2018 Contenders: Donald Trump: Outspoken Personality and President, by Jill Sherman

*deeeeeeeeeeeep breath*

I stopped by my local library the other day, and was browsing the shelf of new children's books. It turned out that the new batch of presidential biographies written after Donald Trump's win had arrived, and I couldn't resist taking this one home to have a look at it.

The presidential election of 2016 probably wasn't the nastiest of all time. (I've always enjoyed the tales of 1800's election, which featured, among other things, Thomas Jefferson's supporters accusing John Adams of having "a hideous hermaphroditical character," and Adams' supporters in turn spreading rumors that Jefferson had actually died, at a time when that was a lot harder to fact-check.) It was, however, the most deeply unpleasant of my lifetime, and I was curious to see how Jill Sherman would choose to address this unpleasantness in Donald Trump: Outspoken Personality and President.

The answer is that Sherman largely sidesteps the issue. She does mention that Trump's announcement of his candidacy contained statements that "immigrants can bring problems to the United States," but there's no mention of what kind of problems Trump mentioned, or of the fact that his comments specifically targeted Mexicans. There's no mention at all of Trump's Access Hollywood tape (or indeed, of any of his questionable remarks about women), of the proposed border wall, or of Trump's role in the "birther" movement. There's a bland mention that "Trump made other controversial statements that some people considered to be offensive," but that's about it. (It does, however, briefly explain the scandal about Hillary Clinton's emails.)

In fairness, I wouldn't have wished the job of writing this book on my worst enemy. At a time of deep political polarization, writing a biography about one of the most controversial candidates in the country's history is a thankless task. I'm not actually sure it's possible to write a successful version of this book; I am certain that it's impossible to write a version of it that would please everyone. I should also mention that the first part of the book, dealing with Trump's pre-political life, works better than the second part. But it's easy to see how hard Sherman is struggling to present a neutral view of her subject, and the seams, so to speak, never stop showing.

Presidential biographies do actually have a proud history in the Newbery rolls. In addition to Lincoln: A Photobiography, Russell Freedman's 1988 winner, the list of Honor books includes Leader By Destiny: George Washington, Man and Patriot (Jeanette Eaton, 1939); George Washington's World,  Abraham Lincoln's World, and George Washington (Genevieve Foster, 1942, 1945, 1950); and Abraham Lincoln, Friend of the People and Theodore Roosevelt, Fighting Patriot (Clara Ingram Judson, 1951, 1954). But there's essentially no chance of Donald Trump: Outspoken Personality and President joining them at next year's YMAs.


Published in April by Lerner Publications

Newbery Wayback Machine: The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon (1922)

 So let's start at the very beginning. Word on the street is, it's a very good place to start.

The first Newbery Medal, handed out in 1922, went to Hendrik van Loon's mammoth history of the world, the portentously-titled The Story of Mankind. The book was something of a sensation at the time, but its reputation (along with that of its author) has faded as the years have rolled along. I'm not sure I've ever met a contemporary child who's read the thing, and John "Mr. Schu" Schumaker of Nerdbery fame declared it the worst Newbery winner ever.

However, after finishing The Story of Mankind (in its original version, rather than any of the later editions that attempt to bring the history up to the present), I have to say that this is one that, while not without its faults, seems unfairly maligned.

Let's get those faults out of the way first. Although it has a bibliography at the end, The Story of Mankind doesn't have any source notes or footnotes. At the time of his Newbery win, van Loon was head of the Department of Social Sciences at Antioch College in Ohio, so one would figure that he could be trusted with the facts anyway, but there is at least one brief section of the book, consisting of letters purporting to be written by Aesculapius Cultellus and Gladius Ensa on the subject of the rise of Christianity, that's woven from whole cloth. This isn't history as we'd expect it to be presented now, and it was, in fact, the subject of some controversy even during van Loon's lifetime.

By the standards of his time, van Loon was remarkably forward-thinking and progressive, castigating many of his contemporaries as "apt to be tolerant only upon such matters as do not interest them very much." However, to a 21st-century reader, he can seem hopelessly backward, and his unshakable belief in Progress feels naive at best. It's also easy to see where his true expertise lies. Van Loon was born and raised in the Netherlands (he did not become a US citizen until 1919), and his doctoral thesis was reworked into his first book, The Fall of the Dutch Republic (1913). When he's discussing the history of northwest Europe, he is clearly knowledgeable and authoritative. On the other hand, his grasp on the western hemisphere often seems shaky; it would be hard to find present-day defenders for his assertion that, during the second half of the 19th century, conditions were significantly better for African-Americans than for European factory workers.

Having said all that, however, The Story of Mankind does still have a lot to offer. The foreword, in which van Loon describes his boyhood experience of climbing to the top of the Old Saint Lawrence Church tower in Rotterdam, remains a compelling personal essay, and it's not the only occasion on which van Loon's prose bursts into a near-poetry of surprising feeling. The opening lines of the book, for instance, are worth quoting in their entirety:

"High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by."

Some readers find van Loon's self-insertions and personal digressions tiresome, but those were some of my favorite portions of the book. I especially loved his fearless examinations of his own biases and points of view, and his honesty regarding his opinion of his own writing. ("I suggested that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once more from the beginning. This, however, the publishers would not allow.")

