This Month's Book Reviews

A biography of a famous children's author
with a Missouri connection

The BK Biography series is a fairly recent series of inexpensive paperbacks that presents interesting biographies of famous persons along with photographs and illustrations that augment the text. "Laura Ingalls Wilder" by Tanya Lee Stone is one of these publications that should especially appeal to kids from Missouri. Wilder's books have been successful largely because she brings history to life for her young readers by graphically portraying life as it was in an earlier era in America. This biography does something similar by bringing the facts of Wilder's life alive for a young reader. This is one I suspect many parents will want to read themselves.

 

Kids and their families cope with a hurricane
in the Florida Keys of 1935

Children's author, Joan Hiatt Harlow, is a prize-winning writer of several adventure stories that feature storms. In "Blown Away" she has built her plot around an actual hurricane that struck the Florida Keys in 1935. She has combined several elements that appeal to young readers into her novel. There is the innocent attraction between a teen-aged boy and girl, a mutual respect and friendship developed between a teen-aged boy and a cantankerous elderly man, family ties, and the fondness that develops for animals, as well as the horrific consequences of a hurricane in a coastal area. This novel should appeal to either a boy or girl.

A book by a popular author who writes about kids' outrageous behavior

Jerry Spinelli is a popular author of kids' books and a winner of the Newbery Award for "Maniac Magee." That "Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush?" is in the genre of books that find humor in fairly over-stated kids' behavior is evident in the title. Young readers can identify with the incidents in the novel because they typify the experiences many kids have while growing up. Spinelli tends to end his little novels with serious lessons to be drawn. In this case, the lesson learned is that small aggravations should not ever be allowed to over balance the love siblings really have for each other.

Two sisters deal with stress in a home disrupted
by parental break-up

The narrator in the novel "Just another Day in my Insanely Real Life" by Barbara Dee is twelve-year-old Cassie Baldwin. Cassie is the younger sister in the family, with nearly fifteen-year-old Miranda, and just-turned-six, Jackson. Their mother has just returned to fulltime work in a law office because their father has "recently moved out of the picture." Cassie is seen as a budding creative writer, so we are treated not only with her narrative of everyday life, but her efforts at fiction as well. There is a teacher who is trying to help her with her creative writing efforts. A big part of the story deals with how the two sisters try to keep a life of their own while they take on many of the responsibilities at home. The story ends with the possibility, however remote, that the family might experience a parental reconciliation.