Nonfiction Monday: Blizzard of Glass

Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917 Sally M. Walker

As regular readers may remember, last year I was on the committee for the Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. In addition to our winners and finalists, the committee also publishes a list of vetted nominations (what I like to call the "long list.") I'm in the process of highlighting these titles during Nonfiction Monday.

In December 1917, war was raging in Europe. In Halifax Harbor, two ships were on their way to the action, one on it's way to pick up relief supplies, the other full of munitions. The two ships collided, causing a fire. As the munitions ship drifted, fire on its deck, it crashed into the pier and exploded, leveling most of of the harbor area and creating a shockwave that blew out almost every window in Halifax proper. 2000 people died, 9000 more were injured. Rescue and relief efforts were further dampened when a blizzard blew in the next day and dumped over a foot of snow on the area.

Until the advent of nuclear weapons, the Halifax explosion was the largest man-made explosion ever.

Walker tells this story (one that's very well known in Canada, but not so much in the US) through the eyes of children who lived around the harbor at the time. Children getting ready for school, running errands, and going about their day. She weaves these daily accounts in with the context of shipping lanes and traffic, and what was happening in the Harbor. Walker also covers the communities on the other side of the Harbor who were affected by the explosion, resulting shock wave, and tsunami. The book is also very good at detailing what happened after the explosion to everyone.

Fun fact: The Halifax coroner's office had a tested system in place to deal with a mass casualty event like this. It had been developed 2 years earlier, when they brought in the bodies from the Titanic.

Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is over at a wrung sponge. Check it out.

Also check out today's YA Reading List post, in honor of Yom HaShoah.

Book Provided by... the publisher, for award consideration

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An Order of Amelie, Hold the Fries

An Order of Amelie, Hold the Fries Nina Schindler, translated from the German by Rob Barrett

You gotta love a book that references Leonard Cohen on the second page. With a big ol' picture of him, too.

Tim's a student who sees the woman of his dreams. He doesn't know her, but her address falls out of her bag, so he takes a risk and emails her. Only... it wasn't her email address. Amelie is NOT the girl of Tim's dreams, but her reply charms him, so he writes back and writes back, until she caves. It's a very sweet relationship the develops as Amelia tries to figure out what to do about her new feelings for Tim and some negative feelings with her very serious long-distance boyfriend.

Format wise, this one's much closer to Middle School is Worse than Meatloaf as we get a much better visual on the notes, flowers that are also sent, phones used in text messages (you actually tell the who's texting who because their phones are different.)

Interestingly, even though this is a German book, it takes place in Canada.

It's a short, sweet read that's a great use of the stuff format.

Book Provided by... my wallet

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Money Boy

Money Boy Paul Yee

Ray Liu is having a hard time at home, living under the harsh thumb of his very demanding father. He struggles in school and with his English. Things are wrse because his step-brother easily meets the demands and expectations. Ray's only refuge is his online video games. When his father discovers Ray's been visiting websites for gay teens, he finds himself locked out of the house with his clothes and belongings all over the lawn. Ray ends up in downtown Toronto. He spends his days exploring the gay district, but his nights are a struggle finding someplace to sleep--sometimes a hostel, sometimes a shelter, sometimes the streets. After his wallet is stolen, he not only loses access to his bank account, but with no ID and limited English, he can't find work. He ends up on Boy Street, where the male prostitutes are.

I have very mixed feelings on this book. I picked it up because it was a Stonewall Honor book. On one hand, it's a wonderful, interesting, and very effective blending of an immigration story, a coming out story, and a blended and broken family story. Ray isn't your stereotypical gay kid, nor your stereotypical immigrant kid, nor your stereotypical gamer kid. He's just a normal guy, with a good group of friends, struggling with school and his father. His orientation is a complete shock to his friends and family. I really, really liked him as a character (even when his decisions frustrated me to no end.)

