A Review of Prisoners in the Palace by Michaela MacColl

When you picture evil regent types trying to wrest control of kingdoms from sweet young princesses, I don't think Queen Victoria instantly springs to mind. Yet that's exactly what this book is about. And while the inclusion of an intrepid maid as narrator and a rakish reporter and young thief as allies is an invention, apparently the young Victoria really did have to battle her mother and Sir John Conroy for control of her country and her future. See the Author's Note for all the gory details!

Now, on to the book proper. And, my, is it proper! In case you weren't aware, being a teenage princess in the 1800s would be like being a prisoner even if your mother and her comptroller weren't trying to keep you on a tight leash—a leash so tight that Conroy even gave it a name, the Kensington System. This meant that Victoria slept in the same room as her mother, was hardly ever allowed to see anyone, never got to be alone or talk with peers, and had to follow a strict schedule of schooling.

I had to double-check to see if this book was written in first person, but it is not. Even in third person, Liza Hastings gives us a strikingly strong narrative viewpoint as we read her tale of being suddenly orphaned and making her way by becoming the maidservant of 18-year-old Princess Victoria. (See chapter titles like "In Which Liza Confronts a Newspaperman and a Fallen Woman.") Liza's own position is precarious to start with, and then she enters into a politically perilous household. Victoria is dependent on her loving but highly protective governess, Baroness Lehzen, and is restless over the restrictions placed on her by her mother the Duchess of Kent and her mother's secretary and comptroller, John Conroy. Soon the Baroness is asking Liza to spy on Conroy and the Duchess, and Conroy is asking Liza to spy on the princess. Besides which, Conroy looks at Liza in a lascivious way, and there are rumors that he had something to do with the previous maid's departure. The Duchess of Kent's enmity with her brother-in-law the king makes everything all the more complicated. Meanwhile, Liza must navigate the hostile environment belowstairs, where she is distrusted because she was a lady before her parents died.

As for Victoria, the princess is spoiled and immature. Liza tries to befriend the girl for her own purposes; besides which, she feels sorry for Victoria. Unfortunately, it's hard to trust the princess, and Victoria is rarely able to converse with Liza. But little by little, Liza manages to find out more about what's going on, and she is even able to offer the princess her help.

In doing so, Liza has two allies: first, a scruffy boy she discovers is actually living in a little nest inside the royal rooms. (This, too, is based on real events, though from somewhat later in Victoria's life.) Inside Boy introduces her to a second ally, a reporter who publishes broadsheets hinting that Victoria is unfit to rule. Liza rightly suspects that Conroy is behind the stories and initiates a counter-offensive.She also finds herself being attracted to the journalist, Will Fulton.

The intrigue gets intrigue-ier, till finally Victoria is trapped in the palace with Liza, the Duchess having left her daughter in Conroy's hands so that he can force her to sign a promise to put him in charge of England's treasury when she becomes queen. It is only thanks to Liza and her friends that Conroy's plot is defeated. Then Liza must choose whether to stay with the princess or pursue a future with Will.

This is a lively adventure as well as a fascinating look at a time in history that I thought I knew, but got to know better thanks to Liza Hastings and Princess Victoria. For example, the contrast between Lisa's view of Prince Albert and Victoria's is a hoot. Another nice thing about Prisoners in the Palace: How Victoria Became Queen with the Help of Her Maid, a Reporter, and a Scoundrel (A Novel of Intrigue and Romance) is that we get to see some of the struggles of the servants and lower-class Brits, especially women. I should note that Victoria's diary entries are apparently all authentic, and the author incorporates them seamlessly into her story. Prisoners in the Palace is a thoroughly enjoyable read!

Note for Worried Parents: This is a book for teens. There's a thread about an unplanned pregnancy and fallen women here, with hints about rape. Of course, the context is how few options women had during this era in history.

Also: I requested a copy of this book from the Amazon Vine program.

A Review of Facing Fire by kc dyer

I'm rather fond of this author's previous book about skateboarder and time traveler Darby Christopher, especially because of its glimpse into the lives of the ancient First Peoples who crossed the Bering Strait to North America. This new book offers us three more slices of history, and middle schooler Darby is just as feisty and appealing here as she was in A Walk Through a Window.

