1280 - 1283 (2025 #32 - #35). October 2025

Sonora by Jenni L. Walsh

The cover of this book caught my eye when I saw it among the LibraryThing Early Reviewers selections for September 2025.  In May of 2016, I visited the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, and, at that time at least, there was an amazing sculpture on the ceiling of the entry rotunda, of a girl on the back of a horse diving into a tank of water.  The book's cover reminded me of that.

So of course I had to request the book, and I was lucky enough to win a copy to review.

Jenni L. Walsh's book is a fictionalized account of the Sonora of the title, Sonora (born Nora Evelyn) Webster (1904-2003), from the age of about 19 (in 1923) to about age 27 (in 1931), when Sonora experiences a life=changing event.  

The oldest of six children abandoned by their father and raised by their mother in Georgia, Sonora answered an advertisement placed by showman William Frank "Doc" Carver in 1923, looking for a girl who could swim, dive, and ride, and joined his diving horses act.  They travel around the country performing, eventually settling at the Atlantic City (New Jersey) Steel Pier.

A movie made about Sonora's life in 1991 was Walsh's inspiration for the novel, but as Sonora herself said the movie was inaccurate, Walsh used Sonora's 1961 autobiography as her primary source.  An author's note at the end of the book includes this and other information about its writing, and is followed by discussion questions for book groups.

Most interesting to me were the details about the training and sequence required to perform horse diving.  This was an easy and enjoyable read, and I recommend it.

The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill

This 2022 middle-grade (Accelerated Reader grade 5.1) fantasy novel by 2017 Newbery medalist Kelly Barnhill (for The Girl Who Drank the Moon) was a National Book Award Finalist in Young People's Literature for 2022 and was recommended by my Seattle-area best friend Kathleen.  On the surface, it's a fairly typical story of good-versus-evil, right-versus-wrong, but older readers and adults may pick up on the allegorical, even satirical, aspects of the story.  

Fifteen orphans live with the unnamed Matron and her husband Myron in a town where the library and school burned and were never rebuilt.  Townspeople have become suspicious of each other and pretty much keep to themselves, not helping their neighbors.  All the adults in town have an out-of-proportion admiration for their dazzling mayor, who (supposedly) defeated a nearby dragon years before.  He collects taxes, but does nothing to help the townspeople, just agitates them.

At the edge of town lives a kindly ogress, a baker and gardener extraordinaire, who enjoys bringing vegetables, cheeses, and baked goodies as surprises to the townspeople, late at night.  Her generosity is helping the orphanage, but not quite enough.  One of the orphans decides to run away (to leave more food for the others), and the kindly ogress finds her.  But the mayor blames the ogress for the child's disappearance, and uses this distraction from the truth to rile up the townspeople.

Does the mayor - actually a dragon in disguise - sound a bit familiar?  Early on (chapter 4), he says, "I, alone, can fix it."  Yup.  In an interview, Barnhill said she was writing fairy tales "just for myself" in response to the 2016 election, and "one day, I wrote one that just didn’t feel the same as everything else. It stuck with me in a different sort of a way. ... I was finishing [the manuscript] around the exact same time that [George Floyd] was murdered by police" in her home of Minneapolis.

Besides dragons and ogres, the book is full of crows who can talk (in their language of course), so there are plenty of fantasy elements for children who enjoy that.  The book starts out slowly at first (or maybe it just seems that way to an adult reader like me) but picks up later on.  Still, I think it could have been shortened a bit.  The allegory and satire will probably go right over the heads of the intended age group audience, but some of their parents and other adult readers might get a kick out of what happens to the mayor at the end.

Lights at Night by Tasha Hilderman, illustrated by Maggie Zena

This gentle bedtime book celebrates the different kinds of light, natural and man-made, one might experience at dusk and in darkness, inside and outside, throughout the seasons.  

One or more foxes, or a representation of them, appear on nearly every double-page spread.  Author Tasha Hilderman is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, some of the indigenous peoples of Canada, and I have to wonder if the fox is important in that culture.  

I loved an interview where Hilderman explained how important it was that combines (and not tractors) be in the text and illustrations, and the interviewer notes, "even something as small as that ... is representation of people who live in a particular place in a particular way of life ... So all those kids who do know what combines are and live with them and have that experience get to really see that reflected."  This is exactly why I'll be sending this book to my great-granddaughter, who lives on a farm.

