This matches up extremely well with Lost Boy, Lost Girl to compare fiction and nonfiction about the Second Sudanese Civil War. While Linda Sue Park says this is fiction, she does mention how closely she based it on the real Salva Dut’s life. Like in Lost Boy, Lost Girl, the depiction of human perseverance in spite of horrible circumstances is amazing.

The really cool part about Long Walk is that it has an interwoven story from 2009 with an update on how southern Sudan is doing. What I love is that Salva Dut, just like John Bul Dau, hasn’t just enjoyed his time in the United States; he has gone on to found Water for South Sudan, an organization to install wells for clean water. Go check them out.

Now, it’s not tough to make a book about spies interesting. The Dark Game is no exception. The short histories are the perfect length to give details about the person or events but not so long that they take away from the rest of the book.

Janeczko has done his research. I checked the bibliography for more books that I want to read. The details that he has included are not just the same old stories that I had read before, even though I was familiar with most of the events described. It’s the little details, like a photo of Juan Pujol‘s imaginary spy network (which is really funny…you have to read about it), that make history engaging and remind us that this stuff actually happened.

The Dark Game is definitely worth the purchase and fits well with the current push for more nonfiction in the library.

You may be familiar with the concept of Bloody Times: President Lincoln is assassinated and the country stages a funeral procession from D.C. to Illinois. At the same time, Confederate President Jefferson Davis tries to keep the Civil War going despite General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

The details are great and help to dispel some myths, like what Davis was wearing when he was captured. The myth is that he tried to sneak away in women’s clothes. In reality, he woke up one morning, saw Union soldiers outside of his tent, and put on an overcoat and a shawl to keep warm for his journey. The shawl was the same type that many men wore, yet newspapers printed mocking photos to discredit Davis. Circus owner P.T. Barnum wanted the shawl and overcoat for one of his shows, but when Edwin Stanton, secretary of war, saw that it wasn’t women’s clothing, he held onto it and the myth was born. Swanson’s attention to detail challenges what many people have accepted as fact.

Even though most readers know that Lincoln will die, Swanson still builds up the emotion leading up to and after the event. He also does a skillful job of intertwining the rival presidents’ lives. Also, no one will soon forget the descriptions of how the embalmers kept Lincoln presentable in the hot summer months.

It’s history at its best. Students who have checked it out enjoyed it. I’m going to booktalk it in time for President’s Day and I predict it to be a popular checkout.

Put this one up on the LCD and let the students explore.

The book explores Deaf culture (lower case “d” is the condition, upper case is the culture) in two different eras. One thing I never really thought about before was that, during the silent movie era, both hearing and nonhearing audiences could enjoy the movie just the same. Once theaters added “talkies”, a whole people group was left out.

Side note: did you know that some movies offer captioning? Check out http://www.captionfish.com/ to search for captioned movie showings in your area.

The book moves quickly, although it feels like there is more text in Wonderstruck than Hugo. I also missed the photos from movies that Hugo had. We do get to meet Lillian Mayhew, an actress from the 1920s that went through personal scandals in Hollywood. We also learn about some of the inner workings of museums around New York.

It’s one to check out. I finished it within a 24-hour period. I really enjoyed seeing a Star Wars poster in the background of one of the drawings, since the book takes place the summer of 1977. One thing you’ll have to look for when you read it: all of the references to E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Even though I knew ahead of time that the little sister would be left behind (that’s in the cover synopsis, so I’m not ruining much), it’s how Senzai tells it that makes it emotionally jarring. It’s third-person perspective limited to Fadi’s viewpoint. A middle schooler is not as naive as an elementary school student, but still doesn’t know all of the details of what danger awaits his family.

Fadi is able to make it to the United States and struggle with the traditional middle grade conflict of dealing with bullies. What sets this apart in Shooting Kabul, though, is that Senzai shows how bullying increased after the World Trade Center attacks. The types of slurs the bullies use are the exact same I heard uttered in 2001. Only once did the dialogue seem a little far-fetched: a janitor yells, “You ruffians!” It took a serious scene, where Fadi is alone and jumped by bullies, and made me laugh, which is not the reaction I wanted.

The photography aspect of the story is interesting. You can tell that either Senzai is a photographer or has done her research. Fadi’s father gives advice on how to take better photos that readers could apply to their own photos immediately.

Like I said at the start, Shooting Kabul is a simple story. There are no car chases, no life-threatening illnesses, and the controlling government is not the main antagonist. The book does have realistic interactions between Fadi and his family. Fadi’s motivation, winning a photo contest to travel across the world to find his sister, runs throughout the entirety of the story and never lets us forget just why we like Fadi.

Spies of Mississippi by Rick Bowers is another great nonfiction history for my students. It’s an overview of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The commission was a semi-secret agency created by the state of Mississippi with the sole purpose of keeping the state segregated (the races separate). That’s the whole “Sovereignty” part. Just like in the Civil War, the state was saying that its rights were being infringed by the Federal government.

The commission’s files are finally online. You can look through them here. It’s crazy that a government group was spying on citizens. Agents would show up to civil rights meetings, pretend to be supporters, and start writing down plans, addresses, and license plates. The government tracked movements of activists in a giant database. It’s like they were fighting the Soviet Union, but it was against United States citizens – people the government should be protecting.

