Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists!

In 1961, fourteen-year-old Lucia Alvarez lives a charmed life on the beautiful island country of Cuba. She loves reading the latest fashion magazines, daydreaming about her crush Manuel and planning her up-coming quincenara with her best friend Ivette. But storm clouds are gathering. President Fidel Castro has ordered factories to be shut down and churches closed. Lucia has noticed that many of her friends, included Ivette, have started attending the Jovenes Rebeldes youth political meetings sponsored by Castro’s government. There are soldiers on every corner. And her father’s boss at the bank has suddenly been arrested and taken away. At first, Lucia doesn’t understand why her parents don’t support the government revolution that promises to make everything better for everyone. “I couldn’t believe how judgmental Papa was being…Castro had no choice but to have the government take over many of the businesses so that there wouldn’t be so much corruption. It was all for the benefit of the country, and everyone was expected to pitch in and help. What harm was there in that?” But when her father is arrested for “hoarding” their family valuables instead of turning them over to the government and Lucia witnesses an unspeakable act of violence in the local park, she realizes her parents are right not to trust Castro’s Revolution. “Before, I didn’t want to think about people being jailed, killed or forced to leave their homes. I thought those people must have done something wrong or just didn’t love Cuba enough. But now I knew better…Castro was, in one way or another, eliminating those who didn’t agree with him.” And now Lucia has to accept an even harder truth—her parents are sending her and her little brother Francisco to the United States to keep them safe from the forced “youth brigades” that separate children from their parents. The last thing Lucia sees as her plane takes off for a foreign place called “Nebraska” is her mother’s bright red umbrella, the only speck of color in a sea of parents frantically waving goodbye to their children. Will she ever see her parents or Cuba again? “It was no use pretending this was an ordinary trip. We weren’t choosing to come here, and we had no idea when we’d be going back home.”

Good historical fiction introduces you to some intriguing tidbit of the past that somehow didn’t make it into your history textbook. That’s what Christina Diaz Gonzalez does with this oh-so-interesting debut novel. I had never heard of Operation Pedro Pan, the underground organization that helped over 14,000 children and teens get out of Cuba and into the United States in the early 1960’s. I was completely fascinated by the true aspects of Lucia’s story and immediately started looking up more information about Cuba during that time period (another hallmark of good hist. fic—it makes you want to dig up more facts on the topic!) In addition to her top notch research, Gonzalez’s depiction of Lucia and Francisco’s culture shock when they join their Nebraska foster family left me laughing and cringing at the same time. Like the scene where Mrs. Baxter, their Nebraska sponsor, has Lucia to put Tabasco sauce on her eggs: “ ‘Oh my, you don’t like it? Mrs. Baxter’s eyebrows were scrunched together. “I thought you liked spicy food. I read that in Mexico they put it on everything…’ ‘Ughmm.’ I cleared my throat. ‘In Cuba, we no eat spicy food. Mexico yes, Cuba no.’ Even my ears felt hot.” You can easily see why this hip hist. fic. needs to be put on your TBR list ASAP. Landing in a library or bookstore near you May 2010.

“Somehow I knew there were a gulch between what got writ down about history and what were remembered by the people who went along living it.” In this hip hist. fic. about Victorian London, Marthe Jocelyn successfully channels the authentic voices of the ordinary people who “went along living” history, and whose stories are just as interesting as those famous folks who end up in all the textbooks. It’s 1877, and fifteen-year-old Mary has been sent away by her humorless potato-faced stepmother to find work. She secures a position in the scullery of a grand manor, where her fresh-faced innocence catches the roving eye of Bates the butler, and stirs envy in the bitter heart of parlor maid Eliza. A failed romance with a fickle groom ends in the unthinkable, and Mary learns the hard way that “Love is not for the likes of us, belowstairs.” What price will she have to pay for her folly? Flash-forward to 1884, where six-year-old orphan James Nelligan has been taken from his foster family and placed in the Coram Foundling Home, where he is taught that he is a “progeny of sin. It is therefore your duty to devote yourselves to goodness and servitude.” Under that dire legacy, he must learn to navigate the treacherous waters of hunger, bullies and strict headmasters. Still, he remains hopeful that one day he will be reunited with his foster mother, and keeps an eye out for the man who might be his biological father. How these two souls are related will soon become clear to quick-thinking readers, but what is masterful is how Jocelyn weaves the two stories together into a working class opera of hope and despair, adding the soprano of Eliza’s spiteful voice, and the pragmatic tenor of Oliver Chester, one of James’s teachers and a foundling himself. Coming to a library or bookstore near you May 2010. While you wait, you might want to check out some of Jocelyn’s other under the radar reads. Trust me, she’s the awesomest author  you aren’t reading, and the time to change that is NOW.

