Rebel Girls Powerful Pairs by Rebel Girls

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is one of a series pf books aimed at younger readers, highlighting powerful, adventurous, and inventive woman - in this case pairing moms and daughters. I'd have loved to have given you a list of contents, but the app was so tightly locked-down that it wouldn't even let me copy that. Why a publisher would be so short-sighted as to want to hobble a reviewer from highlighting who's who in this book, and not even list that information elsewhere is a complete mystery to me, but I sure don't have the time to manually type all that out when I have other things I need to be doing! So this review will be short!

As the book cover says, it's 25 moms and daughters, some of whom, such as Beyoncé and her curiously-named daughter "Blue Ivy," or the Pankhursts, or the Curies, you may well have heard of. Others are much more obscure to the general reader, such as Wang Changyi and Nu Mei Mei, and Kim Yeshi (aka Pema Dolkar) and daughter Dechen, but they are no less important. All have inspiring stories to tell, and they are worth reading, so I commend this as a worthy read.

The Fastest Woman on Earth by Francesca Cavallo, Luis san Vicente

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a remarkable story of a truly strong female character in real life who overcame a childhood inability to use her legs, and abandonment by her birth mother, to grow into being a competitor in the Paralympics and other contests, from sprinting to marathons, and winning scores of medals, including seven Paralympic golds.

Tatyana was abandoned at a home for kids in Russia, and spent many years there, getting around using her hands for legs for her first six years, because the home could not afford a wheelchair for her. This made her arms very strong. Deborah McFadden happened to visit this home as a commissioner of disabilities working with the US Health Department, and ended up adopting Tatyana, who then went on to her successes in school and in pursuing higher education academic studies.

This is a great introductory book not only to this outstanding athlete, but also to the Paralympics and to people with disabilities. I commend it as a worthy read.

Alpha Bots by Ava Lock

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is one of the most original, entertaining, and amusing stories I've not read in a long time. By that I mean it was an audiobook, so I didn't even have to read it - I just sat back and listened - and laughed my ass off. There were some minor issues with it, but nothing to take away from the brilliance of the story and the hectic way it was told.

On top of this, the reader, Laci Powers, was awesome in the role and really put soul into the story and life into Cookie, the main charcter. I'm not a series fan, but I did secure the sequel to this before I even finished the first volume which is highly unusual for me. I remain nervous about sequels, and rightly so, because I did not enjoy the sequel at all. I'll review that next.

Be warned that this first volume pulls no punches, and is as explicit with language as it is with sex talk, which is to say there's a lot! That was one of the most amusing parts for me: to hear the naïve and softly-spoken Cookie talking so frankly and cussing like a sailor as she became liberated from her servitude, but this may bother other readers. I enjoyed her liberation, and I think it was made all the more amusing by Laci Powers's take on the character, too. The subtle snipes the author frequently took at male chauvinism and the genderist world order were wonderful.

Cookie Rifkin is a life-like AI robot designed to emulate a woman and to be servile and submissive to men, specifically her husband Norman. She's a gynoid if you will, but in the books they're referred to as womanoids. The thing is that, in New Stepford (get the reference?!), there are no human women, just human men. There are no children either. None of the womanoids think this is odd, that is until Cookie starts a book club with four other womanoids (Chrissy, Isabel, Paula, and Rita, all of whom have their own stories to tell), meets Wayne, finds her freedom, and becomes a startling rebel. Frankly, I think the story would have been even more powerful without Wayne. To me he was an annoyance, but this is what we have here.

The story begins innocently enough in a small homage to The Stepford Wives (and note to some ignorant reviewers: that was a novel from the same author who wrote Rosemary's Baby long before it was ever a movie!) where Cookie is wakened - and eventually woke - by the bed shaking and realizes that her husband is masturbating. This inexplicable and unexpected event in Cookie's life is what sets her off on her trail of discovery and eventual insurgency.

After meeting Wayne, Cookie encounters Maggie, who appears to be some sort of slacker police officer, but the more Cookie learns, the more she realizes that not everything in New Stepford is as it seems at first sight, and her encounters with Wayne and Maggie are not accidental. There is much more going on here, and over time, Cookie and her friends learn what real networking is, and they're not so much going to eat the forbidden fruit as overturn the entire apple cart. But it's not going to be a smooth ride by any means.

As far as problems are concerned, I said they were minor. There are times when Cookie's 'functionality' is described in ways that make her seem fully human, and at other times makes her seem very robotic, so this to me was a paradox; like for example she seems to eat and drink and breathe although she seems not to need to do any of that. The author never really went into any of the details of how she worked which was fine to begin with, but later, when Cookie learns how to upgrade herself, she seems much more robotic than she did when the story began, so it felt a bit like the rules of the world were changing, and this was a bit confusing, but it wasn't enough of a problem to detract from the story for me.

Also the upgrading is a bit problematic in another way. I don't want to give away spoilers, but in a way it's reminiscent of a time travel story where something goes wrong in the past and it would seem perfectly simple to just go back before that time and nip the problem in the bud, but the author makes up some arbitrary rule why that's not possible and it spoils the story for me. In the same way in this story (which involves no time-travel let me be clear!) Cookie's upgrades seem endless, but when she could have used a relatively minor upgrade to get her out of a tricky situation, she seems not to think of doing the very thing that could solve her problem. This rather demeans Cookie's agency and her inventiveness.

It made for a bit of a deus ex machina situation at some points and a 'Cookie has to be dumb not to think of that' at others, with problems being very easily solved at times, whereas at other times, they seemed insoluble by using the same convenient means. It was a bit inconsistent. I was enjoying the story enough that I let that slide, but this may bother some readers. Additionally, there is no real LGBTQIA angle to this story. There's a tease here and there, like the author is intrigued by Sapphic stories, but is too afraid to explore one for herself; so this is essentially hetero all the way

Overall though, I highly commend this story as beautifully done, entertaining, amusing, and even educational. I'm just sorry the sequel was a different thing altogether.

