Category: Fiction - 24 Carrot Writing

CLAYTON BYRD GOES UNDERGROUND, by Rita Williams-Garcia

2/21/2018

 Review by Annie Cronin Romano

In CLAYTON BYRD GOES UNDERGROUND, Clayton is devoted to two things: his grandfather and his blues harp (no, it’s not a harmonica!). All Clayton hopes for is a solo with the Bluesmen, the group his grandfather and Clayton perform with in Washington Square Park. So when Clayton’s grandfather, Cool Papa Byrd, dies unexpectedly, the soulful melancholy of the blues songs he played becomes all too real. Devastated by his mother’s insistence to rid their lives of all things that remind her of Cool Papa, Clayton takes off in search of the Bluesmen, certain that when he finds them, they’ll take him under their wing and mentor him musically as his grandfather did. And he’ll finally get that solo he’s wanted to play so badly. But life on the run has other plans for Clayton, and his harrowing adventure opens up problems Clayton never dreamed he'd encounter. Throughout the story, Rita Williams-Garcia tenderly and skillfully navigates the emotions Clayton experiences as he struggles with the sudden loss of his grandfather and the resentment he feels towards his mother, who wants to bury Clayton’s love of the blues right along with Cool Papa.

CLAYTON BYRD GOES UNDERGROUND (Amistad, 2017) is a middle grade novel for children ages 8-12. This beautifully written story reads like a blues score with language that captures the very spirit of the music it features.

On Writing
Rita Williams-Garcia explores the complexity of losing a loved one from the child’s perspective while also depicting the contrasting experiences of the parent. Written in third person, CLAYTON BYRD GOES UNDERGROUND does not shy away from the difficult topic of death; it seamlessly weaves the sadness of loss with the joy of how a person’s impact can keep shining even after he's gone. The characterization is strong, and the wailing tones of a blues melody are captured in every line, making it a laudable example of using linguistic style to elicit the tone of a story.

Rita Williams-Garcia is the bestselling author of many award-winning books, including One Crazy Summer and P.S. Be Eleven. For more information on her work, visit her website at https://rita-williamsgarcia.squarespace.com/.

THE HIDDEN MEMORY OF OBJECTS by Danielle Mages Amato

4/18/2017

Review by Annie Cronin Romano

In THE HIDDEN MEMORY OF OBJECTS, Danielle Mages Amato’s debut young adult novel, fifteen-year-old Megan Brown’s brother has just died, supposedly from a drug overdose. Megan is confused and angry, insisting the Tyler she knew never would have taken his own life, let alone used drugs. When the police start digging further into the circumstances surrounding Tyler’s death, Megan sees the memory of the brother she adored being defaced before her eyes. A talented collage artist, she turns to Tyler’s possessions to find comfort. In the process, she discovers she has an ability to “see” the memories held in those objects. It is a talent that causes Megan much upheaval and pain—literally—and takes her and two friends, Eric and Nathan, on a journey which generates more questions than answers about her brother’s life.

Megan’s devotion to the brother she loved clashes abruptly with the betrayal she feels as she uncovers a side of her brother she never knew existed. In her attempt to makes sense of her newfound visions, Megan enlists the assistance of an artifact historian, Dr. Brightman, who specializes in "murderabilia"—and may have a few secrets of his own. As she seeks the truth about Tyler’s death, Megan learns there is far more to people than can be seen on the surface, even those she thought she knew the best.

THE HIDDEN MEMORY OF OBJECTS, a contemporary young adult novel with a dose of paranormal, grabbed me from chapter one. Megan was a believable, likeable character, and her relationships with Eric, a close classmate, and Nathan, a friend of her brother’s whom she doesn’t recall meeting, add nice dimension to the plot. THE HIDDEN MEMORY OF OBJECTS blends family bonds, mystery, a touch of romance, betrayal, corruption, paranormal abilities, and history into an engaging, multifaceted journey. This beautifully written story kept me turning the pages long after I should have turned out the lights!

On Writing
Amato’s character development is strong, as she skillfully uses her characters' dialogue and actions to build their personalities for the reader. There is no info dumping here. She delves into the complex emotions that can arise with the tragic, unexpected loss of a loved one and portrays them in a believable manner throughout the story. Contemporary and paranormal genres are blended seamlessly, and every scene and character contribute to the movement of the tightly woven narrative.

For more information on Danielle Mages Amato’s work, visit her website at www.daniellemagesamato.com.

Get a Grip on the Snurtch!

1/5/2017

Review By Kelly Carey

Whether you are 5 or 50, we all have a Snurtch that we must contend with and control. In Sean Ferrell’s THE SNURTCH, Ruthie is struggling to manage her Snurtch, a wonderful personification of her bad temper and poor behavior. Ruthie’s Snurtch causes big trouble at school...trouble for which Ruthie takes the blame.

