Soldier Sister, Fly Home

Soldier Sister, Fly Home
by Nancy Bo Flood; illus. by Shonto Begay
144 pages; ages 10 & up
Charlesbridge, 2016

Tess and her sister, Gaby are close. So when Tess moves from the reservation school to Flagstaff to finish junior high, she looks forward to spending time with her sister who is enrolled in the local college. Tess is hoping that a track scholarship will help her get to college.

But things change. Gaby enlists and Tess misses her companionship. Gaby's best friend is killed in action right before Gaby is deployed to Iraq. Tess is trying to figure out how to live in two worlds: that of the mostly white school she attends, and back home with her Diné family. She is also left with Gaby's horse, Blue, who she promises to care for but is afraid of.

What I love about this book is the authentic writing. Nancy Bo Flood captures the sounds and smells of the desert: ravens whooshing overhead or "hunkered on limbs of a gnarly pinion tree like old men arguing politics." You can taste the air, feel the red sand in your shoes, and the heat of the desert sun beating down on your head.

I love how Nancy brings us into the Navajo culture, sharing traditions and language. How Tess and her Grandfather collect a lamb for Gaby's Protection Ceremony meal, and soothe it, singing, so the lamb is calm and peaceful when Grandfather picks up his knife.

I love how Nancy captures Tess, caught in two worlds. At school she is the "girl from the Rez" and accused of using "Navajo magic" to win at track. At home she is called an apple - red on the outside, white on the inside. An incident at the trading post makes Tess think more deeply about what it means to be a "real Indian", and where home is when you are half white, half Navajo.

I love that Nancy includes back matter: information about the Navajo language and a glossary of words used in the book, as well as an acknowledgement of Lori Piestewa , a member of Hopi who is remembered as the first Native American woman in US history to die in combat on foreign soil while serving in the military.

Beyond the book: 

Check out this lovely tribute to Lori Piestewa (and pay attention to the song that is being sung).

Writing about a culture other than your own isn't easy. Some people think that you shouldn't. Nancy shares her thoughts on writing about another culture on her blog.

You can learn more about culture, traditions, and beliefs of the Diné here. You'll also find links to Code talkers (like Tess's grandfather). For a lesson in how to say the colors in Navajo language, check out this video. 

 We'll be hanging out on Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other  bloggers over at Shannon Messenger's blog. Hop over to see what other people are reading.
Review copy provided by the publisher.

Paws of Courage

Paws of Courage: True Tales of Heroic Dogs Who Protect and Serve
by Nancy Furstinger
160 pages; ages 10 & up
National Geographic Children's Books, 2016

Last week the focus was on a fictional dog doing rescue work. Paws of Courage contains 22 stories about real dogs doing real work with their military or police partners.

It begins with tales of "historic hounds" - military dogs serving in World War I and World War II. Like "Sergeant Stubby", a pit bull-terrier mix serving in the infantry, who captured a German spy single paw-edly. Then there's "Smoky", a tiny Yorkshire terrier no bigger than the shoe of his soldier.  Smoky rode in a backpack, shared K-rations, and helped string wires through a pipe beneath an airstrip.

Around 2,500 military dogs served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their jobs included searching for explosives hidden in homes, car bombs, roadside IEDs, and weapons. Some worked with medics, others with special forces, parachuting from planes with their handlers. Like their humans, military dogs received care packages - though theirs contained dog booties and cooling vests.

Search-and-rescue dogs work with police and fire rescue teams to help locate people trapped in rubble after earthquakes, tornadoes, and other disasters. Others are trained as lifeguards, or work with search teams to find lost hikers. Some dogs are trained to sniff out agricultural pests, drugs, and other things sent by mail or air cargo. Review copy from publisher.

Wind Dancer ~ Blog Tour

Wind Dancer
by Chris Platt
176 pages; ages 8-12
Peachtree, 2014

Ali worries about the two horses living in the dilapidated barn behind a house her school bus passes. They're none of her business, she knows, but "they'd left hoofprints in her memory."

For starters, how can you pass up the delicious intrigue of neglected horses that leave hoofprints in a girl's memory? A girl who, just a couple years earlier lost her much loved pony in an accident? An accident that was caused by her own foolishness? An accident that - maybe - precipitated her brother's enlistment in the military. That same brother who now, minus a leg, is holed up in his bedroom just a couple doors down the hallway.

 Ali knows she shouldn't be sneaking out of her house at midnight to meet her best friend Cara. She knows she shouldn't be breaking into the horse barn. But when she sees the horses she knows she has to do more, and the next day she calls Animal Control.

What seemed like a straightforward rescue operation goes all skilly-wonkers when the horses end up at Ali's house and she ends up hand-feeding them. Is this punishment? she wonders.... because as far as Ali is concerned, she is finished with horses.

