The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog

This book was not what I was expecting.  I mainly picked it up because it had lots of pictures in the margins and because of the subtitle:  Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog.  Who WOULDN’T want to read about a holy dog?  

This young adult book may not have a high Lexile score (only a 620) but it feels harder because of the time period and the setting of the book.  It’s set in 1242 France.  King Louis has declared a war against these three children and their dog, and people want to know why.  A man stops by an inn one night to ask if anyone knows about the children, which launches into an all-night story about where the children came from, what miracles they have done, and how they banded together.  

The story is told in many different voices, from town peasants to troubadours to a curiously all-knowing nun.  The change in voice is easy to follow, since the author has bolded the words spoken at the inn that are not a part of the storytelling.  The chapters are also visual clues as to who is talking, since the titles all relate back to the current storyteller.  I feel this adds to the authenticity of the story and and unique voice.

Another positive part of this story is the message:  how you can work together, in goodness, even with people who believe differently than you.  Jeanne (loosely based on Joan of Arc) is a poor peasant with no education, just the ability to see visions of the future.  Jacob is a Jewish boy in a kingdom where Christians were literally going to war to wipe out the heathen religions.  William (based on the legend of Guilhem) is a monk-in-training whose father is a Christian crusader and whose mother is an African Muslim, which makes his black in a very, very white France.  Finally, Gweneforte (based on a real story from an inquisitor’s story) is the dog of Jeanne who died because of a misunderstanding, then came back to life.  The whole point of their friendship is to showcase their diversity and how they overcame their differences to become friends.  

The difficult parts to understand about this book is the time period.  There isn’t a whole lot of Middle Ages literature for juvenile and young adult readers that are more historical fiction than fantasy. Because the time period isn’t one that’s well explored, some of the words used may need to be explained to younger readers (like what is an inquisitor, a martyr, crusade, the Talmunds, or an oblate?).

Also, some of the situations seem a little forced or added purely for juvenile comic relief.  For example, the children get captured at one point and must defeat a dragon to get free.  This isn’t an ordinary dragon; this dragon has noxious farts that make you catch on fire.  Silly to me, but may be entertaining for a ten-year-old.  Also, they use the word “ass” multiple times instead of the word “donkey”.  This could be a time period thing, but the first time it’s purposefully meant to be comical, but after that it just seems overused.  For a book with such strong religious morals, it just seemed a little out of place.

The pictures, or illuminations, throughout fit with the time period as well and add to the story.  Overall, it’s a winding tale.  I wanted to love it more than I did.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Sometimes you buy a book on a whim because the cover looks pretty.  Or because the teaser on the back makes you giggle.  Or just because.  That is how this book came to be in my possession:  a splurge birthday book.  And I’m so glad that I bought it.

This quirky book is about Sara, a book enthusiast from Sweden, who decides to spend her vacation meeting her pen pal Amy in her small Iowa town.  But when Sara gets to the town of Broken Wheel, she stumbles upon Amy’s funeral.  The town, not quite sure what to do with their Swedish visitor, decides to let her stay at Amy’s house and tries their best to show off their dying town.  At first Sara is shocked to find the town isn’t as vibrant as Amy’s letters made it out to be, but soon the eccentric citizens grow on her.  Sara decides to give something back to the town, something that her and Amy both loved:  books.  She decides to open a small book store full of Amy’s books to spread her love to reading to this small, forgotten town.

Most of the time, this book is hilarious.  Like when the townspeople decide Sara needs a vacation romance and push Tom, the town’s most eligible bachelor, in her direction.  Or pious Caroline trying to fix the town’s troubles one church collection at a time.  Or Grace, the smart-mouthed owner of the one cafe in town who swears off reading.  Or Jen, the overbearing town transplant, who tries to force the town’s newsletter on everyone.

One thing I had to get used to with the storytelling, however, was the third person perspective.  You don’t realize it until the perspective changes to another character’s thoughts, and it takes a minute to reorient yourself to the new character’s way of thinking.  But this point of view change also gives us insight into different characters’ motivations and doesn’t limit our town view to just Sara, so I feel the good outweighs the slightly awkward transitions.

This book was a refreshing read, and one I’d recommend to all book lovers.  I really enjoy Amy’s point: “Books are fantastic…but how fun is it to read a fantastic book if you can’t tell others about it, talk about, and quote from it constantly?”

The Boy in the Black Suit

Recently, Jason Reynolds name has popped up frequently in the YA reading world.  Earlier this year I finally cracked the pages of All American Boys, an illustration of modern day police brutality.  So I was excited to read his other works, and The Boy in the Black Suit didn’t disappoint.  

