Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

Bibliography
Anderson, Laurie Halse. 2008. Chains. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers. ISBN 9781416905868

Plot Summary
After being sold to a very cruel couple from New York, a young slave girl named Isabel spies for the Rebels during the Revolutionary war.

Critical Analysis
Isabel knew that the day would come when she would be free. When Miss Mary Finch, Isabel and Ruth’s kind owner who taught them how to read, died; she expected to be released. Before their faith could be decided, the lawyer, who has Mrs. Finch’s will, is gone and Mrs. Finch’s nephew, the ungrateful Mr. Robert decides to sell both girls. The girls are then sold to Mr. and Mrs. Lockton. As the girls make their voyage from Rhode Island to New York City Isabel crosses paths with a boy named Curzon who informs her that her new owner Mr. Lockton is a dirty Loyalist who believes in slavery. Curzon asks Isabel to spy on her masters and inform him about plans and conspiracies against General Washington. Isabel chooses not to have anything to do with politics and refuses to help, but Isabel changes her mind after she realizes what Curzon had said earlier was a hard truth, that her master will say anything in front of her because slaves don’t count. After Isabel’s sister is sold and shipped to the West Indies, she becomes even more determined to help so that maybe the Rebels will help find Ruth and help them gain their freedom. Set in 1776 during the American Revolution, each chapter begins with a newspaper article, advertisement, handbill, or letter from the time period. For example, the following ad is a newspaper advertisement from the Royal Gazette in New York: Run-away from the subscriber, living at No. 110, Water-street, near the new slip. A Negro girl named POLL, about 13 years of age, very black, marked with the Small Pox, and had on when she went away a red cloth petticoat, and a light blue short gown, homemade. Whoever will take up and secure the said girl so that the owner may get her shall be handsomely rewarded. These components provide a sense of the time and place as we see these historical events through Isabel’s eyes. Readers may not understand the harsh realities that thirteen year old Isabel had endured from beaten nearly to death because she tried to run away to being branded in her face with the letter I for being insolent, but will sympathize with her for being courageous in fighting for something many take for granted, freedom.

Review Excerpt(s)
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review- “Startlingly provocative…nuanced and evenhanded…a fast-moving, emotionally involving plot.”

Booklist, Starred Review-“Anderson explores elemental themes of power, freedom, and the sources of human strength in this searing, fascinating story.”

Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review- “Readers will care deeply about Isabel…”

Connections
*Received the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction
*National Book Award Finalist
*Slavery
*Revolutionary War
*Children and Slavery

Our Eleanor by Candace Fleming

Bibliography
Fleming, Candace. 2005. Our Eleanor. New York: New York. Atheneum Books for Young Readers. ISBN 9780689865442

Summary
Our Eleanor is a biography of the life of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s life from infancy to her death in 1962. This biography contains very private details from Eleanor’s low self-esteem as a child because of her looks to the details of her not so perfect marriage to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Critical Analysis
All throughout the book the author includes documentable dialogue that came from Eleanor, her children and her friends. At the end of the book source notes, picture credits, and other resources about Eleanor are included. The book begins with a table of contents that includes titles, page numbers and a quote by Eleanor that introduces parallels with what the chapter is about. It continues with a time line of Eleanor’s life and a Roosevelt Family Tree. Then it continues from her birth, youth, marriage, and finally her death in 1962. The book is organized as a scrapbook with each vignette including borders, portraits, letters, newspaper clippings, sketches, or photographs. Headings with bold fonts are included as well as subheadings with a different font style are also used. Captions under well cropped photographs or other images are included to aid the reader. The book jacket is inviting with a colorful portrait of Mrs. Roosevelt. Her warm smile and her soft blue eyes give the photograph an inviting motherly appearance that draws the reader in. The black and white photographs, newspaper clippings, and letters support the text throughout and are placed appropriately with each vignette and are either gay, or serious. Middle school children or older could easily open this book and begin reading from any point in the book. The ivory pages give the book an older feel while giving the background a crisp look. The various font sizes and varieties help move the text along as the journey through Eleanor’s life continues. The writing is clear and to the point and shows the author’s interest in Mrs. Roosevelt’s life without being biased. The author encourages curiosity throughout the book by the way she chooses to title certain vignettes. One of the titles in the book is “The Other First Lady” and then we see a large photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt sitting in a carriage with another woman sitting between the two of them, and then there’s another vignette titled “Father’s Weakness” that peaks the reader’s curiosity.

Review Excerpt(s)
*Society of School Librarians International Book Awards, 2006.
*Jefferson Cup Award, 2006. Honor Book Grades 6-12

* Kirkus Reviews-“Had Eleanor Roosevelt kept a scrapbook-an incredibly well-organized and thorough scrapbook-this is how it might feel to look through it. Arranged chronologically, the volume works like a jigsaw puzzle. Open it up, pick individual pieces at random and when placed all together, a full picture of the subject emerges...”

