Monday, May 21, 2012

City of Orphans


City of Orphans by Avi
Youth New Book Shelves - Lower Level - AVI


Also available in audio book form:
City of Orphans by Avi
Teen Zone CD Books - Main Level - AVI


The audio version of this book is exceptional. The reader is fantastic! I love all of Avi's books, and this is one of my favorites.

The setting is New York City in 1893. The city is filled with immigrants and the streets are filled with orphaned children. Times are tough, and families are just trying to get by. The Geless family are from Denmark, and their oldest children have jobs - including Maks. Maks is a 13-year-old "newsy," selling World News newspapers and trying to steer clear of the Plug Ugly gang. The Plug Uglies are violent and nasty, and have been known to shake down newsies for their paper money.

One night, the Plug Uglies come after him. A street orphan named Willa comes to his rescue, beating the gang off with her stick. Maks owes her for her help, and takes her home to be fed by his mother.

When they get home, they find out that Maks's sister Emma has been arrested for stealing. Maks and the family know she would never have done such a thing, and embark on a plan to prove her innocence. Willa and Maks are particularly helpful, enlisting the help of a private investigator who teaches them how to find clues.

This is a fast-paced story, and highly recommended to upper-elementary and middle schoolers!

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Wild: From lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Wild: From lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail
by Cheryl Strayed


New Adult Nonfiction 813.6 S


No stranger to impulsive decisions, Cheryl Strayed, a young woman from Minnesota with zero backpacking experience decided to solo hike 1100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. The PCT is the lesser know cousin of the Appalachian Trail, running from Mexico to Canada. Although the reader gets a pretty good sense of the trail and all its challenges – yes, there are bears and rattlesnakes -- this is not a travel guide. It is about her personal journey. And it’s a stunner.


Cheryl was a woman lost. She was 22 when her mother died, her remaining family crumbled, and her marriage disintegrated. She dabbled in all the dangerous things that lost people dabble in and she comes clean about all of it. A few years later, as she was hitting bottom, she decided that while she had done and been many things “A woman who walks alone in the wilderness for eleven hundred miles? I’d never been anything like that before. I had nothing to lose by giving it a whirl.” Nothing to lose? That might sound crazy to most people but Cheryl sold all her possessions, learned everything that the good folks at REI could teach her, and sent boxes with provisions ahead to all the outposts of civilization she would be near. And then she strapped on the backpack she refers to as “Monster” and headed off on the trail.


Cheryl quickly came to the conclusion that while she felt like an experienced backpacker due to all the advice she had received at REI, she really was ill-prepared for the journey. Her boots were too small; her backpack, too weighty; the money she sent ahead, too little. And yet… this woman has a fighting spirit that is just amazing. She endures.


Cheryl has a writing style that makes you feel like you are right there with her, every painful step of the way. Hers is a fascinating story of courage. And proof that, if you want to badly enough, you can change your life.


Saturday, May 12, 2012

Laundry Day

Continuing with the immigrants in the city theme, here is a cheerful look at the city of old and its residents aimed at the younger set.

Laundry Day by Maurie J. Manning.
Youth Graphic Novels – Lower Level - MAN

Laundry Day falls somewhere between a graphic novel and a picture book, with a comic book-style layout of cells in a picture book size and target age. Our hero is a little shoeshine boy in a big city, probably around the 1910s. He’s looking fruitlessly for customers when a bright red cloth drops down on him from the tall buildings above. One level up, he sees a Chinese laundress, so he climbs up to ask if it’s hers. It isn’t, but she offers him a moon cake and sends him to a neighbor whom she thinks might be the owner. The little boy’s journey goes on, as he climbs up balconies and across laundry lines, meeting and helping neighbors in small ways. In one case, he takes a penny to an Italian organ grinder from a Ukrainian mother with a crying baby, to see if some music will calm the baby. They are Chinese, Italian, Polish, Jamaican, Ukrainian, and Jewish, as revealed by their hanging laundry and tiny bits of their native languages sprinkled in (pronunciations and definitions given in a glossary at the end). Not until he reaches the roof of the building does he meet the owner. Once he is down on the ground again, the neighborhood is filled with friends instead of strangers and his shoeshine business is booming. One of my youth librarians points out that this is a rare book for preschool/early elementary that takes place during the “Olden Days” in a city rather than on the frontier. This is joyous celebration of the New World and of community.



Tuesday, May 1, 2012

New to America

Here are two new adult graphic novels that look at recent immigrants in old New York City, two very different takes on the same dilemma: how to survive in a country that isn’t entirely sure it wants your kind here, especially if you don’t have a husband to support you. In both cases, the graphic novel format brings the place vividly to life.

