Barbed Wire Baseball by Marissa Moss, illustrated by Yuko Shimizu

From the time he was a young boy and saw his first baseball game, Kenochi "Zeni" Zenimura wanted to play baseball - he wanted that more than anything.  And he was well on his way towards living his dream when he was old enough, managing local teams and playing with the Fresno Nisei League and the Fresno Twilight League, going to exhibition games in Japan, even playing with star players of the New York Yankees.  It seemed Zeni was on top of the world, at least until December 7, 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

By now married with two teenage sons, Zeni and his family were forced to move to an internment camp just because they were of Japanese descent.  Located on the Gila River Indian Reservation, it was hot and dry desert with too many people crowded into barrack after barrack, each containing row upon row of cots.

While families tried to make a home out of their allotted space, putting up curtains and decorating with all kinds of personal mementos, Zeni still dreamed about baseball and decided he was going to play - right in the desert!

And so he picked a spot and began to clear the grass and rocks, hard work in the desert heat.  Yet before he knew it, others joined in to help, including his own sons.   Using his ingenuity, his power of persuasion and any other means possible, little by little, Zeni and his helpers began to turn the desert into a baseball field, right down to bleaches for people to sit and watch games.  And while the men worked on building a field, the women sewed uniforms out of potato sacks.  Lastly, equipment was purchased with funds collected from among the detainees.

Barbed Wire Baseball is an excellent introduction to both Japanese American baseball and the internment of Japanese American in World War II.  Marissa Moss gives the same attention to detail in her text that Zeni gave to creating his baseball field.  And the beautiful illustrations by Yuko Shimizu bring the whole story together.  This is the first children's book that Shimizu has illustrated and for it, she used a Japanese calligraphy brush and ink, than scanned and colored the illustrations with Photoshop, so that the colors give a real sense of the time.

At the end of Barbed Wire Baseball, there is an Afterword about Kenichi Zenimura life, as well as an Author's Note and an Artist's Note, which you may not want to miss reading.   Moss has also included an useful Bibliography for further exploration of Japanese American baseball.

I had never heard of Kenochi Zenimura before, probably because I'm not much of a baseball person, but I really was impressed with his perseverance and dedication to creating a place where he and his fellow detainees could enjoy playing or watching baseball in an otherwise desolate place and that would give them all a sense of accomplishment and community.  And having lived in Phoenix, AZ for 4 years and being somewhat familiar with the desert around it, I really understood what an accomplishment it was.

1927: Zenimura standing between Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth
(also depicted on Page 10 of Barbed Wire Baseball)

This book is a Picture Book for Older Readers and is recommeded for readers age 7+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

Nonfiction Monday is hosted this week by Perogies & Gyoza

After by Morris Gleitzman

After the Nazis took my parents I was scared
After they killed my best friend I was angry
After they ruined my thirteenth birthday I was determined
To get to the forest 
To join forces with Gabriek and Yuli 
To be a family
To defeat the Nazis after all.

After I finished reading Once, the first story about Felix, 10, a young Jewish boy on the run from the Nazis, I wanted to know more about this brave boy and Zelda, the six year old who became his friend.  And so, Morris Gleitzman gave us Then, which did indeed continue the story of Felix and Zelda.  When I finished reading that second book, I still wanted to know more and so along came book three, called Now.  But this is the story of 80 year old Felix and his granddaughter Zelda, 10.  But wait, Now ended in the middle of the war.  What happened to Felix in the last two years of the war?  Where and how did Felix spend them?  Well, we know that he spent time helping partisans with his friend Gabriek.  But, how the heck did that come about?

Well, now there is After.  After returns to the war, where it is 1945 and Felix has been hiding for two years in a hidey hole in Gabriek's barn, emerging once a night to eat and excercise.  The hidey hole is right under the hooves of Gabriek's horse Dom.  On the night of his 13th birthday, Felix hears Gabriek talking to some men with guns.  Nazis?  But they are speaking Polish and are not wearing uniforms and there is a lady wearing a red scarf with them.  Confused and scared, Felix decides to follow them when they head off to the forest with Gabriek.  Afraid they are going to kill Gabriek, Felix tries to rescue him by yelling at his captors.  With their guns pointed and ready to shoot, Felix gives himself up to save Gabriek - only they aren't Nazis, they're partisans and Gabriek is one of them and they have just sabotaged a Nazi train.

