It's Monday - Adventures in Books!

              Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they've been reading, along with others who post their favorites.  Your TBR lists will grow! Happy Reading!
          Share with the hashtag #IMWAYR

Thinking of all of you during this challenging time, hope you are doing well and finding joy in your lives every day.





           It took me a while to read this, not because it wasn't a special adventure story set in the California gold rush days, but because of the challenging days we're experiencing. I'm fine, staying home except for a few trips to the grocery, but feel a little scattered! 
           However, this story by Avi is quite a wonderful trip back to the San Francisco of Gold Rush days where a young girl, Victoria Blaisdell of Providence, Rhode Island whose father has lost his job and gets the 'fever', opts to take only her younger brother along to California. "Tory" wants independence and hates the expectations of a 14-year-old girl, no school but dancing school, act like a lady, no outings without accompaniment. 

Thanks to Candlewick Press for the copy!

            Readers will be thrilled to see that Tory won't be stopped. She stows away on the ship, thus beginning the adventure that is not always easy, but her strength does not stop her will to be who she wants to be. You'll be surprised at the terrible conditions of that old San Francisco, most living in tents, mud everywhere, no schools for the younger brother whom Tory is left in charge of as her father takes off to the goldfields. It's a tale hard to imagine, but Avi says there really was a Blaisdell family that lived in Providence and his descriptions of "Rotten Row" where hundreds of ships were abandoned in the bay as men arrived to take off for the fields nearly defy belief. Those wrecks now at the bay's bottom have since served as a landfill for what is now land extended into the bay.
            Tory makes one good friend, a boy, and then another, who help her rescue her brother who's been 'crimped', kidnapped to serve on one of the few ships that leave for other destinations. 



She knows in her other life, she would never have been allowed to have such friends. But Avi creates a wonderfully strong girl who tells her own story, who only wants to survive in her own way. She then rescues her brother in a hair-raising finale. Avi's descriptions make the story come alive all through the book. Here's one example, a brief part of the sight of the bay as Tory and friends watch before they must start a most dangerous task in the rescue: "Bay waters flip-flopped against the ship. The quietude enhanced these meager sounds, and put brittle edges to my nerves, as if they were being plucked."
          I'm sure some might say that the tale is a bit far-fetched, but I also remember reading a memoir a long while ago when a young boy at fourteen had to take over the family farm when his father died suddenly. Teens, even young ones, are capable of much more than we realize. It's a tale that will touch young readers who may be having dreams of a life that differs from their family's.

           It's always been a positive skill to have the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction. Today it seems more important than ever. Perhaps some people never have learned exactly how to tell differences. Michael Rex has written and illustrated a brief and clear story of looking at a few differently-colored robots, learning which words about these robots are facts: This one is blue, this one has a square head, and this one is the silliest. It is for the youngest readers, and the way Rex has illustrated is bright and funny. I do wonder if those who read it can adapt some of the text and add examples for those students who will benefit from more complexity. I enjoyed the presentation and silly story with a lesson very much.

          Both parents of this young boy work as nighttime office cleaners and when his usual babysitter cancels, he must find the energy to go with them instead of tucking into his nice bed. He's sleepy and grumpy but his parents use imagination to take him into the "paper kingdom" where the Paper King has left so many papers that need to be cleaned up and the Queen sends all those papers to everyone. The bathroom feels a little scary because sometimes, there are little dragons. No, not there, but they love to eat. Perhaps they're in the kitchen? I imagine you know that this boy forgot his sleepiness at least for a while as his parents did the cleaning and made magic at the same time. Pascal Campion's illustrations manage to make even a double-page spread of bathroom stalls wondrous as the boy and his dad peek into a stall, looking for those dragons. Helena Ku Rhee adds an author's note about her own similar experiences made better when her parents told funny stories about the people who worked where her parents cleaned. Readers can't always understand other people's lives until they have stories like this one. And some readers will love if they see a part of their own lives in this story. It's a wonderful book. 

What's Next? Time for another from my "#MustReadin2020 list - Samira Ahmed's Internment.