The story follows Matthew, whose mother just died from cancer.  He’s just trying to cope and keep himself from shattering into a million pieces.  His father has check-out mentally, so the best thing Matt can think of is to get a job to help with some of the bills.  Enter Mr. Ray.  He offers Matt a job at his funeral home after school.  Matt thinks this is the worst idea (but better than cleaning vomit off the floor of the local fast food joint) but decides to take the job.  He starts wearing his black suit so he can sit inconspicuously and watch the funerals as a way to help him cope with his grief.  That’s where he meets Love, a girl with grit and strength beyond what he’s capable of.  As he gets closer to Love he realizes that some events in life can’t be controlled, but you need to be able to play with the hand you’re dealt. 

The ending seems a little abrupt, but I think the author was just trying to illustrate that life isn’t always going to be neatly tied up.  Bad things will happen.  But that doesn’t mean you stop living.  We don’t know the outcome of Matthew’s grief journey; all we know is that he’s started down a healthy path with people who care about him to support him.  And that’s all we can really expect. I think Mr. Ray says it best:  “I realized that it’s not that death is bad.  It’s not. It’s just that life is so good.  So damn good that you just wanna hold on to it, and everybody in it.  But we can’t.  But what we can do, is appreciate it more.  Y’know, smell the flowers.”

Sparrow

After reading the back teaser at our school book fair, I thought I had a winning read:  a girl who has a breakdown and now has to convince people she was NOT trying to jump off the roof of her school.  Seems like it could be heartwarming and funny, but it felt disjointed, like it was two books in one.

Sparrow is an 8th grader who can fly.  Well, at least in her mind.  Being an extreme introvert and overly anxious, her coping mechanism when life got too hard was to pretend she was a bird and fly away.  But when her favorite teacher at school dies unexpectedly, Sparrow starts to come apart.  Hence the school finding her on the roof and assuming she was going to jump.  Now Sparrow is in therapy and trying to deal with her emotions.  This is where the story diverges.  Her hip therapist plays Sparrow music to help her explain her emotions.  From this she learns to use music as her escape instead and decides to try going to a music camp during the summer.

I know it’s all focusing on Sparrow and how she deals with her anxiety, but the whole music camp part of the story seemed a little like an add-on.  I get where the author was going with it, but it just didn’t mesh well with the rest of the story. It’s like listening to a mediocre song and thinking it’s about over when the singers launch into another verse.

Another detail I had issues with was the ending.  The climax the story has been building towards ended up being glossed over and pushed away in a rush to get to the resolution.  Overall, it’s an okay story, just not the best about this topic.

If you’re really looking for a stellar story about teens dealing with anxiety and inward fears, here are some better choices:

It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

The Beauty that Remains by Ashley Woodfolk

House Arrest by K.A. Holt

Ghost

Jason Reynolds is a phenomenal young adult writer. He truly understands his audience and has created another book that all my boys and reluctant readers are picking up.  

Castle “Ghost” Cranshaw is a runner.  He’s run away from his unpredictably violent father and his own problems at school, but now he’s run straight onto a track team. The only catch is he has to stay out of trouble to stay on the team.  That’s easy enough to say but harder to accomplish in reality.

This book does a really good job with pacing.  There’s never any real lag in the story and everything flows together.  I also really enjoy how it shows actions and consequences.  For example, Ghost doesn’t have money for real track shoes, so he ends up stealing some.  For a while he thinks he gets away with it, but in the end he has to confess to his mistake.  I also like how they acknowledged his complicated feelings.  Yes, he’s done bad things, but he understands they are not what he wants to do.  However, I do feel like it could have been taken further.  For example, Ghost has some PTSD from the night that his father became violent towards him.  He can’t sleep in his room, and he freaks out when he’s stuck in the storage room at the local grocery store since that’s where he ran to hide.  But this is never really explained or resolved, so it’s just something you have to infer. I guess I really wanted more to this book, but since it’s the first in a series, we will get to know the characters more as we go (the second book Patina just came out).

Overall, it’s a good book for the target audience (it kind of reminds me of the Bluford book series that was popular about ten years ago), but more advanced middle schoolers may need a more challenging read.

The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland

The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland feels like a warm, comforting hug (if books had arms…which would be weird…and a little gross).  It will make you laugh out loud, cry with sorrow, and feel all the emotions in between.

Zander has been sent to summer camp.  A summer camp for kids who are messed up in some way, shape, or form.  At first, Zander doesn’t want to participate in arts and crafts or share-apy sessions, but then she sort of by accident gets pulled into a group of dysfunctional friends.  Cassie, Zander’s bunkmate, is a “manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic disaster” who pushes everyone away with her bad attitude.  Alex Trebek is a pathological liar.  And Grover Cleveland is PC (pre-crazy) and is preparing for the day he follows his father’s schizophrenic footsteps.  Throughout the book, they learn to let go of some of their anxieties and learn that “reality might be ugly, but sometimes we can be broken and beautiful.”

