All the Impossible Things, by Lindsay Lackey

All the Impossible Things, by Lindsay Lackey (middle grade, Roaring Brook Press, September 2019), is a story about a magical girl finding love, and it's heartwarming and sad and sweet, and a very good read.

Eleven-year-old Red (her real name's Ruby, but she's always been Red to her mom) has been in and out of various foster homes since her grandma's death a few years earlier.  She's driven off to her newest placement with no particular hopes that it will be any better than anywhere else, and since she's counting down the days (about a year's worth) till her mom gets out of prison and they can be together again, she has no interest in actually finding a home.

But the Grooves, an older couple who run a small petting zoo, welcome her with love, and the promise of home.  And when Red finds out her mom, whose drug addition is what landed her in jail and left Red with her Grandma, is out early, she's torn by her burning wish to be a happy family with her mom, and the happy family with the Grooves she could be part of....both of which might end up being impossible things.

When Red is angry or agitate, wind kicks up, and when Red must face her moment of reckoning, it gets out of hand....

It was a lovely story, with bonus giant tortoise and a pack of rescue dogs (kittens don't arrive till the end, which is too bad but better than never), and full of small details that made it all very real, like the new foster mother having put a small stack of books she herself loved in Red's bedroom (at which point, all of us book lovers know that this will be a good home for Red).  The central tension of the story is whether Red's mother will ever be able/be willing to make a home for read, and the heartbreak of this situation is vividly real, without making Red's mother into a villain or the Grooves into magical saviors.

Though there is this magic of Red's wind, which she inherited from her mom, and though it serves beautifully to amplify Red's feelings for the reader and to create moments of danger, it isn't actually essential to the story.  This would be a warm, heartful story to treasure even without this magic, but it adds a nice something extra....for those that don't mind the unexplained fantastical.

Kids who enjoy home finding stories will love it.

Wish Girl, by Nikki Loftin--beautiful, sweet, poignant, and really cool!

One of my favorite types of books as a child (and grownup) are those involving a lonely kid (mostly girls) finding peaceful refuges--ala The Velvet Room, in Zilpha Keatly Snyder's book of that name,  Mandy's house in the woods, by Julie Edwards, and lots in Elizabeth Goudge's books....Wish Girl, by Nikki Loftin (Razorbill, Feb 2015) is a book of that sort, only in this case the main character isn't a girl; he's a lonely, introverted boy desperately searching for the quiet he badly needs, and he finds his peace in a magical east Texas valley.    But regardless of gender and refuge particulars, reading Wish Girl felt familiar and friendly...except for something I've can't recall ever reading before--  here the refuge is not just beautiful and peaceful...it is magical, a character in its own right.  I was totally Team Valley from the start.....

Peter's family has moved from the city out into the middle of nowhere, Texas Hill Country--partly because life in the city was not kind to introverted, bullied, Peter and his parents think a fresh start will help.  But the small house with all his loud family in it, mentally and emotionally pulling on him, isn't what Peter needs, so when he finds the Valley, a beautiful piece of nature where quiet is the order of the day, his spirit can unclench itself.  To his initial dismay, though, he finds a person already at home there--a girl named Annie, who refers to herself as a "wish girl."    She is driven to create art in nature, in what time she might have left--she's a wish girl as in "make a wish foundation."  And she and Peter become friends, really seeing and appreciating each other in a way that is special for both of them (and, just saying, it's not romance; they are introverted kids who are kindred spirits).    The valley is a refuge for both, giving them what they need.

And the valley really does actually and fantastically look after its friends....there are two bad boys, the sort that run around with a gun shooting animals, who are not its friends--instead of clear water and flowers and a cute baby armadillo, the bad boys get attacked by insects....And the two bad boys decide to make Peter their victim...and since his parents aren't listening to him, or hearing what he needs, they think it's nice that there are boys nearby for him to be friends with.  And so, when the physical abuse from the bullies and the noise at home drive him to escape, it is of course to the valley that he goes.

And Annie is also trying to escape...her cancer is back, and she's supposed to be starting new treatments that could leave her permanently un-Annie.  She can't stand the thought that she might loose her creative spark and love of beauty and art...but her mother isn't listening to her, either.   But the valley, try though it may, can't make everything all magically better, or keep all violence out.....

I love the valley.  It is so well described that I feel I have been there, and it is beautiful.  If, like me, you still have several feet of dirty snow around and an icy driveway, it makes an especially nice change!  Annie and Peter's stories were moving without being too much to take; Annie is described in the official blurb as "the dying girl" but she isn't, she's a fiercely living girl and that is the point, and even though Peter's parents are dim, they at least care.  And then ending is not heartbreaking, which it so easily could have been.....I am particularly glad that the valley comes through it all unharmed!  There's not a ton of Action and Adventure, although there is a bit....it's definitely one for the place and character loving reader.