While time may not have been especially kind to the reputation of van Loon's work in general or The Story of Mankind in particular, it still stands as an entirely reasonable selection by the librarians who handed out the Newbery. Five other books were honored, but none of them is more than a footnote today, and nothing else from the 1921 publishing year stands out as an inexplicable omission.   

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2016 Contenders: Drowned City, by Don Brown

Hurricane Katrina was the sixth-deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States. Even that fact possibly understates the significance of Katrina to modern history; three of the events with more fatalities happened during the 19th century (the 1889 storm that led to the Johnstown Flood, the 1893 Cheniere Caminada Hurricane, and the 1900 Galveston Hurricane), and the other two (the 1906 Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, and the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane) took place during the Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge administrations, respectively. Americans had certainly experienced mass tragedies related to war and terrorism, but no natural disaster on the scale of Katrina had occurred in the US in living memory -- or in the modern media age.

We now have ten years of perspective on Katrina, and dozens of books have been written on the subject, including titles we've reviewed here. Drowned City belongs in the very top tier of those books, and may be the best of those written with a juvenile audience in mind. It briefly but effectively sets the stage -- important, given that much of its readership is too young to remember Katrina -- and then brilliantly describes conditions inside the ruined city, as well as the responses to the tragedy, which ranged from the heroic to the unforgivably incompetent.

All of this is done in spare, poignant language; this is a book that shows, rather than tells. The few lines of dialogue are taken directly from primary sources and news reports, all noted in the carefully cited back matter. Although we can tell where Brown's sympathies as an author lie, he holds back from using words that blame, preferring instead to let his readers come to their own conclusions.

Of course, Drowned City is a nonfiction "graphic novel," and so the interplay between the words and the images is where much of the book's meaning is created. The body language of Brown's figures perfectly captures the range of emotions surrounding Katrina, and his stark wide-screen drawings of the utter devastation that followed the storm pack a visceral punch. Brown does not shy away from the hard realities of his subject; although it's all tasteful, and I maintain that the book is certainly appropriate for a middle-school reader, Drowned City includes pictures of storefronts being looted, corpses floating in the flooded streets, and people trying to break out of their attics before the water rises high enough to drown them.

Up until the last couple years, I would have assumed that Drowned City was too visual an experience to show up in the Newbery rolls; after Flora & Ulysses and El Deafo, I'm less sure. I do hope the Sibert committee notices how carefully Brown has used his sources, and how clearly he presents his information.


Published in August by HMH Books for Young Readers

2016 Contenders: Watch Out for Flying Kids!, by Cynthia Levinson

I first heard rumblings about Watch Out for Flying Kids! around a year ago. I was immediately interested, since I thought Cynthia Levinson's last book, We've Got a Job, was excellent, and youth social circuses seemed like a fascinating topic for a nonfiction book. It sounded like a winning combination.

Having now finally been able to obtain and read a copy of Watch Out for Flying Kids!, it pains me to say that this title doesn't hang together as well as We've Got a Job. I think there are two main problems that prevent this one from reaching the heights of its predecessor, and I think it's useful to talk about both of them.

One of the things I really liked about We've Got a Job was the way it managed to intercut the stories of four individual children with the larger events of the Birmingham Children's March, and to do so without losing the thread of the narrative. Watch Out for Flying Kids! isn't much longer than We've Got a Job, but there are now eleven main characters (five kids from the St. Louis Arches, four from the Galilee Circus, and the adult director of each circus), as well as a host of secondary characters. I found it difficult even to keep track of the book's cast, and I felt like I didn't get to spend enough time with any of them for their stories to have weight and heft.

This is especially noticeable because, while We've Got a Job had a clear climax (the March itself), Watch Out for Flying Kids! doesn't really build to a specific moment in the same way. The personal stories of the performers could make up for that muted external narrative, but there are just too many of them, too thinly spread, for it to be effective. Similarly, although there's an overarching theme of learning to build bridges between mistrustful communities, that theme doesn't get a specific dénouement.

The second -- and in my mind, more serious -- problem has to do with the book's support apparatus. It spends four pages of the introduction on an Arabic and Hebrew pronunciation guide, but it contains no glossary of any kind. Because so much of the book is concerned with what's going on in the ring of the circus, and I don't really know the technical terms associated with circus work, that lack made the book nearly unreadable to me. Additionally, especially in the sections of the book set in Israel, there are many discussions of different towns and places, but the book doesn't contain a map. I also would have loved a quick "cast list" reference, but even though there's a sort of "where are they now" section in the afterword, it only included the "main characters."I found the book difficult going without those helps, and I think a child reader might have serious problems navigating the book without these customary aids.

It's clear that the stories of Watch Out for Flying Kids! mean a great deal to Levinson. I'm unconvinced, however, that she translates that importance so that readers can understand it. I'd love to see what Levinson does next, but I don't anticipate Watch Out for Flying Kids! showing up in the YMAs.


Published in August by Peachtree

2016 Contenders: Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights, by Ann Bausum

It is impossible to review Ann Bausum's new chronicle of the gay rights movement without thinking about where I was one month ago today: standing on Market Street in San Francisco, watching the biggest, most joyous Pride parade I have ever witnessed. It was two days after we all woke up to learn that the Supreme Court had granted same-sex couples the right to marry in all 50 states, and the mood in the city was total jubilation. The parade itself felt incredibly uncontroversial, with every corporation you can think of trying to get in on the act and soak up some of that LGBT goodwill. The Apple employees alone took up several city blocks.

