The Horn Book » Dean Schneider

Review of Courage Has No Color, the True Story of the Triple Nickles

Dean Schneider — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:30:15 +0000

Courage Has No Color, the True Story of the Triple Nickles:
America’s First Black Paratroopers
by Tanya Lee Stone
Middle School, High School    Candlewick    148 pp.
1/13    978-0-7636-5117-6    $24.99
e-book ed. 978-0-7636-6405-3    $24.99
“How does one survive and outlast the racism that was our daily fare at that time?” asks artist Ashley Bryan in the foreword to this fine work about the treatment of black soldiers during World War II. With the spectacular success of the Air Force’s Tuskegee Airmen, President Roosevelt ordered the formation of an all-black Army paratrooper unit, the 555th Parachute Infantry Company, nicknamed the Triple Nickles. But the Triple Nickles didn’t actually fight anywhere, as white soldiers didn’t want to fight alongside black soldiers. They weren’t allowed into restaurants and movie theaters, their housing was substandard, and they weren’t even given access to ammunition. Eventually, they put their training to use as smokejumpers in the forests of the western United States. Though they did help to pave the way for a more integrated military in later wars, their story in World War II was one of frustration. The book’s focus is wide: there are excellent sections on segregation and stereotypes in American history, Japanese American internment camps, Japanese balloon bombs, the Battle of the Bulge, and Operation Firefly, brought to life with archival photographs and Stone’s always clear prose. Readers may not find an exciting tale of wartime heroics here, but they will find a story of subtle forms of courage and unexpected ways soldiers can serve their country. Backmatter includes a timeline, chapter-by-chapter source notes, a bibliography, and an index.

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Review of Etched in Clay

Dean Schneider — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:08:42 +0000

Etched in Clay:
The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet
by Andrea Cheng; illus. by the author
Intermediate, Middle School Lee & Low 143 pp.
1/13 978-1-60060-451-5 $17.95 g
Readers familiar with Laban Carrick Hill and Bryan Collier’s 2011 Caldecott Honor–winning picture book Dave the Potter will appreciate Cheng’s interpretation of the man’s life story. Historical record leaves much unknown about this real person, a slave living in South Carolina who learned how to mold clay and became a fine potter. Through alternating perspectives (Dave; partners in the pottery business; the slave master; a woman who may have been Dave’s wife; children he’s teaching) and in spare free verse, Cheng sets the stage for Dave’s personal stand against injustice. After learning how to read and write, he saw clay as a “wet mound / of potential” and began inscribing small poems in the pottery — at the risk of his life, since it was illegal for slaves to know how to write. This inspirational historical fiction novel in verse portrays one man’s capacity to live a creative life within the confines of slavery, a man who (in Cheng’s words) hoped that “someday the world will read / my word etched in clay / on the side of this jar / and know about the shackles / around our legs / and the whips / upon our backs.” Silhouette-like woodcuts enhance the presentation. A selection of Dave’s writings is appended, and source notes are included.

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Review of Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics

Dean Schneider — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:42:12 +0000

Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics
by John Feinstein
Middle School, High School     Knopf     314 pp.
5/12     978-0-375-86963-1     $16.99
Library ed. 978-0-375-96963-8     $19.99
e-book ed. 978-0-375-98455-6     $10.99
Timed to coincide with the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Feinstein’s sixth sports mystery novel again features teen reporters Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson—except that this time Susan Carol is a world-class swimmer in the 200- meter butterfly and Stevie is now her boyfriend. Speedo, Nike, Under Armour, and the Disney Channel are all interested in her, and Susan Carol only has to win a gold medal or two to gain lucrative contracts. She didn’t train to be a celebrity or a “show pony for corporations,” but thanks to her father, who falls prey to the agents’ offers, Susan Carol does indeed become a “human billboard” and America’s latest athlete/sex symbol. She is only important to the agents as long as she wins, and Stevie wonders just how far a corporation would go to ensure victory for its client. It turns out that the answer is “too far”; hence the mystery for Stevie to solve—a little too quickly and neatly, perhaps, but Feinstein’s legions of fans will revel in the intrigue at the Olympics and the excitement of Susan Carol’s races.