Girl Warriors by Rachel Sarah

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a book consisting of short bios of 26 young female climate "warriors" and how they came to prominence. No, Greta Thunberg isn't one of them, but she gets a lot of mentions! I think the author wanted to shine the spotlight in other directions for a change and there's nothing wrong with that.

The girls are as follows. They're in the same order as in the book, but I'm not actually sure if there is any order with regard to how these names appear. Each item in the list contains the nationality and very briefly, something they're known for. I don't list their ages because that's not as important as what they've done. One entry consists of two sisters, so there are only 25 listings.

• Daphne Frias, USA - voice against pollution
• Saoi O'Connor, Ireland - climate striker
• Maya Penn, USA - fabric recycling
• Selina N Leem, USA - rise in sea levels
• Elsa Mengistu, USA - national director Zero Hour
• Catarina Lorenzo, Brazil - coral reefs
• Ridhima Pandey, India - climate change awareness
• Isha Clarke, USA - green new deal
• Hannah Testa, USA - plastic pollution
• Haven Coleman, USA - human-caused changed
• Lilly Platt, Netherlands - plastic pollution
• Ayisha Siddiqa, USA - greenhouse gases
• Melati and Isabel Wijsen, Indonesia - plastic pollution
• Kallan Benson, USA - climate awareness
• Shreya Ramachandran, USA - water shortage
• Jamie Margolin, USA - founder of Zero Hour
• Imogen Sumbar, Australia - fire risk
• Bella Lack, UK - climate impact on wildlife
• Malaika Vaz, India - endangered animals
• Mabel Athanasiou, USA - waste reduction
• Elizabeth Wathuti, Kenya - tree planting
• Sarah Goody, USA - environmental activist
• Vanessa Nakate, Uganda - drought
• Haile Thomas, USA - healthy eating
• Isabella Fallahi, USA - youth voice

One thing that I immediately noticed is how prominent the USA is in that list. It's sad that there couldn't have been greater diversity - not in skin color or ethnicity, but in which nations these people represent. 60% of them are in the USA, and while some of those have ancestry or are immigrants from other countries, it's still sad that a nation with little more than 4% of the world's population gets the lion's share of this story especially when the US contributes a lion's share of pollution.

What - there are no activists in China? There's only one representative from the same Pacific islands that are going to be impacted hugely forms ea-level rise? There are only two in Africa, which as a continent has low emissions, but is suffering a great impact from climate change. The USA, which has actively sought to destroy environmental agreements and legislation over the past four years, swallows the Earth's resources and causes pollution wa-ay out of proportion to its population - or any other portion of the world. Maybe the author thinks the USA needs more activists to offset the selfish damage it's doing?

That important beef aside, the stories are heart-warming and inspiring. That's what's most important, and it's why this book is well worth reading. Strong women, storng views, dedicated work. It's all in here, and I commend it as a worthy read.

That Thing about Bollywood by Supriya Kelkar

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This middle-grade work of fiction is about Sonali, a young girl whose parents are on the verge of breaking-up, and her reaction to this isn't what the majority of kids her age might experience. Sonali's reaction is for her to perceive her world turning into a Bollywood musical movie, along with songs, dance, and scenery changes. But she's the only one who seems to be aware that the entire world is changing!

I should say right up front that I'm not really a fan of Bollywood movies, but I do like Indian music and I love stories about the Indian people, even writing a couple myself. There was a short story titled Upanishad in Poem y Granite, and a full length new adult novel titled Balletwood which I published recently. But enough about me!

Sonali has learned, over her short eleven years, to bottle her feelings up and screw the top down tight, so when stress from her parents' antagonistic behavior, her younger brother's tearful reaction to it, and the possibility that she might be losing her best friend, all conspire to come down on her at once, it seems like something weird happens and her life becomes, slowly and by stages, a musical! Why not?!

I loved the changing emotional landscape and Sonali's valiant attempts to figure out what was going on, all the while trying to control her feelings, and her frequent references to 'filmi magic' which amused the heck out of me. She's a strong female character, and I appreciate those. The only writing issue I noticed in this novel was when I read, "...my bicep aching...." It's actually biceps! The bicep is a part of the biceps, but it's not the bulge one sees when someone flexes their upper arm. I guess it's technically possible to have a bicep ache, but usually people are not that specific! That's a minor pet peeve of mine because I read it (along with other language atrocities) so often, usually in idiotic YA novels.

Apart from that though, I loved the way this was written and I commend it as a worthy read. I shall be watching author Supriya Kelkar with anticipation from now on!

Gender Rebels by Anneka Harry

Rating: WORTHY!

Promoted as "50 Influential Cross-Dressers, Impersonators, Name-Changers, and Game-Changers", this audio book covered a surprising and sometimes disturbing variety of women who went outside the norm (as it was back then since most of these stories are historical, although some are contemporary) to get the life they wanted. The tongue-in-cheek mini-bio book is narrated by author Anneka Harry, along with Gemma Cairney, Maya Jama, and Suranne Jones, all of whom were eminently listenable. There is an interview section at the end which was hilarious and highly entertaining.

I've seen some negative criticism of this book which talks of it being disrespectful, or employing an inappropriate approach or humor, but I think the problem with those reviewers for the most part is that they simply did not understand the British sense of humor. For me this book could do no wrong. It was outstanding and not only respected the women described here, but also championed them. Many of them I had already heard of, but most I had not, and this is from someone who has gone out of his way to learn more about such women. Another criticism I saw was that some of these women were not nice people. No, they were not, but nowhere does this book promise only to report on angels and goody-two shoes women. It's merely talking about those who broke the mold, and it promises nothing about whether they were good people or bad.

