A Gaggle of Book Reviews

We reviewed two lovely picture books in which Death is a main character. Death is also a main character in The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, but that is the only thing the three books have in common.

The Book Thief is a thick (550 pages), dark, intense read. This is a story about a German girl in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The book begins with her on a train with her mother and brother, her mother is planning to leave them in foster care for a reason that is not disclosed. Her younger brother dies on the train, and when they are burying him in the cold, snowy earth, the gravedigger drops a book, and Liesel steals her first book – The Gravedigger’s Handbook. As the book goes on, her brother’s death haunts her, and she has her foster father (Papa) teach her to read the stolen book.

Markus Zusak writes a wonderful book, with amazing character development and a vivid use of imagery – you can picture yourself walking down the dingy streets of the poorer section of town where Liesel lives. Death continues to narrate, coming up with amazing quotes like “sometimes it kills me, the way people die”. He “holds their souls”, and he talks about how overworked he is in Nazi Germany. But he still finds time to go back and watch Liesel, as she has fascinated him.

This book is listed as young adult, but it would really require a very special young adult to get through this book. If a teen has been fascinated by Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, and Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, then this book might be a good next book.

While this book is fiction, it does have some bases in reality – several real events have been fictionalized as a part of the book. The realistic feel of the book makes it a good companion to The Diary of Anne Frank, as they are both about girls about the same age living in Nazi Germany. Anne is Jewish, Liesel is not, but her family does hid a Jew for a time, and she and her Papa try to help the Jews walking through their town on the way to Dachau.

A note – this book is narrated by Death, so it should come as no surprise that the last 30-50 pages require a goodly amount of tissues. If a young adult has issues with Death, this would not be an appropriate book.

However, if a young adult or adult is interested in WWII and Hitler’s Germany, and wants to see the war through a different perspective, this is a well written, amazing book. I highly recommend it, but I would also recommend reading a lighter book before/during/after.

This review is part of a MotherTalk blog tour
It’s amazing how much can change in one day. The events of one day can turn a happy, easygoing child into one with several phobias – we saw that with MG when she was hospitalized for 5 days at 3 1/2. How much can really change as the result of one day? 24 hours can hold a lot of power. I hadn’t really thought about how much difference a day can make until I read Once Upon a Day: A Novel, by Lisa Tucker.

This is an amazing and fascinating book, one which I plan to loan to everyone I know – it is completely engrossing. Ms. Tucker builds characters with such depth, they feel like real people… it felt like the book shouldn’t end, because their stories must continue. This book leaves me wishing I had a book group to discuss it with! So, everybody go read Once Upon a Day and then we can chat!

Ms. Tucker writes the book using a mix of third person and first person. For most books, that would leave me confused and annoyed. Somehow it works here, though. The major character is Dorothea, and her story is told in the first person. The chapters that revolve around her parents and the people she meets are told in the third person. As the story weaves in and out of different lives, the change in narration flows perfectly, and without the jolt of confusion when the narrator changes I get from other books with similar narration styles.

Dorothea is a young woman who was raised with her older brother by her father and paternal grandmother in an estate/home called “The Sanctuary”. The Sanctuary has many, many rules about safety, and they could either be viewed as protective or oppressive. Dorothea knows they moved there when she was 4 and her brother 6, following an event in their prior home in California. They have no media coming into the home, and her father dresses everyone in outfits that would be appropriate in the Fifties. In fact, no media past 1960 is in the home. Dorothea reveres her father, and doesn’t want to think or say or hear anything against him. However, her older brother is more rebellious, and leaves The Sanctuary to find his own way in the world.

When Dorothea’s father gets very sick, she leaves him in the care of their family doctor (who makes house calls! I want that!) to search for her brother. As she searches for him, she meets a man whose life had also changed in one day.

As Dorothea searches with her new friend for her brother, and then for answers about her early life, we are taken back and forth in time to discover what happened on that day to change her life and her family’s life. We see both sides of all the characters – everyone has both a redeeming quality and a flaw as we delve into their lives.

Reading this book was amazing – it really sucks you into it. Once Upon a Day is one of those books you can’t put down – you want to shut yourself into a closet and finish the book, but you don’t want it to end! The characters are so well developed that you really do wonder “what next?” at the end of the book – it’s so clear that the lives of the characters continue.

Once Upon a Day also leaves me wondering about my life, and the life of my family. At what point are parents so overprotective that they are smothering? And what level of distance is OK? Can a horrible wrong ever truly be righted? How much of our lives are changed by the events of one day?

A huge thumbs up from here for Once Upon a Day!

The Birth House: A Novel by Ami McKay is currently on everyone’s “best books” list for 2006. Have you read it yet? If not, you should. Really. Go buy it or reserve it online at your library. I’ll wait.

This is a beautiful book about a young girl/woman as she grows up in Nova Scotia, Canada during WWI. She is apprenticed by the local midwife, and learns from her. This apprenticeship is not exactly a prime assignment – the midwife is thought to be akin to a witch, but there are too many mouths to feed in Dora’s home (the protagonist), and she doesn’t have many marriage prospects, so off she goes.

Dora and her midwife mentor cope with challenges from the community and from a new obstetrician who moves into the area and deems women “hysterical”. I especially loved a passage in which the doctor told a pregnant woman that morning sickness is just women wanting attention from their husbands. Yeesh.

There are so many wonderful stories, unexpected twists and turns, and fabulous passages within the book that there is no way for me to adequately describe it. However, the book does include pregnancy loss, so I would not recommend it to anyone who is currently pregnant.

It was a beautifully told story, with wonderful characters that were really brought to life in the pages of the book. I was so sad when the book finished – I wanted more! I hope you enjoy it just as much. It’s a beautiful read.