The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett - mno book club - Fascinating book about light-skinned Black twins who, in 1954 at age 16, run away from Mallard, their small town in Louisiana, which is populated with people like themselves. Desiree has wanted to leave for some time, but her more cautious twin Stella only decides to go when her hopes for college give way to her widowed mother's need for the girls to work as maids to support themselves - and her employer tries to take liberties with her. They go to New Orleans.
There, Stella gets a job as a secretary - passing for white - and ends up marrying her boss, moving to Los Angeles, and having a daughter (named Kennedy). After Stella leaves, Desiree moves to Washington, D.C., ends up marrying a man darker than her who abuses her, and escaping with their dark-skinned daughter (Jude) back to Mallard. Jude and Kennedy ultimately meet in Los Angeles - and for Stella, things start to unravel.
part 1 - The Lost Twins (1968) - Desiree returns to Mallard
part 2 - Maps (1978) - Jude goes to LA
part 3 - Heartlines (1968) - Stella in LA
part 4 - The Stage Door (1982) - Jude and Kennedy meet
part 5 - Pacific Cove (1985/1988) - Kennedy acting
part 6 - Places (1986) - Stella returns to Mallard to visit
This book is about "passing," which, like the award-winning Genesis Begins Again (which I read about a year ago), is tied to colorism. A quote from an NPR interview with the author of that book, Alicia D. Williams, is relevant. She noted that the kindergartners she taught, when asked "to pick out a crayon that reflected their skin tone, ... something heartbreaking happened: Out of a spectrum of multicultural options, 'Never, never, never do our kids of color choose a skin tone that's close to theirs. They go as light as possible.'"
A quote from page 260, bottom: "She'd [Stella] imagined, more than once, telling her daughter [Kennedy] the truth, about Mallard, and Desiree, and New Orleans. How she'd pretended to be someone else because she needed a job, and after a while, pretending became reality. She could tell the truth, she thought, but there was no single truth anymore. She'd lived a life split between two women - each real, each a lie."
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman - library book club - senior citizens in a retirement community solve a nearby murder. Not impressed.
You Belong Here Now by Dianna Rostow - advance reader edition, early reviewer, historical fiction -
Set in 1925, Charles (18 but pretending to be 16), Patrick (14), and Opal (8), fearful of being sent back to New York City if they aren't adopted, jump off the Orphan Train before its last stop in Bull Mountain, Montana. Charles is caught trying to steal a horse on the nearby Stewart ranch by 30-year-old Nara Stewart, a single woman operating the ranch with her aging parents. They agree to let the children stay. The boys help Nara and Papa Stewart, who hopes his oldest son, an artist, will return home to operate the ranch (instead of Nara). Little Opal helps Mama Stewart, who begins to view Opal as a replacement for a daughter lost in an accident many years before.
The story got a little melodramatic at times, but was a good depiction of life on a Montana ranch in that era. However, the grammatical errors ("Him and Patrick" and "Her and Mama" as sentence subjects) and incomplete sentences in the advanced reader edition drove me nuts! These were NOT cases of the book's characters speaking, just a lack of proper editing. I do hope they were fixed before the final edition was released, as they really detracted from my enjoyment of the book.
I easily found four errors in the first ten chapters:
Page 57: "Him and Patrick wrestled off their muddy boots..." should be "He and Patrick..."
Page 105, last three words on the page, "Her and Mama..." should be "She and Mama..."
Page 118, last line on page, "Him and Patrick..." once again should be "He and Patrick..."
Next page, 119, "Every last calf looked fine within the heard itself..." - "heard" should be "herd"
Perhaps a word search should be done for the phrases "her and" as well as "him and" to correct them to "she and" and "he and" respectively, as I probably missed some more instances in these first 120 pages (out of 336 total) of the book, and I am sure there are more of these errors in the rest of the book.
Women in Chemistry by Mary Wissinger is the second book in the Science Wide Open series about female scientists from different eras and countries. According to the back cover, the book is aimed at ages 7-10 (although the author's stated range on her website of 4-8 is more appropriate). This book is about five women chemists, all unfamiliar to me: Cleopatra the Alchemist (3rd century AD), Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier (1758-1836), Rosalind Franklin (1920-1957), Ada Yonath (b. 1939), and Dawn Shaughnessy (b. 1972). Each is introduced with a typical question related to chemistry that a child might ask, such as "What is the periodic table?" and "What elements am I made of?" The question is answered by highlighting the work of each woman. At the end, the reader is reminded that scientists ask questions and look for answers. There's a pronunciation guide for the scientists' names, as well as a glossary. The vibrant illustrations by Danielle Pioli are engaging. Now published by Science, Naturally, the series was developed by Genius Games, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) publishing company, and were originally funded with a highly successful Kickstarter campaign. These books are also available in Spanish, and would be a great addition to a classroom or school library.
Summer on the Bluffs by Sunny Hostin - advance reader edition, contemporary realistic fiction - About 140 pages (15 chapters) in, I put this book down to read something else. I don't think I will go back to it. There's not much of a story (it drags), and I felt no connection to the characters.
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