by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

The Boy in the Suitcase, by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnette Friis
Soho Press, English translation 2011
ISBN 978-1-569-47981-0

Nina Borg is a nurse and an ardent advocate for the underdog, who works with refugee children in Denmark. It is her do-good nature and persistence that causes a long-estranged friend to ask Nina to pick up a suitcase from a public locker in the Copenhagen train station.

The suitcase is unusually heavy. When Nina opens it, she discovers a toddler, alive but powerfully drugged. Soon Nina is living on the run, temporarily abandoning family and work to protect the boy from the evil that chases him.

The Boy in the Suitcase is compelling and will cause readers to search for more translations of works by this deft writing team. Unfortunately, there is little information about Kaaberbol and Friis online. This is their first novel in the Borg series and was translated to English by Kaaberbol. Similar to Sara Paretsky’s work it focuses heavily on fighting for social injustice.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Breakdown, by Sara Paretsky
Putnam, 2012
ISBN 978-0-399-15783-7

V.I. Warshawski is the daughter of a Polish-American policeman and an Italian immigrant opera singer. She grew up tough on Chicago’s South Side, an area that the private investigator and lawyer hasn’t strayed far from as an adult and which always figures in the Warshawski stories. Breakdown is a fast-paced assault on tabloid journalism empires,  right-wing politics amid mucky electioneering.

As with a number of the books in this Library Mix series of mystery mini reviews, Paretsky’s novels are often driven by terrible, deeply hidden secrets. Always timely, Paretsky tracks American popular culture as well as politics. Breakdown touches on the current teenage passion for paranormal fiction. As the novel opens, a group of girls who are barely teenagers giggle as they film each other with cell phones in the dark of night. They are dancing around a tomb in an abandoned graveyard during a creepy hazing ritual. But they soon discover that the “vampire” they may have seen is more likely a murderer.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls, Scribner, 2005, ISBN0-7432-4753-1
Available at Powell's Books

Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel, by Jeannette Walls, Scribner, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4165-8628-9
Available at Powell's Books

Jeanette Walls is the kind of author who makes it difficult to go to sleep at night. It’s hard to turn off the light and set aside the stories about her hardscrabble, far-from-everyday family.

First came The Glass Castle in 2005, a memoir about her impoverished childhood that demonstrates how parents can be dangerously negligent yet brilliantly nurturing at the same time.

Nomadic family life
Extreme resilience and inventiveness helped Walls and her siblings survive their college-educated parents’ nomadic lifestyle and erratic attempts to earn a living. Hunger, lack of indoor heating and running water, dirty clothing and homelessness were regular problems.

Walls has said it took her 20 years to work up the courage to share the story of her childhood, because she feared that friends and journalism colleagues would ostracize the girl who grew up with a garbage pit in her Appalachian backyard.

But The Glass Castle has been a runaway success with staying power on many bestseller lists, including a steady spot on USA Today’s Top-150 list since October 2009.

Readers told Walls that they were particularly fascinated and puzzled by her mother, Rose Mary Walls, who so wanted to be an artist that she wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning to go to work even if there was no food in the house.

Half Broke Horses
So Walls dug deeper into family memories, trying to write a book about her unconventional mother, with whom she has a loving, supportive relationship despite childhood difficulties. She struggled. So Rose Mary suggested writing instead about her mother, the raucous, resourceful westerner, Lily Casey Smith.

A rip-snorting ride of a memoir was born in 2009 and titled Half Broke Horses, A True Life Novel. The book isn't classified as non-fiction, because Walls told Lily’s story in first person and had to draw most of the information from family stories instead of interviews with her grandmother.

Lily died when the author was 8 years old. But in a Barnes and Noble interview, Walls says, “Lily was one of those people who, once you met her, she was seared on your brain…. Everything about Lily was loud: her voice, her clothes, her piano playing. She cussed like a sailor, danced so as to shake the rafters, and was always pulling out her gun or pulling out her false teeth.”

Southwestern adventures
Half Broke Horses begins with Lily’s youthful adventures in the Southwest, ranging from rescuing siblings during a flash flood to journeying through the desert alone on horseback for a month on the way to her first teaching job. It ends as she and her rancher husband ride out the Great Depression through creativity, severe frugality and a pre-dawn-to-dark schedule of hard work.

Along the way, Lily and Big Jim raise two rambunctious children who perfectly fit the old cowboy lyric of  “Don’t fence me in.”

By chance, I read Half Broke Horses before venturing into The Glass Castle. So Grandma Lily’s story informed my outlook on Walls’ scary yet exhilarating childhood. It also cast light on why, unlike Lily, Rose Mary — whose learning disabilities are apparent in Half Broke Horses — dealt poorly with the boundaries of work life as a teacher. It was a profession she was forced into by her pragmatic mother.

But Rosemary was a Bohemian from the get-go and nothing got in her way, especially once she met Rex Walls, an air force pilot, whose drinking and daring behavior covered up the secrets of his crippling, Appalachian childhood.

Surviving the Skedaddle
Extreme flexibility was necessary for the Walls family to survive what the bright but alcoholic Rex referred to as the “skedaddle” — abandoning one tiny town for another whenever bills or other problems piled up.

