This Month's Book Reviews

A little book about a self-reliant girl is made
into a much-publicized movie

"Nim's Island" by Australian writer Wendy Orr is the story of a girl who lives on an isolated island with her scientist father. The action centers on a period when Nim is left alone when her father is temporarily stranded at sea. She does have an array of exotic pets for companionship. Via e-mail, Nim connects with a female author who is the anonymous voice behind the fictional hero and adventurer, Alex Rover. The normally fearful and reclusive author, Alexandra Rover, intrigued by Nim's e-mail accounts, travels to the isolated island. The stage is set for a possible romance between the writer and Nim's widower father.

In the movie, Jodie Foster plays Alexandra Rover, Abigail Breslin is Nim, and Gerard Butler is Nim's father. A natural use of the book and the movie would be to encourage a young reader to compare and contrast the two. A significant advantage is that the novel is brief and lends itself to a reading by a child who might normally resist reading an entire book.

An interesting and inspiring plot in
a recently published dog story

"Champ" is a story of a boy and a dog by prolific children's author, Marcia Thornton Jones. The boy is Riley, a son pushed by his father to be an athlete, even though Riley is without athletic talent. The dog is a Border collie, a champion show dog, injured in a single car accident that Riley feels was his fault. When the show dog's owner threatens to put down the dog because it has lost a front leg, Riley fights to keep the dog alive, offering to take it home and care for it. Riley's parents are not pleased to have a dog, especially when Riley, because of school and his mandated efforts to make the baseball team, is unable to spend enough time with the newly recovered pet to keep it from being destructive around the house.

When a concerned neighbor helps Riley set up an obstacle course to provide needed activity for the rambunctious dog, Riley and his friends from the team come to realize that Champ loves to compete, in spite of his lost limb. Riley's efforts with Champ help him convince his father that he is also not a quitter but a true champion when he engages in an activity which he feels is worthwhile.

Kids learn about Shakespeare and his plays
while reading a mystery story

It's tough getting college students to read about William Shakespeare, let alone middle school kids. It's inescapable in an English-speaking country to claim to be educated and not know at least a little about the Bard and his plays. Author Elise Broach in "Shakespeare's Secret" addresses this reality by enclosing facts (some disputed) about Shakespeare in a modern-day mystery story that is meant to appeal to middle-school-aged boys and girls.

Elise Broach presents the theory held by some Shakespeare scholars that Edward de Vere, later the Earl of Oxford, was the actual author of the famous plays. The uneducated Shakespeare, himself, was just a front man. Furthermore, de Vere, was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth, fathered by Lord Thomas Seymour, when she lived with his family in her teen-age years. The alleged birth, of course, was never acknowledged. Elizabeth's later favoritism shown to Edward de Vere, including a pension of a 1000 pounds a year, is held up as proof of the allegation. The actual historical dates also tend to lend substance to the theory. It is undisputed, of course, that Anne Boleyn was Elizabeth's mother. The jeweled necklace and huge diamond, supposedly Anne Boleyn's, is a fiction, used to justify telling the modern story.

Kids get involved in hunting for creatures
that aren't supposed to exist

"Cryptid Hunters" by kids' author, Roland Smith, is an unusually lengthy adventure novel now in paperback. A "cryptid" is a creature whose existence is rumored but unproven. (My spell-check still rejects it as a legitimate word.) Young readers are captured early as the plot centers on boy and girl twins who are very different from each other in their habits and behaviors. Although both are precocious, the boy is always pushing the envelope and the girl is much more cautious and reflective. Through a series of unusual events, the two kids find themselves in an isolated section of Africa, believed to be still inhabited by dinosaurs.

With 348 pages, this novel is fairly lengthy for a kids' book. The story is exciting enough, however, that most kids won't want to leave it unfinished. Even parents, if they start reading it, aren't likely to put it down.