Isabel lives her life through other people’s stories; old movies, old photographs and clothing she finds in thrift stores, and old books she repairs in the basement of the library. But when she finds an old postcard of Amsterdam in her favorite junk shop, she is surprised to find a message on the back. She imagines it is a message from one lover to another, and she begins to think about the way she lives her life.

She resolves to reveal something of herself to Spoke, a veteran of the war in Iraq who also works in the basement of the library. Spoke, too, is a solitary figure, liked by his co-workers, but extremely private. Isabel struggles to make a connection while she can.

Glaciers by Alexis M Smith on the surface seems disarmingly simple, but as the story quietly unfolds and Alexis reveals more about herself and her childhood near the Glaciers in Alaska, the portrait emerges of a twenty-something woman who values the things that others have discarded, while she struggles to find beauty and meaning in the present. Her hometown of Portland, Oregon plays a strong role in the story, as it allows her to be isolated even in the midst of an urban landscape that is on the surface much the same as Isabel.

Glaciers has a restless quality to it that will keep Isabel’s story in your mind long after you have turned the last page of this small but provocative novel.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book for review.

Adrienne is sure her summer is going to be a disaster. Instead of spending it on a wilderness canoe trip in Canada with her best friend, she’s stuck at home in West New Hope, Delaware with a knee injury. And if that isn’t bad enough, her mother is forcing her to be in a mother-daughter book club with girls she would never hang out with. CeeCee is popular and a bit of a spoiled, rich girl, Jill works at the pool and her mother thinks she doesn’t socialize enough, and Wallis is a sort of recluse who for some reason actually wanted to be in the club. Her mother never attends meetings and no one has ever met her.

The girls choose to read five books from their AP English list for junior year, but it’s clear from the beginning that reading and books isn’t at all what this club is about.

Until reading The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls by Julie Schumacher I had never considered the possibility that mother-daughter book clubs could actually be a bad influence on girls. Even though this reading group bears no resemblance to real-life groups that I know of, the issues brought up are important ones.

The story is told from Adrienne’s perspective. She loves to read, she’s comfortable around her best friend but not in broader social circles, and she’s not much of a risk taker. But CeeCee, who has a knack for creating trouble, starts to get under her skin.

As the two of them spend more time together Adrienne finds herself doing things she never would have otherwise, as though she’s trying on a different personality for the summer. She questions who she is and thinks about who she wants to be, but the questions create turmoil and the answers don’t come easy. The moms also have issues they are dealing with, and it’s clear that there are different levels of parental supervision and involvement in each of the girls’ lives.

As a side note, girls and their moms may also want to explore the titles in the summer reading list this book club takes on: The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Anna Perkins; Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley; The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula LeGuin; The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros; and The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. Each book resonates in some way with the girls, and their discussions about them are interesting. Girls in mother-daughter book clubs with girls ages 14 and up will find a lot to talk about when reading The Unbearable Book Club.

The author provided me with a copy of this book to review.

Glow is a fascinating story that starts during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1940s and goes back in time to tell the story of a remote mountainous region in Georgia and the generations of whites, African Americans, and Native Americans who lived there. I enjoyed it from beginning to end, and I have a copy to giveaway to one reader who leaves a comment before midnight (PDT) on Thursday, May 24. Also, tomorrow I am featuring a Q and A with the author, Jessica Maria Tuccelli. So read on to for my official review, leave a comment, then check back tomorrow for the author interview.

Glow by Jessica Maria Tuccelli

When Amelia McGee gets a threatening rock through her window on the eve of a picket by blacks in Washington, D.C. in 1941, the first things she thinks to do is send her daughter Ella back to the homestead in Georgia where she will be safe. But something goes wrong on the way. The bus breaks down and deposits Ella late. When she begins to walk to her uncle’s home, two men in a pickup attack her, but she’s rescued before she is seriously injured. So begins the tale in Glow, a novel by Jessica Maria Tuccelli that starts with these early stirrings of the Civil Rights Movement and goes back in time to slavery and the removal of Native Americans from their land.

In remote Hopewell County, Georgia, a mix of fiercely independent people worked a hardscrabble existence in the hills. When preacher Solomon Bounds brings in a hardy strain of tobacco and builds a home with his family and slaves, he lays the footwork for a dynamic that will exist for generations to come.