Despite deprivation, the Walls children experienced an abundance of rich experiences along the way.  When he was sober, Rex tutored them in geology, physics and inventiveness. Rose Mary taught them to view all difficulties as an “incredibly fun adventure.” She fed their imagination with piles of books from the public library. Sometimes the whole family would lounge around reading.

The Walls children inherited their parents’ ability to dream that they might someday earn a living doing something they enjoyed.

Except for the youngest, most fragile one, they also inherited the steel spine and practicality of Grandma Lily, memories of whom no doubt inspired them as teenagers when they ran like the dickens away from the poverty and mean circumstances of their childhood.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Cosmic, by Frank Cottrell
Walden Pond Press, 2008,
ISBN 0-061-83688-5
Available at Powell's Books

Sometimes a book sneaks up, taps the reader on the shoulder, and says “Aha!” One minute, you think that you are reading an outer space fantasy for kids; the next, you realize that it travels far beyond the universe of childhood.

As Father’s Day approached, I had no intention of writing anything about the holiday. The books I had found on that topic a year ago had been mostly sad and didn’t reflect the great dads I saw all around me.

But this week, I was, by chance, reading Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Cosmic, which its publisher has described as “ ‘Apollo 13’ meets ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’”

Cosmic is an out-of-this-world romp for fathers to share with their children. It journeys through inner space as well as outer space as 12-year-old Liam reflects on all the fine “dadness” he has learned from his father.

Parenthood isn’t a typical concern for most 12-year-olds. However, Liam needs all the parenting wisdom he can recall since the maturity of his appearance has led him to commit what turns out to be a terrible blunder. Liam pretends to be the father of a 12-year-old friend so they can win an entertainment park contest.

As bad behavior goes, this is not so terrible. However, the entertainment park is in China far from their Liverpool suburb, and the thrill ride it promised is a trip into outer space.

In an interview with Walden Media, which plans to make Cosmic into a movie, Boyce acknowledges taking inspiration from Roald Dahl’s darkly humorous Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (better known as Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). Similar to Dahl’s story, Cosmic involves dysfunctional parents pushing their children to win a contest.

Although far away, Liam's dad looms in his son's thoughts as a model of good fathering. Liam spends considerable time comparing his dad's behavior with that of the parents whose greed and thirst for fame is jet-propelling their children into an ill-advised trip with only one adult chaperone. Unfortunately, the children have selected as their chaperone the father who knows the least about science but who has won their vote with ice cream.

Although he is aware “that politeness is dadly and yelling is not,” Liam tries to avert takeoff by complaining loudly in a group meeting.

“How can we let our children go into space with a man who doesn’t even know that the moon has no innate luminescence? How can we let our children go into space at all?” he shouts. “Space isn’t safe. What kid of dad lets their child go into space?”

Boyce’s writing is spare, but the ideas are deep even if the language is simple. When Liam ends up being the dad who oversees the kid crew in space, he develops a strong sense of protectiveness for his shipmates.

In one moment of lovely prose, this new maturity causes Liam to stay awake while the others must snooze in sleeping bags attached to the wall.

“Hanging there, with their heads lolling, the children look like they’re sleeping in a row of Christmas stockings. And I’m the only one awake, like I’m Father Christmas or their guardian angel or something.”

Boyce was a successful screenwriter before becoming a children’s author. It was the director of the movie Millions who suggested that he turn his screenplay from that movie into a novel. The result was a 2004 Carnegie Medal for his first children’s book. Now Cosmic is on the shortlist for the 2009 Carnegie Medal, which will be announced this week.

Boyce works at home and has seven children, all of whom are home schooled. Good dad that he is, the author doesn’t complain about the clamor this creates during the workday. “Noise is creative!” he says.

Cosmic provides rich insights into many aspects of childhood from the lure of computer gaming to the loneliness of social awkwardness. Certainly, it is one of the most creative books I have read in recent months.

So blast off with the kids to your local library and pick up a copy of Cosmic for a joy ride you won't soon forget.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Children of the Waters, by Carleen Brice, One World Books, Random House, 2009,
ISBN 0-345-49907-7
Available at Powell's Books

Who are we? This review is part of a continuing focus on the issues of identity—such as struggling to fit in, having a sense of place, and practicing tolerance.

Mixed roots
When Barack Obama began his campaign for the U.S. presidency, it increased the discussion about what it means to be born into more than one culture in America. Now the topic of multi-racial heritage is no longer a tributary in the national discussion; it has rushed into the mainstream of American thought.

An example of this change is the third annual Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival to be held June 12 to 13 in Los Angeles. It will feature writers, filmmakers, and performers who festival organizers say are “dedicated to sharing and nurturing storytelling of the Mixed experience.”

One of the authors scheduled in the festival is Colorado’s Carleen Brice, whose first novel, Orange Mint and Honey was transformed into the successful made-for-television movie “Sins of the Mother.” Her second novel, Children of the Waters concerns issues facing mixed-race families.

Brice specializes in stories that sizzle, sear, and then provide a healing ending.

