| 'Navigating Early,' by Clare Vanderpool Jan 2nd 2013, 03:25 Early Auden is the "strangest of boys," a savant who sweeps 13-year-old Jack Baker onto the Kennebec River and into an adventure rife with "pirates, a volcano, a great white whale, a hundred-year-old woman, a lost hero, a hidden cave, a great Appalachian bear, and a timber rattlesnake." For Early, the number pi tells an ongoing story that somehow relates to the fate of his older brother, Fisher, a soldier reportedly killed in World War II. Pi's story is interspersed with Jack's first-person narrative and guides Early, for whom numbers have "color and landscape, texture and voice," on his quest for his brother. Initially, Jack, who is reeling from the sudden death of his mother, just goes along with his odd friend. But the wilderness journey becomes a way through Jack's guilt and grief, too, as he begins to recall small things — his mom's special teacup and funny sayings, his father's ring — and feel more connected with the world. Clare Vanderpool deftly rows this complex, inventive novel — her most recent since her Newbery-winning "Moon Over Manifest" — to a tender, surprising and wholly satisfying ending. The richly detailed Maine setting allows the reader to experience moss-slick rocks, murmuring water and bear prints as big as pie pans. Read full article >>   |  | 'The Skull in the Rock,' by Lee R. Berger and Marc Aronson Jan 2nd 2013, 03:25 Adding to a heap of impressive recent books about old bones, "The Skull in the Rock" provides a dual picture of science being practiced in all its current high-tech glory and of life as it was precariously lived by our hominid ancestors about 2 million years ago. The link between the two is Lee R. Berger, who grew up in small-town Georgia and became a paleoanthropologist based in South Africa. The book, co-written with Marc Aronson, begins in August 2008, near Johannesburg, as Berger and his 9-year-old son, Matthew, explore a protected area that had yielded many important fossils. Matthew's remarkable discovery that morning led to the identification of a new species, Australopithecus sediba, whose traits combined the archaic with the modern, the ape and the human. In chapters well-illustrated with photographs of the project's groundwork and labwork, as well as fascinating reconstructions of some long-gone individuals, "The Skull in the Rock" explains where this skeleton, nicknamed Karabo, probably stands in the evolution from primates to humans. The authors note that some scientists disagree with Berger's conclusions, but they argue convincingly that the key thing about finding Karabo is that it clears the way for the next discovery. Read full article >>   | | 'Unspoken,' by Henry Cole Jan 2nd 2013, 03:23 Eyes alone speak volumes in this wordless picture book. On the opening pages, a young farm girl leading a cow down a country lane turns her head to stare at a string of Confederate soldiers passing by on horseback. Later, gathering potatoes in the shed, she is startled to see a single eye peering out from between stalks of corn piled in a dim corner. At dinner that night, she eyes her own meal, quietly wraps a biscuit in a checked napkin, and delivers it to the shed. That's the first of many gifts — a slice of pie, a square of cornbread, a drumstick — always concealed in the same square of cloth. Eventually, two roughly attired men show up holding rifles and a poster that silently shouts "WANTED! ESCAPED! REWARD!" The whites of our heroine's eyes catch the light as she peers out from her hiding place beneath the stairs. Henry Cole's meticulously detailed drawings created from hundreds and hundreds of individual pencil strokes evoke the rough texture of hand-hewn logs, hand-spun cloth and hand-tilled soil, while the sepia-tone backdrops recall 19th-century daguerreotypes. How the girl's simple gifts are returned to her, wordlessly transformed by gratitude, is the gentle resolution to this quietly dramatic tale about the Underground Railroad. But the real question is voiced only when the book is closed. On the back cover, two solemn eyes peering directly into the reader's accompany the words "What would you do if you had the chance to help a person find freedom?" The question is universal, but the answer — for each person staring back into that solemn face — must be individual. Read full article >>   | |
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