The storytellers are mostly women: Amelia, Ella and Willa Mae Cotton. Ella is still young and impressionable, not aware of the cruelties of the world for a mixed race child in the 1940s. Amelia suffered the taunts of children who called her a half-breed when she was young, and she remembers her Cherokee grandmother sharing with her the lore of her people. She couldn’t understand hating or loving someone because of the color of their skin, and it seemed natural to her to fall in love with Obadiah Bounds, a black man who is Ella’s father. Willa Mae was born into slavery, and she knew that both her happiness and grief depended on the character of the man who owned her.  She navigated the tricky waters of freedom and survived as a bridge from the old ways to the generations that came after her.

Throughout the saga, Glow paints a story of people for generations who want nothing more than the freedom to decide their own fate and care for their families. It’s a sweeping tale that reminds me Cold Mountain with it’s descriptions of life in the Georgia mountains, and of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman for its scope of American history. Mother-daughter book clubs with girls aged 15 and above will find a lot to talk about including the role of women in the times represented, slavery, Civil Rights and the relocation of Native Americans from their homeland.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book to review.

Kara’s life in Manhattan roars at a dizzying pace. She feels she is always rushing to something—work, her children’s activities, or an event with her husband. There’s no time for her to think, just to do. Then, one day when she encounters paintings in a gallery from her former lover in college, she begins to question what she really feels is important as well as how she wants her future to unfold.

Henny on the Couch by Rebecca Land Soodak takes a look at how easy it is for us to go through every day in charge of the details and lose sight of the big picture we want to create with those details. Kara experiences what many moms do: she is generally happy with her life, yet she’s also restless for something more. She started a successful business, but the work there doesn’t make her happy. She always wonders if she’s spending enough time with her children, particularly when her daughter Henny starts to have trouble in school. And her husband seems sure of where he wants to go, which is to grow his business and move the family to the West Coast, but Kara’s not sure she wants to do that either. She wants to address the issue, but she doesn’t know how to do that and stay married.

Underlying it all is Kara’s own experience as a child, with a mother who was always disappointed that she wasn’t talented enough to pursue her dream of singing professionally and drank to numb her sense of failure. When Kara meets Oliver, her old lover, again, and when her best friend makes a life change Kara doesn’t approve of, she finally takes the time the think about what she really wants and how she wants her life to be going forward.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book to review.

When Annia Ciezadlo started dating a Lebanese man she met in New York, she had no idea how his culture and his family would influence her life. After all, most of Mohamad’s family lived elsewhere, in Lebanon, France and Spain. But when Newsday appointed Mohamad to chief of its Middle East bureau, he wanted to be stationed in Beirut, and Annia moved with him. Soon they were both in Iraq, Mohamad reporting and Annia working as a freelance writer. Annia’s story, Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, And War talks about their days living there and the subsequent years they spent back in Beirut.

A girl from the Midwest, Annia saw importance in food from the time she was very young. She eats anything, which is part of what makes her account so fascinating. While Annia’s story takes place in war zones, her story is not about the conflicts themselves as much as it is about the people that experience it. How do they live, how do they eat, and how do they comfort themselves amid the uncertainty and violence? The people she befriends, the people she interviews for stories, all experience loss and deprivation, yet they carry on in ways that people have probably been carrying on from the beginning of conflict—with food, with friends and family, and with hope for the future.

As Annia meets Mohamad’s family and gets to know them, eventually even learning how to cook traditional Lebanese foods from his mother, she also confronts what it is about herself that makes her crave life in a war zone. Her descriptions of the conflicts she finds herself in the middle of and recent histories there are interesting. It’s a fascinating account of a place and a time that few of us have experienced outside of news stories. A bonus with Day of Honey is all the recipes in the back—nearly 20 of them that you’ll be eager to try so you can bring a taste of the Middle East into your own kitchen.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book to review.

Rosie Flo’s coloring books series by Roz Streeten offers several out-of-the-ordinary options for kids who like to and have the patience to color in detail. The series includes books on kitchen items, gardening, animals, travel, night-time activities and more. Now author Roz Streeten has created Rosie Flo’s Coloring Fashion Show with tear outs that let kids create their own fashion shows, complete with an audience and a runway.

