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.
© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!
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.