Just don't expect an appearance from Darby's guide, Gabe. Or rather, expect him to show up in a relatively non-helpful way. This time Darby is accompanied by a new guy, a fellow skateboarder named Zander who has even more of an attitude than Darby does.

In her latest adventure, Darby travels from Toronto to Kingston, where she has offered to help Fiona, a friend of her mother's, largely in an attempt to avoid spending all summer watching her baby sister. She is also avoiding dealing with some trouble she got into with her friend Sarah. And once again, a mysterious window at a historical site allows Darby to travel into the past.

Darby winds up at Fort Frontenac in 1758, in the middle of a group of Acadians fleeing a British attack during the Seven Years' War. Though the people she observes can't see her, Darby is still subject to danger, and she barely escapes a fire to return to her own time.

In between texting her friend Sarah, Darby goes skateboarding and meets local boy Zander, who is cutting class. When she and Zander get together at a skate park, she learns that he is Mohawk and has his own interest in Canadian history. Later she and Zander fall into the past together, winding up on board a ship that is transporting two prisoners, an American doctor and a Shawnee boy who is Tecumseh's nephew. Once they get back home, Darby and Zander have some interesting debates about what it means to be Canadian and why Darby, whose ancestors are relative newcomers, should be more capable of time traveling than Zander, who feels he has more right to it. Eventually Darby and Zander go back into the past again, where they witness the near-capture of a runaway slave.

When writing time travel, an author has two basic choices. Should his characters interact with the people in the past or just observe them? Each approach has its strengths and weaknesses, of course. When a character from the present interacts with people in the past, it can make the storytelling more lively; however, it can also distort the history, especially if the focus remains on the time traveler and she affects the events in which she participates.

In the Window books, dyer has gone the other direction, creating characters from the present who mostly observe the past they visit. This keeps the history pure and in some sense mysterious, as Darby must put together what's happening from the bits and pieces she sees and hears. She sometimes does research after she gets home so she can figure out the history she has observed. And really, isn't that what we always end up doing when we study history that goes back more than one or two hundred years? This reminds me of reading Bill Bryson's book about Shakespeare, in which he points out how little we really know, since very few records remain from the 1600s.

Now, dyer balances out her contemporary characters' somewhat passive role as observers of history by giving them other, present-day concerns: Darby is afraid of being blamed for an arson incident with her friend Sarah back in Toronto, while Zander has issues with his heritage and is thinking of dropping out of school. Another minor but intriguing subplot is Fiona's work with water needs on the First People lands.

I find that most time travel books read more like historical fiction and sometimes contemporary realism than fantasy, with the time traveling simply acting as a doorway—or window, in this case—to another era. It's nice to see these historical events taking place in Canada, since my students and I generally only get the American viewpoint. I always tell them that if they were to read about the American Revolution in a British schoolbook, they would get quite a different perspective. Facing Fire made me want to get my hands on more books written locally about the histories of different countries around the world.

Like A Walk Through a Window and the author's Eagle Glen time travel trilogy, Facing Fire brings the past to life, and it slips in a few lessons about life in the present, too. While I missed Gabe, I enjoyed meeting Zander, who is a strong character in his own right. Maybe in Book 3 we can see all three of these kids in one place, or rather, one time!

Note: kc dyer is a member of my small online writing group.

A Review of Stolen Child by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

To tell you the truth, I've been waiting to review this book till it showed up on Amazon (U.S.), but it still isn't there... Finally I asked the author what's up, and apparently there's some businessy situation about rights which means that this won't be happening any time soon. So if you search for the book on Amazon (U.S.), you'll only find a couple of used copies. The trick, it turns out, is to look it up on the Amazon Canada website.

You've probably heard of Hitler, the Nazis, and World War II. You're no doubt familiar with the terrible events of the Holocaust. But have you heard about the Lebensborn Program? It's yet another nasty thing the Nazis did in their push for Aryan purity. Basically, they sorted through children in villages throughout Eastern Europe, sometimes using women called the Brown Sisters to do the job. Their goal was to find kids who looked Aryan and take them away to be raised as Germans. As Skrypuch explains in her author's note:

The stolen children were put through tests, including the measurement of sixty-two body parts, to ensure that they were "racially valuable." Any tiny shortcoming meant the difference between an adoptive home and either a concentration camp or a slave labour camp.
The final round of racially valuable children was then sent to special homes where the children were brainwashed into thinking that they were German. Some were told that their parents were dead, or had only been spies and liars. Children who were still young—under the age of eight—were then placed with their new Nazi families. Older children were put in Nazi Youth boarding schools or fostered out.