Contrast that with the way things stood on the eve of the Stonewall Riots. Marriage equality was such a distant dream that Richard Enman, representing the Mattachine Society, said, regarding the legalization of same-sex marriage, "Homosexuals don't want that." "Cross-dressing" was a criminal offense, homosexuality was listed as a mental illness in the DSM, and men trying to pick up a date might be told to "keep moving, faggot, keep moving."

Bausum does an excellent job of evoking that time and place with a chatty prologue that addresses the reader directly and invites us to walk the streets of Greenwich Village with her. She maintains that sense of immediacy through the next several chapters, quickly establishing the historical backdrop and then plunging us into a play by play of the events at the Stonewall on June 27, 1969. She combines eyewitness accounts with historical context and broader social analyses to form a full picture of the significance of the riots. And she doesn't shy away from plainspoken descriptions of the gay experience in 1969, from sex in unlocked semi-trucks previously used to haul animal carcasses, to the raunchy chants that gay teenagers shouted at the police.

While the entire first half of the book is concerned with the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of the riots, the second half touches, in less detail, on the ensuing gay rights movement, including the AIDS crisis and the fight for marriage equality. Of course, despite the fact that the publication date is May 5, 2015, the book is already out of date, because it doesn't include the recent Supreme Court decision. Sam and I were speculating about whether Viking will release an updated edition, but things are moving so quickly that it might be impossible to keep up. Just last week, several legislators introduced the Equality Act, a comprehensive federal non-discrimination bill. 

As the LGBT community continues to rack up victories, it will become ever more difficult to remember this history of brutal oppression. Bausum's book serves as an essential reminder of that history, honoring those who risked their lives to pave the way, and, I hope, providing inspiration to the next generation to continue the fight.

I think it's unlikely that Stonewall will receive Newbery recognition. Despite the immediacy of Bausum's prose, I wouldn't call it narrative nonfiction on the level of something like Bomb, and it feels like a strong year for fiction. I won't be at all surprised if it the Sibert Committee honors it, though, and it seems like a shoo-in for the Stonewall Book Award. (There's a question: has a book ever won its namesake award before?)

Published in May by Viking Books for Young Readers

2016 Contenders: Poet, by Don Tate

George Moses Horton was the first African-American poet to have a book published in the South (The Hope of Liberty, 1829). Amazingly, this occurred while he was still a slave. Though Horton's hope was that the money from the book would enable the purchase of his freedom, his master refused to sell him, and Horton's slavery continued until the end of the Civil War, some three and a half decades later. Through it all, Horton continued to write, producing another volume of poetry, many uncollected poems, and a brief autobiography.

Although Horton is still in print, and he retains a strong following in his home state of North Carolina, he remains much less known than other early African-American authors such as Phillis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon. I completed an English degree at a southern university, and still never came across any of his work. I'm glad to say that Poet does an excellent job of discussing the man, his unusual life, and his writing, which may well make him a more familiar name to a younger generation.

The writing is spare, but clear. Tate made his name as an illustrator, but in his previous foray into writing (It Jes' Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw, 2012), he certainly displayed a facility with words, and he continues to exhibit that talent in Poet. I really felt Horton's determination, his crushing defeat, and his indomitable will while turning the pages.

As good as the text is, it's not going to win the Newbery -- no picture book is going to break through and take the prize, not in a year with Circus Mirandus and Echo and Moonpenny Island and The Jumbies. Some of the other committees may appreciate it, however, and I do hope there's room for it on the Notables list.


Publication in September by Peachtree.

2016 Contenders: Historical Animals, by Julia Moberg

Books that pair poetry with nonfiction facts seem to be in vogue as of late. It's a structure that I associate most with Joyce Sidman, but Historical Animals is the second non-Sidman book we've reviewed this year (Random Body Parts is the other) that also utilizes this format.

However, if Random Body Parts was no Winter Bees or Dark Emperor, Historical Animals is no Random Body Parts. The brief poems, each of which describes a famous animal from history, possess some of the most awkward meter I've read in a long time, and are filled with rhymes that are forced, or that are noticeably approximate. I can't immediately think of another volume of modern children's poetry I've read that is as technically inexpert.

The nonfiction sections are, if anything else, even more difficult to deal with. The facts are often presented with little context, to the point of being shorn of meaning. We're told, for instance, that the poet Virgil spent 800,000 sesterces on a funeral for his housefly, but not what a sesterce was, or how much one was worth. This problem is compounded by the fact that the book contains no source list, no suggestions for further reading, and no glossary.

The book also suffers from sloppy editing. Errors include writing BCE for CE (pg. 22); spelling the name of the country as "Chili" (pg. 26); and stating that Florence Nightingale wrote a book in 1959 on the same page that lists her date of death as 1910 (pg. 40). Historical Animals also features awkward constructions ("Tortoises have the same life span as humans. Some can live from ninety to one hundred and fifty years old."), disconcerting word choices ("Dolly was named after the performance artist Dolly Parton."), and questionable taste (claiming that South American penguins like "life as Latinos"). 

Even the layout and illustrations seem subpar. I couldn't understand the logic by which some of the headings carried the names of the animals themselves, while others listed the name of the person who owned them. The cartoonish pictures, credited to Jeff Albrecht Studios, may attract the eyes of younger readers, but also make errors such as giving the famed rescue dog Barry der Menschenretter the incorrect colors.