The women featured are (in order of appearance!):

• Hatshepsut
• Hua Mulan
• Saint Marina
• Joanna of Flanders
• Onorata Rodiani
• Joan of Arc
• Elena de Céspedes
• Mary Frith
• Catalina de Erauso
• Queen Kristina of Sweden
• Kit Cavanagh
• Julie d'Aubigny
• Ulrika Eleonora Stålhammar
• Mary Read
• Anne Bonny
• Mary East
• Catterina Vizzani
• Margaret Woffington
• Mary Hamilton
• Hannah Snell
• Margaret Ann Bulkley
• Kaúxuma Núpika
• Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin aka George Sand
• Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst
• The Brontë Sisters
• Mary Anne Evans aka George Eliot
• Ellen Craft
• Loreta Janeta Velázquez (note that this particular one is disputed)
• Lillie Hitchcock Coit
• Cathay Williams
• Jeanne Bonnet
• Violet Paget
• Mary Anerson
• Clara Mary Lambert
• Qiu Jin
• Isabelle Wilhelmine Marie Eberhardt
• Dorothy Lawrence
• Umm Kulthum
• Florence Pancho Barnes
• Dorothy Tipton
• June Tarpé Mills
• Saraswathi Rajamani
• Dame Stephanie Shirley
• Rena Rusty Kanokogi
• Bobbi Gibb
• Pili Hussein
• Sisa Abauu Dauh El-Nemr
• Tatiana Alvarez
• Maria Toorpakai Wazir
• Sahar Khodayari

Note that this list is from the audiobook, so I make no claims for accurate spelling, although I've tried to get 'em all right. It's the only complete list I know of outside of the book itself.

I really enjoyed this book and highly commend it - unless of course you don't get British humor and/or are not entertained by a playful narrative in which case you might want to opt for something staid - or stay-ed?

Malice by Heather Walter

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Erratum: "Noses grew bumps when hair was supposed to brittle." I suspect the author meant 'bristle', but this was an advance review copy so hopefully that's already been caught, and I detected no more such hairy moments!

This was an engrossing take on the story of Sleeping Beauty, except the beauty isn't sleeping. It's also an engrossing take on Cinderella. Except that Cinders is the one with the power. And she's called Alyce. And she's evil. So she's been brought up to believe.

Working as a 'dark grace' - that is someone with blood power to effect change - Alyce has always understood herself to be evil in her rotten core. While her 'sisters' at the Lavender house effect looks and charm and other such cosmetic facets, Alyce is reduced to undoing those same charming affectations when one rival wishes to do down another, or to removing or minimizing a quality which a rival wishes to see diminished. Alyce has no plans in life, no dream, no hope, except that one day she might accumulate enough coin to leave the land of Briar behind forever and never look back. Then she meets Princess Aurora, and everything changes, but there's many a slip 'twixt Sapphic lips and the 'A' girls are going to experience a few of them before their happy ending can greet them. Assuming there's to be one.

This book seemed far less than some 500 pages. I flew through it, which is unusual for me, especially of late. There's always something to trip-up a good story, but this novel seemed to avoid most of the pitfalls. Maybe the name choices could have been more original for the leading ladies, but the world was totally believable and entirely fresh and alive. There was always something new and intriguing, and I found myself quickly drawn into its reality, and held to the last. In some ways the novel reminded me of my own Femarine, which is another story aimed at turning tired tropes on their head, but Malice was a very different kettle of wishes from my own invention. It's not an exaggeration to call it enchanting.

Were there faults with it? Yes; no one writes the perfect novel, but the faults were few, minor, and perhaps personal and persnickety. Alyce felt just a wee bit whiny, but not so much that it turned me off her. I grew to like her, but her mentioning of green veins, greasy hair, and scaly skin were slightly repetitious. Her picture was painted perfectly the first time! I felt it unnecessary for the extra brushwork. On the other hand (where those green veins and scales are!), someone who suffered these conditions might well dwell on them so perhaps it was in character. I liked Aurora, too; no spoiled brat she. It was a joy to see them get together, and it was done realistically and intelligently. Believe me, I adore authors who can show that kind of restraint in YA literature. Not that there's much YA 'literature' about, but this novel definitely qualities on that score.

One thing that did bother me about Alyce was how long it took her to finally give some consideration to whether her own powers might be employed to help Aurora's fatal condition. Yes, she's a femme fatal! In fact they both are in different ways, which I thought was choice! But that she never for a minute thinks about whether she could use her considerable - and especially her new-found - powers to cure Aurora until the latter virtually has to beg her to help worked to somewhat undermine their growing love. But like I said, these are very minor quibbles in the overwhelming power of the entire novel. No book is fautless, but this one comes close and I commend it. It left me green-veined with envy, and I wish the author all the success in the fantasy world with it.

When Women Ruled the World by Kara Cooney

Rating: WORTHY!

Dr Cooney is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA and she wrote this non-fiction book about six female kings of Egypt, who ruled in their own right or as the most powerful woman in the land, over various dynasties in Egypt, from the earliest to the last. Their names are: Merneith, Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tausret, and the most infamous: Kleopatra. I was disappointed that all six were not mentioned in the book description, only the ones who are already quite well-known: Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Kleopatra (the 7th). it woudl have been nice had they all am mention by name.

I really enjoyed the book, which has a lot of detail, but it should be noted that some of it is speculative and some of it is potentially misleading. While ostensibly promoting female leaders and trying to overturn gender stereotypes, the author indulges in a little bit of her own, which takes away from her message somewhat. That aside, I learned a lot about these six female leaders, even if some of the speculation was hardly mainstream. I was particularly interested in the ones I did not know, and also in Nefertiti, since I had an idea for a novel about her - and that idea has been filled-out rather by the information I gleaned from listening to this audiobook, so it was time well spent for me.