Gone to Amerikay by Derek McCullough. Art by Colleen Doran.
Adult Graphic Novels – Main Level - GON

This graphic novel interweaves the story of three periods of Irish people coming to America. In 1870, Ciara O’Dwyer comes with her young daughter Maire, expecting her husband Fintan to follow soon. She moves in with family in the slums of New York and starts working as a laundress to support herself. Months pass, and even though a letter arrives saying that Fintan is on his way, he never turns up. Only Tim O’Shea, an altar boy with her husband when they were small, comes. Tim tells Ciara that Fintan changed his mind, joined the military, and might turn up in a few years. Meanwhile, he gets involved with the Irish gangs in New York and starts drawing Ciara into his Life of Crime. Meanwhile, in 1960, Johnny McCormack, a young would-be actor, immigrates to New York and finds work performing traditional and original Irish music instead. He falls in love with another Irish boy, a less recent immigrant, who introduces him to the right people but also breaks his heart. Finally, in 2010, businessman Lewis Healy, made rich by the Celtic Tiger, comes with his assistant who is giving him a tour of the origins of “Ciara’s Song.” This was the least interesting story for me – nothing really happens to Lewis himself – but it holds key information to both of the other stories. There is a wee bit of ghost story mixed into this – really just one creepy spread - but lots and lots of Irish song lyrics and an old story or two. I never really got a feel for the modern character, but both Ciara and Johnny have for me a deep inner integrity that lifted them out of their sordid circumstances and gave the story, despite its many distressing elements, an overall upbeat feeling. I never lost confidence that both Ciara and Johnny would live out their American dreams, despite the many setbacks. Colleen Doran, famous for her work on Sandman, does not disappoint with the beautiful work that captures the people and places of all the different times. There is some violence that might make this unsuitable for young children, but overall, this is an uplifting tale of the Irish immigrants in America.


UnterzakhnUnterzakhn by Leela Corman.
Adult Graphic Novels – Main Level - UNT

“Unterzakhn” is Yiddish for “underthings”, which seems to refer both to our main characters, on the bottom end of the social ladder, tied together with views of laundry lines drying underthings between chapters. This story takes follows two girls growing up in the tenements of New York, from 1909 to 1923. Fanya and Esther are six when we meet them, according to the back cover. Fanya is sent to find Bronia, the Lady-Doctor, because Mrs. Gold is bleeding out in the street. Unfortunately, Bronia is too late, and she refuses to tell Fanya just what has happened, despite her persistent questions. However, Bronia comes back to their mother to ask for permission to teach the girls to read. Permission is granted only for Fanya, as the mother doesn’t really think learning necessary for girls, and wants help still with their little sister Feigl. Even so, Esther finds herself drawn to the nearby burlesque and whorehouse. She’s interested in the dancing, and starts learning despite teasing from some of the other dancing about her Jewish looks. As the girls grow older, Fanya starts helping Bronia more with her work of helping women with childbirth, while also providing illegal abortions (mostly very early on, via herbal teas) and family planning training, just as controversial. In this world where death in childbirth is frequent and those who survive end up with more children than they can feed, Bronia’s advocacy for total celibacy seems reasonable. Meanwhile, Esther starts working on both sides of the House. After their father dies, a flashback shows us his journey to America from Russia, forced out by a regime willing to kill any Jews who won’t leave on their own. After his death, Fanya and Esther’s lives diverge further, as Esther gains fame and wealthy patrons, while Fanya’s work starts gaining her enemies. Spoiler alert: by the end of the book, only one member of the original family of five is still alive.

This is a much darker view of life in New York City than we see in Gone to Amerikay. There’s a lot of blood and unglamorous nudity, though not as much actual sex shown as one might expect for a book starring a prostitute. In spite of this, Corman’s characters are so full of life and joy, her strong black-and-white drawings so vibrant, that the book comes across as a celebration of the strong people of the tenements, determined to live their life to the fullest, no matter how shoddy the hand they are dealt.



The Wind




The Wind by Warren Zevon
Cd Bins - Rock Z




The best songwriters and musicians always seek to leave a legacy in their field that will hopefully be inspiring for those that come after them. Rocker Warren Zevon had a very successful career filled with multiple accomplishments that included the album The Wind. The album would be the last artistic achievement of Zevon as he would pass away from an inoperable form of cancer mere weeks after it was released in 2003. He began recording the album shortly after his diagnosis and many of the songs paint the picture of a man coming to terms with the end of his life but still trying to fight on and enjoy what he still could. On any other album, a cover of the song “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” might seem as a simple tribute to Bob Dylan but knowing the circumstances surrounding Zevon’s health gives the song extra poignancy.

Not all the offerings on the album deal with sentimentality as tracks such as “The Rest of the Night” show Warren was still a rocker at heart. But it is the final song that is the most impactful and moving on the album. “Keep Me in Your Heart” was written by Warren Zevon especially for his family members. The song is a testament to how easily good music can convey the emotions we feel regarding personal loss and the desire to be remembered by the people who were special in our lives. It is a shame that we will never know what else Warren Zevon could have contributed to the music industry but his legacy is already one that will most likely influence future musicians.