When it is all over, Felix is allowed to go home with Gabriek, but when they get there, the farm is on fire, set by the Nazis.  They manage to save the horse and find their way to the partisan camp, asking to permanently join.  But Felix is an outsider and must prove himself - by stealing a gun from a Nazi.  The lady in the red scarf, Yuli, takes him to a village and tells him what to do.

Felix ends up joining the partisans, but as the doctor's assistant not as a fighter.  He befriends the maternal Yuli, even fantasizes that Gabriek and Yuli could be his new parents.  But the war is still going on, and the more the Nazis are defeated, the more hateful and destructive they become.  Life is still precarious - for Felix and for the partisans.

There is much more in store for Felix and Gabriek before the end of the war, but it would probably require a **Spoiler Alert** and I think it needs to be experienced first hand.  Suffice it to say, that After did, indeed, give me the sense of closure that I really needed on Felix's story.

Gleitzman, we know, is a master storyteller and the four books that comprise Felix's history are no exception.  Caught in one of the darkest periods, witness to all kinds of horrors, he gives us a Felix who has managed to maintain his sense of humanity, fairness and imagination throughout and it is all incredibly believable.  And in After, we see the man that Felix will become - a doctor who wants to heal the wounds of the world - small wonder.

After is a true coming of age book.  Had things been different, Felix would have had a bar mitzvah at 13 instead of joining a partisan group.  But even so, there is a very discernible change in Felix in this book.  He is not a young boy anymore, praying to Richmal Crompton, but has a sense of maturity about him that becomes all the more obvious and poignant when he is put into a paternal position of taking care of three Jewish sisters hiding from the Nazis.

I am sorry to say good-bye to Felix now, but am comforted by the fact that I can reread his story anytime I want to.  His story is sad, funny, violent and painful, but so well worth reading.

Patience has never been my strong suit, so as soon as I knew it was available in Australia, NZ, and the UK,  I also knew I had to order After from The Book Depository (free shipping, Americans!) because I don't know when the American edition is going to come out.  Sound good?  Why wait? You can read the first chapter right here on The Morris Gleitzman Collection.

And thank you, Mr. Gleitzman, for doing such a bang up job telling us Felix's story.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was purchased for my personal library.

His Majesty's Hope (A Maggie Hope Mystery #3) by Susan Elia MacNeal

His Majesty's Hope is the third book in Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope Mystery Series.  Maggie, you will remember, is a Brit who was raised by her aunt in the United States after her parents died in an accident.  She went to England to sell her grandmother's house which she had inherited and ended up staying there once the war started in 1939.

In the first book, Mr. Churchill's Secretary, Maggie, who is a brilliant mathematician, found herself working for the PM and is soon caught up in solving the mystery of who and why his previous secretary was murdered - and it involves her own father, you know the one that is dead.

In the second book, Princess Elizabeth's Spy, Maggie is sent undercover to Windsor Castle under the guise of maths tutor to Princess Elizabeth.  But again finds herself in the midst of a murder mystery and lots of decoding of messages -and it involves her own mother, you know, the one that is dead.

In book three, Maggie has just finished training in Winston Churchill's elite SOE (Special Operations Executive) as a spy for Britain.  First off, she is to parachute into Germany to deliver some radio crystals to the Resistance in Berlin - in and out in three days time.  But when the opportunity comes along for a job as companion to the pregnant daughter of a high ranking Nazi, Gustav Oberg, Maggie jumps at the chance to perhaps uncover information that would be valuable to Britain's war effort.

But what she finds doesn't make sense until she gets friendly with Elise Hess, a nurse at Charité Hospital who has herself uncovered some disturbing information about what's happening to some of Germany's children.  And it doesn't take long for Maggie to find herself on the run from the Gestapo in Berlin.  And yes, this novel also involves family members and more, but that's all I can say without the need of a spoiler alert.

I loved the first two Maggie Hope mysteries and couldn't wait to get my hands on this one (I received an ARC from the publisher a while ago, read it immediately, and just reread it).  Macneal has really honed her skills as a historical mystery writer.  His Majesty's Hope is a taut, suspenseful story involving some disturbing programs that the Nazis had in place to secure their position as "Master Race." There is also just enough romance without over doing it.

Though His Majesty's Hope is a lot edgier than the first two books, I think it still retains its appeal to YA readers who enjoy mysteries.  You could, perhaps, say that this mystery is less of a cozy than the previous two because of some of the subject matter, but I certainly think it is still borderline cozy.  It isn't a classic murder mystery in the same way as the previous two books.