It's a short book and a quick read, and that's where my misgivings come in. THe entire action only takes about a week. Despite an early mugging, life on the streets is hard, but not too bad. Most of the drama is because Ray's led a very privileged life and has a hard time "slumming it." When he gets cash, he blows through it rather quickly. He finds a good community of gay Asians in a sushi restaurant and even when he's taken advantage of by a pimp, the action's a bit glossed. The ending is very swift and overly tidy, to the point where it's completely unbelievable. Had it been a bit longer, it could have been more fleshed out. As it stands now, it has a lot going for it, but falls apart a bit at the end.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday: Running to Extremes

Running to Extremes: Ray Zahab's Amazing Ultramarathon Journey Steve Pitts

Ray Zahab lacked direction. He drank a lot and smoked a pack a day. He was just getting through life when he realized he needed a change. Several relatives had recently died, sooner than they should, and mostly due to complications from the same lifestyle Ray was living. It was time for a change, so he stopped smoking, cut back on the drinking, and started running. When he heard about the Yukon Ultramarathon (160km in extreme arctic conditions) he thought "why not" and signed up. Never mind that he had never run an actual marathon before. Nevermind that he didn't have the right gear to survive or the training to complete it. Off he went.

Once there, he met other dedicated ultramarathoners who gave him some tips and befriended him. Then, when the ultramarathon started, he ran. And ran. And ran.

And won.

He soon signed up for more ultra-marathons. He quickly learned that he wasn't as prepared as he had to be. He suffered severe injury and setbacks, but he kept signing up and kept getting better. A few years after his first ultra-marathon, he and some of his new running friends decided to run across Northern Africa, for fun. Parts were great, parts were horrible, but they did it.

Zahab started doing more and more long solo runs to raise awareness and money for different causes. He then started Impossibile2Possible, which helps teach kids to reach their dreams, no matter how crazy they seem.

Pitt rights a gripping and readable account of Zahab's life and running. It was one of those books that I picked up thinking I'd read a few pages and then go start dinner and the next thing I know, the book is done and my stomach is loudly protesting.

Seriously, who says "Hmm... let's go run this ultramarathon through the Arctic for shits and giggles?" Zahab's pretty badass and it's pretty cool that he found a way to turn extreme long distance running into something he could use to help other people.

Sadly, this book isn't available in the US (Zahab's Canadian and so is the book.)

Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is over at A Curious Thing.

Book Provided by... the publisher, for Cybils consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Didja Miss Me?

Ah finals week. Stress stress stress stress... but, the final has been turned in and the group project given and now I have a whopping 6 days until fall semester starts.

Let's see... this weekend I went to Des Moines for my friend's wedding, which was lots of fun. While there, we went to the State Fair and you can read all about it all at Geek Buffet.

I had also forgotten what Iowa is like during primary season. Lots of Washington types were at the fair and Huckabee's Iowa headquarters was right by our hotel. Coming out of the airport, we saw a billboard that said "Are You Running for President?" Oiy. It might even be crazier than DC for your average-type person.

Anyway, I didn't review anything due to the stress of last week, so I'm quite behind! Let the catching up commence! So many books to talk about, I hardly know where to start. But let's start with some WWII YA novels, ok?

First up is The Girls They Left Behind by Bernice Thurman Hunter

Beryl/Natalie is a teenager in Toronto during the World War II. It's mostly written in diary form, but with a few-stand alone scenes scattered throughout--mostly towards the end of the book. The story deals with the feelings of always been left behind as she sees one more friend, relative, or neighbor off at the train station nearly every night--some of whom she will never see again. She drops out of school to work in an airplane factory and tries to go on with life, despite rations, black-outs, and no boys left to date.

Beryl (who hates her name and is trying to change it to Natalie, if only her friends and family would remember to call her as such) is a real voice dealing with the frustrations of always being left behind, of British girls snatching away the Canadian boys when they're stationed overseas, and in being laid off and having to go back to school when the war is over and the most of the boys come home. Her voice is very straight forward and matter-of-fact:

Dad had resurrected the Quebec heater from the garage and set it up in the kitchen so we would use less coal in the furnace. Coal was scarce these days because it was needed in factories like The Steel Company of Canada. Dad said the munitions factories practically ate it up by the ton.

I prefer more evocative prose and this language left me a little 'meh' on both the story and the character, but that's just me. I think it's still a good book about life on the home front and the hardships and heartbreaks the girls left behind had to endure.

Another book written with a similar voice that left me a little off is

For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Based on the true story of Suzanne David, a teenager in Cherbourg, France, this is a first person narrative of a teenager turned Resistance spy. Suzanne is an aspiring opera singer who isn't that caught up in current events until Cherbourg beach is bombed while she's sitting on it. She watches one of her neighbors blow up and her best friend never recovers from the experience. Her strength in such an ordeal and the fact that her singing takes her throughout northern France leads the local resistance leader to recruit her as a spy.