Obviously, I don't think Historical Animals should or will win anything. Charlesbridge usually puts out much better titles, and I do expect that other books that they produce will be of higher quality than this one.


Published in February by Charlesbridge / Imagine!

2016 Contenders: Inventions That Could Have Changed the World...But Didn't!, by Joe Rhatigan

Inventions That Could Have Changed the World...But Didn't! is exactly the kind of book that my ten-year-old self would have devoured in a single sitting. It's sort of a curiosity cabinet of commercially unsuccessful inventions and the people who devised them. Each failed invention is described briefly -- usually in less than half a page -- and accompanied by cartoon illustrations, patent drawings, photos, or some combination of these.

It's a quick, breezy read, and I think it would be a very easy reader's advisory sell for the kinds of kids who haunt the 000s looking for books of weird facts. However, it's put together less carefully than I'd prefer. For instance, the very first page of the book says, "Before lightbulbs, people went to bed when it got dark outside. (There was nothing else to do.)" That statement neatly overlooks the development of torches, candles, and oil lamps, and sacrifices accuracy for the sake of a witty observation.

The book is still a lot of fun, and it's nice to have internet links to things like an audiorecording of the demonic-sounding Edison Talking Doll and a video of some brave/foolhardy folks driving Dynaspheres. If I were still doing collection development, I would certainly purchase Inventions for my library.

I'm not entirely sure about the eligibility of Inventions for the ALA awards -- the copyright date is 2015, and Amazon lists it as having a 2015 publication date. However, Goodreads claims it was published originally in 2014, and the printing date is October 2014. Even if it's eligible, however, Inventions certainly won't win the Newbery, and I doubt the Sibert committee will show it any love either.


Published in February(?) by Imagine / Charlesbridge

2015 Contenders: The Right Word, by Jen Bryant

Although the earliest work that could be considered a thesaurus was written almost two millennia ago (On Synonyms, a volume written by Philo of Byblos, who died in 141), the first truly modern thesaurus didn't appear until until 1852, when Peter Mark Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases was first published. Nowadays, it's hard to find a person who hasn't used a thesaurus in some form -- and yet Roget himself is a little-discussed figure in popular circles.

Full disclosure: at ALA Annual last year in Las Vegas, Rachael and I scored an invitation to a dinner that Eerdmans was hosting in celebration of Jen Bryant, Melissa Sweet, and the forthcoming release of The Right Word. I got a chance to talk to both of them at length, and they're the most wonderful people that you could hope to meet. In fact, Melissa Sweet took it upon herself to make each of us name badges, each of which contained a small fragment from a 19th-century edition of Roget's Thesaurus. Mine is hanging proudly on my cubicle wall now, and it makes me smile every time I see it.

So yes, I'm very much predisposed to like The Right Word. But even when I try to look at it with more objective eyes, I come away from it thinking that this really is an excellent book. The Right Word begins in Roget's childhood, and traces his life from there. It includes information about his many endeavors -- Roget wasn't just a thesaurus writer, but a polymath who also published important works on natural history, medicine, electricity, and optical illusions. However, the book manages to keep its center by referring back to Roget's near-obsessive list-keeping, which began when he was only eight years old, and which culminated in the publication of the Thesaurus.

Indeed, the main problem with The Right Word from a Newbery perspective is similar to the problem with El Deafo: the text and the illustrations blend together to the point that analyzing just the text is almost impossible. The dialogue bubbles -- which are not designed to be read as part of the main text -- add layer upon layer of detail to the story, and Melissa Sweet's illustrations include both drawings and collages of Roget's various lists. Even the typesetting, which includes several passages with only a word or two on each line, serves to reinforce the theme of Roget's passion for order. Simply reading The Right Word aloud doesn't do it justice, and I don't know that the Newbery committee will be able to consider it in a way that would really allow its considerable strengths to shine.

I have, however, seen The Right Word show up on several Mock Caldecott lists, and the Sibert committee may well find a lot to love here as well. I hope it wins something; it's a brilliantly-designed book that sheds a great deal of light on its quirky, important subject.


Published in September by Eerdmans

2015 Contenders: Winter Bees, by Joyce Sidman

After last year's unorthodox but effective What the Heart Knows, Joyce Sidman returns to familiar territory with Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold. As in her 2011 Newbery Honor book, Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night, Sidman produces a series of nature poems around a common theme, and pairs each one with a prose nonfiction note that elaborates on the poem in question's subject.

The book starts with "Dream of the Tundra Swan," a stunning tour de force of alliteration, assonance, and startling imagery. It's probably one of the fifteen or twenty best poems I've ever read for children; it's that good. I'm not familiar with very many books for children that come out of the gate as strongly, and the piece raises the expectations for the book sky-high.

Perhaps it's inevitable then that the remainder of the volume doesn't quite live up to that initial salvo. The book jacket indicates that "Dream of the Tundra Swan" was the first poem Sidman wrote for the collection, and that initial burst of inspiration turned out not to be entirely sustainable. Interestingly, the second-best poem in the book might well be the very next one, "Snake's Lullaby," which, if it isn't at that level, at least comes close in its incisive description of hibernating garter snakes.