Maggie is becoming a character with a strong personality, though sometimes she can be a little petulant and willful, but that just makes her all the more realistic.  Still, I like that way she uses mathematics to solve many problems and this novel also involves a clever cipher that I found to be fun.

There is a subplot with Maggie's friend David, who is gay.  Being gay at that time was still illegal and in fact, Alan Turing, who broke the German Enigma Code that helped Britain so much in the war, was gay and was tried and convicted in 1952.  In 1954, he committed suicide using cyanide poison at age 42.  MacnNeal doesn't include a gay character because it is cute to do, but rather to point out the dangers for gay people at that time, when you would think more tolerance would be shown given what the Nazis were doing.

A word about the cover art - once again, it is great and feels so of the time.

So if you want a nice nail-biter of a mystery, give the Maggie Hope mysteries a try.  If you are already a fan of Maggie's than you are in luck - this novel will be available on May 14, 2013

I sure hope there is a fourth Maggie on the way!

This book is recommended for readers age 13+
This book was an ARC sent to my by the publisher

This is book 1 of my 2013 Crusin' with the Cozies Reading Challenge hosted by Socrates' Book Reviews

This is book 3 of my 2013 European Reading Challenge hosted by Rose City Reader

This is book 6 of my 2013 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Historical Tapestry

Sunday Funnies #9: Donald Duck and his Victory Garden

First, I would like to wish everyone

A Very Happy Mother's Day!

Second, I would like to wish my kiddo 

A Very Happy Birthday!

I hope you and Lipeng do something fun today.

Third, since I live in the city, I only have a little herb garden in my window, but today I have spent the morning chasing the birds away from it (a chicken wire fence is in the making), but since I reviewed a book about the importance of Victory Gardens in WWII and it is pretty much planting time, I thought I would post this old Donald Duck comic about birds and Victory Gardens.  Donald's Victory Garden first appeared in this edition of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories April 1943 #31 (in color, not B&W):

Page 1 (click to enlarge and read)

Page 2 (click to enlarge and read)

Page 3 (click to enlarge and read)

Page 4 (click to enlarge and read)

Page 5 (click to enlarge and read)

 Page 6 (click to enlarge and read)

 Page 7 (click to enlarge and read)

 Page 8 (click to enlarge and read)

Page 9 (click to enlarge and read)

 Page 10 (click to enlarge and read)

Maybe I will print some of these out and attach them to a Popsicle  stick and put them in my window box to keep away the birds.

HAPPY GARDENING!

The Victory Garden by Lee Kochenderfer

It is spring 1943 and for 11 year old Teresa Marks the war has turned personal - her beloved older brother Jeff was off in Europe flying B-24s, a dream come true for him, but not for her.  It is also time for planting the annual Victory Garden and resurrecting the annual competition for best tomatoes with the Markses curmudgeony neighbor Tom Burt.  But just as the planting and competition gets underway, Tom Burt is seriously injured in a tractor accident and must spend the summer in the hospital.

Rather than plow his entire garden under, and knowing it is his pride and joy, Teresa suggests that one of the ways her class can raise money for the schools war bond competition would be to take over Tom Burt's garden and sell the produce.  No one is more pleased than Teresa when six kids volunteer, even if the new kid, troublemaker Billy Riggs, thinks it's a bad idea.

The kids, called the Young Sprouts by the local newspaper, work hard on the Tom Burt's Victory Garden.  But one morning, Teresa wakes up to a trampled garden and a broken St. Francis statue belonging to the very gentle Mrs. Burt.  Naturally, she is convinced that Billy Riggs did it to spite the Young Sprouts.

At the same time, Tom Burt's big dog Wolf goes missing from the relatives who are caring for him during his master's hospital stay.  The police seem to believe the dog will make its way home and sure enough, one day Teresa finds the dog under the Burt's porch with Billy Riggs.  Dirty and badly injured, Billy had been trying to help the frightened animal.  Together, they nurse Wolf, but when Teresa notices a piece of the broken statue lodged in the dogs side, she think that Billy Riggs may have had nothing to do with the trampled garden after all.

Throughout the summer, as the kids work hard in the garden and at selling their produce, Billy comes and goes, each time offering advice and help to Teresa while avoiding the other kids.  Pretty soon, Teresa begins to think of him as a friend, but then he disappears along with his alcoholic father, their run down house closed and deserted.

And Teresa is surprised to realize how much she misses him.

