Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
The middle grade novel A Season Most Unfair by J. Anderson Coats (Atheneum, Jun 2023) shares the common issue of a preteen girl not ready to “grow up” in the unique setting of a small town in Medieval England. Scholastica (Tick) wants to continue being her father’s candle-making partner, but to her horror, he has
Breaking Through the Clouds: The Sometimes Turbulent Life of Meteorologist Joanne Simpson by Sandra Nickel, illustrated by Helena Perez Garcia (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2022) teaches readers about an unknown young woman who went into a unique STEM field in the mid-1900s, this time the study of meteorology. Her interest in clouds began even
My daughter studied Medieval and early modern history recently, and then last year my kindergartner and I studied places around the world. I so enjoy finding amazing picture books about the things we’re learning about, so I really enjoyed finding the historical fiction picture book Therese Makes a Tapestry by Alexandra S.D. Hinrichs, illustrated by
In Jessie Redmon Fauset’s second published novel, Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral (published 1928), one woman struggles to finding her own identity racially and sexually in New York City during the vibrant years of the Harlem Renaissance. Artist Angela Murray is a light-skinned “coloured” woman in the transitional years of the late 1910s
Bleak House (published serially 1852-1853) is a sweeping saga of epic proportions. Charles Dickens obviously planned the plot carefully, especially by providing an introduction and characters for the bulk of the first third of the novel, so that the last third of the novel would swiftly move to a satisfying conclusion that ties all the
The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner (first published 1924) is the first in a series for children about four orphaned children striking out on their own. I haven’t read the others in the series since I was a child and I don’t remember them very well, but the first book was a fun trip
Although I have a different review waiting in the wings, yesterday afternoon I finished my next Persephone book, and I can’t help posting this review now because the ideas are so fresh and I just loved it. Besides being an interesting look at 1920s gender roles in raising a family, The Home-maker by Dorothy Canfield
Aucassin et Nicolete was written in medieval France, but it’s not your typical roman d’amour. I haven’t actually read any other medieval romances. My expectations of “typical” are all formed on stereotype. In many ways, Aucassin and Nicolette meets those fairy tale stereotypes. On the other hand, something goes quite “wrong” in this love story,
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