Monday, April 30, 2012

War Horse - The Movie

War Horse
    Novel by Michael Morpurgo
    Movie by Steven Spielberg (via Walt Disney Pictures & Dreamscape)



War Horse, set in England and Europe during World War I, is a story of a young boy's love for a red bay colt that he raised and trained against odds and the wishes of his father.  The hero of this story is the horse, who much in the same fashion as Black Beauty, is allowed to tell his own tale. 



In 1914, Joey, a classy red bay gelding is sold to the army by the young boy's (Albert) father to help pay the monies due to keep the family farm.  He is purchased by a kind and gentle English captain and is, at first, well tended.  As can be expected in a war story, Joey's soldier is killed in battle and he is taken by the Germans and put to use on the Western Front.  As the story progresses, Joey finds strength and courage in a bond with a beautiful black stallion, and they miraculously are able to stay together through several misadventures during the war.




At home, Albert (15 when the gelding was sold) is finally old enough to join the fight and signs up for the veterinary corps.  It is his belief that he will someday find his beautiful horse and they will be together again.  Joey lives through many terrors of war but also finds love and tenderness from a small French girl named Emily who is able to, with the help of her grandfather, keep both horses safe for a period of time.  However, he ultimately finds himself and his black companion captured by the Germans and put to work pulling the great war guns.



Topthorn, the black stallion, does not survive this life and dies in the harnesses, leaving Joey to break away and look for a way out of these horrific circumstances.  He is terrified by an approaching German tank and runs frantically through the front into No-Man's Land where his is injured by barbed wire. 



It is this deadly situation that prompts a short truce between two soldiers on either side of No-Man's Land, one English and one German, as they work together to provide Joey with a chance to survive.  It is this act of kindness and cooperation between the two that helps him finally find his way home.



Michael Morpurgo is one of England's most loved children's book writers. He has written over 100 books including Homecoming,  Sparrow, and An Elephant in the Garden.  Morpurgo has won the Smarties Prize, the Whitbread Award, and recently the Blue Peter Book Award for Private Peaceful. He is also written a sequel to War Horse called Farm Boy. You can visit him online at http://www.michaelmorpurgo.com/.


    



You can also learn more about horses and mules used in World War I by visiting http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWhorses.htm


Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Paintings From the Cave by Gary Paulsen

PAINTINGS FROM THE CAVE: THREE NOVELLAS
     by Gary Paulsen

 
This short story collection contains three novellas: Man of the Iron Heads, Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Girl, and Erik's Rules.  These stories allow the reader to embrace three troubled children, Jake, Jo, and Jamie, who are growing up in environments that no one, much less a child, should have to endure.  Jake lives in a city polluted with gangs, drugs, and violence.  He lives by one rule: You stop moving, you're done!  Next to the building he hides in to avoid the drug lord and his minions is a newly constructed apartment building protected by security and guarded entrances.  As he scrambles and sneaks through the wrecked interior of his building in an effort to avoid the druggies and crackheads who inhabit the front rooms, he spots a man across the alley who seems to be creating an iron head out of putty.  Intrigued and mesmerized, Jake risks exposure to find a window to better see the man work.  As he watches, fascinated, the man looks up and their eyes meet.  Jake has spent his entire life hiding from evil and protecting his friend, Layla, who is pregnant from being raped in the stairwell of her building.  His entire world changes, however, when he meets the eyes of this stranger across the alley. 

Jo lives in a low-class suburban area, where her drunk parents spent their days either screaming at each other or beating Jo.  She became very good at moving silently through the days of her life, attracting as little attention as possible...that was before the dogs.  Jo's first dog was a terrier that a neighboring family had left behind tied to the fence as they pulled away.  Mike became the first of her canine family, followed shortly thereafter by Carter, a skinny brown mutt that had a permanent smile.  It wasn't long before Betty joined them...laying in a box outside the grocery store sporting a sign that read, "Free Puppies".  Jo spend her days going to school, where she was the brunt of a considerable amount of bullying due to her ragged clothes and unkept appearances.  She learned to shoulder this distain along with the neglect her "biologicals" afforded her.  This all changed when she found the dogs...and when the dogs found a small girl with dark, sad eyes named Rose.

Jamie was an artist.  He didn't feel like one or believe he had any talent, but it was his art that kept him from going insane.  Jamie and his brother, Eric had a major challenge in their life...they are runaways, running from a live of abuse and neglect from their mother and her alcholic boyfriend.  Eric is fifteen and Jamie's ten and they have hidden in cars, slept in alleys, in the park, stayed over at the houses of a few sympatheic strangers, and even slept on the benches of the burger joint that Eric worked at after school.  Eric has rules: Rule #1...Don't talk about, or think about, what happened before.  Jamie tries to follow this rule, but the nightmares still come in the dark of the night and he wakes screaming and trembling with fear as Eric holds him close, comforting him, waiting for the shaking to stop.  Eric is trying to keep them together, in school, clothed and fed, and most importantly, out of sight.  Eric's Rule #5...Stay off the grid, out of sight, out of the loop, don't do anything to call attention to yourself because the least little thing could trip you up. 
This was a rule that Jamie was very good at following, he was small, quiet, unobtrusive.  It was his art that caused him to break this rule, his art that led him to the dogs, and it was the dogs that gave him and Eric a chance for a short stay in heaven. 

