Middle Grade Review: Rocket to the Moon!

Rocket to the Moon! by Don Brown

Series: Big Ideas that Changed the World
Genres: Middle Grade, Non-fiction, Graphic Novel
Maturity Level: 1
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” when the Apollo 11 landed on the moon. But it wasn’t just one man who got us to the moon. Rocket to the Moon! explores the people and technology that made the moon landing possible. Instead of examining one person’s life, it focuses on the moon landing itself, showing the events leading up to it and how it changed the world. The book takes readers through the history of rocket building: from ancient Chinese rockets, to “bombs bursting in air” during the War of 1812, to Russia’s Sputnik program, to the moon landing.

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For kids who enjoyed learning about science from The Magic School Bus, learning about history from Big Ideas might be a great fit. But ultimately I found that graphic novel was maybe not the best medium for a non-fiction title.

Review: Chanel’s Riviera

Chanel’s Riviera: Glamour, Decadence, and Survival in Peace and War, 1930-1944 by Anne de Courcy

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Maturity Level: 4
(content warnings: harm to children, holocaust)
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆

The Cote d’Azur in 1938 was a world of wealth, luxury, and extravagance, inhabited by a sparkling cast of characters including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Joseph P. Kennedy, Gloria Swanson, Colette, the Mitfords, Picasso, Cecil Beaton, and Somerset Maugham. The elite flocked to the Riviera each year to swim, gamble, and escape from the turbulence plaguing the rest of Europe. At the glittering center of it all was Coco Chanel, whose very presence at her magnificently appointed villa, La Pausa, made it the ultimate place to be. Born an orphan, her beauty and formidable intelligence allured many men, but it was her incredible talent, relentless work ethic, and exquisite taste that made her an icon.

But this wildly seductive world was poised on the edge of destruction. In a matter of months, the Nazis swooped down and the glamour of the pre-war parties and casinos gave way to the horrors of evacuation and the displacement of thousands of families during World War II. From the bitter struggle to survive emerged powerful stories of tragedy, sacrifice, and heroism.

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Chanel’s Riviera is almost two books in one. Partly it is the story of Chanel’s Riviera home, La Pausa, and partly it is the story of France in World War II. While these two things are linked, the different narratives had very different tones and themes. The Chanel aspect of the book was like reading a decade’s worth of gossip magazines: affairs, fashion, betrayals, becoming rich and gambling it all away. The WWII half was like reading a war book: factual, full of first-hand and second-hand accounts, death, hunger, terrible deeds. Together they show a France that is both gilded and war-torn. Like Chanel, the country is far more complex than we make it out to be.

Audiobook Review: Agent Zigzag

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Narrated by: John Lee
Genres: Non-fiction, History, Biography
Maturity Level: 3+ (some mention of prostitutes)
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆

Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began.

In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service. For the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service who at one time volunteered to assassinate Hitler for his countrymen. Crisscrossing Europe under different names, all the while weaving plans, spreading disinformation, and, miraculously, keeping his stories straight under intense interrogation, he even managed to gain some profit and seduce beautiful women along the way.

The Nazis feted Chapman as a hero and awarded him the Iron Cross. In Britain, he was pardoned for his crimes, becoming the only wartime agent to be thus rewarded. Both countries provided for the mother of his child and his mistress. Sixty years after the end of the war, and ten years after Chapman’s death, MI5 has now declassified all of Chapman’s files, releasing more than 1,800 pages of top secret material and allowing the full story of Agent Zigzag to be told for the first time.

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Agent Zigzag was my first non-fiction audiobook, and I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy the experience as much as I expected to. I found the narrator, John Lee, to be a bit dry. Listening to him drone on and on and on about World War 2 was a bit like listening to an uninteresting lecture. That’s not to say he did a poor job. He pronunciation in particular was on-point, and I was impressed by his ability to imitate different accents. And his inflection was fine, giving me a clear idea of tone and personality. It just … never ended. He never seemed to pause for a breath. I needed time every paragraph or so to process what I’d learned.

