Book Review: My First Best Friend by Nancy Lindemeyer

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Do you remember the first person you called your best friend? If you do, chances are you’ll enjoy the 30 stories celebrating friendship in a new book from Nancy Lindemeyer, My First Best Friend: Thirty Stories, Lifetime Memories.

Stories feature friends who are still close and continue to think of each other as “the best,” and also stories from those who may have lost contact long ago but still remember how much their special friendship meant then. You’ll find recipes that hold special memories for some of the writers, and poems and quotes that help illustrate the influence friends can have on our lives.

The women in these stories also span the ages, some are enjoying being grandparents together, others are mothering older teens and young adults, and some are just starting out on their own. It’s interesting to see the things that stay the same and the things that are different in how friendships can develop in different historical times. Don’t be surprised if My First Best Friend inspires you to reach for your phone or keyboard to reconnect with your own friend from long ago.

Book Review: The Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner

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Prince of Persia imageFor years I’ve heard of Prince of Persia as a video game, but as I don’t play games I didn’t know much about it. When I was given the chance to review the new graphic novel inspired by the video, I knew I wanted to take a look. Graphic novels in general are something relatively new for me. I think of them as like picture books for older readers. So many times when my daughters were young we would read a picture book over and over again, and each time we would see something we missed in the illustrations when we read it before. Or, we would look for some of our favorite scenes.

As with picture books, illustrations carry the story in graphic novels too. There’s often not much back story that can’t be found out through dialogue and pictures. Which means graphic novels, while they can be read quickly, are more enjoyable when they are read slowly.

This is definitely the case with Prince of Persia. The action takes place in the kingdom of Marv during two centuries, the 9th and the 13th. The two story lines are similar in some ways: a restless population, both good and corrupt rulers, the people looking for a savior. If you race through it all, it can be confusing, even though the different time periods are depicted in different color tones. As I read I found myself going back a few times to clarify what was happening in one place or another. That’s when I realized I needed to slow down.

While Prince of Persia readers may definitely call to mind scenes from The Arabian Nights and Disney’s Aladdin, this isn’t a book for very young children—violence includes quite a few severed heads and tongues. But the story, once you grasp it, has a few twists that make it enjoyable. It could be fun for mother-daughter book clubs to read this graphic novel, go together as a group to see the movie, The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, then gather to talk about both. The movie is rated PG-13 for violence, so consider that when deciding to take on both adaptations.

Jordan Mechner, creator of the Prince of Persia, had this to say about the novel, the video game and the movie.

Can you talk about translating your video game to the graphic novel and the forthcoming movie? What stayed the same, what had to change?

JM: It might seem on the surface that a video game story should translate fairly easily into a movie screenplay or graphic novel, but in fact games demand a totally different approach to storytelling. For a writer, this makes games one of the most difficult of all forms of literary source material to adapt.

Graphic novels are read; movies are watched; video games are played. The story of the video game “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time” was tailored to support the needs of the game play and give the player the best playing experience—whereas in movies and other linear storytelling formats, the story is primary.

The game story, as proud as I am of it, wouldn’t make a completely satisfying reading or movie-going experience. It works well in concert with the game play, but taken on its own, no matter how well embroidered, it would be a pale echo of the game. That’s why, to write the movie screenplay, I took the characters and plot elements form the video game and rewove them into a new story line that is better suited to the cinema. For the graphic novel, we took an even more radical departure—it doesn’t follow the plot of any of the games, or of the movie.

Book Review: The Turning by Helen Ellis

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The Turning imageMary Richards isn’t sure what’s wrong with her. She got so tired in school she fell asleep…and purred. She’s sprouting fur wherever a cat rubs against her skin. And she’s craving milk. When Nick, the guy she has a crush on, seems to understand what’s happening to her, and he offers to help, she decides that maybe what’s happening to her isn’t so wrong after all.

The Turning: What Curiosity Kills by Helen Ellis is a new teen series focusing on humans who can turn into cats. Ellis pokes fun at Upper-East-Side-priveliged- Manhattan life with her cast of characters—most of whom attend an elite private school populated by scads of fertility drug, embryo implanted twins and children adopted as babies from Asia. Mary and her sister Octavia are the only students adopted out of the foster-child system in the U.S. when they were eight. Their school is super politically correct.

