This month's book reviews

A story of the heroic sea rescues performed
by black "surfmen" of the 1890's

Nathan Williams lived with his father and grandfather in an old cabin on Pea Island on the coast of North Carolina. The island also was the location of the Pea Island Life-Saving Station. The station was the site of a rescue team whose purpose was to save people from shipwrecks. Numerous ships ran aground on the reefs of the dangerous coastal waterways of this part of the Atlantic Ocean. Heavy winds and cold, with occasional hurricanes, added to the isolation and rough living conditions on the island.

The Williams supported themselves by fishing from a small boat. They were friendly with the rescue team members and often helped them with rescue attempts when ships ran aground in bad weather. Nathan thought he wanted to be a rescue team member more than anything in the world. He couldn't understand why his father disapproved of his ambition. What Nathan didn't fully understand at first was that this one rescue station was the only one manned by black men. All of the rest of the rescue service locations were for white men only. When men left their jobs at the Pea Island station, vacancies were filled by relatives - sons, cousins, and nephews. Nathan really did not stand much of a chance of ever getting into the rescue service.

Just because the slaves had been freed in the Civil War didn't mean that racial prejudice had been done away with, even thirty years or more after the war. In fact, a few years earlier, Nathan's family had been run off their little farm by Ku Klux Klan terrorism. His father and grandfather had turned to fishing, rather then farming, to support themselves.

Nathan taught himself, with the help of one of the rescue team members, to be good at providing emergency treatment for accident victims. He had the ability to stay calm in the face of injuries and the sight of blood, and he could treat wounds and broken bones. This skill was called on several times in the story. Nathan had demonstrated he had the makings of a hero on more than one occasion. Still, Nathan realized he could never be a rescue team member. Would he have to spend his life as a fisherman like his father? What other option was open for a young black male? This exciting story ends with a surprising choice of a future for Nathan.

 

A girl loves a dog but, sadly, he belongs
to the mean owner of the junkyard

Katie lives with her mom and her new stepfather in a bad part of town. On the way to school every day, she walks past the junkyard. The yard has a high chain-link fence around it and signs that say KEEP OUT and BEWARE OF DOG. Inside is a medium-sized, muddy-brown colored dog. Some of the neighborhood boys like to throw rocks at the dog. But Katie can see that the dog isn't mean, but really just scared and miserable. Katie decides to try to make life better for the poor animal.

Katie had lived alone with her mother most of her life in a one bedroom apartment. When her mother married Jim O'Grady, a construction worker, Katie felt left out of her mother's life. The three of them were really crowded in the small apartment. Katie had a hard time communicating with her stepfather. He seemed kind of rough, and Katie didn't know what to talk about with him. With a new husband, by the time she got home from work, Katie's mom didn't have time anymore to talk to Katie. So the junkyard dog became Katie's best friend.

Winter was coming. The dog wasn't getting enough to eat. He had no place to get in out of the rain and snow. What could Katie do to help the poor animal that was the only one who seemed to listen to her when she talked about her troubles? What would her mom and Jim O'Grady do when they found out she was spending her tiny little allowance on dog food? Why was Katie's mother so upset when her new husband started working two jobs and seemed only to come home to sleep? Could the small family stay together and someday live in a real house with a yard?

How the lonely junkyard dog plays a part in helping Katie overcome her own loneliness and become part of a real family is what this story is all about.

 

It's hard to write a journal when
your life as a teenager is absolute chaos

The Finney family is made up of Sam, the father, Sally, the mother, and four children, Maggie, age seventeen, Mary Lou, age thirteen, Dennis, age twelve, and Dougie, age eight. Mary Lou has been told to keep a journal during the summer and have it ready for her new English teacher when school starts in the fall. With her being the younger of two sisters and having two younger brothers, Mary Lou's life is practically guaranteed to be chaos. With all that confusion already in her life, who really needs to keep a journal, whatever that is!

What Mary Lou had expected to be another boring summer turns out to be a summer filled with one unexpected surprise after another. Her best friend, Beth Ann, becomes boy crazy like some of the other girls at school. The girls form a secret club and Mary Lou finds out that she is not being asked to join. A neighbor, an apparently healthy middle aged man, dies suddenly and leaves behind a grieving widow. Carl Ray, her cousin from the country, comes to stay with them while he looks for a job. Some unknown person gives Carl Ray a large amount of money. Carl Ray gives the grieving widow a ring that he had been given by his father from back in the country.

Carl Ray comes up with a girlfriend, who turns out to be Mary Beth! Alex Cheevey, a pink-faced boy who had always been around, starts to hang around with Mary Lou, and, all of a sudden, she finds that Alex is really an attractive guy. When the other girls realize that Mary Lou has Alex as a boyfriend, she is asked to join the secret club. And now Mary Lou doesn't want to belong to that club. Oh, it's all so confusing! Is this the kind of stuff you can put in a journal and let other people, especially your new English teacher, read?

You now have a pretty good idea of what goes on in "Absolutely Normal Chaos." If you would like to try to untangle all this along with Mary Lou Finney, you should consider reading the book (oh, or "journal").

 

Harmless modern-day wizards and witches
have to deal with an evil wizard's creation

"The Beast Under the Wizard's Bridge" is the eighth title in a series of paperback books about witches and wizards, called the Lewis Barnavelt Mysteries. Lewis is a seemingly normal boy who lost his parents when he was quite young. His Uncle Jonathan has taken on the responsibility of raising Lewis. It just happens that Uncle Jonathan is a wizard and his next door neighbor, Mrs. Zimmermann, is a witch. In the small Maine community there is a club for witches and wizards that Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann belong to. Lewis and his best friend, Rose Rita Pottinger, aren't magical themselves, but their relatives and friendly neighbors who do possess magical powers make life very interesting for them.

Early in the book, Lewis finds out that a metal bridge close to town is going to be torn down and replaced with a more modern one. For some reason, his Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann seem quite worried about the old bridge. Lewis hears enough of their talk that he becomes overly anxious himself. He can't sleep at night because he has this feeling that something is wrong. His friend, Rose Rita Pottinger, is much more adventuresome than Lewis, and she suggests that the two of them do some investigating on their own. After all, the adults won't talk to the kids and tell them what the problem is.

Lewis and Rose Rita start investigating strange happenings that occurred in the town's past. They found out that the old bridge seems to have been built many years before, after some kind of meteor landed in the vicinity. The bridge is the thing that keeps some kind of horrible monster from getting loose and destroying the countryside.

The two kids get in a number of scary situations while trying to solve the mystery. They really get scared when they find out that Uncle Jonathan's and Mrs. Zimmermann's magic spells can only make the monster grow bigger and stronger. It looks like the town and, possibly, the whole state of Maine could be wiped out!