

But when a British lawyer draws a line across a map, splitting India in two, Raj is thrust into a fractured world. With Partition declared, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim families are torn apart—and Raj’s Hindu and Iqbal’s Muslim families are among them.

Forced to flee and become refugees, Raj’s family is left to start over in a new country. After suffering devastating losses, Raj must summon the courage to survive the brutal upheaval of both his country and his heart.

Inspired by the author’s true family history.

My Review

When I read the first few pages or chapters of this book, it gave me some The Kite Runner vibes. Obviously, since this is a middle grade story, it has a completely different arc, but there was something about flying a kite with one’s best friend that took me back to my first time reading TKR in a good way.

I love that those opening scenes show Raj and Iqbal’s friendship despite the differences in their families’ beliefs and dietary practices. You could really feel how deeply connected those two boys were.

And then the British Partition occurs, and everything changes. Raj views the tumult through a child’s gaze, and sometimes the things he does to try to preserve the relationships he cares about inadvertently make things worse. That part was so heartbreaking to read.

The family moves in with relatives, and sharing space is challenging. The family grieves for everything they’ve lost. Raj’s dad and brother look for work, but it’s Raj who discovers a new path forward for his family and a new opportunity for his dad to see and appreciate him for who he is.

While the story has some dark moments, as the Partition turns neighbors against neighbors, it also has beautiful, poignant moments about the power of resilience and daring to be different. Raj, who at first seems like such a gentle character that one worries he’ll be crushed, shows the greatest inner strength and adaptability. The experience of watching him blossom and grow in confidence makes reading this book such a triumph.

Readers who enjoy novels in verse and historical fiction set outside the United States will not want to miss this one.

Content Notes for Lion of the Sky

Recommended for Ages 9 to 13.

Representation
Raj and his family are Indian and Hindu. Raj’s best friend and his family are Muslims.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
The story hints at a romance between Raj’s older brother and a girl.

Spiritual Content
References to Hindu and Muslim beliefs, practices, and holidays.

Violent Content
Bullying. Islamophobia. Prejudice against Hindu and Sikh people. Tensions build between the different faith communities until violence breaks out, sometimes unexpectedly. In one scene, the description implies that someone kills a man tasked with protecting Raj’s family.

Drug Content
Raj’s dad sometimes drinks whiskey and smokes hookah.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich

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The Game of Silence (Birchbark House #2)
Louise Erdrich
HarperCollins
Published June 13, 2006

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About The Game of Silence

Winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, The Game of Silence is the second novel in the critically acclaimed Birchbark House series by New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich.

Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an island in Lake Superior. One day in 1850, Omakayas’s island is visited by a group of mysterious people. From them, she learns that the chimookomanag, or white people, want Omakayas and her people to leave their island and move farther west.

That day, Omakayas realizes that something so valuable, so important that she never knew she had it in the first place, could be in danger: Her way of life. Her home.

The Birchbark House Series is the story of one Ojibwe family’s journey through one hundred years in America. The New York Times Book Review raved about The Game of Silence: “Erdrich has created a world, fictional but real: absorbing, funny, serious and convincingly human.”

My Review

It’s easy to see why this series has won the awards and received the acclaim that it has. The author welcomes readers into the story of a young Ojibwe girl as she navigates changing seasons, life as a middle child, and the recipient of a powerful gift of dreams.

Omakayas learns about medicine from her grandmother. They collect plants for different purposes and help others who fall sick or become injured. She watches her older sister growing up and falling in love, though she doesn’t fully understand what’s happening and feels shut out of her sister’s thoughts and feelings sometimes.

The relationships between characters strike the perfect balance between presenting information as a child would understand it and offering clues that older readers will interpret to more fully explain what’s happening. This is especially true of the relationships between female characters, such as Omakayas and her older sister, her mother, and her grandmother.

The story also includes characters who don’t fit the traditional expectations for women or men. One example is a woman named Old Tallow, who lives on her own with several dogs and is a renowned hunter. Another instance is Omakayas’s cousin, Two Strike Girl, who refuses to help with what she terms “women’s work” and impresses the tribe when she brings down a bull moose with a single shot. The tribe leaders sense that she could become a great leader, or she could make choices that put her life or the lives of others in danger. They feel it’s important to nurture the girl’s strong spirit and understand her path will look different than the others’.

Readers who enjoy mid-nineteenth century history, especially American history, will enjoy this clever, beautiful story about community, family, and finding one’s own path.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Representation
Omakayas and her family are Ojibwe. Most characters in the book are Ojibwe.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Omakayas witnesses and participates in spiritual practices and rituals of her people. Her family are friends with a priest who serves at a church in a nearby town, but they do not share the same beliefs. There are references to other tribe members who practice Catholicism.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Someone hunts and shoots a moose. Omakayas helps her grandmother, a healer, remove a frostbitten finger from someone in their care.