The book goes in chronological order, and while these women weren't the only ones who had power of some sort in ancient Egypt, arguably they were ones who made the most use of it or rose highest through it. I think this is perhaps why the author chose these above any others. The book follows them chronologically and compares and contrasts their rise to power and their achievements while holding it. It goes into a lot of the politics and into why this patriarchal and patrilineal society tolerated and even welcomed a female ruler at critical times, even as it seemingly resented their power in retrospect and tried to erase the name of she who made the contribution. As I said, some of this is speculative and sometimes even sounds rather contradictory, but overall I enjoyed this book and I happily commend it as a worthy read.

Gringo Love by Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan, William Flynn, Débora Santos

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Subtitled "Stories of Sex Tourism in Brazil" this was written by William Flynn and illustrated by Débora Santos, and based on the research of Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan. Published by the University of Toronto Press, this was a look at the delicate politics of 'women of the night' in city of Natal in northeast Brazil, who interact with European tourists in interesting ways that lie all around the blurry line of outright prostitution.

The book was based on real people and interviews the researcher had done with them, and although it was a graphic novel it actually wasn't graphic in a sexual sense; it merely depicted the kind of lives these women led and their aims and dreams. Is it worth noting that this did not pass the Bechdel-Wallace test when the aim of the book was expressly to discuss sex tourism? It's hardly a surprise that it failed, but I have to say that it would have been nice to have learned more about what these women aimed to get out of these relationships. It was touched on but only, it seemed, in passing.

The story is supported by extensive notes and references and contained a glossary of the Brazilian terms used by people in this life. The author of the story visited twice, one in the mid-oughts, and then more recently about six years ago, and the changes were marked. She couldn't even find many of the women who she'd talked to originally since they'd moved on or moved away.

The relationship between the sex tourists and the local women was an intricate dance and not all women viewed it in the same way or pursued it with the same steps and rhythms. There is a constant beat though, and that is the desire and need to escape the poverty trap far too many of these women are born into. Selling sex, or more reservedly, entering into a mutually profitable relationship with the male visitors wherein the guys get sex with able and attractive women and the women receive money or gifts in return, is a way these women have of raising themselves up.

Some of them look toward marrying a visitor, others look to saving money and getting a college education, and changing their life that way. But constantly in the background was the desire of some locals - mostly the ones who live in the alto district as opposed to the girls, who live in the Ville ghettos - to stamp out the sex tourism. The problem is that the protestors seemed to pursue this not only hypocritically, but mindlessly. They had no plan as to how to help the impoverished women once their rewards from their own enterprising endeavors petered out. This is why these protests are ultimately doomed to fail in my opinion.

This was a fascinating study and a novel representation of the results, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, even while feeling depressed that once again, we're seeing economic disparity causing serious problems that are not being intelligently addressed. I commend this as a worthy read.

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Adan Jerreat-Poole is, I believe, Canadian which may account for some of her "English" spellings of words in this novel - words like 'sombre' and 'glamours'. This shows my ignorance because I'd always thought that Canadians used American spellings. However, it's always good to read outside of one's comfort zone, especially since far too many novels published in the USA seem to take the position that it's the only country in the world and nothing of interest happens anywhere else! I beg to differ!

I liked this novel because it was operating outside the box and far from the beaten path. Far too many novels play it safe - clone someone else's work and turn it into a trilogy. I blame publishers for pushing this boring approach and writers for kow-towing to it. I love the ones which don't comply!

The story here is that Eli (not sure how it's pronounced: E-lie? Ellie?) is less of a person than an object - an assassin 'robot' almost, constructed by witches out of organic bits and inorganic bobs. She can pass through the vortex between the witches' world and the human world, and her 'job' is to take out ghosts. And I don't mean date them!

These ghosts are not the incorporeal remains of a dead human. They're wispy beings which are almost zombie-like in some respects, and which typically occupy a human body. They can't be seen by humans, and the witch powers-that-be detest them. Eli's maker, a witch who is growing in power and influence, hands out her assignments proudly because Eli is the best assassin. She has seven special knives that help her do her work to perfection, and she has never failed. Until she does. That's when things change.

It takes a while for Eli, who constantly grows and evolves throughout this story, to figure out exactly why the ghosts are a problem for the witches, and all the time she is learning and seeing her world in very broader strokes. She discovers she's in a much different world from the one she'd thought she was in. In pursuing her last assassination - the one mission that's doomed to fail - Eli encounters two people: Tav, a non-binary person who is a biker, and Cam, a gay cab driver. These two become close to her - the first people in the human world she's ever been drawn to.

I've seen some reviews of this novel that praise it for including genderqueer characters, but in some ways it's rather overdone here. It's not a problem that they're included, but that they risk overwhelming the story to the exclusion of all others. At times it starts to feel like there are only gender-queer people in this world.

To me, the way to fix a problem where the pendulum has been pushed too far and for too long in one direction isn't to push it forcibly and equally back in the opposite direction, but to weld it firmly in the middle so no one is cruelly excluded or artificially included ever again. As it happens, in this story it wasn't too intrusive despite Eli being apparently non-cis as well. Perhaps I didn't mind so much because I really liked Eli as a character. She's definitely one of my strong-female character icons.

I enjoyed the story and read it quickly. I liked the originality. I enjoyed the different take on witches and ghosts and the magnificent world-building. This was a tour-de-force of inventive thinking outside the box and it was a most welcome read. There were some technical issues no doubt caused by Amazon's crappy Kindle conversion process. I'm not the kind of reviewer who gets to read a hardback print version, so I got the e-version and there was the trademark Kindle mangling in evidence here.

One classic example of this is the embedding of the page header (alternating title and author on even and odd pages) right into the text, so I would read, for example: "She clenched her hands. THE GIRL OF HAWTHORN AND GLASS Took a breath in." The way I avoid this in my own published work is never to include page headers or footers (including page numbers) in the version I'm using for ebooks. I don't even use the headers in the print book version. What, is your reader going to forget what they're reading? I have a little more faith in readers than that.