Give this to any introverted child who loves quiet places, or to a kid who appreciates being part of nature and making beautiful things!  Or give it to a kid who doesn't yet know that these things might be just what he or she needs....

Added bonus for those of us on the lookout for diversity--Annie, as shown in the cover, is a brown skinned girl....

Tall Story, by Candy Gourlay

Tall Story, by Candy Gourlay (David Fickling Books, 2010 in the UK, 2011 in the US, middle grade/young adult, 304 pages)

Andi’s 16 year-old brother has finally gotten his visa to leave the Philippines and join his mother and stepfather in London. It’s been several years since her mom last made it over to visit him, and everyone is tremendously excited to see him. Andi’s expectations for her new big brother are high…she’s looking forward to being a little sister. And maybe Bernardo will love basketball as much as she does.

But when Bernardo arrives at the airport, he is a much bigger brother than she could ever have imagined. He is around eight feet tall.

Back in the Philippines, the people of his village believed his gigantic height made him the embodiment of a legendary giant who kept his people safe from earthquakes; they knew that if he left, the village was probably doomed. And although Bernardo knows he’s just a horribly tall kid (perhaps because he was cursed by a vindictive witch), sometimes he has felt as though he carried the crushing weight of the earth. Bernardo has another secret—a wishing stone that came to him in rather horrible circumstances. He wished on the stone to grow tall, and he did…

In London, Andi’s wishes are going wrong. Her brother is a giant who has no clue about how to live life in London, and, due to an unfortunate ceiling collapse, she has to share her room with him! She’s angry and miserable that her new school has no girls’ basketball team, even though she’s better than the boys. When Bernardo is hailed as the answer to the boys’ team’s prayers, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

But Bernardo wants badly to be a good brother. And so he shares the wishing stone with Andi….

It’s a warm, magical story, rich in detail and rich with honest, believable emotion. It’s told in the alternating voices of Bernardo and Andi, and this allows the author to share Bernardo’s story of growing up too tall in the Philippines, as well as the two kids’ reactions to each other and their new life together. The two different voices and settings emphasize the cross-cultural divide between the two siblings, a divide that I was pretty sure would eventually be crossed, and which, very happily, was.

Tall Story is a lovely example of a book in which the message of acceptance becomes simply part of the journey the characters and the reader take together. And it’s a lovely example of magical realism at its best—if you want to believe that curses and wishes are efficacious, you can, but it isn’t required.

(Edited to add: This was, in fact, nominated for the 2010 Cybils in the science fiction/fantasy category; it was one of the few books I didn't manage to get a hold of. I would probably have suggested moving it to straight middle grade--I lean more toward folklore and coincidence at work, rather than magic....but I put it on my multicultural sci fi/fantasy list anyway. Because maybe it is magic).

Note on age: there is no stereotypically "young adult" content--ie sex, drugs, and bad language-- in this book. But it is about "young adults" and it is so rich thematically, and such a good book, that I think it has appeal for both middle school and high school kids.

Tall Story has picked up three starred reviews (Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist), and it deserves them. A whole slew of reviews can be found nicely cached here.

Ps: For those of us who might feel Doubtful about sports, the basketball side-story doesn’t dominate the book, but nicely enhances the tension.

Tortilla Sun, by Jennifer Cervantes

After my last fiction review, of a book of a much more, um, mature type than I usually read (Bleeding Violet, a book I liked, but which sure wasn't middle grade), it is with a sense of peaceful composure that I sit down to write about Tortilla Sun, by Jennifer Cervantes (Chronicle Books, 2010, middle grade, 218 pages)

12-year-old Izzy has been sent off unexpectedly to spend the summer with her grandmother in New Mexico, where she has never been before, while her mother heads off to Costa Rica to do her own research. She takes with her the baseball she had found just before her mother broke the news-- an old baseball, tucked away in box, with faded words written on it--"Because....magic." Izzy is pretty sure the ball belonged to her father, who died before she was born, but her mom won't talk about him at all.

That summer in New Mexico, Izzy not only finds a place for herself in the love of her grandmother's home, but she finds as well the story of her father and mother, and the tragic end of their love for each other. And helping her find this story is her father himself, calling to her on the wind....

This is a book that makes pictures in the mind--of patches of shade in a hot sunny place, of cool walls with high windows to let in the starlight, places lived in by people who care for each other. And I'm a sucker for books that give me beautiful bedrooms:

"A tall four-poster bed stood at the center of the room. Creamy gauze curtain hung loosely around the edges. At the foot of the bed lay a light blue blanket threaded with lemon yellow that matched the blue swirls layering the walls. Two French doors opened to a walled courtyard with a brightly painted yellow and purple fountain.

"It's so ... so colorful," I said with a hint of surprise.