*Booklist- “As in Fleming's Ben Franklin's Almanac: Being a True Account of the Good Gentleman's Life (2003), which was a 2004 Booklist Top 10 Biography, this takes a pastiche approach to humanizing a legendary life. Through anecdotes and archival photos drawn from an assortment of sources, Fleming invites readers into a camaraderie with the timid, neglected little girl who grew up to become the woman many nicknamed "co-president," and whose flouting of accepted gender roles earned her admiration and ridicule in equal measure…”

*Library Media Connection- “This scrapbook biography employs oral history transcripts, books, and photographs. Eleanor's vital role in American history is chronicled in this biography that captures her vulnerability and her humanity. With chapters in loose chronological order, chapter titles indicate phases of Eleanor's life...”

Connections
*Use as a cross curricular resource in Social Studies and English Language Arts to study biographies.

Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America by Karen Blumenthal

Bibliography
Blumenthal, Karen. 2005. Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America. New York: New York. Atheneum Books for Young Readers. ISBN 0689859570

Summary
In Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America Blumenthal includes the injustices of many female athletes to how women in politics helped introduce, pass and enforce Title IX.

Critical Analysis
What would you say if someone told you your daughter could not play sports because she doesn’t need to build character? When she graduates from college with a law degree she can only teach but not practice law because she is a woman. Karen Blumenthal’s Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, answers these and many other questions in an informative survey style book. The photographs, cartoons, newspaper and magazine clippings keep the heavily factual book interesting. Each chapter either focuses on female athletes or influential woman throughout the women’s rights movement and includes interesting female player profiles such as Mia Hamm and Billie Jean King. Although the split sentences during the course of the text create a bit of confusion at times the overall information found throughout is priceless.

Review Excerpt(s)
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, 2006
Booklist-“ As in Six Days in October (2002), a compelling overview of the 1929 stock market crash and a financial primer, Wall Street Journal editor Blumenthal uses specific facts and fascinating personal stories to give readers a wide view of history. Here, the author looks at American women's evolving rights by focusing on the history and future of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in U.S. education...”

Kirkus-“ The history of the small but wildly influential amendment known as Title IX receives a thoughtful, enlightening and inspiring treatment from the Sibert Honor-winning Blumenthal...”

Library Media Collection-“ Before the time that Donna de Varona won the gold in the Olympics and made the cover of Sports Illustrated, or Billy Jean King played Bobby Riggs, the battle for equality in the treatment of the sexes had been fought on several fronts. The warriors for the cause and the skirmishes leading up to the victory of Title IX are the subjects of this book...”

Connections
*Women Athletes
*Sex discrimation in sports
*Women’s rights throughout the centuries.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

Bibliography
Hoose, Phillip. 2009. Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. New York: New York. Melanie Kroupa Books. ISBN 9780312661052

Summary
This is the story of Claudette Colvin a 15 year old African American girl who in 1955, when segregation laws were still in effect in Montgomery Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger and was arrested.

Critical Analysis
Did you know Rosa Parks was not the first African-American to make history by refusing to give up her seat on a city bus in segregated Montgomery Alabama? Phillip Hoose’s biography of Claudette Colvin shows readers anyone can stand up for their rights at any age just like Claudette Colvin did at the young age of 15. Teenage readers will identify with Claudette’s struggles as a single mom during her young adult years, to her decision participate in tumultuous court case that endangered her life. The book will appeal to readers visually with the many photographs that depict the ignorant way thinking such as the sign that read “NO Dogs, Negros, Mexicans,” back when segregation was in place to the faces of innocent lives lost and the courageous boycott leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Tidbits of interesting facts, such as how Jim Crow Laws got their name, are sprinkled throughout out the 10 chapter narrative filled with interviews from many individuals that lived in Montgomery Alabama during the tumultuous times of segregation to desegregation.

Review Excerpt(s)
*Booklist Starred Review-“ Starred Review* Nine months before Rosa Parks’ history-making protest on a city bus, Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old Montgomery, Alabama, high-school student, was arrested and jailed for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. Hoose draws from numerous personal interviews with Colvin in this exceptional title that is part historical account, part memoir....”

* Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices-“Phillip Hoose’s narrative, which was drawn in large part from interviews with Colvin and others as well as additional research, paints a fresh, insightful picture of those life-changing times in Montgomery, looking at them through the experiences of a teenager who faced challenges for being both young and Black.”

*Kirkus- “Claudette Colvin's story will be new to most readers. A teenager in the 1950s, Colvin was the first African-American to refuse to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Ala. Although she later participated with four other women in the court case that effectively ended segregated bus service, it is Rosa Parks's action that became the celebrated event of the bus boycott. Hoose's frank examination of Colvin's life includes sizable passages in her own words, allowing readers to learn about the events of the time from a unique and personal perspective….”