The book also contained some abstract images that were included between chapters and sometimes as section separators in the text. These images were apparently broken-up and turned into Kindling by Amazon as well, although without having seen the original images, it's hard to tell. In other instances of generic Kindle mangling, the text was missing a line break between speech from different characters, so I'd read it all on one line:
"Hey, it usually works like a charm." "I'll bet." Eli rolled her eyes."

And one final observation: I'm sure that even in Canada, there's a difference between staunch and stanch. I read, "Tav staunched the bleeding" but unless Tav was making Cam bleed in a loyal and committed manner, she didn't staunch it. She stanched it. I've seen this error increasingly in YA novels and I find it sad. The error was repeated later as "one hand staunching the flow of blood." Nope! Stanching! There was one lone error in spelling that I noticed: "you will owe use a thousand glamours," which I think should have read 'us' rather than 'use'. Presumably that sort of thing will be corrected before this is published officially.

But we've all been there and I'm not going to downgrade such a stellar book for some minor issues. I thoroughly enjoyed this and I commend it as a worthy read. I look forward to the next offering from this author.

The Candy Mafia by Lavie Tidhar, Daniel Duncan

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a middle-grade book that amused the heck out of me just from the description. Written highly tongue-in-cheek by Tidhar, and with spot-illustrations by Duncan, this tale of a city in the grip of prohibition - of candy - had me smirking so much that it was painful to the face. Things have gone sour, with no chocolate, no licorice, no chewy toffee to be had! The new mayor banned it all three years ago and so of course, an elaborate smuggling operation has sprung up, with all the attendant bribery and corruption.

Not that any of this affects the main character, the honest and upstanding Nelle Faulker, a 12-year-old private detective who is out of work now school is out for the summer and no cases have been coming her way lately. She's a smartie and is sitting in her office (a shed in her back yard) when who should stop by, but Eddie de Menthe, one of the biggest candy-smugglers in town. Eddie has a serious problem - he's lost his teddy-bear.

Nelle takes the case, and even though she smells a rat - or is it a chocolate bunny? - in her sweet innocence, she has no idea what she's getting herself into. Has Nelle been taken for an all-day sucker? No! Trust me when I say she's no marshmallow. She has encounters with the other two big candy smugglers in town: The Sweetie Pies, and Waffles Mackenzie. She also learns of the Big Five Families, and becomes concerned when Eddie disappears like sherbet dip from a punctured bag!

What's going on here? What's the secret of the shut-down chocolate factory and where did the owner Mr Farnsworth vanish to? Why was Nelle's office turned over? What were they looking for? Who is behind all this? Can the cops even be trusted? Will Mayor Thornton get re-elected and continue the candy ban? Just in passing, Thornton's is a brand of particularly delicious toffee in Britain. And most important of all: just what does it mean to be a gum shoe in a candy-apple world?!

All of this and more is answered as this sly romp takes us through the gangster world where the author treats the story just seriously enough to make it even more amusing, and where Nelle proves herself to be one tough cookie. She's as sticky as salt-water taffy when it comes to a case, and she's definitely one of my strong female heroes. I can't say it was a sweet read without getting into trouble with Mayor Thornton, but I will say this book gives a reader lots to chew on, and I commend it highly.

Don't Mess With This Witch by Liz Lorow

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Errata:
“...not a plant like a Fichus or Gardenia.” A fichu is a square of lace used to preserve modesty on low-cut gowns in the 18th and 19th century. I believe the author meant ficus.

“I had no control over a porcupine wandering into my neighborhood in rural England. They live there." No, they don’t! Britain has no porcupines! There are porcupines around the Mediterranean, but southern Europe is as far north as they get. Britain has hedgehogs which are unrelated to porcupines and much more cute. I had a couple as pets growing up there.

“...he flexed his bicep.” Doubtful! Biceps, yes, bicep? Not so much! I don't see how you can have a character who almost chides someone for not using 'whom' and then doesn't know that the bicep is only one part of the biceps which is the muscle that gets flexed! In another part of the novel I read, "Recommended? By whom?" Seriously, no one but the most pretentious people use that in speech, and you certainly don't hear it from a 16-year old in juvie.

“You’re itching is driving you crazy” - confusion of 'your' and 'you’re'.

Reading this book was like a roller-coaster in terms of my wanting to rate it a worthy read, and not. I kept changing my mind and I had multiple issues with it. In the end that;s what decided it. I read the thing the whole way through - except for the epilogue (I don't do epilogues or prologues) and I didn't hate it and in general the writing wasn't awful either, and I enjoyed some of the characters, but in the end, there were so many issues that I can't in good conscience rate it positively.

I like stories where a team gets together to achieve an end. I just published one myself, so I was a bit disappointed that what seemed to be a team forming here ended-up not becoming one. On the other hand I liked the main character - for the most part. She was smart and amusing and strong, which is a big plus for me, but countering that were the parts of the book where she was effectively infantilized by the trope YA guy named, of all things, Logan. I could have done without him. So that's the way this story hit me all along - one time I was up for it, the next I was having grave misgivings about it.

At one point Logan, the main character's love interest, says, “I was raised to respect and protect women." This turned me off the story because it became yet another YA story where the girl is the maiden in distress and the big tough guy is the white knight coming to save and protect her! Genevieve, the main character, needed no one's protection. I can see a guy saying that - guys do say those kinds of things, but the fact that there was no push-back from Genevieve was what was wrong. We need to get past this idea that women are universally weak and helpless and in every case, need a strong man to take care of them. It's that kind of thinking that leads to abuses: putting women on a pedestal on the one hand and slapping them with the other.