Review: Indianapolis

Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic

Genres: Non-Fiction, History
Maturity Level: 4+
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆

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Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, days after delivering the components of the atomic bomb from California to the Pacific Islands in the most highly classified naval mission of the war, USS Indianapolis is sailing alone in the center of the Philippine Sea when she is struck by two Japanese torpedoes. The ship is instantly transformed into a fiery cauldron and sinks within minutes. Some 300 men go down with the ship. Nearly 900 make it into the water alive. For the next five nights and four days, almost three hundred miles from the nearest land, the men battle injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other. Only 316 will survive.

It begins in 1932, when Indianapolis is christened and launched as the ship of state for President Franklin Roosevelt. After Pearl Harbor, Indianapolis leads the charge to the Pacific Islands, notching an unbroken string of victories in an uncharted theater of war. Then, under orders from President Harry Truman, the ship takes aboard a superspy and embarks on her final world-changing mission: delivering the core of the atomic bomb to the Pacific for the strike on Hiroshima. Vincent and Vladic provide a visceral, moment-by-moment account of the disaster that unfolds days later after the Japanese torpedo attack, from the chaos on board the sinking ship to the first moments of shock as the crew plunge into the remote waters of the Philippine Sea, to the long days and nights during which terror and hunger morph into delusion and desperation, and the men must band together to survive.

Then, for the first time, the authors go beyond the men’s rescue to chronicle Indianapolis’s extraordinary final mission: the survivors’ fifty-year fight for justice on behalf of their skipper, Captain Charles McVay III, who is wrongly court-martialed for the sinking. What follows is a captivating courtroom drama that weaves through generations of American presidents, from Harry Truman to George W. Bush, and forever entwines the lives of three captains—McVay, whose life and career are never the same after the scandal; Mochitsura Hashimoto, the Japanese sub commander who sinks Indianapolis but later joins the battle to exonerate McVay; and William Toti, the captain of the modern-day submarine Indianapolis, who helps the survivors fight to vindicate their captain.

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Guys, this book is bonkers! It’s a tale of heroism, and incompetence. The crew members of the USS Indianapolis exhibited amazing heroism in the face of an impossibly gruesome ordeal. Men literally kicking sharks off crew mates, men risking their own lives to swim after others who swum off towards hallucinations. But the elephant in the room is the complete and utter incompetence of the navy that led to the ship to be sunk in the first place, and then for it to be FOUR EFFING DAYS before anyone even noticed! AND THEN they went and blamed it all on the captain, who could have done literally nothing to prevent it, and didn’t own up to their own mistakes for over 60 years. This story is utterly fascinating, and my eyes were glued to the page.

Review: The Nightingale

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Genre: Historical Fiction
Maturity Level: 5
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆

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In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another. 

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real–and deadly–consequences.

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Well. I have so many mixed feelings about this book. I’m not quite sure where to start, or what order to go in…

Hmm. I guess I’ll start with the bit I’m not really knowledgeable to comment on: the historical accuracy. I don’t really know much about France in WWII. I heard some reviewers saying there were some very accurate details, and others saying it was inconsistent and that there were a lot of inaccurate details. All I know was that I felt like I was learning a lot about Occupied France, and it felt accurate.

Calendar Girls August: Best Historical Fiction

What are Flavia and Melanie trying to do to me?!?!?! How am I supposed to pick just ONE best historical fiction????????

Historical fiction. A fictional novel written in the actual past, containing real events, places, and people. The main character might be an actual person, or might be a made up person. It’s a cool genre because there is a lot of flexibility, but you still have to do your research and know your stuff.

I adore historical fiction. This love goes all the way back to my childhood and Laura Ingles Wilder. There’s just something so magical about reading a great novel where you also learn a little bit. Plus, and I’m just being honest here, the clothes! *swoon* I can’t even begin to count the number of historical fictions I’ve read just about Henry VIII, his wives, and his children. It’s probably my favorite genre, if I had to pick a favorite, because I’m a terrible person who picks favorites, get over it.