That's not to say that the rest of the book is a failure by any means. Sidman is a highly-skilled poet, and her work never dips below the level of solid craftsmanship. But Winter Bees is so obviously front-loaded that the concluding impression doesn't match the initial hopes that it raises -- especially since it doesn't have a final piece that ties everything together, like Dark Emperor did.

It might have been better to finish the book with the best poem, but the schema that Sidman has chosen doesn't allow her to do that. The sequencing at least loosely follows the rhythm of the season, with the first few poems being about the onset of winter, while the last few concern its end. That's certainly a legitimate choice -- and one that's similar to the one Sidman used in Dark Emperor -- but it does place some serious constraints on her ability to move individual pieces around for maximum impact.

This maybe makes it sound like I enjoyed Winter Bees less than I did. It's an excellent book, and one that solidifies Sidman's place in the uppermost echelon of American children's poets. "Dream of the Tundra Swan" ought to be showing up in anthologies for generations to come. I'm not sure the book as a whole is as consistent as Dark Emperor, however, and given that that one was kind of a left-field honor book, I don't know that Winter Bees will duplicate its awards success.


Published in November by HMH.

2015 Contenders: Leontyne Price: Voice of a Century, by Carole Boston Weatherford

Leontyne Price: Voice of a Century is a spare, poetic biography of the woman who would eventually become (according to a BBC Music critic's poll) the greatest American soprano ever to record. As remarkable a feat as that is in and of itself, the fact that Leontyne Price was a black woman from Mississippi, born in 1927, raised the degree of difficulty exponentially. This book carefully emphasizes the magnitude of Price's achievements and her indomitably sunny spirit, while also mentioning the many people who aided her along her way.

Voice of a Century is the kind of biography that only provides a brief overview of its subject's career. Indeed, it essentially ends with Price's spectacular star turn in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Il Trovatore in 1961, when almost a quarter-century of her operatic career was still in front of her. This means that most of her Grammy Awards, her Emmy Award, her Presidential Medal of Freedom, her Kennedy Center Honors, and her National Medal of Arts all fall outside of the book's time frame. In its structure, if not particularly in its content, it reminded me of last year's You Never Heard of Willie Mays?!

Nonetheless, Voice of a Century does an excellent job of chronicling Price's rise to prominence. Carole Boston Weatherford's prose is conversational without being talky, and indeed, reads in places very much like a prose poem. Readers who enjoyed Pam Muñoz Ryan and Brian Selznick's Sibert Honor book When Marian Sang might well enjoy Voice of a Century, especially since Weatherford repeatedly makes clear how much of a debt Price owed to Marian Anderson.


Raul Colón's lovely illustrations add a great deal to the book, though the Newbery committee won't be able to consider them. In honesty, I'm not sure that much Newbery love is going to come for Voice of a Century -- as we've discussed before in this space, short, heavily-illustrated biographical nonfiction tends not to show up in the Newbery rolls, regardless of how well-written it may be. 

The Sibert, however, has been much more open to these kinds of books (see: Balloons over Broadway, A Splash of Red, Ballet for Martha, and of course, When Marian Sang), and if Voice of a Century is to be recognized, that's probably the most likely place. I hope it wins something -- it's an excellent book, and I really enjoyed reading it.


Published in December by Alfred A. Knopf / Random House

2015 Contenders: Eyes Wide Open, by Paul Fleischman

Environmental issues, challenges, and disasters seem to occupy an ever-increasing percentage of the news. Clearly, we have problems, and Paul Fleischman wants to make sure that we are able to understand, analyze, and maybe even solve them.

Eyes Wide Open is a sharp, well-researched, and at times fiery book with two clear objectives: helping its readers to know what current environmental issues are, and making sure those readers have the critical thinking skills to separate fact from opinion. Fleischman talks about global warming, fracking, and renewable energy, but he also spends time discussing rhetorical strategies, cognitive defense mechanisms, and how studies and reports can be affected by who funds them. New information about the environment is always becoming available, and Fleischman wants his readers to able to evaluate it intelligently.

This means that Fleischman doesn't have a lot of patience with those whom he sees as obfuscating the truth, and he isn't shy about saying so. He explicitly mentions Republican denial of climate change, and even uses the famous quote from Stephen Colbert: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." His tone -- cheerful, but insistent and unafraid -- reminded me of pop-science heroes like Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Fans of those thinkers will probably love Eyes Wide Open, even if it's hard for me to imagine that this book won't be challenged in at least one library somewhere.

Fleischman is equally clear that he doesn't intend for his book to be read on its own. It includes a dizzying number of links to other sources of information, and a formidable bibliography. Towards the end of the book, he even discusses some of the assumptions that he held when he began writing the book, and how, while his sources and research confirmed some, they disproved others. "Stay open to the facts, wherever they are," Fleischman says, and in some ways, that's the thesis of his book.

Paul Fleischman has, of course, won the Newbery already (Joyful Noise, 1989 award). It's unlikely to me that Eyes Wide Open will net him a second medal; not only does nonfiction rarely win the Newbery, but Eyes Wide Open is more informational than narrative, which indicates to me that it's not a top contender for a "literary" award. I'm curious to see if it draws any attention from the Sibert committee though.