Connections
*National Book Award Winner
*Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Finalist
*The Robert F. Sibert Honor Book
*Civil Rights
*Segreation
*Inspirational biographies

The Llama Who Had no Pajama

Bibliography
Hoberman, Mary Ann. The Llama Who Had No Pajama. by Betty Fraser.
New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-205571-4

Plot Summary
This is a collection of 100 favorite poems by Poet Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman. The poems are of universal topics such as birthdays, family, animals, insects, opposites and time.

Critical Analysis
The Llama who had no Pajama is an individual poet compilation of poems by author Mary Ann Hoberman from 2008 to 2010 and beautifully illustrated by illustrator Betty Fraser. The Language is full of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and repetition of sounds. The use of alliteration is found in the poem “Permutations” such as in the flea flew high to flee the fly. The poem “Termite” is full of rhyme. At the end of each line we find the following words that rhyme: sort, report, resort, state, rate, cooperate, find, blind, kind, kings, stings, and things. There are insect riddles as in “Who Am I” and animal tongue twisters as in the poem “Gazelle” 'O gaze on the graceful gazelle as it grazes'. The collection of 100 poems will resonate with young children since the poems center around themes young children will be able to relate. For example in the poem, “Brother” where the poet complains about having a little brother who is a bother and the poem “Let’s Dress Up” where little girls are enjoy playing dress up in grown-up clothes. The poems will also resound with adults since there seems to be a nostalgic feeling in the poems of things we enjoyed as children such as the rain. There is also an index at the end of the book where the first line of each poem is provided as a quick reference. The watercolor illustrations are simple but colorful and do not overwhelm the poems. The snow-white page backgrounds enhance the detailed and lively drawings that accompany every poem.

Review Excerpt(s)
School Library Journal-“Hoberman’s rhythms are lively and agile.”

Publishers Weekly-“This inventively illustrated collection brims with enough wordplay and silliness to please a room full of young wordsmiths.”

Connections
*The Llama Who Had No Pajama was awarded the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children for Mary Ann Hoberman’s lifetime of poetry writing.
* The animal poems can be a great introduction to science themes.

Flamingos on the Roof

Bibliography
Brown, Calef. Flamingos on the Roof. By Calef Brown
New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 978-0618-56298-5

Plot Summary
In this compilation of poems written and illustrated by Calef Brown we are introduced to 28 poems that vary from topic to topic. The topics range from a biker named Bob to televisions in a taxi cab and worms.

Critical Analysis
The poems vary greatly from poems that rhyme like “Poseidon’s Hair” where we see words such as kelp, help, toupee, away. Then there are other poems, for example “Sally” where the poet compares people like Sally to Medusa from Greek Mythology. Then there’s “Combo Tango” where the poem is actually a simple tango. In “Allicater Gatorpillar” we see a play on words such as combining the words alligator with caterpillar. “Weatherbee’s Diner” is a great example of a poem with rhyme. Here we see words like eat, street, rain, main, loud, cloud, treat, sleet, dessert, hurt, warm, storm. The acrylic illustrations are lively and filled with colorful and wacky pictures. In the poem “Allicatter Gatorpillar” we see a butterfly with an alligator’s body and a caterpillar with an alligators head. Then in “Poseidon’s Hair” Poseidon appears with his green kelp hair and a tattoo on his arm stating king of the sea.

Review Excerpt(s)
Booklist-“An exuberant debut, equally enjoyable read silently or aloud.”

Publishers Weekly-“A traveling circus of poems…weird and wonderfully catchy.”

School Library Journal-“A gleeful book for solo or shared reading.”

Connections
*May be compared with non-silly poems from “The Llama Who had no Pajama.”
* It makes a wacky read aloud book of non-sense poems.”

What My Mother Doesn't Know

Bibliography
Sones, Sonya. 2001. What My Mother Doesn’t Know. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
ISBN 978-0-689-855535

Plot Summary
In What My Mother Doesn’t Know we meet Sophie, a teenager who is almost fifteen. The entire book is about Sophie’s teenage life. We are introduced to her best friends Rachel and Grace and all the fun teenage things they love doing together and to the many boy crushes Sophie has.

Critical Analysis
This verse novel is filled with themes young adults will be able to relate to such as teen age love, parent and teen relationships, school friendships, and cultural acceptance. What my mother doesn’t know is written in a colloquial conversational language from the main characters point of view. The book is organized as a group of free verse poems written in short lines that are easy to read that will appeal to reluctant teenage girl readers. The story moves and evolves quickly making it a quick and enjoyable dramatic read aloud novel.

Review Excerpt(s)
Booklist starred review-“Fast, funny, touching.”

Publishers Weekly-“Honest, destined to captivate.”

Kirkus starred review-“A verse experience that will leave readers sighing with recognition and satisfaction.”

Connections
*What My Mother Doesn’t Know is a great verse novel to inspire reluctant teenage girl readers.
*Must read What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know, the novel in verse, from Robin’s (Sophie’s teenage love) point of view.
*Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy, another acclaimed novel by Sonya Sones for reluctant readers.
*Compare and Contrast with another verse novel such as Heartbeat by Sharon Creech.