When Octavia thinks about her grandma Mare, the first word that comes to mind is “embarrassing.” Instead of being the cozy type of grandmother who bakes cookies and does the Sunday paper crossword puzzle, Mare “has long fake nails and a croaky hoarse drawl, and she’s always holding a long, skinny cigarette…She’s loud and bossy and she drinks bourbon with lemon juice at dinner. She has a low-slung, two door red coupe…and walks everywhere else on strappy high-heeled sandals.” As far as ‘Tavia’s  concerned, the less time she spends with outspoken Mare the better! But now her parents have volunteered Octavia and her snooty older sister Tali to accompany Mare on a summer road trip South to a mysterious family reunion, and neither of them is very happy about it. Octavia stopped getting along as sisters with Tali a long time ago, and the prospect of having to deal with her in the close quarters of Mare’s car seems not only uncomfortable but practically impossible. But soon Octavia sees a whole new side of her outrageous grandma as Mare starts spinning tales of her time in the WAC (Women’s Army Corp.) during WWII to pass the time in the car. Almost against their will, the sisters are drawn into Mare’s sweeping story of bravery, sacrifice, prejudice and pain. As the journey continues, both girls begin to soften towards each other and Mare as they begin to understand the role the past has played in shaping their present.  There’s nothing I like better than a good inter-generational story—as long as the oldster on the scene isn’t some sappy, wise Yoda-type figure dispensing advice. And Mare couldn’t be less like that. She’s smart, sassy and utterly cool. But she also admits her mistakes, never sets herself up as a role model, and allows her granddaughters to see her weaknesses and insecurities. I loved how Tanita Davis wove together the contemporary with the historical and showed how they connect through two generations of strong African American women. And if you want to read another great story about the contributions of African American women during WWII, check out Sherri L. Smith’s Flygirl.

In 1943 Louisiana, nineteen-year-old Ida Mae Jones wants nothing more than to contribute to the war effort like her big brother Thomas. She’s tired of serving on the home front, where all women can do is save bacon fat for machine grease or donate their silk nylons for parachutes. Like her father before her, Ida Mae has the flying bug and won’t be happy until she’s piloting a plane for Uncle Sam. There’s just one lil’ problem: Ida Mae is an African American woman, and although black men are allowed to enlist and serve in segregated units, women are not welcome as pilots or soldiers in the United States Army. But just when Ida Mae has given up all hope of realizing her dream, she hears about the WASP, or Women Airforce Service Pilots program. Due to the shortage of able-bodied men, the Army needs female pilots to ferry planes across the US to drop-off points where they can then be flown overseas to the battlefields and Ida Mae is determined to become one of those women. To the horror and dismay of her friends and family, armed with just her father’s forged pilot’s license and her light skin, she enters the WASP training program as a white female pilot. Her fear of being found out  is quickly eclipsed by the thrill of flight and the close friends she makes at the training center. But her family and her roots are never far from her mind. Exposure as a black woman would mean expulsion from the program, criminal arrest, or worse. Can Ida Mae make it as a black woman in a white man’s Army? Will she even want to after facing discrimination, ridicule and the death of a dear friend? Sherri L. Smith’s fourth novel is a high flying historical adventure, full of thrills and spills, but also jam packed with fascinating historical facts about the amazing WASP and their unique brand of heroism.