Drug Content
Some tribe members smoke tobacco in a pipe. Vague references to alcohol. (No one drinks alcohol on scene.)

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. All opinions are my own.

Review: In Want of a Suspect by Tirzah Price

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In Want of a Suspect (A Lizzie and Darcy Mystery #1)
Tirzah Price
HarperTeen
Published November 12, 2024

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About In Want of a Suspect

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that London’s first female solicitor in possession of the details of a deadly crime, must be in want of a suspect.

The tenacious Lizzie Bennet has earned her place at Longbourn, her father’s law firm. Her work keeps her busy, but luckily she often has help from (and steals occasional kisses with) Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a stern but secretly soft-hearted solicitor at Pemberley.

Lizzie is hired to investigate a deadly warehouse fire, and to find the mysterious woman who was spotted at the scene moments before the flames took hold. But when the case leads her to the sitting room of a woman Darcy once proposed marriage to, the delicate balance between personal and professional in their relationship is threatened.

Questions of the future are cast aside when the prime suspect is murdered and Lizzie’s own life is threatened. As the body count rises, and their suspicions about what was really going on in the warehouse grow, the pressure is on for Lizzie and Darcy to uncover the truth.

Lizzie and Darcy are back for more suspense, danger, and romance in this first in a duology spinoff of the Jane Austen Murder Mysteries!

My Review

It turns out that a cozy mystery was a great pick for me to read this month. I enjoyed the early 19th-century London setting and the investigatory prowess of Lizzie and Darcy. The murder mystery had just the right number of twists and turns for me.

Also– if you asked me before I read this book whether I needed a book in my life in which multiple heroines of Jane Austen novels appeared, I probably wouldn’t have had an answer. Now, I realize it’s something I absolutely needed in my life. My favorite scenes from the book were the ones in which characters from other Austen novels appeared. Lizzie, Elinor, and Marianne solving a mystery together?! YES!! With my whole heart, yes.

As with Pride and Premeditation, I struggled when the two main characters did something that seemed decidedly different than something either would do in the original story. Once I invested in this mystery enough to imagine these as different versions of Lizzie and Darcy (more a multiverse representation than a reimagining, if that makes sense?) then I deeply enjoyed my reading of the book.

If you like a good, cozy mystery set in London during the Napoleonic Wars (I love that Price included this detail), I recommend this one. If you’re new to Tirzah Price’s reimaginings of Jane Austen novels, Sense and Second-degree Murder is my favorite.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Lizzie and Darcy are white. The story delves into prejudice against the French, with whom England is at war during the story. There is some xenophobia and anti-French comments and behavior.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
References to murder. Lizzie and Darcy see a warehouse on fire from a distance and learn that someone perished in the blaze. They see the body of a murdered woman in a park.

Drug Content
References to alcohol.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Banned Book Review: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Book Review and Content, Coming of Age, Historical, , , , , , ,

The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
Vintage
Published June 24, 2007 (Orig. 1970)

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About The Bluest Eye

Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison powerfully examines our obsession with beauty and conformity—and asks questions about race, class, and gender with her characteristic subtly and grace.
 
In Morrison’s bestselling first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

My Review

Parts of this book were a hard read for me. The writing is moving, fierce, and compassionate. The story explores not only Pecola’s wish to have the blue eyes she believes will make her beautiful but also the lives of the people around her. It follows two sisters, Frieda and Claudia, whose family takes Pecola in when social services remove her from her home. They forge a connection with her that opens and closes the story and offers some reflection on the events that take place.

We also watch what happened to each of Pecola’s parents before they met and after they were married. At one point, Pecola asks for help from a spiritual man who positions himself as having God’s power, and the story illuminates some of his background and past as well. By doing this, Morrison shows not only what happens to Pecola (often from the perspective of a perpetrator) but also why it happens.

It’s a hard read. I loved reading the author’s note at the end of the book in which Toni Morrison reflects on her intentions in telling the story and her evaluation of whether she achieved them. That added some context to the story that I think I needed to hear.

On the whole, I am glad I read this book. The writing is so powerful. I want to read more of Toni Morrison’s work, but already I feel like I see she’s made valuable contributions to literature and our ongoing conversations about race, class, and gender roles.