I asked for a copy of this for review from the publisher because I thought it would resonate with younger girls who like to color and would appreciate being able to make a display with their creations. Once I received my copy in the mail, I knew it would live up to my expectations. Rosie Flo’s Coloring Fashion Show comes in a sturdy box that can keep everything tidy as girls complete each part of the tableau that will make up their stage and fashions. Once colored in, the stage itself with the runway is easy and fun to assemble.

The outfits for the models and audience members are not connected with faces, legs and arms, and at first I wasn’t sure I liked it that way. I am used to cut-outs that attach to figures that actually look like people. But then I realized I like this template better, because it lets you imagine the types of people wearing the clothes. In your mind, you can create an audience and models of whatever ethnicity you’d like, without a cut-out making it fixed.

I really enjoyed thinking about the colors I wanted to use on the fashions, and it was fun creating wild combinations that I would never wear myself. My daughter and I worked on this together, and I appreciated the time we had to talk as we both colored away. It’s the kind of unstructured conversation time that rarely comes up in our daily lives. My daughter is also a fan of Project Runway, so she was happy for a chance to put her own thoughts about color onto the outfits provided in the kit.

Here are a few photos of Rosie Flo’s Coloring Fashion Show to help give you an idea of what you and your daughter can create.

Here’s the box with the stage unassembled and sheets of fashions nearby.

Here’s the audience assembled and a dress on the runway.

Here’s our work area. Lots of fashions are already completed, but there’s still more to go.

Calli feels as though she’s the only one in her family who is not a super achiever. Her brother excels at basketball, her sister skates and her parents are busy getting them to practices and games and cheering them on. As the youngest, Calli often feels she gets no attention because she’s average and happy to be that way. But when her fifth grade class is paired with a group of second graders as part of a Peer Helper Program, she may just find something she is happy to excel at.

Calli Be Gold by Michele Weber Hurwitz is sure to strike a chord with both moms and daughters. Calli’s mom never has a spare moment, rushing from one event to another with post-it notes stuck to her steering wheel to help her remember where she’s going. Her dad pushes all the kids to be super achievers, and he asks them each to report on their accomplishments every night at dinner. The portrait is of a family so busy doing, they don’t have time to relax. That lifestyle is bound to be familiar to many readers.

Calli has to figure out how to let her family know that she doesn’t want to jump onto the merry-go-round of activities. The family dynamic is complicated by the fact that both of her parents didn’t get to achieve things they wanted when they were children, so they are determined that their own kids won’t have similar regrets.

Calli’s relationship with Noah, the second-grader she works with for the Peer Helper Program, helps her see what’s really important and find a way to let everyone else know how she feels. Noah faces challenges of his own, and as she gets to know him better, she realizes what her own strengths are.

Mother-daughter book clubs with girls aged 9 to 13 will have a lot to talk about after reading Calli Be Gold. They can talk about the things they like to do and what motivates them to do those things. They can talk about the difficulties and challenges family members sometimes face when communicating with each other. Also, there are issues with Calli and her friends at school, as well as with Noah, that should provide for interesting discussion. I highly recommend it.

The author provided me with a copy of this book to review.

I loved being able to recommend good books for middle-grade readers, which is roughly defined as readers aged 9 to 12, The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook is one of those, so read on for the review, and check back tomorrow for an essay from author Joanne Rocklin about the power of telling stories (check back tomorrow for the essay).

Ever since Oona found Zook, short for zucchini, in the alley by their apartment, the kitty has been a big part of her family’s life. He helped comfort Oona’s dad when he was dying of cancer, and he’s a constant companion to Oona and her little brother, Fred. But when Zook gets sick and has to stay at the vet’s office, Oona and Fred both worry that he won’t make it.

To distract Fred, and to buoy up her own spirits, Oona tells him that cats have nine lives, and Zook is on his fifth. She creates imaginative stories about all the adventures their kitty has had in his other lives, and while she talks she also helps Fred learn how to spell by drawing rebuses, which are puzzles that combine pictures and letters to suggest a word.

In between telling stories of Zook, Oona worries because her mom is hanging out more and more with a man who lives around the corner. Plus, Oona is keeping a big secret about the day she found Zook. She’s not sure how she’s ever going to tell the truth, but she knows the day is coming when she’ll have to.

The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook is a sweet book about a thoughtful 10-year-old girl who is still grieving for her father and is determined to do what she can for her beloved cat. You’ll fall in love with Oona, who knows that important words are spelled in all caps and has what she calls the “Rainbow Whopper Theory” about lying—blue whoppers save “your scaredy skin,” black whoppers are told to hurt someone, yellow whoppers leave important information out…and so on.