The Turning brings up several issues for Mary: Who can she tell about what’s happening to her? Given the chance to go back to her regular life, will she take it? Can she adapt to her new realities without getting hurt in the sometimes-violent cat life? This first novel is funny and intriguing. While it sometimes feels like a prologue for the books that are to come,  I expect teens interested in finding a new series with an intriguing premise will find a lot to like here.

Book Review: The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott By Kelly O’Connor McNees

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The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott imageLouisa May Alcott is one of the most beloved literary figures in American history. Her book Little Women, has never been out of circulation, and it’s been adapted for the screen and stage many times. As Little Women is widely known to be somewhat autobiographical, it’s easy for readers to feel they know Louisa May as well as they know Jo, her fictional counterpart.

I would expect this familiarity would make writing a novel about Louisa and her real family daunting, especially for first-time novelists. But I’m glad that author Kelly O’Connor McNees took up that challenge when creating The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott. The book is full of enough facts about Louisa’s real life to make her situation come alive for readers, but those facts are woven into the story well enough that they remain interesting instead of becoming a boring list forced into a story line.

We see Louisa as a real women influenced by her own upbringing to reject romance and marriage for herself. We see the struggles she faced when deciding between accepting the reality of love freely offered to her and pursuing her dream of being a writer. Married women in Louisa’s time were mostly relegated to a life of drudgery and endless chores. Few had the option of pursuing anything other than domestic pursuits. Even those who by necessity worked, usually earned their money through sewing or teaching or cleaning.

Louisa’s father plays a prominent role in the book, as he did in her life. His unwillingness to earn money affected the whole household, making the family dependent upon friends and relatives for their support. It’s no wonder that Louisa developed a fierce drive to make money from her writing so she would not be forced into the same situation during her adult life.

Since we all know the real Louisa May Alcott never married, it’s no surprise how her romance in this book will end. But McNees weaves her words so well that you want to keep turning pages anyway, hoping against hope that the outcome will be different than you know it to be. The resolution, when it comes, feels true to Louisa, and satisfying to the reader as well.

Mother-daughter book club members who read The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott will have a lot to discuss including the writer herself, constraints on women of her time and family relationships. Also interesting to discuss will be how men of the times were just as constrained in many ways by the expectations of society. Clubs may also want to consider watching Louisa May Alcott, The Woman Behind Little Women. It’s an excellent documentary created for PBS from the book written by Harriet Reisen. See the website http://www.alcottfilm.com/ for more details about the biography. See McNees’s website for more info about The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott: http://kellyoconnormcnees.com/

I highly recommend any of these titles for mother-daughter book clubs with girls aged 15 and up.

Book Review: Tombstone Tea by Joanne Dahme

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Tombstone Tea imageJessie is acting on a dare when she shows up at the Laurel Hill Cemetery one night. Her instructions are to spend a whole night while wandering the cemetery and collecting rubbings from the gravestones of 10 residents. Desperate to make friends in her new high school, Jessie has agreed to the task despite her misgivings.

Almost immediately she runs into Paul, a boy who seems to be near her age and who says he works as a night caretaker at Laurel Hill. He offers to help her. While collecting rubbings Jessie meets what Paul call “actors” playing the parts of inhabitants of certain graves. Jessie thinks they’re doing a great job until she finds out they’re not actors, they’re really the spirits of the people they claim to be. Most are friendly, but Jenny is not, and Jessie has to escape with Paul’s help.

Undeterred, Jessie is back the next day, and she begins to volunteer at the cemetery during daylight hours on a regular basis. As she helps to revive the Tombstone Tea Laurel Hill held years before, she also works to find a way to reconcile Jenny with her daughter in the hopes that her spirit can move on.

Tombstone Tea by Joanne Dahme has plenty of action to give you the creeps, it does take place in a cemetery and spirits are some of the main characters, but it’s not so spooky that it’s likely to keep you awake at night. Jessie is a strong character, and while sometimes I worried for her, I really liked her growing confidence and her ability to turn a strange situation into a purpose. Mother-daughter book clubs members will be able to talk about spiritualism, beliefs about what happens to you after you die, the history in cemeteries, and courage. I recommend it for groups with girls aged 11 to 14.