The lights described in the beautiful text glow from Maggie Zena's illustrations, digitally rendered in Photoshop.  This book could be used to talk about the seasons, holiday celebrations, and different forms of light in a classroom, yet could also help soothe a child with fear of the dark.  Highly recommended.

Our Corner Grocery Store by Joanne Schwartz, illustrated by Laura Beingessner

In an interview, author Joanne Schwartz said she was inspired to write this book by a store at the end of her Toronto street, run by an Italian couple who had emigrated to Canada in the 1960s.  The story takes place on a Saturday, when Anna Maria helps her grandparents at the store, from opening to closing.  Readers and listeners will enjoy spotting the details in Laura Beingessner's intricate illustrations.

This book is a reissue of one originally published in 2009.  It was a finalist for Canada's Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award in 2010.  It's aimed at children ages 3 to 7, but most will need the book read aloud to them, as there is a lot of text.  I think the book would be appreciated by all elementary school age children, and could be used in social studies lessons about neighborhoods and communities.  

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1279 (2025 #31). September 2025

I was on the road almost all of the month, and did very little reading other than guidebooks for the Oregon Trail (which I am still reading and will hopefully write about next month).  I did receive one picture book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program that was short enough for me to read and review the last day of the month:

The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt, written by Riel Nason, and illustrated by Byron Eggenschwiler, is a lovely story about a ghost who's a little bit different.  Instead of being a sheet like most ghosts, he's a patchwork quilt.  (One ancestor was a checkered tablecloth, his great-grandmother was a lace curtain.)  Being a quilt is problematic - for example, he can't fly as easily as other ghosts.  But things change one Halloween.

This is a gentle, non-scary Halloween story for young children, with messages about courage and acceptance (of self and others).  The color palette of the illustrations is muted, but full of interesting little details.  

Originally published in 2020, the book I'm reviewing is a lovely gift edition with gilt-edged pages and a gilt-embossed cover.  The end papers echo the patchwork of the little ghost, in grays, beiges, and blues. I plan to make this lovely book a gift to my two great-grandsons.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1276 - 1278 (2025 #28 - #30 ). August 2025

The Girl from Guernica by Karen Robards

So late last month, I had finished reading all the items I had around to review for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, so I checked some books on my wish lists in Libby to see which had the highest average rating, and this was it.  

Although the premise and some of the events in the book stretch credibility, it is based on a real incident - the bombing by the German Luftwaffe of Guernica, Spain, in April 1937, at the request of Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.  

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

I love Kate Quinn's historical fiction, so when I saw that my local public library had this e-book, I placed a hold and got it about the time I finished The Girl from Guernica.  Much to my surprise, it was actually a murder mystery, albeit set in the early 1950s.

Christina the Astonishing by Marianne Leone

In an author statement that accompanied the advance reading copy I received of this novel, Marianne Leone said, "After three memoirs, this is my first deep dive into fiction."  It felt a bit like a memoir, though, because of the similarities between the narrator, Christina, and Marianne herself (acknowledged by the author in the same statement).  

This growing-up-Catholic novel starts (Part 1) in 1960 with Christina in fourth grade at a Catholic school in a Boston suburb.  It then jumps to 1964 and eighth grade (Part 2) followed by eleventh and twelfth grades (Part 3), all still at the same Catholic school (which is coed grades 1-12).  Part 4 is set in Christina's post-high school, early adult years.

My favorite chapter was in Part 3 - "Quando Mai," which is an expression often used by Christina's Italian immigrant mother Rita that means "when ever?" or "since when?"  It starts out with Christina writing a (literal) litany about the nuns she's had as teachers in first through eleventh grades, when she's supposed to be researching the saint she is named for.  There is more than one named Christina, and the one she chooses is Christina the Astonishing - which at first I thought Leone just made up.  But no, although never canonized, Christina the Astonishing is venerated in the Catholic Church.

Leone is five years older than me, and, like one of her friends in the book, I have an aunt who was a nun (for 75 years).  I never experienced any mean nuns, nor was I ever awed by (nor afraid of) them, thanks to my aunt.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed Leone's take on her growing-up years.  This book has a lot in common with Leone's Ma Speaks Up, a memoir about her mother, which I also received from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program and read eight years ago.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1272 - 1275 (2025 #24 - #27). July 2025