The best part about this book are the characters.  Zander is the perfect narrator for this story because she’s already so far inside her own head.  She doesn’t outwardly show a lot of emotions, so when she’s confronted with characters that spew their emotions everywhere, it makes for an interesting story.  Grover is just adorably hilarious.  He’s never scared to speak up—especially if it will confuse the counselors—and has a quick wit.  His interactions with Zander compliment each other well. And then there’s Cassie.  She’s the girl you love to hate.  She’s loud, she gets into everyone’s business, she purposefully causes chaos, but in the end, you can’t help but like her. Alex is more of a throw away character—just there for some comic relief and to round out the friend group to four—but the other characters more than make up for that.

I’ve read stories like this before, but none have the heart that this book has.  

The Traitor's Game

The Traitor’s Game is what you would expect from a Jennifer A. Nielsen book: lots of plot twists and changing alliances.  If you haven’t read her other works, she’s also written The Mark of the Thief trilogy (see blog post here), The False Prince trilogy, and A Night Divided (see blog post here). 

This one is set in a fictional country of Antora where a tyrannical Lord Endrick has taken control.  With the help of the Dominion, he’s wiped out the rest of his Endrean people and stolen their magic so he’s practically immortal.  Or is he?  The Coracks and the Halderians (two rebel groups trying to fight Lord Endrick) believe there is a dagger that holds magic that can kill Lord Endrick, the Olden Blade.  Enter Kestra.  Her father is Lord Endrick’s right-hand man and a part of the most powerful family in the country, and she may be the only one who knows where the blade is hiding.  So, the Coracks blackmail her into helping them find the blade.  In the middle of all the politics, there is also a tension between Kestra and one of her captors, Simon, who used to be her childhood friend.  A romantic entanglement is the last thing Kestra wants (or needs) if she’s going to get through this scenario alive.

I’m still on the fence about how this series will go.  I felt like there was a lot going on with all the different groups vying for power.  It was hard at times to keep track of all of them and who was mad at whom.  For example, the Coracks were the ones who planned Kestra’s kidnapping and blackmail, but on their way back to her home, they are also raided by the Halderians who may happen to have a mole in the Corack operation.  Crazy, right?  Then she also decided to throw magic in the mix, too?  It seems like a fantasy hodgepodge.

I do have to give kudos to the main character, Kestra.  She’s a multifaceted character with many layers.  She can defend herself (and does multiple times by stealing knives off soldiers or disabling them with defense moves) and she’s a pro at compartmentalizing her priorities (which is good because between an arranged marriage, Simon’s obvious feelings for her, and figuring out who she can trust with her darkest secrets, she has her brain full).  I can’t wait to see how she gets herself out of her tangled situation (don’t worry, this is the first of a trilogy).

Was I in love with it?  Not really.  Will I read the sequels when they come out?  Definitely.  

*This book just came out at the end of February, so check it out now!

806

Meet KT.  She just found out her deadbeat dad who walked out on her isn’t her biological father.  However, the truth isn’t much better; her real father is anonymous sperm donor 806.  After realizing her life isn’t complete, she decides to investigate, starting with finding any other donor 806 siblings that may be out there.  She ends up meeting Gabe (a nerd who’s allergic to everything and is into magic tricks) and Jesse (the star swimmer at her school and reigning jock king).  They are donor 806’s kids and want to find their biological father, too.  This starts a crazy cross country road trip to hunt for him.

On the surface, this book has potential to be hilarious.  However, it falls flat.  Yes, there are funny things that happen but for the most part it seemed rather jumbled.  There were some parts that didn’t seem like they belonged, like Gabe’s crush on Daisy.  Or their Jeep getting stolen by a guy robbing a convenience store then finding him literally one page later and getting the Jeep back.  Or running out of gas and then having to persuade the cops to give them gas while trying to evade their questions.  Or all their parents being blissfully unaware of their road trip (Gabe and Jesse’s parents are out of the country…conveniently…and KT’s mom just doesn’t really care where she is).  It all just seems a little implausible to me.

The characters also seemed a little one-sided.  As the story progressed, it got better, but readers shouldn’t have to wait until 80% of the way through the book before they see any type of growth in a character. 

It was good for a rainy Saturday read, but not much more. 

*I received this book free from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

The Beauty That Remains

This book is achingly beautiful and poignant.  Over the three days it took me to read it, I cried.  Every.  Single.  Time.  But it was worth the extra tissues and puffy eyes.

The story revolves around three teens who’ve lost someone important in their lives:  Autumn’s best friend Tavia just died in a car accident, Logan’s ex-boyfriend Bram committed suicide a month ago, and Shay’s twin sister died of leukemia three months ago.  They are all going through grief and pain and loss and blame.  However, the one connection they all have is the band Unraveling Lovely.  Their lyrics are the backdrop to their pain and their go-to music to drown out their sadness.