Volunteering with Your Book Club

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When Marci’s mother-daughter book club girls were in fourth grade, their group read Rent a Third Grader by B. B. Hiller. In the book, students raise money to help an old police horse remain part of the community. That story inspired the girls to help their local animal shelter by organizing a bake sale.

In addition to raising $300, Marci believe the girls and moms both learned a lot from the experience. “The girls learned how to put into action the good feelings they got from the book,” says Marci.  “They also had an opportunity to learn about each other in a different environment and see each other out in the world.” Besides spending time on a worthy cause with their daughters, Marci says the moms got to see “individual personalities and passions come out.”

If you haven’t yet volunteered with your book group—mother-daughter or otherwise—this summer may be the perfect time for you to consider taking on a project. Volunteering with children can teach them more than how to be compassionate for others and caring of the world around them. It can also teach them skills, boost their self-confidence, and help them appreciate people of different backgrounds and beliefs. Volunteering as adults helps you work together to build community and meet others who also have an interest in the cause you support.

How can you decide where to focus your efforts? Here are a couple of tips:

  • Think about your interests to help you decide where to give your time.  Many non-profit organizations can be broken down into three broad categories: human welfare, environmental welfare, or animal welfare.
  • Once you define your broad category, think about the things your group members like to do. For instance, if you all like being outdoors, you can work at a community garden for a local food bank to benefit human welfare. You can help clean up litter from local beaches or riverbanks to help the environment. Contributing to animal welfare may involve participating in a backyard bird count or helping restore a wild habitat.

Because you are all readers, you may decide to focus your efforts on organizations that promote literacy. Or, like Marci’s group, you may be inspired to pitch in after something that inspires you.

Check these online sites for more ideas on how your book club can get involved in helping out:

http://www.handsonnetwork.org/

http://thevolunteerfamily.org/

http://www.volunteermatch.org/

http://liveunited.org/volunteer/

http://idealist.org/

http://www.voa.org/Get-Involved/Volunteer.aspx

Book Review: What I Would Tell Her, Edited by Andrea N. Richesin

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What I Would Tell Her image

What I Would Tell Her image

The relationship between dads and their daughters is often complicated in ways neither understands or is likely to talk about much. A peek into the dad’s side of the equation can be glimpsed through a new collection of stories called What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To and Letting Go of Their Daughters, edited by Andrea N. Richesin.

These stories honestly express the fears, hopes, insecurities, and dreams dads feel for their daughters. There are dads of newborn daughters, young daughters, adopted daughters, and adult daughters. One particularly powerful story even portrays a dad’s experience of having his wife deliver a stillborn baby girl. Each essay is moving in its own way. Some will make you laugh, and others will make you cry, but they will all give you reason to contemplate the father-daughter dynamic.

Pictures of the contributors with their daughters are in the back of the book, and I found myself studying the photo of a writer and his daughter after reading his essay. If you particularly like a writer’s style, in many cases you’ll also find other works he’s written listed in the bio. I’m not sure who would enjoy this book most, dads or daughters. Moms are likely to want to read it too, for the insights they may gain about their own dads as well as their husbands.

Book Review: Magickeepers, The Pyramid of Souls by Erica Kirov

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Magickeepers imageNick is tired of living in the Las Vegas hotel/casino that acts as the cover for his magical family. All he gets to eat is Russian food, all he does is practice magic, and his older cousins keep access to the outside world at a minimum for him. So he’s excited to think of a whole convention of Magickeepers, the guardians of magic in the world, coming to his hotel. But then he discovers that Shadowkeepers plan to target the convention, and Nick and his cousin Isabella are in danger of having their souls stolen. Will his training be enough to help him fight them off?

Magickeepers: The Pyramid of Souls by Erica Kirov is the second book in this series where magic has to be protected from evil in the world. Crystal balls, magical swords, Egyptian pyramids, and even Edgar Allen Poe writing his famous poem “The Raven” all add to the adventure. Historical facts get a makeover from a magical standpoint and historical Russian culture also is featured. The Magickeepers series is lots of fun for readers aged 9 to 12, who will also enjoy the preview of the next book, which starts out with famous illusionist Harry Houdini.

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