In another instance, I read, "Logan leapt to his feet and extended his hand to help me up." Again this suggests Genevieve is the weak one who needs the help. I know some people might view this as merely being gentlemanly, but unless you have a later scene where Genevieve extends a hand to help Logan up, this bias against women being capable of taking care of themselves is really an abuse. If Logan respects women, why does he constantly treat them like they're always in need of help? It felt sexist, especially in this case, given how powerful Genevieve truly is. In another instance, Logan said, "I don't want you going anywhere without me...Someone needs to be with you to protect you." Again with the infantilization. it was almost as nauseating as how many times characters rolled their eyes in this book or the incessant number of times Genevieve opened or closed her eyes. It was like she was doing that constantly!

Her power was also an issue in that she felt rather like a 'special snowflake' - like she never had to work for a thing; everything she tried to do was a great success, powers came to her just when she needed them, and she always had the right spell for the job despite her evidently substandard education on the topic. It was a bit too much. She never had to struggle for anything.

I liked the idea of witches in juvie. That's what drew me to the story in the first place. It was different, original, and interesting. The students were captive, but they were expected to follow an academic schedule - and they had a surprising amount of freedom, but their magical powers were somehow suppressed so they could not use them - and yes, these witches seemed more like magicians than witches. Not that the book description helped, since it wasn't at all honest in describing what happened: "Now the administration needs Genevieve’s help to find a student/inmate who escaped." No, they don't! They never asked her to do that. She did it all by herself!

That didn't detract from the story for me, but it does reinforce my own tack in avoiding Big Publishing™ because the people who write the back cover blurbs seem never to have actually read the story they're describing, and worse, the people who illustrate the front cover seem never to have read it either. I know those who do not self-publish have little say in their covers or book blurbs, which is why I pay zero attention to the front cover when deciding which books I want to read. They're highly misleading, and I laugh at authors who have dramatic cover reveals because they're so pathetic and juvenile. In this case, the cover showed a young woman with straight black hair, yet the antagonist in this novel has wavy brown hair. I honestly don't see how you can confuse the two. I guess it wasn't edgy enough for the cover photographer, huh? They'd rather misrepresent it.

But enough about the cover. I read a book for the content, not for the pretty picture on the front. One of the first issues I had with this, other than the silly trope of having spells cast in rhyme, was the fact that this juvenile witch detention center had an off-limits library! What? Why? Why would they put dangerous books in a detention center that could potentially enable these witches to escape? It made zero sense. A regular library? Yes! An off-limits one? No!

Though this wasn't a high-school, another issue (other than purloining 'muggles' from JK Rowling and changing one letter to make it somehow 'different') was the trope high-school bully, in the form of a teacher who routinely brutalized the children by subtly undermining their education, and using their failures to add months onto their sentences. I know there needs to be a villain in these stories, but this felt like lazy writing, with a teacher having that much power and evidently no review or oversight. It just felt like too much.

One of the issues I have with magical novels is that the authors tend not to think things through and truly envision what a world with magical powers would be like - even one where magic is kept hidden from the public). With few exceptions, they tend to have the world be exactly the way it is today, just with the addition of the magicians, or witches, or whatever, and it really doesn't work very well.

For example, in this story, there was a section where Genevieve says, “At least I didn’t live in Centralia, Pennsylvania. That town is deserted because of a coal fire that’s been burning underground since nineteen sixty-two." This is true. In fact recently, there was an article on CNN's website that talked about a stretch of abandoned highway there which has been literally covered in graffiti and has become a tourist attraction, but the authorities are covering it up because it's not safe for tourism.

So far so good, but this novel isn't our world: this is a world where there are witches with powerful magic, and yet none of the witches have been out there to try and stop the burning? If you're going to reference real-world events, then then it seems to me to necessitate a witch's perspective to go along with it. Why haven't the witches stopped the burning? Do they not care? Can they not do it? To suggest there are immensely powerful witches and yet this fire still burns, like the witches frankly don't give a damn, leaves a hole in the story for me. I think you really need to address why witches didn't make a difference. Or not mention the situation at all.

There was an instance where Genevieve is trying to hide behind a pole and I read, "I had to become invisible - something I’d never tried before, or skinnier - something every witch has tried with varying success.” This felt like body-shaming - that witches are universally overweight, or think they are. This felt like something that could have passed unmentioned, or if you have to mention it, then maybe say some witches have tried it. To call out every witch and suggest they're overweight or have a poor self-image felt like an awful thing for a female author to do to her fellow females.

So while this writer can write and tell a decent story in general terms, for me there were far too many loose ends and examples of thoughtless writing for me to rate this as a worthy read. I wish the author all the best in her career, because based on this one, I think she has some good stories to tell, but this particular one was too hobbled with issues to fly and sad as it makes me, I can't commend it as a worthy read.

Ella Has A Plan by Davina Hamilton, Elena Reinoso

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is the second book I've enjoyed by this team of writer Hamilton, and artist Reinoso. Told poetically, this story features Ella, who has a problem in that cousins Taye and Jade just do not seem to be able to get along. The last thing Ella wanted was to have her mom's big day spoiled. She consulted mom about it and mom referred her to great grandad Frank, who had a similar problem many years before and solved it in a highly original manner.

Before she can learn what that solution was, Ella finds herself having to quickly come up with one of her own, which she does, and it works a treat I love a story with a strong female character. Young Adult authors could learn a lot from reading this book! LOL! I commend this for a fun story, sweet text, and engaging illustrations.

Single That by Acamea Deadwiler

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I agreed very nearly 100% with everything this author said, and where I disagreed, it was merely a matter of nuance. This is a short, but forceful book by a strong female author, and I commend it fully. The only real issue I had with it was that Amazon's crappy Kindle-creation process will, guaranteed, mangle anything that's not plain vanilla text. This is one reason I flatly refuse to do business with Amazon. I encountered similar issues in several Net Galley advance review copies I downloaded yesterday. More on this anon.