How to Dodge a Cannonball by Dennard Dayle

I requested this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program because it was listed as historical fiction and was published by a well-known house (Henry Holt).  Instead, it is really "Civil War satire about American racism" as described in the blurb, and I was probably not the best audience for that.  Parts of the book were quite funny, but I found the story hard to follow (and unbelievable) in places.  White teenager Anders joins the Union Army as a flag twirler to escape his abusive mother, defects to the Confederates, then back to the Union after Gettysburg - but to an African American regiment, where he claims to be an octoroon.  By the end of the book (also quoting the blurb), "Anders begins to see the war through the eyes of his newfound brothers, comprehending it not so much as a fight for Black liberation but as a negotiation among white people over which kinds of oppression will be acceptable in the re-United States."  I did finish the book, I didn't hate it, and I'm sure there's an audience who will love it - just not me.  (My ex-brother-in-law, who tries too hard to be funny in his annual holiday newsletter, would probably love this.)

The Irish Goodbye by Heather Aimee O'Neal

Three sisters come home for Thanksgiving after many years apart, due to a fatal accident on their older brother's boat and his later suicide.  Cait, the oldest, is recently divorced with bratty twins, home from England where she recently quit her attorney job when she didn't make partner.  She wants to get together with her high school crush - the brother of the boy who died on her brother's boat - and invites him to the holiday dinner.  Maggie, the youngest, is nervous about bringing home her new lover, knowing her mother won't approve.  Alice, the middle child who stayed near home and takes care of their aging parents as well as her own family, has a secret that could wreck her marriage.  These women are somewhat unlikeable (at least to me) at the beginning of the book, but as their backstories come out, I grew to empathize with and even like them.  This is author Heather Aimee O'Neill's first novel, and I have to wonder if she modeled Maggie on herself and Cait and Alice on her own sisters.  Write what you know, right?

Drawing Is ...: Your Guide to Scribbled Adventures by Elizabeth Haidle

A beautiful book for ages eight and up about drawing, with a number of exercises to practice the tips and skills discussed.  Author and illustrator Elizabeth Haidle used pencil, ink, gouache, graphite powder, digital collage, and a lot of hand-lettering.  I especially love the endpapers, the first with tools of the trade neatly lined up, the last with them more scattered, many clearly used, and interspersed with sketches.  A great gift for a budding artist or anyone interested in learning more about drawing.

This Book Is Dangerous! by Ben Clanton

This picture book features Jelly, the jellyfish character from cartoonist Ben Clanton's Narwhal and Jelly series of easy readers / comic books / graphic novels.  (I reviewed the first book in that series back in 2016.)  The story is silly, and not particularly interactive, in my opinion, but the illustrations are fun, and the glow-in-the-dark dust jacket is awesome.

I also re-read Moloka'i by Alan Brennert, since I'd forgotten some aspects of the story (which I first read in 2008) when I read its sequel, Daughter of Moloka'i, earlier this year.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1266 - 1271 (2025 #18 - #23). June 2025

This month, I read some more books by John Graves - I'd checked out everything my local public library had in late April in advance of a presentation about his Goodbye to a River near the end of that month.  

The Last Running was a short story originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in June 1959.  It was reprinted a number of times thereafter, including as a stand-alone book in 1974 with black-and-white drawings by John Groth.  In his annotated bibliography in John Graves and the Making of Goodbye to a River:  Selected Letters, 1957-1960 (read in April), Graves describes it as "Cowboys & Indians, spinoff from the digging in regional history that was part of my homecoming to Texas.  Possibly the best of my few short stories, certainly the best known of them."  Set in 1923, it features the reunion of an old Comanche named Starlight with a Texan named Tom Bird, who pursued him in the late 1860s after a horse raid that resulted in the Comanches murdering a Texan and his wife and two children.  

This story, along with excerpts from Goodbye to a River and other selections of Graves' writings, some previously unpublished, were compiled into the 1996 anthology A John Graves Reader.   Graves makes it clear in the preface that he often revised the works, both unpublished and previously published, for this anthology.  Notes at the end of each of the 22 pieces in the book indicate the provenance.  It's hard for me to pinpoint a favorite, but one story that stuck with me was "Fishing the Run' (originally published as "Going Under" in Texas Monthly magazine in March 1981), about a fishing trip on the Brazos not far from his home near Glen Rose (which isn't far from my home) with his 15-year-old youngest daughter, with a scary ending that makes one realize we're all getting older.