Published in September by Candlewick

2015 Contenders: The Family Romanov, by Candace Fleming

I have to make a confession. Though we diligently try to include at least one work of nonfiction in our Mock Newbery discussions, in my heart of hearts I rarely find it as distinguished as the fiction and poetry it's up against. There have been some very well-crafted works of narrative nonfiction in the past ten years, but, to my mind, none of them has displayed the alchemical combination of plot, character, setting, style, and theme that distinguishes the best fiction.

Until now. The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia is the first work of non-fiction that I would seriously defend as a Newbery frontrunner*. It would be difficult for me to say anything that was left unsaid by its six starred reviews, but I'll add my voice to the chorus of approval.

It seems to me that it must be very difficult to write clearly about the Romanovs; a century after their deaths, most portrayals are either fairy tales and (literal) hagiography, or demonic caricature. By shifting her narrative point of view between the claustrophobic lives of the Tsar and his family, and events "outside the palace walls," Fleming deftly walks the tightrope between these two extremes. We are privy to both tender moments between Nicholas and Alexandra and instances of their shocking callousness and indifference to the suffering of the Russian people. What emerges is a portrait of a flawed, sad, arrogant, but ultimately human set of characters.

Plot also presents a challenge in narrative nonfiction (especially when the foregone conclusion is well-known to most readers), but Fleming builds suspense through the use of expert pacing. She also immerses the reader in the setting with vivid details and primary sources - diaries, letters, memoirs - that remind of us what was at stake for every stratus of Russian society. Stylistically, she uses irony to wonderful/tragic effect - in one chapter, Nicholas plays dominoes and sips tea as Petrograd falls to mobs of hungry peasants.

I'll be recommending this one to Sam for our final Mock Newbery reading list, and I'll come to the table prepared to defend it. Whether or not our participants elect it Maryland's choice for the most distinguished contribution to American's children's literature though, I have little doubt that they will find it, along with Booklist (and me), "compulsively readable."

*Caveat: I never did get around to reading Bomb.

Published in July by Schwartz and Wade.

2015 Contenders: The Port Chicago 50, by Steve Sheinkin

On July 17, 1944, a pair of explosions rocked the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California. Approximately two short tons of munitions that were being loaded onto a cargo vessel accidentally detonated. The resulting blasts completely destroyed the entire loading area, sunk both ships that were docked there, killed 320 people, and injured another 390. It was the worst non-combat military disaster of World War II in the United States.

In The Port Chicago 50, Steve Sheinkin examines the conditions at Port Chicago before the catastrophe. Segregation was still the order of the day, and so all of the sailors actually doing the loading were black. They were treated poorly, given almost no training, and ordered to work with little regard for safety. Sheinkin then details the accident (insofar as is possible, given that every eyewitness was killed), and its aftermath. Specifically, he describes how, given that no changes were made in safety policies or procedures, many of the surviving sailors refused to go back to work. Some eventually did return to the job, but fifty did not, and were court-martialed for mutiny in the single largest trial in American military history. Despite the blatant racism and unfairness of the proceedings, all fifty were convicted and jailed. However, their mistreatment became a national story, and though they were never exonerated, their courage inspired many Civil Rights reforms.

Sheinkin is one of the very best juvenile nonfiction writers working today, and The Port Chicago 50 is a great showcase for his talent. It reads like a gripping thriller, but is well-documented and carefully reasoned. The book reminded me in many ways of Tanya Lee Stone's Courage Has No Color, which also covered the struggles of black service members during WWII. However, even though Stone's book was wonderful (and it made the 2014 Notables list and was a Finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, so I'm not the only person who thought so), Sheinkin's is better -- the writing is sharper, and the imagery more vivid.

That said, it's not quite as impressive as Bomb!, for the simple reason that it's less ambitious. Where Bomb! was a brilliantly-executed three-part fugue, The Port Chicago 50 has a more singular focus (though it does discuss developments in other places, such as the offices of the Secretary of the Navy and the NAACP). The Port Chicago 50 is, however, a much more tightly-constructed book than Sheinkin's effort from last year, Lincoln's Grave Robbers, which tried to maintain a Bomb!-like level of intricacy without having as many stories to tell. Here, Sheinkin's approach is a good fit for the material that he uses, even if it's less involved.

I'm not sure The Port Chicago 50 will make an appearance in the Newbery rolls -- it's not the magnum opus that Bomb! was, and there is stiff nonfiction competition from Brown Girl Dreaming and The Family Romanov, among others. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this nets a Sibert or a Sibert Honor, however.


Published in January by Roaring Brook / Macmillan

2015 Contenders: Angel Island, by Russell Freedman

Almost everyone in the United States knows at least something about Ellis Island, the gateway for immigrants arriving from Europe. However, Ellis Island's Pacific counterpart, Angel Island, remains much more obscure. I know I couldn't have told you anything about it before reading Angel Island.

There's a certain assurance of quality that comes with Russell Freedman's name, and Angel Island more than lives up to expectations. Freedman details the racism and onerous legal restrictions that faced immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere in Asia, with many references to primary accounts. Scattered throughout the book are a number of achingly sad poems -- mostly anonymous pieces that were written on the walls of the Angel Island detention barracks. They're a heart-rending window into a troubled part of America's past.

The archival photographs that accompany the text, though they're outside the Newbery criteria, are excellent and well-chosen. Freedman's author's notes and acknowledgments also provide insight into the work process of one of America's foremost children's authors. It's a really well-designed book, and both Freedman and his publisher, Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), should be proud.