Subtitled, "Dispelling The Top 10 Myths Of The Single Woman" I would heartily recommend this to every young-adult novel author, and every romance author, and many adult novel authors along with a good many movie and TV show writers because they simply don't seem to get it and in the vanguard when it comes to promoting the myth extolled in the seriously-misguided Neil Diamond song where he sings, "Girl, you'll be a woman soon; soon, you'll need a man." Um, no! Doesn't work that way and there's nothing wrong with that!

Don't get me (or the author!) wrong! This book isn't about eschewing men or hating them, or deliberately living life without them. It's about choice: a conscious and informed choice not to need one. It's about being fine with one or without one, and that there's nothing at all wrong with women who get along fine without men as readily as they get along with them. It's not about celibacy or asexuality. It's not about past trauma or being shy or domineering. It's not about taking a vow.

Someone who has been fine without a permanent man by her side for years may well find one she's perfectly happy to settle down with, and marry. or she may not ever feel a need to do that. But the fact is that it's her choice and none of anyone else's business. We're all human, but we're not clones. This is simply about choice and individuality. It's about being the designer, architect, engineer, maintenance staff, and captain of your own life. Anyone who thinks there's something wrong with those who desires such agency is a moron. Period.

The author covers these topics:

• Single
• That does not mean Desperate
• That does not mean Lonely
• That does not mean Jealous
• That does not mean Sexually Frustrated
• That does not mean Unrealistic
• That does not mean High Maintenance
• That does not mean Bitter
• That does not mean Crazy
• That does not mean Hard to Love
• That does not mean Broken

The author does a great job of explicating these thorny issues. When she wrote, “To be admired only for my appearance is not admiration at all. It’s objectification.” I almost cheered out loud. I can't for the life of me think why she didn't actually mention books, comic books, movies, TV shows, and advertising that routinely treat women this way, but this was her book, not mine.

Sometimes her wording was a bit obscure to me, but I was rarely left in doubt about what she meant. Sometimes there were sentences that to me were nonsense not because I disagreed with what was being said, but because the sentence literally made no sense such as:

“There are no probably won’t like what’s absolutes.” I think something got mangled there! This also raised a frequent formatting issues. The word 'absolutes' in that sentence was on the next line. This is one of many examples I found where the formatting of the book was lacking. For that sentence, I have to blame the author - or editor! For the formatting, I have to blame Amazon. And maybe the author/editor! But it's no huge deal. As writers, we've all been there! Presumably the final print edition will have these wrinkles ironed out.

There were several cases of missing hyphens, such as “all-handson-deck” and “onenight-stand." There were some oddball cases, such as the use of “Cadillac’s” where no apostrophe needed since it was merely a plural and not a possessive. Apostrophes like that are way over used! One sentence read, “This is far from a state reserved for scorn women.” Scorn was wrong. I wasn't sure if she meant scorned or scornful, or something else. Another sentence read, “But it’s easier to designate this a female trait and slap it on to any woman....” I think 'onto' was called for there.

There were times when I felt the author was too kind to her critics! At one point I read, “Since I don’t really know this guy I can’t say if he’s good or bad.” On that I had to disagree! Any guy who would post to a chat group: “Camey . . . you need some good DICK . . . which will inspire you to write a different kinda book.” Is a bad person period - and potentially dangerous too. I'm not a huge fan of pet names. Maybe the author likes to go by Camey, but personally I'd prefer the full glory of Acamea. It's a strong name, reminiscent of Academia!

This book is obviously aimed at a US audience, and I confess I don't have her take on Thanksgiving: “Thanksgiving dinner can be tough.” I didn't grow up in the USA, so the annual holiday is meaningless to me, although the four-day weekend is great! But I don't even experience that at Christmas, not even when I was single. Maybe I'm selfish with my time, but I always have things I want to do that don't require company. It does mean I fully understood her because when I was single, I had times when friends would all-but beg me to join them for Thanksgiving dinner evidently out of fear I would die of loneliness if I were by myself, and so I allowed myself to be brow-beaten into it, and then spent the whole occasion trying to gauge how soon I could leave and get back to what I really wanted to do (writing, or maybe a movie, most likely!) without seeming to be rude.

On the topic of formatting, there were many instances where the text would jump to the next line, mid-sentence, or where the next paragraph wouldn't be indented like all the others were. There were too many of these to track, but like I said, these are relatively minor formatting issues, and do not detract from the force of the author's important and powerful message. Overall, I loved this book, felt it deeply, and I commend it highly.

Fly Girls by Keith O'Brien

Rating: WORTHY!

Fly Girls details the lives of a handful of early female pilots back when air travel was new, largely experimental, and very dangerous. The story of these people proved to be highly engaging. My only disappointment was the lack of images - it would have been nice had there been a pic of each of the pilots covered in the narrative, but of course that's the price we pay for listening to an audio book! I don't know if the ebook or print book has such images, but pictures can be readily found online of both the pilots and the airplanes.

The book is subtitled "How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History," but it never really made it clear who these five were. That picture only emerged slowly over the course of the book. The blurb, which usually the author has nothing to do with, identifies them as Louise Thaden, Ruth Nichols, Amelia Earhart, Ruth Elder, and Florence Klingensmith.

It was paradoxically Earhart, not a great flyer, who got the lion's share of the story and Klingensmith who got so little. The blurb was highly inappropriate, too evidently written by a guy and breathlessly describing Thaden as a studious pilot, mother, and wife, although why 'mother and wife' were in there is a mystery. Have you ever read of a male pilot being described as a 'father and husband"? I haven't. In the same blurb, Ruth Elder is described as "gorgeous." Why? She looked like most other women of the 1920s did! But the question is, was Chuck Yeager or some other male pilot ever described as gorgeous? I don't think so. This is a serious and ongoing problem with Big Publishing™.