The last book by Graves that I checked out was Texas Rivers, published in 2002, with photographs by Wyman Meinzer.  This book was a compilation of six articles first published in Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine over about three years, beginning in March 1999.  That month's article was on the Canadian River, and in his annotated bibliography in John Graves and the Making of Goodbye to a River:  Selected Letters, 1957-1960 (read in April), Graves noted that "this piece was done to large extent out of books and from talking to knowledgeable people, with some field trips.  It came out reasonably well."  Graves acknowledges the people who helped him in an introduction.  The other rivers covered are the Lower Neches, the Pecos, the Clear Fork of the Brazos, the Llano, and the Upper Sabinal.  I'm only really familiar with the last two, from trips to the Hill Country.  The large photos are quite stunning, especially the double-page bleed spreads. I just wish that some of the photos that were printed quite small had been made larger.  There's also a two-page bibliography at the end of the book.

I also realized I had one more book introduced by Graves at home:  Landscapes of Texas:  Photographs from Texas Highways Magazine, published in 1980.  I forgot to make a note of what Graves wrote about this book in the annotated bibliography in the book mentioned above, but I think it was because the book was simply listed, as he wrote a number of introductions for similar books.  Entitled "Some Notes on Texas Landscapes," the introduction takes only ten pages in the book - there are 130 pages of photographs, followed by two pages of photo credits.  The photos are divided into sections for East Texas, Texas Gulf Coast, West Texas, Panhandle Plains, Central Texas (which is everything not in the other areas, including the Hill Country).  I appreciate that every photo has a caption.

The Great Dinosaur Sleepover by Linda Bailey, illustrated by Joe Bluhm

When my son was about two-and-a-half years old, he was obsessed with dinosaurs.  Playskool Toys had a line of plastic toys called "Definitely Dinosaurs," some of them distributed by the Wendy's burger chain, and my son had a number of them - and he could remember and pronounce the names, such as Apatosaurus (which was blue).

This book reminded me of those long-ago days.  Jake is supposed to have a dinosaur-themed birthday sleepover party - but his guests all get the flu.  But in the middle of that night, he awakes to find three dinosaurs - including the difficult-to-pronounce Pachycephalosaurus - watching a "hilarious" dinosaur movie on the downstairs TV.  They came for the party!

I didn't realize until reading another review that there's a T. rex hidden on most of the spreads - and a subtle message about not leaving others out of the fun.  I disagree with another reviewer who down-starred the book because of the word "gobsmacked."  Author Linda Bailey is Canadian.  The omniscient narrator uses the word, not any of the characters, and I for one appreciate picture books that introduce a few new vocabulary words to children.  It can't be any harder a word than the names of some of the dinosaurs! 

This is a great book (with a fun ending) that any dinosaur fan (kid or adult) will love.  I can't wait to give it to my great-grandsons.

Speak to Me of Home by Jeanine Cummins

This story of three generations of women - Puerto Rican Rafaela Acuña y Daubón Brennan, Ruth Brennan Hayes, and Daisy Hayes - was one I found hard to put down each day (as I do most of my reading in my daily half-hour on an elliptical trainer).  

Spanning seven decades (1953-2023) and multiple locations (Puerto Rico; Trinidad; New Jersey, St. Louis, Missouri; and Palisades, New York), the book jumps back and forth in time and place, but the chapter headings signal the reader of both.  

Rafaela is the privileged daughter of a government official - until her father is disgraced, and she has to take a job on a USA military base in Trinidad.  There she meets her American husband Peter Brennan, and marries him even though her heart belongs to another.  They start their family in Puerto Rico, but move to Peter's hometown of St. Louis when their youngest child, Ruth, is seven.  Rafaela encounters prejudice there, and her marriage founders.

Ruth goes to college in New Jersey where she also encounters prejudice - but in reverse, from Puerto Rican students.  She falls in love with two different men, but ends up marrying an Irishman, Thomas Hayes - who dies when Ruth is 38, with three young children, Vic, Daisy, and Charlie (later Carlos) to raise.

The story begins with Daisy at age 22 in Puerto Rico.  She's in an accident in the height of a hurricane, and Ruth and Rafaela need to get to her.  That does happen near the end of the book, but first we get all of their compelling backstories.

You also learn a lot about the secondary characters - Rafaela's parents, her sister Lola, the family cook Priti and her son Candido, Peter and Ruth's brother Benny, Thomas and Ruth's other beau Arthur, and Daisy's brothers and cousin Stefani, Benny's daughter.  I want to know more about these characters and could see a sequel to Speak to Me of Home some day.  

This novel makes me want to visit Puerto Rico. and it makes me want to read more of Jeanine Cummins' books, especially American Dirt.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!