Running beneath the story of the horses is Ali's relationship with her brother, who has been detached from the family since returning home a wounded warrior. Though not a horse person, he develops a relationship with the gelding Ali calls "Wind Dancer" - a relationship that just might save them both.

This is a horse story that will definitely nuzzle its way into your heart.  Join the Blog Tour and check out what Lee and JJ have to say about Wind Dancer over at Blue Owl Reviews. Tomorrow's Tour Stop is at Chat with Vera and remember to drop by The World of Peachtree Publishing . Today is also Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday round-up. Drop by to see what other bloggers are reviewing. Review copy provided by publisher.

After Eli

After Eli
by Rebecca Rupp
 245 pages; ages 10 & up
Candlewick Press, 2012

Daniel's full name is Daniel (E.) Anderson. That's not the name printed on his birth certificate; Daniel added the (E.) after his brother, Eli, was killed when his truck ran over an Improvised Explosive Device in Iraq. To the folks in town, Eli is a war hero.

Eli's death leaves a hole in Daniel's heart and a lot of questions. To help sort through all those questions, Danny grabs an old binder and creates a "Book of the Dead" -pages full of notes about people who died, how they died, and (most important) the reason they died. There's George Mallory, who died while climbing Mt. Everest. Danny wonders whether "because it's there" is a good enough reason for risking one's life. He wonders if Eli had a good reason to volunteer for the war in Iraq. He wonders whether things would have been different if his dad had allowed Eli to volunteer in New York City after 9/11.

Then one summer Danny notices a new neighbor: Isabelle. He makes friends with an unlikely ally. He starts working on an organic farm. He begins to grow into himself while coming to terms with his brother's death.

This is a book of place: rural Vermont, summer fields and fireflies. This is a book of how people connect: parents, friends, people you thought were friends but turn out to not be. It is a book full of struggle and emotional pain and wondering if you're going to be OK when you grow up. But even more, it is a book infused with love and filled with nuggets of wisdom - like the day Danny's working at the farm and tells Emma that "a real friend is someone who likes you for who you want to be and not for who they want you to be."

Author Rebecca Rupp, master of creating fiction that holds deep truths, graciously answered Three Questions about her book.

Sally's Bookshelf: What inspired this story?

Becky: The evening news. In the first years of the Iraq War, every news broadcast had moments of silence and a list of people who had been killed - most of them painfully young. Then, as we moved into our decades-long condition of permanent war, we stopped doing that. II thought that was weong. These are real people; when they're lost, whole families are devastates. I don't want us to forget the human cost of war.

SB: The characters are so real. Where did Emma come from?

Becky: She just blossomed. When I first wrote the book, Emma wasn't even a character. Then she was introduced as a minor character. And then she just took on an infinitely kind personality all her own. She's based a bit on my Aunt Bev, who never finished high school, married at seventeen and by most people's standards wasn't a success in life. But all of us adored her, ans she solved everybody's problems with love and by listening around her kitchen table.

SB: This is a book with many layers. How long did it take to write it?

Becky: That's so hard to judge - maybe a couple months for a first draft. Then second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh drafts. Then editor's comments and an eighth draft... I don't keep a writer;s notebook, but I do have a daily journal in which I note down all kinds of stuff: ideas for books, ideas for characters, interesting tidbits that might turn into plots. Sometimes I outline the whole story, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I write the ending first. As for research, in writing diction you have to know a whole lot more than you ever put in the book. Since After Eli is set in both present and past, I has a huge timeline that went year by year, starting when Eli was born until Danny was fourteen and meets Isabelle.

This is part of the Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday round-up. Check out more great reading here. Review copy from publisher.

Operation Oleander

Operation Oleander
by Valerie Patterson
192 pages; ages 11 and up
Clarion, 2013

What happens when you do something good, something that helps people and something you believe in - and it goes horribly wrong?

When Jess's dad ships out to Afghanistan, she wants to stay close to him. So she and her friends form "Operation Oleander", a group that collects donations of school supplies for Afghan orphans. Jess, who was adopted herself, feels a special connection with the orphans caught in a war zone. She ships the supplies overseas, and her dad's unit distributes them.

Until the day the soldiers are distributing supplies to an orphanage and a bomb kills some, including her best friend's mother, and leaves her father critically wounded. The base commander orders her to shut down the operation and Jess finds herself suddenly on the wrong side of things. She wants to continue helping Afghan children orphaned by war, but how can she do it without putting soldiers like her father in danger?

A good look at contemporary military family life, and ethical questions facing the folks back home. This is part of the Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday round-up. Check out more great reading here. Review copy from publisher.