Despite the fact that Angel Island is an excellent book (for my money, a superior title to Freedman's previous effort, last year's Becoming Ben Franklin, and the equal of the one before that, Abraham Lincoln & Frederick Douglass), I'm not sanguine about its Newbery chances. Although the Newbery guidelines are essentially genre-neutral, the last year that more than one nonfiction book (leaving out poetry and folklore) was honored was 1951. My library hold for Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson's verse memoir, hasn't yet been filled, but it has five starred reviews that I've seen, and the other early critical opinions are uniformly brilliant, with many reviewers naming it as the Newbery front-runner. I'm not sure that Angel Island is enough of a standout to beat that, and, to go back to books I've actually read, I'm also not sure it's superior to A Woman in the House (And Senate). Freedman might conceivably be able to add another Sibert Honor to his crowded awards shelf, but that's as high as I'm willing to project for it. I would, however, consider it a must-purchase title, and a worthy addition to what's possibly the most impressive corpus of work in the history of American children's nonfiction.


Publication in October by Clarion Books / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

2015 Contenders: A Woman in the House (And Senate), by Ilene Cooper

It was a mere 128 years after the first session of the United States Congress that a female representative joined that legislative body. There were legal, social, and political issues to be overcome, even after that first breakthrough. A Woman in the House (And Senate) both traces the narrative of women in Congress and provides detailed profiles of some of these notable legislators.

Some of the names were familiar to me: Clare Booth Luce, Geraldine Ferraro, Maryland's own Barbara Mikulski. Many others, however, I knew very little about, and I found myself enthralled by their stories. I read about Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who was the first woman elected to Congress, and also the only person to vote against the United States' entry into both WWI and WWII; Senator Rebecca Felton, who was the first woman in the Senate, even though her interim appointment lasted only one day; Representative Helen Douglas, who gave Richard Nixon the "Tricky Dick" nickname; Representative Cardiss Collins, who worked so tirelessly for equality in college sports that she was enshrined in the Women's Sports Hall of Fame; and a whole host of others.

Ilene Cooper's writing is engaging, making what could be a dry recitation of facts into a vibrant collage of characters and achievements. Her research is also solid, and I found the source notes and other back matter thorough and easy to navigate.

The Newbery committee won't be able to consider the book's design, but the Sibert committee will, and they should find much to like. A Woman in the House (And Senate) features both vibrant illustrations by Elizabeth Baddeley and a wealth of archival photographs, and is a genuine joy to look at. The page design is both clean and engaging, and I think the choice to refrain from using sidebars was a wise one in this instance.

Ilene Cooper has made it to the Notables list before (Jack:The Early Years of John F. Kennedy, 2003), but hasn't received any of the big ALA awards. I think A Woman in the House (And Senate) may have a very good shot at changing that. It would very much be a Newbery dark horse, and I don't think I'd pick it over Caminar or Half a Chance. However, it's easily the best nonfiction book I've read so far this year, and if the Sibert committee is anywhere near as impressed by it as I am, it could easily show up in the list of winners at the 2015 YMAs.


Published in March by Abrams

2015 Contenders: Babe Conquers the World, by Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace

There's nothing sports fans like better than a good argument, so allow me to start one: who was the single best athlete in American history? Jim Thorpe? Jessie Owens? Jackie Robinson? Bo Jackson? Michael Phelps?

There's no definitive answer to the question, of course, but let's consider one other possibility: Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Over the course of her remarkable career, the Babe led her team to a national championship in basketball, won Olympic gold medals in the javelin and the 80m hurdles (as well as a silver in the high jump), won national titles in the javelin and the baseball throw, single-handedly won the national track and field championship (entering as a one-woman team, she scored more points than any other team), barnstormed as a baseball player, won a league championship as a bowler, co-founded the LPGA, and won multiple major golf championships -- including the 1954 US Women's Open, a title she captured after cancer surgery, while wearing a colostomy bag. She was a six-time winner of the Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year, over a mind-breaking 22-year span (1932, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1950, 1954). Essentially, she was simultaneously LeBron James, Carl Lewis, Satchel Paige, and Tiger Woods.

Babe Conquers the World is an accessible yet detailed look at the life of this extraordinary athlete. It covers her many triumphs, as well as her challenges. Much like Amelia Lost from a few years ago, Babe Conquers the World doesn't shy away from its subject's faults -- Zaharias wasn't a particularly easy person to get along with, and the book notes this, while at the same time pointing out how difficult it was to be a female athlete in the first half of the twentieth century, and how hard Zaharias had to fight simply to have the opportunity to make a living.

The book is exhaustively documented and sourced; anyone who wants to follow the authors' research won't have any difficulty. It also includes a wealth of archival photographs, and though that's not of concern to the Newbery, it might be of interest to the Sibert committee.

I'm not sure it will be, as Babe Conquers the World isn't a "literary" work in the mold of something by Steve Sheinkin or Russell Freedman. Its odds of winning the Newbery, especially in what is shaping up to be a highly competitive year, are probably zero. But it's a great introduction to a fascinating figure, and I'd definitely purchase it and talk it up.