Discomfort in Literature

One of the things I’ve thought a lot about while reading The Bluest Eye and some of the other books I’ve read lately is the discomfort I experience while reading certain parts of the book. I remember in school really wrestling with stories that left me feeling uncomfortable for various reasons. I wish someone had been able to explain to me the purpose of that discomfort and that discomfort serves an important purpose.

Sometimes, discomfort is a warning sign of danger. It means we need to escape a situation quickly. At other times, though, discomfort is recognition of injustice or wrongdoing. Literature gives us a safe space to experience that discomfort without being in actual physical danger.

This doesn’t mean that reading about trauma can’t be triggering. Sometimes it can. There are certain things I can’t read.

But I’m learning that discomfort isn’t always an indicator that I’m experiencing danger or trauma. Sometimes discomfort means I’m experiencing the injustice or the sense of wrongness in someone else’s story. Sometimes sitting with that discomfort helps us develop empathy or understanding of someone else’s experience.

One of the Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2023

The Bluest Eye was one of the top ten most challenged books of 2023. It has some graphic content, though it’s limited to a few scenes. I definitely think this is a hard book to read, though its messages and perspective are deeply important.

Content Notes for The Bluest Eye

Content warning for graphic sexual assault of a child.

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Major characters are Black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
A few F-bombs and profanity used infrequently. The N-word appears a few times.

Romance/Sexual Content
References to sex and incest. (A girl is pregnant with her father’s baby.) References to nudity. One character befriends and visits three women who are sex workers. More than one scene shows two people having sex. In one, the description is detached and uncomfortable. Others show more pleasure.

In one scene, two white men stumble onto a Black couple having sex. They force the couple to continue while they watch.

One scene shows a man assaulting a child from the man’s perspective. Another passage relates a man’s preference and reasons for preying on girls. He describes some of the things he does.

Spiritual Content
References to prayer and reading the Bible.

Violent Content
References to domestic violence. A man and woman have a violent marriage in which they attack one another. During these episodes, their child wishes she was dead.

Drug Content
A man goes to bed drunk, as is his habit.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. All opinions are my own.

Review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Book Review and Content, Historical, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
Viking Classics
Published November 22, 2022 (Orig. 1847)

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About Wuthering Heights

“Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.” -Catherine

Emily Brontë’s 1847 gothic novel is set on the windy moors of Yorkshire and depicts the tragic and ill-fated love between Catherine Earnshaw and her father’s adopted son, Heathcliff.

Using vivid imagery to portray their volatile, passionate relationship, Brontë has crafted a timeless masterpiece that honestly depicts the pain and anguish felt from love, hatred, and revenge.

For over 150 years, millions of readers have found Wuthering Heights to be a must-read of the greatest classical novels in English Literature. It has been translated into stage, film and television for decades. Completed as her only novel before her death, Emily Brontë is generally considered one of the most talented and gifted storytellers to have ever lived.

About My Review

This is one of the books I am sure I read in school, and my only surviving memories of it are how much I didn’t like it. Because I want to read the Remixed Classics version, WHAT SOULS ARE MADE OF by Tasha Suri, I wanted to reread the original to give me a grid for the remix and how things changed. I’m not a literature expert, so this definitely won’t be a technical review.

Why I Reread Wuthering Heights

My memories of this book before this reread were pretty thin. I remembered Heathcliffe as an unpredictably violent person and Cathy as a lovesick girl. I did not remember the abusive behavior by so many of the characters in this book, including Catherine. So much yikes.

My Review

Honestly, by the time I hit chapter ten, I felt like Heathcliffe, who’d been found as a very young child and dragged home by perhaps a well-meaning man, was the person I sympathized with most. He didn’t ask for all the bananas behavior of the Earnshaws, and he certainly didn’t ask to place himself in the center of a group of people who treated him so abominably. And then.

He ruined it. I love that he went away and made his fortune and educated himself. Good for him for breaking away. Then, he comes back and vows to destroy the people who harmed or betrayed him in his youth. That was such a waste of his time.

Catherine continues to be terrible to him and pretty much anyone around her. Heathcliffe continues his plot to ruin the lives of the Lintons and Earnshaws. For a while, he’s completely successful. He abuses his wife, his son, and his daughter-in-law. Eventually, near the end of his life, Catherine’s daughter and nephew seem to find their way past the animosity they’ve been raised to feel for one another, and the story ends with a possibility of hope.

Racism in Wuthering Heights?