The best thing about this book and the reason I would recommend it is how it deals with grief.  Not everyone will show their pain the same way.  Some, like Autumn, try to hold it in until they feel like they are downing without air.  Some, like Logan, try to escape into distractions and deny their pain.  Others, like Shay, start to have panic attacks at the most random times.  I think that sometimes we are told that we can only grieve one way when we have a loss or that there is a time frame for grief, but really it will be different for everyone.  But the best thing is that it teaches kids it’s okay.  It’s okay to feel like you’re going to burst into a million pieces over a simple toothbrush.  It’s okay to forgive, even if the person you need to forgive isn’t here anymore to hear you say it.  And it’s okay to talk about it.  Some of the characters end up getting professional help, but they all realize that they have to open up to their friends and those who love them to help them deal with their pain.  It doesn’t glamorize death.  It makes it real and painful and shows the reactions of those left behind in a true way.

Recently, I experienced this kind of grief. My cousin had a baby, the first cousin on that side of the family to have kids that my kids could play with.  His name was Aubrey, and he was perfect.  He lived a week before contracting a virus he couldn’t fight.  I never got to meet him, never got to tell him how loved he was, never got to introduce him to my boys, and that wrecked me.  The mother in me pours out to my cousin in pain and hope and understanding.  I know how easily something like this could happen to my boys.  Without my faith in a God that works all things for good, I don’t think I would have handled it as well.  I may not like the circumstances, but I can put my trust in an infallible God that heals broken hearts.

Bad things happen.  That is a fact of life.  This book let’s everyone know that although things may seem bleak, there is still beauty that remains.

*I’d recommend this for high school and up since it does have some situations of teen drinking and some drug/sex references.

**Thanks, Net Galley, for this book!  It was just released, so find it at your local library today.

A Letter to A Wrinkle in Time

Dear Wrinkle in Time,

I guess congratulations are in order.  You are about to be one (of the many) books that now have a movie.  I know that’s the reason why my book club chose you as our reading book (and because most of us have kids so why not choose a book we can enjoy WITH them?  It’s a win-win situation) and I know people are eager to see what kind of adaptation will happen on the big screen.

However, I am not a convert to your pages.  I’ve tried to read you three times (I mean, how many times does one need to read a book to realize they don’t like it?) and each time I think I understand you a little better.  But that doesn’t mean I like you.  

The first time I cracked your pages, I utterly despised you.  It was sixth grade and my teacher thought she would pull you off her shelf and read you aloud to us.  Big mistake.  To capture the attention of a room of eleven-year-olds, you need to be a little more relatable.  Yes, my imagination was wild as a child, but science fiction isn’t usually a child’s first genre to love.  And it’s hard to love (or even appreciate) something that is just so totally foreign.  I mean, you made up words…you purposefully confused me (or so I thought) with your science-talk…your bad guy was not physically fighting anyone but worming his way into their brains.  Ew!  So I vowed to push you aside and not read you again.

Then I became a teacher.  I felt bad for you.  Why had I tossed you aside?  What had you done to deserve my response of, “Oh, you’re reading A Wrinkle in Time?  I’ve never liked it, but good luck…”?  So like any good English teacher, I tried again. And again you were found wanting.  By this time I had at least been introduced to science fiction and found my mind was able to accept more of your principles now.  Sure, they’re squeezing themselves between time and space.  Okay, they land on a two-dimensional planet by accident.  I can make sense of this.  

But like the last time the characters annoyed me.  Meg Murry, the main character, seemed childish and impetuous (how many times does she stomp her foot in anger, as a thirteen year old?  I’m around thirteen year olds all the time and I’ve never seen one stomp their foot).  Charles Wallace, Meg’s precocious little brother, is just creepy.  I have an almost-five-year-old, and I would be weirded out if he talked to me the way he does.  And don’t get me started on Calvin O’Keefe, the kid who shows up randomly because of a “feeling” and never goes away.  It’s a little too “we are fated to meet and now I love you”, which if you’ve ever heard me talk about teen romance books, this is my biggest pet peeve.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on you (I think I can hear you sobbing on my nightstand). You do have some good qualities.  Like your message about love being stronger than hate. How Meg’s love leads her back to her brother and her father and gives her the ability to help them when noting else will.  You also admit that it’s okay to be scared.  No one has to be confident and brave all the time, but true bravery is doing what is necessary even when you are scared.  You teach children not to judge others based on their appearances, like Meg did with Aunt Beast and the witches, because you never know what’s a person’s really like until you get to know them.

So let’s just agree to disagree and move on with our lives.  People love you, so don’t worry, Wrinkle (just not THIS person)…you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

Sincerely, 

Mrs. Harper