Skrypuch presents the story of one such child in a unique way, showing Nadia after she has been essentially rescued by a couple who takes her to Canada to start a new life. But Nadia is troubled by flashbacks to her life as a German child, and her classmates call her Nazi because of her accent. Who is she really? It takes a series of events and memories for Nadia to remember her life in Germany, let alone the life she had when she was very small. In a way, this is the story of a girl who is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and must be deprogrammed. (Her kind new guardians do not actively try to bring this about, as they have no information on how to do so.) Just keep in mind: Nadia's struggle to adjust to her life as an immigrant in a new country would be difficult enough without her astonishing and painful history as a stolen child. Skrypuch makes Nadia's extraordinary story seem ordinary, writing it in a way that the book will be accessible to middle grade readers. You will have to judge for yourself whether your child is ready for the mature themes of war and kidnapping, of course.

In a companion book due out in a year or so, Skrypuch will give us the story of Nadia's older sister, who was made into a slave laborer.

Sadly, many of the children in the Lebensborn Program never recovered their original identities. According to Skrypuch, not only did the Nazi destroy the records of these children when they saw that they were going to lose the war, but "most of the stolen children refused to leave their German parents, even if their birth parents were still alive and could be located."

I'll close by telling how the author found out about the Lebensborn Program:

I first heard about [it] from my mother-in-law, the late Lidia (Krawchuk) Skrypuch. The Nazi front passed through her city of Zolochiv twice and soldiers took over her house. She and her parents became prisoners in their own home. One day she overheard bits of conversation from the Nazi officers. Something was happening at her school the next day. Her parents kept her home. When she did go back to school, all of her blond and blue-eyed female classmates had disappeared.

As in her previous books, Skrypuch has a way of making historical events present and personal. She has received a number of awards for her writing, including the 2008 Order of Princess Olha from the President of Ukraine. You may have trouble tracking down Stolen Child, but I suggest you try.

Note for Worried Parents: This material is handled gracefully, but there are some scary moments, as when Nadia recalls her kidnapping and brainwashing. The whole book is rather intense; while it is written for readers ages 9-12, some young readers may be more ready for the story than others.

Also: Marsha Skrypuch is a member of my online writing group.

A Review of Emily's Fortune by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

If you're like me, you'll wish this book were a little longer. Of course, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is a force to be reckoned with, often in rather serious stories, but here she goes for a good old-timey rollicking adventure of the "orphan heiress pursued by evil uncle" variety. I can't recall if the author included any actual moustache twirling, but she could have very easily.

Naylor even has fun with conventions, ending every single chapter with a sentence or two printed in very large type of the kind used for posters in the Old West. These are oral tale-telling-style questions for the reader. Here are the first few:

*** But somebody else was on the way to Luella's big house! Now, who in the flippin' flapjacks could it be?
*** And who in creepin' creation do you suppose was in it?
*** ...where in tumblin' tarnation was Emily supposed to sleep?
*** And what in blinkin' bloomers do you think she saw?

That should give you a good idea about the tone of this book!

When Emily's mother and the wealthy woman she works for, Miss Nash, are killed in a carriage accident, Emily wants to go live with her father's kindly sister-in-law, Hildy, though she is more closely related to her awful Uncle Victor, who "had the silver-black hair of a wolf, the eyes of a weasel, the growl of a bear, and a tiger tattoo on his arm. He had a gold tooth that gleamed when he opened his mouth, and he could crack two walnuts in the palm of one hand just by squeezing his fist."

After Miss Catchum, the child catcher, comes around, the neighbor ladies help Emily onto a stagecoach heading for Aunt Hildy's home. She makes friends with a grubby orphan boy named Jackson, her first and only friend besides her small pet turtle, Rufus. But Emily doesn't know she has inherited Miss Nash's fortune, and pretty soon Uncle Victor is after her so he can get his mitts on the money.

Did I mention this book is rollicking? There's a lot of humor here—for instance, the only thing that seems to scare Emily's uncle is two flirtatious and over-painted spinster sisters who think he's manly. And the depiction of the stagecoach passengers is a hoot. Once Uncle Victor joins the road trip, you'll be holding your breath as a disguised Emily tries to keep from being recognized by him. It's only a matter of time before he catches on...

