May 2010 Staff Book Reviews

Last Updated on Friday, 30 April 2010 14:21

Frequently Asked Questions - Reader Services

May brings flowers from "April showers," the end of a school year, and the beginning of Summer plans. The Pioneer Library System staff members have shared some books that are great for a little relaxation from a hectic schedule and Summer reading lists. There are quirky, strong, mysterious, and inspirational characters involved in adventures to interest readers of every age.

Lucky Breaks by Susan Patron
Staff Reviewer: Mary Lea Wallace, Norman Public Library

Lucky Breaks continues the story of almost-eleven-year-old Lucky, resident of Hard Pan, California, a desert hamlet of 43 hardy, intrepid, and unique characters. The Higher Power of Lucky, the first book in the series, won the 2007 Newbery Award for Children's literature. Lucky Breaks continues the adventures of the central characters who must unite with Lucky's new friend to rescue her from a dangerous excess of treasure-seeking intrepidness.

Richly drawn, quirky characters and unique plot highlight this second adventure. The final story in the Lucky/Hard Pan trilogy will be published soon.

Money To Burn by James Grippando
Staff Reviewer: Victoria Mongold, McLoud Public Library

If you are into a good "who done it" novel you will be on the edge of your seat with James Grippando's latest novel Money to Burn. The main character, Michael Cantella, is a 31 year old up-and-coming Wall Street star with a premier investment company, Sexton Silvers.  He was on his honeymoon with the love of his life Ivy Layton.  He wakes up one morning on a boat and she had vanished.  After a period of time a shark was found with the remains of a female body.  DNA test proved that it was Ivy Layton.  Four years later Michael is remarried and is leading an ideal life as a successful trader with a beautiful wife.  Michael's wife has planned a surprise 35th birthday in a prestigious hotel.  As the evening winds down, Michael and his wife leave to continue the evening in the pent-house suite.  As his wife prepares to get comfortable, Michael flips open his laptop to check on a personal investment account - zero balance!  He checks several of his other accounts with the same results.  He even checks his former wife, Ivy's account and it has a zero balance.  He then receives an email from an unknown source that states "went as planned XO, XO, XO."  Money To Burn, a great way to start your summer reads!

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Staff Reviewer: Brenda Johnson, Moore Public Library

In the early 1950's, Eilis Lacey leaves her mother and sister in Ireland and moves to Brooklyn, New York to start her adult life.  A quiet and shy young woman, she has always lived with her mother and sister in the family home.  Her father has died, and her glamorous older sister, Rose, is happy with her job playing golf and staying at home with their mother.  Rose encourages Eilis to leave home and snatch up the opportunities that so many other Irish immigrants have found in the United States.  Being a pliable younger sister, Eilis follows Rose's prodding and takes the leap.

In her new life, Eilis relies on the network of Irish immigrants that have gone before her: her boarding house landlady Mrs. Kehoe, the parish priest Father Flood, and others.  They help her find a place to live, a job in a department store, and a place to spend her free time.  Yet, she is homesick. She begins to spend time alone, roaming the city, missing her family.  The Irish support network comes to her rescue; Father Flood gets her into night school to study bookkeeping and insists that she attend the parish's weekly dances and help with holiday meals for the poor.  At one of the dances, Eilis meets Johnny, an Italian-American whose fair complexion allows him to pass as an Irishman.  The two fall into a regular routine: dance on Friday, meal and movie on Saturday, and walking home from night class on week nights.  Eilis becomes very comfortable with Johnny.  She has to admit she's not madly in love, but Johnny's easy-going nature makes him easy to talk to.  He seems to always be happy, always holds her in highest-regard, and always assumes they will marry.

Then tragedy strikes.  Eilis receives word of a death in the family, and after completing her classes and receiving her bookkeeping certificate, she schedules a visit home to Ireland.  Eilis returns to Ireland as an adult, no longer the mousy, self-conscious girl who left her family home.  She enjoys being with her friends, using her bookkeeping skills, and being paired on dates with Jim Farrell, someone who wouldn't give her a second glance before she immigrated.  A month-long visit turns into six weeks and then into an open-ended return ticket.  Eilis delays reading and answering letters and telegrams from Johnny.  The painful decision to stay in Ireland or go back to Brooklyn comes when something from her past makes the decision for her.  Eilis's story is a gentle and bittersweet one about making one's way in the confusing journey to adulthood.  Brooklyn is an award-winning book and is available in regular and large print version.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Staff Reviewer: Leanne Cheek, Moore Public Library

In Graceling, being different is bitter-sweet.  One difference that can mark you as an outcast while giving you great power is to have a Grace.  A person with a Grace is marked by having two different colored eyes.  Graces can give a person the ability to read someone's mind, bake incredible bread, swim like a fish, or in Katsa's case, fight and kill.  Because of her unusual Grace, she becomes the King's henchman and is sent on horrible quests to kill and torture members of the kingdom.

Katsa is a teenage girl with an amazing ability to kill someone, but a lack of ability to trust someone.  To offset the horrible things she is forced to do, she creates a council that helps her secretly fight her uncle the king.  During one of her secret missions she encounters a stranger with the same mission and must decide to trust him and succeed, or continue independently towards possible failure.

Cashore creates a fascinating and harsh world in Graceling.  Her heroine is a unique character that will take readers on an absorbing, wild ride.  Readers will experience action, mystery, romance, and fantasy in all too short a time.  I highly recommend this well-written and engrossing book that is difficult to put down once you begin reading.

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell
Staff Reviewer:Susan Gregory, Pioneer Library System

The Italians saved over 43,000 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust by hiding them in plain sight.  Roman Catholic priests and nuns, prosperous merchants, impoverished peasants and members of the nobility drew Jewish families into their homes and churches and either hid them behind closed doors or presented them to the Germans as Italian Catholics.  A thread of grace appeared for both the hunted and the hunter in this beautifully written story, grace that saved some lives and transformed others.

One of the Jewish refugees who poured into Italy in 1943 seeking safety was 14 year old Claudette Blum.  Accompanied by her ailing father, naive Claudette was poorly prepared to survive the brutal climb over the Alps into northern Italy and would have perished if not for the kindness of a young Calabrian soldier named Santino and the safe haven provided by an impoverished villager named Tercilla.  By the end of the war, Claudette will have known utter deprivation and hunger.  She will have learned to load a machine gun and kill a man in less than sixty seconds.  She will also have known love and grace due to the extraordinary generosity of people like double spy and confirmed alcoholic Renzio Leoni and his unrequited love, and wife of the local rabbi, Mirella.  Claudette's life will have been saved by the medical services of a Nazi deserter, Dr. Werner Schramm, who finds grace by joining the Italian guerrillas and serving the Resistance.  Most of all, she will have survived the Holocaust because of the courageous acts of people like Don Osvaldo Tomitz, who spent the war hiding Jewish children in a series of convents despite the risk of torture.

This extraordinary book was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 2005.  Mary Doria Russell, a scholar trained as a paleontologist, is a wonderful writer who is able to build tension and fascination into an era that other novelists have covered many time before.  In this WWII story, she has accomplished the unusual: she's successfully peopled a lesser-known corner of the war with fascinating characters and the pacing of a thriller to produce a book that's impossible to put down.