A short glimpse of these three novellas may be seen at:
http://play.google.com/books/reader?id=viMwInQ1qiQC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en



Gary Paulsen is heralded as being "one of the best-loved writers alive".  After reading these novellas, I can completed understand why this may be so.  His youth was troubled and he ran away from home at the age of fourteen.  As with many of his story characters, he was also "saved" by art and dogs.  A short bio-glog can be seen at glogster.com. 

 http://cdoerksen.edu.glogster.com/gary-paulsen/




Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Rotters - An Odyssey Award Winner

Rotters                          
     by Daniel Kraus



Are you wondering how a book about grave diggers ended up winning the 2012 Odyssey Award?  The Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production is given to the producer of the best audio book produced for children and/or young adults.  The author, Daniel Kraus, has managed to successfully endear us to Joey, an high school outcast who's only triumph in life is the achievement of straight "A"s and a talent with the trumpet.  At sixteen, when his mother tragically dies and he is sent to live with the father he has never met.  Unwelcome, ignored and neglected by his father, Joey Crouch is even more bullied at his new high school.  When he is forced to steal money for lunch, he is caught and labeled as "bad" and taunted by teachers and students alike.  At home, he sleeps on the floor in front of the kitchen sink and is disgusted at the filth and smell that trails his father when he is in the house.  As Joey maintains his "A" average, a fervent wish of his mother, he watches his father and notices a strange intellect and purpose that surrounds his actions.  

A bit reminiscent of A Tale of Two Cities, (those of you who remember the man whose wife cleaned his boots every evening only to find them full of mud the next morning) Joey's father has a similar secret.   As a member of a morbid by proud society of grave diggers, assigned to a specific territory by an old pact, Harnett peruses stacks of newspapers daily to decide who has died and where the best wealth may be buried.


My obvious inclination, were I in Joey's shoes, would be to bolt and find a new place to live.  He, however, realizes that the apple falls not far from the tree and opts to join his father's pursuits and passions.  The story is quite intriguing as he is constantly challenged to be the best "Digger" he can be (all the while trying to maintain his grades).   As he is indoctrinated into this society, he meets the Diggers from around the country and find that they are, in fact, a dying breed...no pun intended.  Lionel, his father's mentor, had actually trained another Digger along with his father and the plot becomes intense when we realize they were both in love with the same woman, Joey's mother. 



Rotters is quite a long journey for a YA novel.  It is divided into two parts, the first telling of his learning/training days, and the second depicting his fall from normal society and journey into the "dark side" of the rotter world.  Baby, his father's counterpart, has a vendetta for Joey and his father and becomes a constant nemesis.  As the Digger culture falls apart, Baby creates "The Rotter Book", a photo-journal of all the graves he has dug and plundered.  This sets a macabre spin to the plot and Joey is very much in danger of being destroyed. 

I enjoyed this story immensely, but be forewarned, it is not a quick read.  I feel it is an amazing story of challenge, choice and chilling scenarios.  This is a story of strength, determination, dedication and devotion is a completely unexpected venue.  It would be a terrific summer vacation or cruise ship read.

For more information about the author, Daniel Kraus: his bio, book trailer, and his other works go to http://danielkraus.com/.

To get know more about The Odyssey Awards, go to http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/ala/listening-library-wins-2012-odyssey-award-rotters.


Ship Breaker

Ship Breaker
    by Paolo Bacigalupi




Ship Breaker is a post-apocalyptic novel that tells of a teenager's journey from a low paying, dirty and dangerous job of "ship breaker" or salvaging valuable scrap off wrecks, to running for his life with a beautiful, rich "swank" who he finds barely alive within a clipper ship wrecked during a violent storm.  Nailer, along with his "crew", his work group, stay alive while working scrap by observing a strict code of honor of loyalty and trust.  Pulling scrap copper and other medals off the beached iron ships that have been abandoned after the polar ice caps have melted and covered many of the major cities of the world is a deadly job since, at any time, the creaky and rusted duct works could collapse sending a body tumbling into the bowels of the wreck.  Nailer's life is drastically changed one day when, as he is trying to recover from such an accident, a huge "city killer" storm hits the beach where the impoverished workers live.  In the aftermath of the storm, he and his crew chief Pima, stumble across the wrecked clipper and decide to investigate it for any wealth they can pull off it.   In one of the luxurious bedrooms they find a body of a beautiful young girl.  When they decide to remove her jewelry, her fingers are too swollen.  As they attempt to cut off her fingers to pull of the rings she comes to live unexpectedly.   Nailer and Pima have to decide whether to kill her to take the wealth that will make them rich for life or let her live and chance that she will reward them for their help. 




As a YA science fiction, I loved the plot and action of this novel.  Once "involved" with the characters, which I admit took me awhile, I was engrossed in the story line and couldn't wait to see where Nailer and Pima's decision would take them.  The dog-men, genetically engineered half-human half-dog, loyal and devoted to their "patrons", added a unique danger factor when we found out that "Lucky Girl" (as they named the clipper survivor) was being pursued by murderous corporate moguls trying to capture her and use her to force her father to agree to their power hungry demands. 





Paolo Bacigalupi has done a phenominal job with this second full length novel.  His first, The Windup Girl, received many awards.  Ship Breaker has been nominated for the 2011 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.  Bacigalupi has finished his third novel, a sequel to Ship Breaker called The Drowned Cities.  To read reviews on this story, go to Goodreads, http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/12814594-the-drowned-cities.