I enjoyed watching timid Emily become braver as she pursued her quest to get to Aunt Hildy's, helped along by Jackson's influence as well as her own delight in new skills like climbing trees. As I read, I was reminded of Sid Fleischman's style, also Avi's, in their humorous historical fiction. No huge surprises here, just a satisfying little story, an old-fashioned yet fast-moving stagecoach road trip, a melodrama with a hint of tall tale for almost any young reader.

A Review of Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman

I don't normally seek out historical fiction, but I make an exception for Karen Cushman's books. I still smile when I think about the heroine of Catherine, Called Birdy, for example. Like Meggy Swann, the main character in Cushman's new book, Birdy is just so completely lively and real. Cushman has a knack for created characters who seem like someone you know—even as they fit into their historical setting. And that setting will also seem comfortably real. You never feel as if Cushman is a history teacher thinly disguised as a storyteller. She is simply a storyteller who sets her tales in vanished eras.

Cushman doesn't mind taking risks when it comes to writing main characters who are unpleasant, either. But like Mary in the classic, A Secret Garden, these girls tend to become more likable as they face their challenges and grow up a bit. In the case of Meggy Swann, those challenges are formidable: Meggy is a cripple in Elizabethan times, an age when many still thought that physical deformities were the mark of the devil and even a sign of witchcraft.

Meggy's mother, a hot-tempered barmaid, had shuffled the child off on her mother for years. Now that the old woman has died, Meggy's mother washes her hands of the girl, sending her to live with her long-vanished father, an alchemist, in London. When he sees Meggy, he doesn't want her because she is not a boy and is imperfect, besides. Meggy's only friend is a goose named Louise.

Here is a glimpse of Meggy after she has been dumped at her father's by a carter and has forgotten her goose. The carter returns to drop off the bird, but refuses to take Meggy back to her village:

Startled by a sudden banging at the door and in truth a bit fearful, Meggy stood up quickly, grabbed her walking sticks, and made her way into the farthest corner of the room. She moved in a sort of clumsy jig: reach one stick ahead, swing leg wide and drag it forward, move other stick ahead, swing other leg wide and drag it forward, over and over again, stick, swing, drag, stick, swing, drag. Her legs did not sit right in her hips—she had been born so—and as a result she walked with an awkward swinging gait. Wabbling, Meggy called it, and it did get her from one place to another, albeit slowly and with not a little bit of pain.

The banging came again, and then the door swung open and slammed against the wall, revealing the carter who had fetched her to London.

He was not gone! Meggy's spirits rose like yeasty bread, and she wabbled toward the doorway. "Well met, carter," she said. "I wish to go home."

"I were paid sixpence to bring you hither," he said. "Have you another six for the ride back?"

"Nay, but my mother—"

He shook his head. "Your mother was right pleased to see the back of you." He turned, took two steps, and lifted something from the bed of the wagon. Something that wriggled and hissed. Something that leapt from his arms. Something that showed itself to be a large white goose, her wings spread out like an angel's as she made her waddling way over to the girl. Louise. Meggy's goose and friend.

When our story begins, Meggy has no idea how to care for herself because her grandmother did everything for her. She is also frightened of the big city and has no social skills. Yet though some Londoners are superstitious and mocking, others are kindly and reach out to Meggy. She gradually makes friends with a group of players, especially a boy named Roger (whom she begins by insulting mightily!), and with a cooper neighbor and a printer.

As for her father, Master Ambrose, readers get a look at the life of an ever-hopeful alchemist during this period of history. The predecessors of chemists, these men pursued the dream of turning base elements into gold. As we discover in the book, they could be a shady lot. What's more, Meggy's father isn't any better at parenting than her mother was. He can't even seem to remember her name.

Meggy becomes a sort of assistant to her crotchety father, who eventually gets involved with a conspiracy that could lead him into terrible trouble. Meggy tries to set things right, giving the book more of an adventurous flair. But really, the strengths of Alchemy and Meggy Swann are Meggy's growing friendships and the close-up look the book gives us at life during Queen Elizabeth's reign.