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Review of Summer in the City

Dean Schneider — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:31:54 +0000

Summer in the City
by Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel; illus. by Marie-Louise Gay
Intermediate    Groundwood    151 pp.
4/12    978-1-55498-177-9    $15.95    g
e-book ed. 978-1-55498-200-4    $15.95
Sixth grade is almost over, summer’s approaching, and Charlie’s parents haven’t revealed the family’s summer plans yet. What great adventure is in store? In the past, they’ve been caught in a revolution in Mexico, gotten sandblasted in the desert, ridden out hurricanes on the coast, and faced down hungry alligators in a swamp. As it turns out, times are a little hard this year, so Charlie and his younger brother Max will have a “stay-cation”: they will have to make their own fun in their hometown of Montreal. And so they do, with each chapter relating adventures that inevitably become misadventures. The summer begins with relatively tame efforts—rescuing cats, walking dogs, camping out in the backyard—but escalates to dirty, tattooed Santas riding motorcycles; a thrilling rescue from a stranded car during the storm of the century; a goldfish named Jaws landing in the toilet; and a baseball game interrupted by medieval knights. Who needs trips abroad with so much happening right at home? With energy and enthusiasm, spelled out with many an exclamation point and with added black-and-white illustrations for visual appeal, Summer in the City continues the adventures related in previous novels Travels with My Family and On the Road Again!

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Review of The Mighty Miss Malone

Dean Schneider — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:03:03 +0000

The Mighty Miss Malone" width="160" height="239" />The Mighty Miss Malone
by Christopher Paul Curtis
Intermediate, Middle School    Lamb/Random    309 pp.
1/12    978-0-385-73491-2    $15.99
Library ed. 978-0-385-90487-2    $18.99
e-book ed. 978-0-375-89736-8    $10.99
To her father, twelve-year-old Deza Malone is “my Darling Daughter Deza,” “that sassy, smart, beautiful, charming little girl…my Mighty Miss Malone.” But it’s 1936, and the Depression has hit Gary, Indiana, hard. The loving Malone family is desperately poor and withering away. Older brother Jimmie hasn’t grown in three years, Mrs. Malone’s clothes hang on her, and Deza’s teeth are so bad it’s as if she’s rotting from the inside. In one poignant scene, Deza overhears her beloved father say to her mother, “I can’t breathe out of my nose when I’m near Deza because of the smell of her teeth. How sick is that?” Mr. Malone lights out for Flint, Michigan, in search of work, planning to write when his family can join him. But when they don’t hear, they journey to Flint in search of him. As incandescent and full of good cheer as Deza is (and as she was when introduced in Bud, Not Buddy, rev. 11/99, as the little girl who kissed Bud in a Hooverville camp), and as funny as the book’s early scenes are, this is an angry novel, unflinching in its portrayal of poverty, with plenty of resonance with the fifteen million poor children in the United States today. There’s certainly a measure of hope, hard won, by the end of the novel, but this is a depiction of a family and a nation that embody poet Robert Burns’s lines, much repeated here: “the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley.”

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Opening day

Dean Schneider — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:44:27 +0000

Part of the appeal of baseball is its storied history. These three old-timey baseball books add to the lore of the game for young fans.

Audrey Vernick’s Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team highlights the Acerra family of Long Branch, New Jersey. In 1938, the oldest nine boys (there were twelve in all) created their own semi-pro team, coached by their father. During World War II, six of the boys went off to fight; all came back safely to return to baseball and to raise families. Steven Salerno’s mixed-media illustrations capture the feel of this slice of Americana. (4–8 years)

Baseball has developed a whole language of hand signals — bunt, steal, take a pitch, etc. — and some baseball historians attribute them to William Hoy, the first deaf major league everyday-position player (Hoy signed with the Washington Nationals as an outfielder in 1888). Bill Wise’s biography Silent Star: The Story of Deaf Major Leaguer William Hoy covers Hoy’s many accomplishments on the field and at bat and celebrates his courage and determination. Adam Gustavson’s oil illustrations provide historical details — handlebar moustaches, old uniforms — that will put readers in the games alongside Hoy. (6–9 years)

There Goes Ted Williams: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived is an ode to the famed Boston Red Sox slugger. Williams’s most memorable season was in 1941, when he batted .406, but his career ran until 1960, when he hit a homer in his last at-bat. Matt Tavares’s present-tense narrative lends drama and immediacy to the all-smiles-and-heroics biography, and the watercolor, gouache, and pencil illustrations depict Williams as large as a double-page spread can hold. Published in time for Fenway Park’s centennial celebrations, this full-of-life biography will be a hit with young baseball fans. (6–9 years)

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