Now, she's not reporting on troop movements or anything, but passing messages from one spy to another. There's the adrenaline rush as she walks past Nazi soldiers with a note about the Normandy landing in her hat, but the hardest part is being able to get to her scheduled meetings without her parents finding out. One of my favorite parts was when she had to pass a message but it was time to go to church and she had to find a way to get her parents to let her stay at home, as they had no idea what she was really up to.

A good story for younger teens/ tweens on the French resistance the role young people played. But, as with The Girls They Left Behind, the straight forward, matter-of-fact narration left me a little less engaged than I would have liked. But that's just me.

Also, Good as Lily (review here) and Clarice Bean, Don't Look Now (review here) are now both available!

Misty Peppers

POPCORN!

10 points to anyone who gets that.

Keeping with the theme of random, here are some books I haven't reviewed yet. That's today's theme. I really need to catch up. I didn't start keeping notes until January and I'm still facing a backlog since September, so these are kinda short, because my memory isn't that long. Still, you get the last impression of a book. OK-- I've started writing this post. The "theme" has been narrowed a wee bit. These are all YA books that I liked. Not shout-from-the-roof-tops-love, but really enjoyed and liked.

Doing It by Melvin Burgess

This is hilarious, but not nearly as frothy-fun as I was expecting it to be. The basic premise is a bunch of British boys trying to get laid. One of them ends up boinking his teacher. One is obsessed with finding some action for Mr. Knobby Knobster. Burgess injects a lot of humor into this, but it's not the male equivelent of Georgia Nicolson. There are real issues here that are seriously dealt with, but it's not angst-ridden.

Eva Underground by Dandi Daley Mackall

This is a really interesting book about a teenager whose father is an organizer for the Polish Underground, so they move to Poland so he can, um, organize. It's a great look at fitting in to a new culture as well as life behind the Iron Curtain. I think it will really spark some further research in some readers, as you're never sure quite *when* it takes place until JPII gets elected Pope and everyone in Poland is super-excited. There were a few minor details that got me though-- one is a type towards the end where the printer switched Krakow and Warsaw, so that page made NO sense. The other is that she misses hanging out at Abercrombie and Fitch, even though that really wasn't a mall store until the late 90s. Just saying. Still, an awesome book.

Yellow Line by Sylvia Olsen

This is the first book I've read put out by Orca Soundings. This is a hi/lo line of books (high content level, low reading level). I was really surprised by how good it was. Vince lives in Pacific Canada in a small town near a First Nations reservation. The two ethnic groups (White and First Nation) segregate themselves everywhere-- in living, on the school bus. One on each side of a yellow line. Because this is a short book, things happen fast. Vince's friend and cousin, Sherry, starts dating someone who's First Nation. Vince develops a crush on a girl who is. The parents and some of Vince's friends are literally violently opposed to this idea. The plot comes quickly and there isn't a lot of character development, but it still sheds enough light on a heady topic and situation.

Red Kayak by Priscilla Cummings

This is really well written and is on several people's shout-off-the-roof list. The plot and characters just didn't grab me. I'm not sure why. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood the afternoon I read it. Anyway, Brady lives on the northern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. There are new people moving in, new development and McMansions going up. Fishing is threatened. Brady befriends the D'Angelo family, part of the new wave of people coming in. Brady's friends play an awful joke that ends in tragedy. Brady is then torn between doing the right thing and snitching on his friends. It's really well-done and not over-wrought, but still gives the situation the gravitas it needs.

Invisible by Pete Hautman

Dougie is a loner, an outcast, and really, a bit of a weirdo freak. His best friend Andy is athletic and popular. They don't hang out a lot at school but the next-door neighbors talk every night through their bedroom windows. It becomes apparent really quickly that Dougie is not the most reliable of narrators and there's something else going on. Or is it just that with YA fiction we now expect some sort of massive sixth-sense type twist? It was a good book, but I knew something was up way before it was revealed, so the last half of the book I was just thinking what's going on already?!

5 books in one post. And the grocery store now has cherries, so I know where I'm going after work.

Yes, my dinner tonight will be cheese and cherries and bread with olive oil. Yummy. I can't wait.