I’ve been thinking for weeks trying to decide between three of my favorites, which are all VERY different. In the end I am picking the one that I personally enjoy the most, even if it’s not necessarily the most representative of the genre.

So. Drumroll please.

Review: Music of the Ghosts

Music of the Ghosts by Vaddey Ratner

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction
Maturity Level: 4
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆

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Leaving the safety of America, Teera returns to Cambodia for the first time since her harrowing escape as a child refugee. She carries a letter from a man who mysteriously signs himself as “the Old Musician” and claims to have known her father in the Khmer Rouge prison where he disappeared twenty-five years ago.

In Phnom Penh, Teera finds a society still in turmoil, where perpetrators and survivors of unfathomable violence live side by side, striving to mend their still beloved country. She meets a young doctor who begins to open her heart, immerses herself in long-buried memories and prepares to learn her father’s fate.

Meanwhile, the Old Musician, who earns his modest keep playing ceremonial music at a temple, awaits Teera’s visit with great trepidation. He will have to confess the bonds he shared with her parents, the passion with which they all embraced the Khmer Rouge’s illusory promise of a democratic society, and the truth about her father’s end. 

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If you’re looking for a lighthearted, summer read, look somewhere else. If you want a straight-forward story about modern-day Cambodia, look somewhere else. Music of the Ghosts is a sad, meandering story about the worst times in Cambodian history. The writing is lovely and it will make you think, but I won’t lie to you, it was a difficult read.

Review: The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction
Maturity Level: 3
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆

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Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

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It’s kind of pointless to talk about how much I loved The Help because everyone else in the world already has. But goodness, I loved it. The thing is, I love the characters. All three protagonists remind me of myself or who I want to be in some way.

Review: The Wages of Sin

The Wages of Sin by Kaite Welsh

Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Fiction
Maturity Level: 4
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆

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Sarah Gilchrist has fled London and a troubled past to join the University of Edinburgh’s medical school in 1892, the first year it admits women. She is determined to become a doctor despite the misgivings of her family and society, but Sarah quickly finds plenty of barriers at school itself: professors who refuse to teach their new pupils, male students determined to force out their female counterparts, and—perhaps worst of all—her female peers who will do anything to avoid being associated with a fallen woman.

Desperate for a proper education, Sarah turns to one of the city’s ramshackle charitable hospitals for additional training. The St Giles’ Infirmary for Women ministers to the downtrodden and drunk, the thieves and whores with nowhere else to go. In this environment, alongside a group of smart and tough teachers, Sarah gets quite an education. But when Lucy, one of Sarah’s patients, turns up in the university dissecting room as a battered corpse, Sarah finds herself drawn into a murky underworld of bribery, brothels, and body snatchers.

Painfully aware of just how little separates her own life from that of her former patient’s, Sarah is determined to find out what happened to Lucy and bring those responsible for her death to justice. But as she searches for answers in Edinburgh’s dank alleyways, bawdy houses and fight clubs, Sarah comes closer and closer to uncovering one of Edinburgh’s most lucrative trades, and, in doing so, puts her own life at risk…

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I enjoyed The Wages of Sin! It was a fun, light read with a little bit of feminism thrown in for good measure. However, I’m not sure it was a particularly well-written book.

Review: 1776

1776 by David McCullough

Genres: Non-fiction, History
Maturity Level: 2
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆

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In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence – when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King’s men, the British commander, William Howe, an his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known.

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Well, I did it! I finished my first historical non-fiction book, and what a great way to start!

1776 was jam-packed with facts and stories, but still somehow read almost like a novel. Lacking dialogue, McCullough masterfully wove in letters almost as if the characters were speaking to one another. I felt as I was reading as though I was really getting to know characters like George Washington, Henry Knox, Charles Lee, and even a lowly private Martin. It was a fascinating book, leaving me wondering why McCullough didn’t write about the rest of the war. I’ve always loved military history, though I’ve never understood why, and finally getting a good look into the Revolutionary War was awesome. I really enjoyed this book, and it leaves me thinking I definitely want to read more of this genre that I’ve always been a little afraid of.