Ferrell’s book offers a platform for discussing those moments when we are not at our best. It is much easier to assess our own actions if we can blame our poor choices on a Snurtch, an ever present goblin of sorts that causes trouble. Ruthie’s Snurtch pulls her hair and makes her grumpy. He makes her run in the classroom and push her classmates. When she burps back at the Snurtch or returns his tongue out face, Ruthie ends up alone on the playground or relegated to the teacher’s time-out chair.

Who can’t relate to being blamed for something you didn’t do? The Snurtch did it!

But as Ruthie looks hard at the Snurtch, Ferrell finds a unique plot twist to show that Ruthie is ready to claim responsibility for the Snurtch. Ruthie transforms the Snurtch from a scapegoat for her misdeeds to a safe way to say “I’m sorry.”

THE SNURTCH is a wonderful, whimsical, and humorous character, conjured up with the same care as the imaginary bunny Harvey who landed Jimmy Steward in a looney bin – lucky for Ruthie, she found a way not only to own her Snurtch, but she found classmates who have Snurtch issues of their own.

On Writing
Ferrell has taken a universal childhood problem – managing our behavior and impulses – and wrapped this complex problem up in simple straightforward text. His plot is complex, which keeps the pages turning and the story interesting – but the easy flowing text meets the readers at just the right level.

What could be simpler and yet more provoking than an opening line that reads “Ruthie has a problem at school”?

What I find most intriguing about this book is the wonderful marriage between the author’s words and the illustrations. While the book is illustrated with Ruthie and her classmates in fun and realistic artwork, the troublesome Snurtch is a crayon scribble that interacts with the other drawings like the cartoon Roger Rabbit walking amidst live action scenes and actors. The result is a clever visual representation of how the enigma of our mood and behavior can have a drastic effect on our everyday life.

Read Ferrell’s wonderful picture book, and get a grip on your Snurtch.

Reading COUNTING THYME Is Time Well Spent

9/5/2016

A review by Annie Cronin Romano

In COUNTING THYME, Melanie Conklin’s middle grade debut, eleven-year-old Thyme Owens is uprooted from her San Diego home and moved to New York City so her younger brother, Val, can undergo experimental cancer treatment. Thyme is determined to return home by March so she and her best friend can celebrate their birthdays together. Challenges at her new school and having to share a room with her emotionally volatile older sister further spur on Thyme’s desire to return home. Thyme uses her parents’ time reward system—a half hour for doing the dishes, an hour for helping with laundry—to save up enough days to visit her best friend. With each passing day, however, Thyme is making friends and mediating drama in New York, and she feels herself drifting further away from her previous life. These changes heighten Thyme’s desperation to return home. Anger and fear set in as Thyme begins to suspect that returning to San Diego may not be part of her parents’ plan after all. Throughout the story, Conklin tenderly and skillfully navigates the conflicting emotions Thyme experiences as she struggles between the resentment she feels about moving and her fear of losing her brother to his devastating disease.
COUNTING THYME is a contemporary middle grade novel for children ages 10 and up. This beautifully written story is engaging and heartfelt. A must read!

On Writing
With humor and sensitivity, Conklin delves into the complexity of dealing with what Thyme wants (to go home) versus what she has (a brother with cancer). Written in first person, COUNTING THYME does not shy away from the emotional struggles of having a family member battling a serious illness. Conklin illuminates the importance of selflessness and sacrifice without being preachy or heavy-handed.

For more information on Melanie Conklin’s work, visit her website at www.melanieconklin.com.

Magic is Reality in Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley

7/31/2016

A Review by Kelly Carey

Cassie Beasley’s middle grade fiction novel, Circus Mirandus, certainly deserves a space on the shelf with The Polar Express and Alice in Wonderland, as all three explore the importance of a belief in magic and the unexplainable through a creative explosion of fantastical characters that pluck at the very heart strings of love and life. On the surface, Beasley’s Circus Mirandus is a visual delight of fun house creatures, sideshow oddities and mind bending magicians, but pull the tent flap back just a bit and readers will find a touching examination of the special bond between a devoted grandfather and his grandson and a stunning message about faith and the magic of love.

In Circus Mirandus, Beasley conjours up a mystical traveling circus that appears like Brigadoon to the faithful who believe. The circus first materializes to a young Grandpa Ephraim and it both changes and shapes his life in essential ways. When the story opens, Ephraim is a dying old man whose powerful relationship with his grandson, Micah, makes them both reach out to Circus Mirandus for a miracle. Beasley wonderfully complicates Ephraim and Micah’s quest with a horribly wicked Aunt Gertrudis. Even her name sticks in your throat as you read it and her actions make you hate her in a most satisfying way. Then along comes clever and logical Jenny, a classmate and friend of Micah’s, to act as a perfect foil to both Aunt Gertrudis’ nastiness but also to Micah’s faith in the existence of magic.