It would have been easy for Cushman to transform Meggy's father into a more thoughtful and reliable person, but that would be like turning lead into gold. In real life, it can't be done. Instead the author lets Meggy figure out how to make her own way in life, a far more satisfying resolution. Of course, Meggy's new friends help her, which some might find a little too smooth. Then again, that's what most of us do when the people who should be there for us let us down: we seek out new sources of support.

One nice touch in this book is Meggy meeting two men among the players, one named Master Grimm who looks jolly and friendly, another named Master Merryman who looks, well, grim, with a scarred and twisted face. But as Meggy comes to find out, Master Grimm is selfish and impatient, while Master Merryman is thoughtful and kind. Although Cushman doesn't lecture us about this experience, it does serve to teach Meggy—and us—about not judging by appearances.

Cushman provides an author's note at the end of the book, explaining things like alchemy, broadsides, and the treatment of cripples during the Elizabethan era.

At 176 pages, Alchemy and Meggy Swann is a compact read. It is also a compelling one. Cushman gives us a girl whose favorite expression is "Ye toads and vipers," a girl who wabbles and loses her temper, a girl not wanted by anyone. Yet the author shows us how Meggy succeeds against the odds—and there we have lead that truly does turn to gold. Or at least, we have lead used to build something altogether new and promising.

Note: I requested this book from the Amazon Vine program. It is scheduled to be published on April 26.

A Review of The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone

It's hard not to read this book without thinking back to another book about children sneaking around in a museum, E.L. Konigsburg's The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Only this time we're in the Art Institute of Chicago, zeroing in on the titular sixty-eight rooms in the Thorne miniatures collection. (And yes, I've been there, although I was more interested in the Chagall window, not to mention the satisfying discovery that a board game my family had when I was a child, Masterpiece, was obviously based on paintings from the Art Institute.)

As our story begins, Ruthie goes to the museum on a field trip and is entranced by the Thorne Rooms, encapsulations of different countries and eras in history. Ruthie, who shares a cramped room with her older sister, wishes she could have one of the beautiful rooms all to herself and sleep in an exquisite canopy bed. Meanwhile, her bold friend Jack asks a staff member, Mr. Bell, about the mechanics of the exhibit, and Mr. Bell lets Jack take a peek into the back hallway behind the miniatures. Jack pulls Ruthie over to take a look, too, and sneaks inside—where he sees something on the floor and tucks it in his pocket.

Jack's find turns out to be a beautiful little key. When Ruthie tells him he should put it back, he convinces her to return to the museum with him the next day and look for the lock the key fits. Only once they sneak back into the corridor behind the Thorne exhibit and Jack lets Ruthie hold the key, Ruthie shrinks down until she herself is a miniature girl. Briefly shocked and then thrilled by their discovery, Ruthie and Jack experiment with the key. Later, having properly tricked their families, they hide in the museum by night and explore the rooms in the exhibit at their leisure, even learning that they can walk through the outside doors of the rooms into the past and talk to people, i.e., in France a few years before the Revolution and in a Massachusetts village during the Salem Witch Trials.

One of the best things about this book are the strategies Ruthie and Jack come up with for getting around the exhibits while they're small, such as unshrinking when needed, using duct tape ingeniously, and dealing with a giant cockroach. Their adventures in the past are brief, but intriguing. They must also solve the mystery of who used the key before them, leaving items like an ordinary pencil and a barrette in surprising spots.

The Sixty-Eight Rooms is a pleasant book, though perhaps not a compelling one. Of course, the author's passion for the Thorne Rooms will be more appealing to some young readers than others. I did notice that exposition, a sort of adult voice which sounded a lot like my high school history teacher, crept in and out of the book, at times overanalyzing the rules of the magic and interfering with the storytelling. I also found myself wishing that Ruthie weren't so unwilling to take risks in contrast to Jack's brashness, a combination which felt a bit stereotypical. (Even their names reflect this—Ruthie is a sweet, old-fashioned name, while Jack sounds like the daring boy in "Jack and the Beanstalk" or even Captain Jack Sparrow.)

However, there are some nice adventurous moments in The Sixty-Eight Rooms. I was especially pleased when the kids were able to walk out of the rooms into the past, though a few more such occurrences would have really enriched the book. Fans of historical fiction, time travel, and intellectual puzzles are likely to wish they were Jack and Ruthie, shrinking down to explore a miniature world of mysterious rooms.

Note: This book is due out on February 23. I requested a review copy from the Amazon Vine program.