Mixed marriage
In Children of the Waters, Brice focuses on two sisters—one white and the other biracial—who discover each other in adulthood. Their relationship starts out rocky, but ultimately leaves the reader feeling buoyant and hopeful for a better America.

Trish is a laid-back white woman in early middle age whose marriage to her black high school sweetheart has foundered. At the beginning of the story, she has returned home  with their son to Denver where none of the puzzling pieces of her life “seem to fit anymore.”

Priding herself on being racially color blind, Trish is blindsided when her son becomes the focus of racial profiling at the mall. The incident drives a wedge between mother and son.

This rift also makes Trish painfully aware of how alone she and her son are. The adults in her small extended family are long dead.

But Trish is accustomed to little comfort in her life, except for the dogs she brings home from her job as a vet tech. The grandparents who raised her were never particularly kind or demonstrative. And the adoring but drug addled mother, who abandoned her to their harsh care in early childhood, died in a car crash that also killed her only sibling. Or so Trish thinks.

Mixed adoption, mixed emotions
Trish’s soon-to-be-discovered sister, Billie, is an African-American earth mother who works hard at eating right and staying peaceful. A placid existence is the key to staying healthy and avoiding a flare-up of lupus, her dangerous chronic illness.

Billie is also concerned about the health of the planet and refuses to grow a lawn, because she deems it a poor ecological choice. She chooses instead to create a Zen-like yard of hard-packed swept dirt.

“She remembered hearing about how ancestors from West Africa had swept yards in Georgia, where the soil was clay, as it often is in Denver. Nothing appealed more to Billie than picking up a dying tradition of her ancestors.”

Almost nothing appeals less to Billie than ambition. She prefers teaching preschool to following in the footsteps of her financially successful parents and brother. Plus, her parents disapprove of her musician boyfriend, whose day job involves mowing lawns.

A flash flood of difficulties soon disturbs what Billie had viewed as the solid clay of her life. First, she accidentally becomes pregnant—a high-risk situation for someone with lupus— and discovers that her boyfriend is unsupportive. Then she meets Trish and learns what appeals to her least of all. Her parents never told her that she was adopted or that her birth mother was white.

Who are we?
Meanwhile, as Billie rejects Trish’s tentative reunion, Trish’s son begins to reject her as well. Then as Billie begins to grudgingly include Trish and Will in her life, Trish starts becoming uncertain about who she and her son are.

“With Will, [Trish] rarely thought of him as biracial. He was just her son. But around Billie, her white skin felt like a Klansman’s robe.”

Brice is the kind of author whose work is made for discussion. Children of the Waters makes one consider the true nature of race. Is it defined by the color of your skin or the culture in which you are raised? Brice causes us to think about who we are, what America is, and why we need our individual cultural heritage as much as we need our commonalities.

Similar to Matt de la Peña’s young adult novel Mexican Whiteboy, Brice’s book also makes us explore the dangers of hiding family history from children.

As part of Random House’s “Reader’s Circle” program, Children of the Waters contains an insightful interview with the author as well as a useful set of questions for classes and book clubs to consider. It is an ideal book for use in high school literature and social studies classes much the same as Mexican Whiteboy and the memoirs I’m Down by Mishna Wolff and Not a Genuine Black Man by Brian Copeland.

One of the great values of reading—whether fiction or nonfiction—is that it helps us to understand others and ourselves. One of the great values of public libraries is that they are good places to find all these books and to find ourselves.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Unafraid of the Dark, by Rosemary L. Bray, Anchor Books, 1999,
ISBN 0-385-49475-0
Available at Powell's Books

Sometimes you stumble over something important at the library, because you weren't looking for it to begin with. That is what happened when I read Unafraid of the Dark, A Memoir by Rosemary L. Bray, a former editor of the New York Times Book Review.

Bray's story illustrates the importance of public libraries in positively shaping lives and providing sanctuary for those who need respite from difficulties.

Extreme poverty and a violent, alcoholic father deviled Bray's childhood from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s.  Home was usually a place of fear for her, especially at night, when she would lie in the dark listening to her father berate and beat her mother.

Escaping home at the library
However, there were people and places that saved Bray. These included a clever, dedicated mother and the public library.

The author notes that she and her siblings would hurry up and work hard to complete household chores in order to escape home for a bit.

We all knew that when we finished doing what we had to do, we could cajole my mother into taking us to the library, with a trip to the playground afterward. The library was the part I was most interested in.

Once the house was clean, the next step in their library day ritual was for Bray's mother to make sure that all her children were clean and dressed in "decent clothes" for their walk through Hyde Park to Chicago's T.B. Blackstone Library.

But before they stepped out the door, Bray writes, Mama would  "go to the second drawer of the dresser that sat in our kitchen....In the drawer was the old black felt pocketbook....a repository for the really important records of our household." These included the family's library cards.

Libraries rescue us
It was the library that helped Bray to explore the rich worlds of fairytales, mythology, biology, and history. A lonely egghead of a child, she found her friends in fiction rather than on the playground.

This sad yet inspiring story about endurance and resilience is also a story about how libraries can help rescue us.

Reprinted from the Older Archives of Library Mix