Again, I’m not a literary expert by any stretch of the imagination. I do want to point out that multiple times, especially at the beginning of the book and the end, characters refer to Heathcliffe using the G-slur used against the Romani people. At multiple other times, characters use words that suggest a darker complexion to label him as a bad person. The narrator, Ellen, also refers to Heathcliffe’s son (who is white-passing) as a “monkey.” It’s unclear whether she meant to insult his behavior alone or was referencing his heritage.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Characters describe Heathcliffe as having darker skin and several times refer to him with the G-slur used against Romani people.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
The G-slur is used multiple times. Mild profanity used somewhat infrequently. Cathy uses cruel language to label her cousin, Hareton, who can’t read, as Heathcliffe barred him from learning.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
A man has a strange dream after reading a sermon about forgiveness. One character, a cold, cruel older man behaves piously and speaks authoritatively about scripture and God.

The narrator warns Heathcliffe that he should get a Bible and read it to see where he should repent and change his ways. She asks him if she can summon a minister of any denomination to speak with him. He refuses.

Violent Content
A man has a creepy nightmare about a child grabbing his hand and demanding that he let her in through his window. A boy physically abuses his adopted brother. A girl hits a servant, shakes a child, and hits her lover. A drunk man threatens to harm multiple people. He shoves a knife into a young woman’s mouth before trying to throw a child off a balcony.

Multiple on-scene deaths from illness.

A man hits more than one woman and locks doors to prevent her being able to leave. He threatens a young woman, forcing her to marry someone. A man shows a woman a gun and tells her to lock herself in her room at night or else he may try to murder the room’s occupants.

Drug Content
One minor character repeatedly gets drunk and violent.

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MMGM Review: Unsinkable Cayenne by Jessica Vitalis

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Unsinkable Cayenne
Jessica Vitalis
Greenwillow Books
Published October 29, 2024

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About Unsinkable Cayenne

When her unconventional parents finally agree to settle down in one place, twelve-year-old Cayenne’s dreams come true—but the reality of fitting in is much harder than she imagined. Acclaimed author Jessica Vitalis crafts an unforgettable historical novel-in-verse about belonging, family, and social class for fans of Lisa Fipps’s Starfish and Jasmine Warga’s Other Words for Home.

Cayenne and her family drift from place to place, living in their van. It hasn’t been a bad life—Cayenne and her mother birdwatch in every new location, they have a cozy setup in the van, and they sing and dance and bond over campfires most nights. But they’ve never belonged anywhere.

As Cayenne enters seventh grade, her parents decide to settle down in a small Montana town. Cayenne hopes that this means she will finally fit in and make some friends. But it turns out that staying in one place isn’t easy.

As her social studies class studies the Titanic tragedy (the wreckage has just been discovered and her teacher is obsessed), Cayenne sees more and more parallels between the social strata of the infamous ship and her own life. Will she ever squeeze her way into the popular girls’ clique, even though they live in fancy houses on the hill, and she lives in a tiny, rundown home with chickens in the front yard? Is it possible that the rich boy she likes actually likes her back? Can she find a way to make room for herself in this town? Does she really want to? Maybe being “normal” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Unsinkable Cayenne is a character-driven novel-in-verse about family, friendship, first crushes, and fitting in. Set in the mid-1980s, this literary novel is for readers of Megan E. Freeman’s Alone and Erin Entrada Kelly’s We Dream of Space.

My Review

This is the first book by Jessica Vitalis that I’ve ever read, though Coyote Queen is already on my reading list! I saw nothing but high praise for that one and added it to my reading list immediately. If I wasn’t planning to read it before, I would definitely be planning to now.

I love novels in verse because it gives an author a chance to tell a story in which each word really counts. Delivering rich characters and vivid settings in just a few words takes really precise writing, and I can’t help but appreciate when it’s done well– as in this book.

Cayenne lives an unapologetically unconventional lifestyle. While she longs for the stability of a more permanent home and school experience, she understands how much her parents value the life they’ve crafted. She relates her experiences sans outside judgment. This is simply how her life is.

At school, her history teacher introduces a unit of study on the Titanic, which allows Cayenne and her classmates to think about the impact of classism through a really specific situation in which someone’s class dramatically impacted their likelihood of survival. Cayenne relates to the prejudice and classism described in the disaster as she tries to navigate relationships with kids whose families have fancier houses and clothes than hers.

It’s a thoughtful story filled with metaphors about birds and emotive descriptions of middle school moments that will still resonate today. I could see readers of Starfish or other thought-provoking novels in verse really enjoying this one.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Representation
Cayenne’s dad has depression.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
References to nudity.

Spiritual Content
List.

Violent Content
Cayenne learns about the Titanic disaster.

Drug Content
Cayenne’s dad smokes pot.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday

I’m sharing this post as a part of a weekly round-up of middle-grade posts called Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday. Check out other blogs with posts about middle-grade books today on Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays at Always in the Middle with Greg Pattridge.