The Victory Garden is an interesting novel.  It is a real slice of life, coming of age story.  Teresa talks about reading Life magazine and that is exactly how this novel feels - like a story out of Life about how communities are coping with the war.  Which may be why it has such an 'in the middle of things' feeling to it, and not just because it is directed at middle grade readers.  It is set in the middle of Kansas, in the middle of the US, in the middle of the war and, with the exception of Billy Riggs, among very middle class people.  Days pass, vegetable grow, and small town Kansas begins to feel almost idyllic in the midst of war.  And yet, in the midst of all that middleness, the Young Sprouts are learning some very valuable lessons and some painful truths about life.  Especially Teresa, who was very happy believing she knows how to keep bad things away - like as long as she uses her 'secret weapon' on the tomatoes they will be big and juicy and award winning just the way her brother liked them, and that as long as her brother is in the air in his B-24, he will be safe, and that planting a victory garden will help win the war and bring everyone home safely.

A US poster encouraging people to grow
their own vergtables

But can Teresa learn that magical thinking doesn't actually work in the middle real life?

Teresa was right in thinking that a victory garden could help win the war.  Victory gardens were a very important part of life on the home front.  These gardens began to appear everywhere there was room to plant - back yards, allotments, public lands, rooftops and in England, there were even gardens planted in bomb craters (see my post Victory through Vegetables: Woolton Pie).  The American, British and German governments all encouraged citizens to grow their own food to supplement their food supply during rationing and to allow more food to be sent to their troops.  And it victory gardens turned out to have an unexpected benefit to folks on the home front - it brought them together as a community, just as it does in The Victory Garden.


This book is recommended for readers aged 10+
This book was given to me by a friend

Sorrowline, Book 1 of the Timesmith Chronicles by Niel Bushnell

It is 2013 and Jack Morrow, 12, is visiting his mother's grave while his dad explains that while he is in jail, Jack will be staying with his aunt.  Not at all happy about this, Jack rubs his hand on his mum's gravestone, memories instantly start to flooding his mind and he finds himself in the graveyard in 2008, the year his mum died, with a man claiming to be his dead granddad.

But before anything can be explained to Jack, dirt and dust start swirling into human shape, Dustmen, his granddad calls them, and tells Jack to find a gravestone from 1940 and to go there and find his younger self and that Jack must protect the powerful Rose of Annwyn  Not knowing what he is talking about, but threatened by the Dustman, Jack finds the 1940 gravestone and, with another flood of memories, ends up in wartime London.

And sure enough, he does manage to find the much younger teenage version of his grandfather, Davey.  It seems that Jack is a Yard Boy, having the ability to travel along the Sorrowline that connects every gravestone to the date of the person's death.  In fact, there is a whole other world, the First World, that Jack did know about, peopled with Yard Boys, Dustman, Paladins (undead knights), Boagymen, and of course, the power hungry, evil Rouland, who is also seeking the Rose of Annwyn.   

Yard Boys normally only travel downstream, that is from present to past and not very far into the past at that.  But Jack has the ability to be able to travel not only downstream, and quite far back in the past, as far as 1813, but upstream as well, and he can even take a non-Yard Boy with him, making him a very special Yard Boy.

Naturally, given his ability, and not fully understanding things yet, Jack begins to formulate the idea that he can return to 2008 and prevent his mother's death, something he has never come to terms with.  And even though Davey keeps reminding him that he can't change history, Jack stubbornly holds on to this idea right up to the end.  But naturally, it isn't as easy as he thought - Rouland has other uses for him, should he be able to capture and get Jack under his power. 

At the center of everything is the Rose of Annwyn.  And so the quest is who will get to it first - Jack or Rouland?  It is a fight between good and evil in the First World, just like the one that is raging in 1940 between the allied and axis powers - a rather nice parallel, I thought.  

This is a real action-packed fantasy adventure with lots of time travel.  I particularly liked the way the time travel element worked - simply by rubbing his fingers over the death date on a gravestone opened the Sorrowline for Jack.  And I thought it was a nice touch to include the memories of the deceased as he traveled back in time.  Memories are so much a part of a person's life.  

On thing that did annoy me was that the Rose of Annwyn was really fully explained and it came late in the book.  But that is a small complaint and the excitement of the quest for it made up for that.   