Oona loves her little brother, and she wants to protect him as well as help teach him. She’s a big help to her mother, but she also resents that her mother seems to be moving on with her life after her dad’s death. She’s determined to think bad things about the man her mother is spending time with.

Oona is quick to judge, but she’s also quick to revise her opinion. Deep down she knows what is right, but she struggles to always do the right thing. By the time you turn the last page of The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook, Oona will have worked her way into your heart and will stay there for a while. I highly recommend the book for mother-daughter book clubs with girls aged 8 and up.

Check the author’s website for a sample chapter, an activity kit that you can use during a meeting, and a link to the book trailer.

The author provided me with a copy of this book to review.

Finley goes into his senior year in high school knowing three things: he loves his girlfriend Erin, he plans to have a stellar year as point guard of his basketball team, and then, somehow, he will get out of the rough Philadelphia neighborhood that has worn down his father and grandfather.

But when his basketball coach asks him to befriend a troubled boy whose parents have been murdered, Finley’s world is turned upside down. Russ, or Boy 21 as he wants to be called, is a basketball star who plays the same position as Finley. Also, Finley has never been friends with another boy; he’s not sure he will know how to help Russ.

As Finley discovers, senior year has even more surprises in store for him, and before it’s over he will revisit a troubling incident in his own childhood and question all the things he knows to be true.

Boy 21 by Matthew Quick is raw and gritty as it unflinchingly looks at life in inner-city Philadelphia, where competing mobs and drug dealers rule the streets and quiet boys need to be under someone’s protection to survive. Quick gets to the heart of Finley’s conflict: he is a part of the environment he grew up in, and while he longs to find a better life, he’s not sure how to make that happen. He’s been taught to respect authority, and he doesn’t question what his coach asks him to do. But is that truly in his best interest? Finley is a team player. The question is, can he stay one and still find a way to leave the street behind.

Great for both boys and girls, Boy 21 examines issues of family, resilience, survival, and tragedy. It will grip you right up until the unexpected conclusion.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book to review.

I always love to read author Christina Hamlett’s insightful reviews. Today she is stopping by  with her thoughts of the book Starters by Lissa Price.

Title: Starters
Author: Lissa Price
Genre: YA
Publisher: Delacorte Books (2012)

Despite this dystopian novel’s underlying political message that wealth is synonymous with evil and that the old guard can only retain its grip on power by physically “occupying” the youth movement, the author has crafted a gripping, plausible premise that could easily topple The Hunger Games in today’s YA market. It clearly has film potential written all over it, and the gutsy heroine at the core of the crisis is someone with whom readers will empathize from the get-go.

Although it borrows some of its futuristic themes from existing novels and movies, the YA emphasis gives it a fresh, page-turning spin that offers teeth-gritting danger at virtually every turn. In addition, it provides no shortage of food-for-thought for book clubs and discussion groups, specifically insofar as the lengths that desperate people will go to in order to ensure their survival in a hostile world. Dark parallels can be drawn to teen prostitution and the makeover of young innocents like Callie into appealing eye-candy that will subsequently be used by others in exchange for money. The body bank that controls these transactions is the functional equivalent of a pimp, complete with threat mechanisms if the parties in question start getting ideas of their own about flipping the status quo.

It’s also a clever device that a mysterious, air-borne plague has wiped out everyone who is middle-age (a proxy for the middle class?), leaving only the very young (who are poor) and the very old (who are rich). I’m reminded of how many times a new strain of flu surfaces and the public is advised that those with the weakest immune systems (children and seniors) are a priority for getting shots because they might not otherwise survive. In Starters, that possibility serves as the grim reality that kicks all of the danger into high-gear.

Obviously my own analysis of symbolism and political motifs may just be a product of the country’s current mindset which is repeatedly fueled by divisiveness and reinforced by have/have-not hatred geared to attract votes. Whether or not that was this wonderful author’s intention, the unsettling election-year climate that exists makes the intensity and sustainability of this plot that much easier to accept. My only cautionary note is that you clear the decks, turn off the phone, and tell your family they’ll have to find their own food when you plan to start reading; from the opening chapter you won’t be able to put it down until you’re finished.