The search to find Circus Mirandus will be just as harrowing as the sights and characters of the circus itself. Readers will feel their hearts swell and swoon as they join Micah on his quest to discover the circus and the miracle he and his grandfather desire. Along the way, it would be a good idea to adhere to British science fiction writer Arthur Clarke’s second law – The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. This is true both when hunting for a magical circus and in our universal pursuit of happiness.

Enjoy the discovery!

On Writing

Plot, character and creativity are Beasley’s greatest strengths as she masterfully pulls readers into her story of magical realism. First, she makes you care about Ephraim and Micah. Then, she enthralls you with the fanciful charm of her circus and its performers. Finally, she presents a life or death problem plagued with a vile villain.

The formula may seem simple, but Beasley plays out her plot and characters with the skill of a master puppeteer and, at some point it may be true, that the strings are attached to the reader who happily allows Beasley to move them through her wonderful tale. Beasley lets her story unfold with a seamless flow back and forth between Ephraim’s boyhood to the present, where the reader is following Micah’s struggle to save his grandfather, find the circus and survive horrible Aunt Gertrudis. Backstory comes through chapters told within the tents of the circus and Beasley offers up each new bit of information just as the reader is relaxing. She ramps up the rising tension of her plot by removing the limits of Aunt Gertrudis’ wickedness, pushing Grandpa Ephraim closer and closer to death, and then snatching away the certainty of Circus Mirandus as a solution.

In the end it is simply magic.

SOPHIE'S SQUASH GO TO SCHOOL by Pat Zietlow Miller

7/5/2016

Reviewed by Annie Cronin Romano

In this spirited follow-up to Sophie’s Squash, Sophie is off to school, toting her closest friends, two squash named Bonnie and Baxter, along with her. Sophie’s devotion to her squash makes it difficult for her to bond with the other children in her class. Even a boy who brings his beloved stuffed frog to school can’t win Sophie over. As Sophie’s two squash start to fade, she realizes that making room for human friends is an important part of life.

SOPHIE’S SQUASH GO TO SCHOOL (Schwartz & Wade Books, 2016) follows Sophie as she learns to open her mind and heart to making new friends. Colorful, lively illustrations by Anne Wilsdorf perfectly depict Sophie’s progress as she moves from sharing adventures with her two squash to growing relationships with her classmates. Miller’s text and Wilsdorf’s illustrations blend flawlessly to convey a sweet tale of learning how to welcome new friends. SOPHIE’S SQUASH GO TO SCHOOL is picture book for children ages 3-7. Get your hands on this well-crafted sequel and make some new friends of your own!

On Writing:
In SOPHIE’S SQUASH GO TO SCHOOL, Miller creates a sequel which flows beautifully from Sophie’s Squash yet creates a unique adventure for Sophie. Lessons Sophie learned in the first book are carried over into this follow-up in a seamless, subtle way.

For more information on Pat Zietlow Miller’s work, visit her website at www.patzietlowmiller.com or check out her June 2016 guest blog on this site at http://www.24carrotwriting.com/-blog/guest-blogger-pat-zietlow-miller-talks-sequels.

For info on Anne Wilsdorf’s work, visit her website at www.studiogoodwinsturges.com/anne-wilsdorf1.html.

Echo Masterful in Character Creation

6/3/2016

Review by Kelly Carey

For adults who loved All the Light We Cannot See, here is a middle grade novel for the young reader that similarly embraces the universality of the tiny threads that bind all of humanity together. This 2016 Newbery Honor novel blends a mystical fairy tale, complete with kings, queens, evil witches, spells and curses with the grounding historical reality of Nazi Germany, the Great Depression and the treatment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. On the surface, Ryan uses music, and specifically harmonica music, to connect the stories. But, on completion of this amazingly crafted novel, readers will find a linkage that goes beyond music, time and place.

Echo reels readers in with an opening story filled with enchantment and make-believe. The opening story is left incomplete as Echo introduces three separate tales told through the eyes of three young protagonists. As each protagonist faces their own daunting challenges, the history around their lives becomes relatable and personal. Friedrich is caught in Nazi Germany just before World War II. Mike struggles during the Great Depression, and Ivy’s story plays out after Pearl Harbor. For young readers who devoured the Magic Tree House series, and are ready to jump up a level, Echo is the natural next step in historical fiction for children.

On Writing

Pam Munoz Ryan’s Echo proves that a single story can jump genres and be more successful for the leap. Her novel is equal parts fairy tale and historical fiction. The combination has an amazingly readable effect.