Publication in March by Calkins Creek Books

2014 Contenders: "The President Has Been Shot!", by James L. Swanson

The plan was for my review of Prisoner 88 to be my last one of 2014 Newbery contenders. However, I looked back at my Mid-Year Predictions post, and noticed that I'd never gotten around to reading "The President Has Been Shot!",  even though it was on my list of books that I felt like I ought to make sure and read before the YMAs.

Now that I've finished it, I have to say that this is probably the most impressive nonfiction book for older readers that I picked up this year. In clear, vivid language, Swanson takes us through the lives of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, up to the moment where they violently intersect, and through its aftermath. Much like last year's Bomb, President reads more like a thriller than a standard nonfiction book, and is the better for it.

The criticisms I do have of the book are fairly minor. The section on JFK's life and career are less nuanced than I might have liked, but given that Swanson had highly limited space, it might be as good as it can be. The book also maintains a laser-like focus on its two subjects (and, to some extent, on Jackie Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in the aftermath of the assassination), to the point that, although it mentions that Governor John Connally was also shot, the text neglects to inform us that Connally recovered from his wounds.

James L. Swanson has written two previous books for youth, Chasing Lincoln's Killer, and Bloody Times. Both of those got excellent reviews, but neither was eligible for the Newbery, as both were adaptations of Swanson's adult titles (Manhunt and Bloody Crimes, respectively). President also has an adult counterpart, End of Days. However, whether by design or by chance, President seems to have been published the month before End of Days, a bit of chronological trickery that I think may render it Newbery-eligible, since, at the time it was published, it was an "original work."

Assuming that the Newbery Committe also considers President eligible, I think this book has the best shot of any nonfiction title this year of showing up in the Newbery list. I don't think it's actually the best nonfiction title of the year -- that's still On a Beam of Light -- but it's easier to take the text of President on its own merits than that of OABOL. That said, I think the likelihood is still that no nonfiction titles show up in the Newbery rolls this year.

We'll find out in a week and a half!


Published in September by Scholastic

2014 Contenders: Locomotive, by Brian Floca

Locomotive is another of our Morris Seminar books, and a very good one it is, too. It's by Brian Floca, who has already won two Sibert Honors as author and illustrator of Lightship (2008) and Moonshot (2010), as well as a third for his illustrations for Jan Greenberg and Sandra Johnson's Ballet for Martha (2011). His fascination with transportation continues here, in an evocative free-verse description of a trans-continental railway journey as it was in 1869.

As we've been mentioning in recent days, the strongest nonfiction of the year seems (in our collective opinion) to be concentrated in the picture book section. Locomotive is another title that deserves to be in the mix with Brave Girl, A Splash of Red, and On a Beam of Light. Interestingly, however, I think it's not as good a Newbery candidate as some of the others, because of the relationship between the text and the illustrations.

One of the ways that Floca creates continuity in Locomotive is by putting words that describe sounds in markedly different fonts from the rest of the text. This works beautifully in the context of the book as a whole, but it's a strategy that's more design than pure text. Much the same could be said of Floca's choice to put some of the lines uttered by the railway workers in speech bubbles. The line between text and illustrations gets very blurry in Locomotive, and although that's fine for the Sibert, it makes Newbery consideration highly problematic.

As a book, I like On a Beam of Light a little better than Locomotive, but I recognize that that's essentially an issue of personal taste -- I like science-y subjects, and I prefer Jennifer Berne's understated prose to Floca's whooshing, onomatopoetic poetry -- rather than any kind of pure critical judgement. However, I think On a Beam of Light does objectively fit the Newbery criteria better, mostly because there's simply more left once one removes the illustrations from consideration.

In reality, the Newbery is probably a pipe dream for both books. However, I'm starting to get really, really curious about this year's Sibert results, where Locomotive could easily carry the day.


Published in September by Atheneum.

2014 Contenders: Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans during World War II, by Martin W. Sandler

This is a solid book about a topic that's seldom given the attention it deserves: the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. If I were reviewing it in detail, I would pay close attention to the way it's organized, indexed, etc.

I am not reviewing it in detail. I have been out of the office (traveling, dealing with my sickness, and then dealing with my kid's sickness) for a week and a half. I have Sam's permission to write a Short Grouchy Review (patent pending) of this one. In fact, I am going to deploy bullet points.

• The prose is adequate, but that's all. I noted that the prose in Courage Has No Color was not up to Tanya Lee Stone's usual standard, but it's still noticeably better than the prose in this book. 
• I mentally took away organization points for the ineffective way the full-spread sidebars were integrated into the text. I hate when I have to stop mid-sentence and decide whether to read a sidebar or mark it with my thumb and return to it later. 
• Content-wise, it was quite comprehensive, giving ample attention to the historical background (Japanese immigration and resulting persecution) and the redress movement and ongoing ramifications. The link to 9/11 and persecution of American Muslims and Sikhs was especially welcome. 

I'm giving it four stars on Goodreads, but for someone with my reading habits (seeking out the best children's books published in any given year), there is a lot of room within that fourth star. This is a low four, compared to the mid-to-high star I gave Courage Has No Color.

Neither of them are going to win the Newbery, and, as Sam mentioned today, I'm kind of hoping that the Sibert goes to a nonfiction picture book this year. Brave Girl and A Splash of Red are both great choices, Sam loved On a Beam of Light, and I haven't been able to get my hands on The Mad Potter yet, but I'm a big fan of any Greenberg/Jordan collaboration.

Published in May by Walker Childrens