Aside from the parallel of power crazed leaders, I asked myself why was Jack sent back to the Blitz.  Well, the most obvious reason it that it fit with his grandfather's age.  The other obvious reason - the Blitz brought its own destruction of property and diverted people's attention, so that any destruction the First World inflicted on the Second World would be chalked up to the Blitz.  And no one would pay much attention to Jack, Davy.  Otherwise, this isn't really a WW2 book, though the descriptions of the Blitz are really spot on.

This is the first book in a series, so a lot a time is spent explaining things to the reader that they need to know to enjoy this and future books in the series.  But since Jack was also a novice to this new world he has become a part of, the intros and explanations worked beautifully into the story. 

This is a British book that I bought from the Book Depository, so I don't know if it will be published in the US or not, but it is still available online if you want to read it.  And I would recommend it if you like time travel, fantasy, adventure and good world building.  Meanwhile, I am looking forward to Book 2, due out in 2014.

This book is recommended for readers 9+
This book was purchased for my personal library

It's Monday! What are you reading? #3

It's Monday! What are you reading? is the original weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.  It's Monday! What are you reading? - from Picture Books to YA is a kidlit focused meme just like the original and is hosted weekly by Teach Mentor Texts.  The purpose is the same: to recap what you have read and/or reviewed and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week.

Last week, I probably read less than I have in a long, long time.  I was down in Washington DC, visiting family and doing other things and just had no time to really be able to get into a book, which is not a good thing when you have two different blogs.  But I did read and World War II: a visual history of the world's darkest days by Sean Callery and Odette's Secrets by Maryann MacDonald, none the less:

This week, I plan to read the following (all descriptions from the publisher's blurbs): 

Kid Soldier by Jennifer Maruno
Fatherless and penniless, fifteen-year-old Richard Fuller wants a bike, so Mr. Black, the baker hires him to help with deliveries. Mr. Black entertains him with army stories and teaches him Morse code. He invites Richard to attend the opening ceremonies of the local 1939 military camp. Infatuated with army life, Richard takes part in Army training camp under an assumed name. When war looms, he makes the most impulsive decision in his life and enlists.
He travels to England, witnesses the terror of the Battle of Britain, the horrible death of a German pilot, is caught in the London Blitzkrieg, and is wounded himself. When his true age is discovered, Richard faces a possible court-martial.
Will Richard’s desire for adventure lead to disaster so early in his life?

After by Morris Gleitzman
In the fourth part of Felix's story, continuing his adventures in World War Two, he faces perhaps his greatest challenge - to find hope when he's lost almost everything, including his parents. As Europe goes through the final agonizing stages of the war, Felix struggles to reconcile hatred and healing. He's helped by a new friend, but if he should lose her as well ...

(my review of Once, Then and Now, the first three books about Felix and his survival while on the run from the Nazis.)

Sorrowline by Niel Bushnell
The past is not a frozen place. Graveyards are not dead ends. And if the Sorrowline lets you in there is a hidden world of adventure waiting behind every gravestone.
Just when 12-year-old Jack Morrow’s life is falling apart he discovers his natural ability to travel through Sorrowlines: channels that connect every gravestone with the date of the person’s death. Confused and alone Jack finds himself in 1940. He embarks on an adventure through London during the Blitz with Davy, his teenage grandfather, to find a mystical Rose that might just save his mother’s life, a mother who he has already seen die. But the terrible power of the Rose of Annwn, is sought by many, and the forces of a secret world are determined to find it first. With a league of Undead Knights of his trail, commanded by the immortal Rouland, can Jack decipher the dark secret hidden at the heart of his family? Can he change his own destiny and save his mother? 

His Majesty's Hope (Maggie Hope Mystery #3) by Susan Elia MacNeal
...whip-smart heroine Maggie Hope returns to embark on a clandestine mission behind enemy lines where no one can be trusted, and even the smallest indiscretion can be deadly.World War II has finally come home to Britain, but it takes more than nightly air raids to rattle intrepid spy and expert code breaker Maggie Hope. After serving as a secret agent to protect Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle, Maggie is now an elite member of the Special Operations Executive—a black ops organization designed to aid the British effort abroad—and her first assignment sends her straight into Nazi-controlled Berlin, the very heart of the German war machine. Relying on her quick wit and keen instincts, Maggie infiltrates the highest level of Berlin society, gathering information to pass on to London headquarters. But the secrets she unveils will expose a darker, more dangerous side of the war—and of her own past.

(my review of Mr. Churchill's Secretary (Maggie Hope Mystery #1) and Princess Elizabeth's Spy (Maggie Hope Mystery #2)

What are you reading this week?