Nana laughed and leaned against one of the bedposts. "But of course it's colorful. Life is color, isn't it?" (page 31)

Nana's small village is filled with life--with the entwined stories of those who live in this close knit community, and Cervantes' writing is similarly rich with loving descriptions of all the foods, and fabrics, and beliefs and customs that make up their daily lives. It is a book full of things that pulled at my heart, and things that made me laugh. Perhaps it is a bit unbelievably Utopian--it's a place where people aren't pigeon-holed because they are Hispanic (like Izzy's mom) or not (like her dad); where even though people don't have much money, they don't suffer in consequence-- but heck, that makes it an awfully nice place to spend one's reading time.

And it's not at all cloying--Izzy is vividly alive with the twitchy energy of growing up and pushing back a bit at life and figuring out her place in the scheme of things. I liked her lots, and not just because she wants to be a writer--one of the sources of her frustration is her struggle to make her words into stories (which is one of the many metaphors (yay for metaphors) that can be found here!).

Finally, it is awfully nice when a cover matches a book so beautifully. If you like this cover, you will like this book. It was also nice having it's lovely cheerfulness out and about during our most recent spat of grey February weather.

There are things in this story that are magic; things far beyond the quotidian that infuse Izzy's experiences with mystery. I'm a bit torn--on the one hand, I want very much to put the label "fantasy" on this post, so that I can include Izzy's story in my list of multicultural fantasy, and because I think that readers who like the subtle type of fantasy where magical-ness overlaps with the everyday world as part of the natural order of things, will be the readers that like this book best. But on the other hand, the magic so overlaps with the real in this case that "fantasy" isn't the right word--"magical realism" is a better fit, and I don't have a label for that, and I don't want to have to decide which books are what. Sigh. Labels are vexing.

ps. I've decided that putting "fantasy" in the label section is the best way to share with others that I like this book; it will get lost in the morass of my blog otherwise. So I did.

pps. and then I went back and labeled it magical realism too.

Here are some other thoughts, at Readergirlz, The Mother Daughter Book Club, Elizabeth Varadan's Fourth Wish, and The HappyNappyBookseller.

Ninth Ward, by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Ninth Ward, by Jewell Parker Rhodes (2010, Little Brown, middle grade on up, 217 pages) is a book that is just plain unequivocally Good, in its writing, its story, its characters, and even in the much more subjective territory of the feelings it left me with.

Lanesha has lived all her twelve years in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans secure in the love of Mama Ya-Ya, the wise old woman who was the midwife at her birth. Her seventeen-year old mother, rejected by her well off family after she became pregnant, died giving birth to her...but she hasn't quite left her daughter. Her ghost still lies there on the bed where, still and unresponsive, still waiting for her baby to be born safely into the world.

Her Mama is just one of many ghost that Lanesha can see. Mama Ya-Ya has raised Lanesha in world where ghosts are just one fact of life, and everything around them--magnolia flowers, birds, numbers--has a meaning that transcends the quotidian. Despite being as poor as can be money-wise, Mama YaYa given Lanesah a childhood that is just about the warmest, most tenderly-drawn fictional childhood I can think of. Lanesha's suffered through a lot of teasing--crazy, spooky, and witch are some of the things she's called by the other kids. But when it gets too much, and she hides in the bathroom, she thinks of Mama YaYa's words--"'You are loved, Lanesha,' she always says. 'Lanesha, you are loved'" (page 22).

Lanesha might not have any friends at school, but she loves it all the same. She learns everything the teachers can give her (she dreams of being an engineer, and designing bridges, and her teacher, incidentally, is a gem). This school year looks like it might be different, though--there are promising signs that Lanesha will make friends, with both a neighbor boy, TaShon, and a girl in her class. All seems to be going gloriously well.

But reading this happy part of the book, and falling hard for Lanesha and Mama Ya-Ya, and their diverse and vibrant community, brought cold chills, and made me want to cry for the pity of it. Because I knew it was all a fragile soap bubble, about to pop-- it is late August of 2005, and Hurricane Katrina is forming off to the east. The Ninth Ward is doomed, and the courage and determination of Lanesha and TaShon are about to be put to a test that no child should have to undergo.

Now the book becomes a gripping story of children on their own, facing the possibility that there will be no rescue, facing the reality that they will have to save themselves. The great adventure-type of story, where ordinary kids are heros, and must do extraordinary things...

Gosh, it was a good. Brilliant in its characters, vivid with regard to place, gripping in its story. It's my pick for the Newbery this year.

Here's an interview with Jewell Parker Rhodes at Through the Tollbooth, and one at TheHappyNappyBookseller.

(And now I am wondering the following. This book deserves to be nominated for the Cybils Awards. The choice is straight middle grade fiction, or fantasy. It isn't straight middle grade fiction--Mama Ya-Ya has uncanny knowledge, and there are ghosts, one of whom plays an important part in the story. But it isn't fantasy either--there are ghosts, but that's just part of everyday life for the characters, and it is the here and now that is at the center of the story. "Magical realism" might be the most accurate descriptor, but doesn't help with my need to put the book into one of two boxes, neither of which is quite the right fit....

If you've read this book, in which category do you think it would be happiest?)