The book walks through the history of the commission and puts a personal face to the issues through interviews and photos. It’s a very quick read, less than 100 pages, and is more than just a listing of facts and dates. It’s well worth your read. As the author points out, most of this stuff is a historical footnote, but the minute we forget, that’s when it happens all over again.

Well, now it’s going to be a movie for real:

It stars Jude Law, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lee (Saruman/Count Dooku), and is directed by Martin Scorsese. Those are some big names. It looks exciting.

Okay for Now does not deal with race issues, but it reminds me of the same style as To Kill a Mockingbird in that the second half of the book tackles some pretty difficult issues.

Okay for Now is set in the late 1960′s like Wednesday Wars. We see the town through Doug Swieteck’s eyes as his family moves because his dad switches jobs. Doug runs into trouble at school and the first part of the book is him dealing with bullying, both by students and staff. In real life, Schmidt tested poorly and was tracked into a lower group at school. He could have stayed in that lower group, but a teacher mentored him and helped him with his academics, especially reading. It makes sense, then, that he draws on this experience when Doug is taken in by a teacher who coaches him in reading.

The second half of the book, though, involves Doug’s older brother coming back from Vietnam. There are some huge surprises there, though, so I don’t to give away too many spoilers. The book has a plot, yet most of the fun is hanging out with the characters. They are very believable and I feel like I know them. It may be obvious for those that know me, but I attached to the awesome librarian who is the first friendly interaction Doug has in town. The guy teaches Doug how to draw from Audobon’s Birds of America. The town is tearing out pages from this rare book and selling them to keep the town running. Doug is on a mission to regain the pages in a great metaphor of his own journey to completeness.

I do have have one complaint about the book, but it is a semi-spoiler, so I will put this picture of a paper bag face here so those that don’t want to continue on won’t accidentally read my complaint.

*SPOILER*
My complaint? The ending. For being a book that delves into spousal abuse, child abuse, veteran trauma, and school corruption, the book resolved way too quickly. Doug’s dad says he’s sorry and then everything’s cool. We just move on, which is really the only option we have, but it seems like a switch was flipped and then everyone decided to get along with each other.

Yes, Schmidt set up some of the changes, but I expected some things to be left unresolved. To my recollection, everything is wrapped up with a nice bow on top. It didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the book; it’s just an observation about style. It’s like how I complain when not enough characters die in a story. The English teacher part of my brain has something wrong with it. Hamlet much?

I have not seen either True Grit movie.

I fully expect John Wayne to ride up on horseback and punch me. I accept the consequences.

Chalk it up to my age, but I have never been one for Westerns. That’s stuff for my dad and grandpa. I am a product of post-Space Race entertainment. Star Wars and Star Trek are my visions of wild frontiers. Westerns sometimes are downright uncomfortable with their portrayal of non-White races and other times just seem so boring.

Then I watched Firefly.

Yes, I had heard Han Solo labeled a space cowboy, but it wasn’t until I saw the crew of the Serenity stroll around in dusters and laser revolvers that I finally showed an interest in Westerns. I wanted to learn more about Joss Whedon’s inspiration for the series and that led me to Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. This is a great book if you haven’t read it and makes the Civil War come alive.

But what about Western fiction? Sure, I could watch a Western movie. Who doesn’t like The Magnificent Seven? But could I sit down and read a Western?

Thankfully, I began my experiment with True Grit by Charles Portis.

This book does not need me to recommend it. This one’s a classic. When older teachers hear me talking about it, they’re like, “Well, yeah!” So, older readers, you can sit back and enjoy your wisdom accrued over the years. This review is for the younger crowd.

Main character Mattie is a teenage girl on her own in the world attempting to right a wrong. This screams of YA fiction, so I don’t know why it hasn’t been pushed recently in secondary libraries. Mattie’s father was killed by the man he was trying to help. The killer, Tom Chaney, will probably be lost in the system and escape punishment. Mattie recruits washed-up Marshal Rooster Cogburn as her hired gun to track down Chaney. Portis will have to forgive me that, as I read, I pictured Haymitch from The Hunger Games as Cogburn.

I think a teen reader will appreciate the story, although the rising action part of the plotline does take a little bit as Mattie is trying to get Cogburn to help her. Those scenes develop Mattie as a character and show where she can hold her own with any adult, but they’re not action-packed. Her characterization is right up there with Katniss and Tally Youngblood. Some critics will try to convince you that Mattie is like Huck Finn.

Sure. They’re both:

1. Young
2. Fast-talking
3. Southerners

But if I were going out into the badlands to hunt down a crew of killers, I would never take Huckleberry Finn with me. He’d be more likely to chew loudly on some straw, pull a prank out of boredom, and get us both killed. Mattie has the determination and purpose that makes for a strong female protagonist. (Yes, I do understand that Katniss and Tally get whiny. They’re not uber-heroes. They’re human.)(Well, fictional humans.) Huck Finn is more about fate and where The River will take you.

Get True Grit by Charles Portis. It’s worth the read, even if you’re not a big Western fan. Now that I’ve finished, I plan on getting the new version of True Grit on Netflix. The reviews have said that it stays pretty closely to the book.