While the history is there, Pam Munoz Ryan uses poetic, yet solid and simple characters, to show rather than tell the history. As a result, readers become entranced with each character. You will cheer for them and weep for them because they are complete in their humanity, in their flaws, in their hopes and in their struggles. Ryan’s characterization is so full that you know things about her main characters without her ever even telling you. Here is an author who didn’t just create characters, she created souls.

Mother Bruce Will Make You Roar With Laughter

4/28/2016

Review by Kelly Carey

Be prepared to laugh uncontrollably at Mother Bruce and the growing goslings who climb on him, tug at him, become troublesome teenagers, are annoyingly adorable and will absolutely not leave Bruce alone. Bruce is not your average bear in the forest. He finds recipes on the internet, shops with a shopping cart, and sets out to make hard-boiled goose eggs with a honey salmon sauce. Before he can boil the eggs, they hatch and Bruce becomes a very grumpy, growling, furrowed brow Mother Bruce. He tries desperately to ditch the goslings who lovingly tail him all over the forest.

The illustrations alone will have you howling. Add in a story line filled with humor that appeals to kids and adults alike and the result is a belly laugh inducing picture book that will make you wish for goose eggs that hatch.

On Writing

Higgins’ Mother Bruce is masterfully plotted. The page turns are fast paced, and the creative story line zigs and zags with a wonderful unpredictability. The writing follows the number one rule established by the writers of South Park. The South Park writers advise that the beats between your scenes should connect with the words “therefore”, and “but then” rather than the snooze worthy “and then”. (You can watch them discuss this during a guest lecture at NYU using the button below. But beware; the language is colorful so have your bar of soap handy.)

Higgins has achieved this plot rule brilliantly and the result is a thoroughly entertaining story that keeps the reader anxious, frazzled and laughing hysterically.

South Park Writing Team NYU Lecture

Last Stop on Market Street

2/22/2016

Review by Kelly Carey

I’m a country girl who finds joy in her heart far, far from the city. Imagine my surprise when Last Stop on Market Street, a picture book that takes place in the city, filled me with mountain hiking happiness.

On the surface, this Newbery Award winning picture book is a simple tale of CJ and his grandmother hopping a bus after church to volunteer at a soup kitchen. CJ is frustrated that it’s raining, that he has a chore to do after church, that he has to take the bus, that he doesn’t have music pumping through his ears from headphones, and that the Last Stop on Market Street is a gritty, graffiti scrawled part of the city. Nana uses gentle guidance, delivered in a spunky no-nonsense voice, to flip CJ’s frustrations into celebrations.

A pay it forward coin, a lady with butterflies in a jar, a blind man, and a song shared from a musician with a guitar all offer opportunities for CJ and the reader to notice bits of joy that could easily have been missed. The sights and happenings along the bus ride encourage adult and child readers to recognize all the beauty of life; beauty that is sitting right next to them, sometimes on a bus to Market Street.

In the end, CJ, the readers, and a country loving gal like me will have learned to be a “better witness for what’s beautiful” in the world.

On Writing

Matt De La Pena combines gritty city images and real dialogue with gorgeous messages and amazingly beautiful imagery. There is a wonderful rawness about the way CJ and Nana talk to each other. De La Pena doesn’t dress up their language for this story, but writes it exactly as you would hear it. No soft cooing phrases or unreal platitudes fly between CJ and Nana. The result is that De La Pena’s message is strong and true.

Using a coin, a song shared, and the wonderful interaction between Nana and a blind man, De La Pena not only propels his plot forward but delivers a stunning reminder to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us.

RODEO RED by Maripat Perkins

9/28/2015

~ by Annie Cronin Romano

Rodeo Red has a hootin’ good time down on the ranch with her loyal stuffed dog, Rusty. But when a new rancher, Slim, shows up on her land and takes a liking for Rusty, Rodeo Red must figure out how to get Rusty back without displeasing mom, the Sheriff, and dad, the Deputy.

Maripat Perkins’ debut picture book takes a simple yet honest look at the conflict that can build up for an older sibling when a new baby enters the picture. Using humor and delightful cowboy jargon, Perkins’ RODEO RED (Peachtree Publishers, 2015) is sure to delight children, particularly those who may have a younger brother or sister. The story is beautifully illustrated by Molly Idle (Flora and the Flamingo), whose muted earth toned illustrations flawlessly capture Red’s range of emotions. Perkins and Idle take the reader on an amusing, clever adventure with pictures and text that readers will enjoy over and over again. Toss your lasso around RODEO RED, geared towards children ages 4-8, and get your cowboy drawl on!

On Writing:
Perkins’ text is rich and entertaining. RODEO RED a solid example of how to use dialect and wordplay in a lively, engaging manner.