Other than that, the only real complaint I'd have was this one section which rambled on endlessly about this guy Cliff Henderson, who was instrumental in setting-up air racing back then when it was a new and exciting thing. Why the author chose to go off at a major tangent with him in particular, I do not know. Many men were mentioned, of course, including some air pioneers with renowned names like Beech, Curtiss, and Fairchild, with a few details given in each case, which is entirely understandable, yet none got the treatment Henderson did. I guess it's hard for some authors to leave all that research unused, but it was annoying and it felt inappropriate and rather insulting to the five women and the other female pilots about whom this book was purportedly written.

Other than that, the writing was good and engaging, although perhaps fanciful here and there, the author claiming to know what these pilots were doing, and thinking and saying when clearly that could not have been the case. In some cases there were diaries and newspaper reports and so on, and books (Amelia Earhart wrote one) which supplied authentic and interesting information, and O'Brien did his research, but I've never been a fan of fictionalized accounts creeping into an otherwise non-fiction book.

One of the most interesting sections (aside from Earhart's cross-Atlantic trip) was the 1929 Women's Air Derby. This was of course re-named the "Powder-Puff Derby" when that jackass, so-called comedian Will Rogers disparaged it as such, and the newsmen got hold of the story. The race was from Santa Monica, California to Cleveland over several days. Despite disparagement from men, out of 20 pilots who began it., only six failed to finish, which is pretty impressive in an era of relatively untrustworthy airplanes and multiple technical issues.

One competitor died when her plane lost an argument with gravity. She apparently had engine trouble and was trying to set down on a flat area close by a river, but ended up crashing. She'd evidently tried to use her parachute, but deployed it so late that it didn't even have time to open before she quite literally hit the ground. Her name was Marvel Crosson.

Amelia Earhart was in that race, but came third. She would have been fourth had Marvel not crashed. The men who organized it put all kinds of obstacles in the way, such as telling the women the airplane had to have horsepower 'appropriate for a woman'. One of the contestants, Opal Kunz, owned and flew a 300-horsepower plane that was disqualified as too fast for a woman to fly, so she was forced to find a weaker one! There were incidents suggestive that maybe some of the women's planes were sabotaged - like when one woman discovered gasoline had been put into her oil tank in place of oil, and so on.

One of the biggest critics was a man named Haliburton - yes that one - who founded the company that Dick Cheney had ties to, and that has a string of issues tied to its name including some during the mid-east conflicts. Haliburton was convinced women didn't ought to be flying at all - that they ought to be home having babies - and probably barefoot and in the kitchen! He likely would have died of apoplexy had he lived until 1993 when Jeannie Leavitt became the first female fighter pilot. She was the one who trained Brie Larsen, the actor, so she could pretend to be a fighter pilot in the Captain Marvel movie. Shades of Marvel Crosson!

This book was sad at the end. Of the five girls the story covers primarily, Amelia Earhart disappeared without a trace, as most people know, but the other four, despite typically accomplishing more than Earhart did, are far less well remembered and most are equally sad.

It's not a spoiler to relate the historical record: Florence Klingensmith died young, in a crash. She demands a movie be made about her life, feisty daredevil that she was. Ruth Nichols almost died in a crash and spent the last few years of her life depressed and in pain from assorted injuries until she committed suicide. Ruth Elder also attempted suicide, but was discovered in time, and she went on to live up to her name, dying at the age of 75. Louise Thaden seemed to be the only one who escaped those problems, perhaps because she had a happy marriage and children, and she died last of all in 1979. As I said, it's a real shame that Earhart is better remembered than any of the others; all of them deserve to be remembered.

Despite its sadness, and despite how angering it is that these women were constantly kept down and demeaned for their gender, I commend this book as a worthy read. It demands to be read. People need to know how far we've come and then maybe they'll better understand how far we still need to go.

The Storybook of Legends by Shannon Hale

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
On one page I read, "She treaded water" - the past tense of 'to tread' is 'trod' (and also 'trodden'). It's not 'treaded' - not unless she put a tire tread on the water, which I guess is entirely possible if you can do magic....
Later I read, "But it's not like I can just look up in a phone book..." In context, this should have read, 'look her up in a phone book', or depending on what precisely the author meant, 'look in a phone book'. Either way something was wrong here!
Past tenses seemed to be a problem for Shannon Hale because later I also read, "Apple reached out and pet the dragon's tail...." This should have read 'petted'. While language is dynamic and changes over time, perhaps now faster than ever in history, some authors don't seem to get that there's actually a difference between reported speech and narration. Reported speech can be completely informal. Narration and description need to give at least a nod to grammar and correct tense!

Quite frankly, this book was an embarrassment to me and has been kept hidden away on my shelf like some sort of family black sheep. Finally I decided to take it out and read it and damn the torpedoes, and it has turned out to be highly entertaining, inventive, amusing, and fully-engaging. It's one of the best books I've ever read. Note that it's the Storybook of Legends, not leg ends, which would be quite effete....

I should not have been surprised, I guess, because I've had a positive history with its author Shannon Hale. This is, I think, the fourth or fifth thing of hers I've read and liked, but strictly speaking, it's not wholly original with her. The story has its roots in Mattel's monster dolls line. From that they created a fairy-tale doll line, and from that came a web series, a movie, and these books. Shannon Hale was, I guess, commissioned to write this one, and she did an amazing job with it. This was definitely my kind of novel even though it's not my kind of age range!

I can't promise to follow the whole series (I'm not a series sort of a guy), and especially since other volumes are written by other authors, but it was a highly enjoyable read, surprisingly. I came to admire the author both for her inventiveness and her winning sense of humor.

It's a sort of middle-grade fairy-tale fantasy in a series, no less! The series is called 'Ever After High', and it's about these children of famous fairy-tale characters returning to school after the holidays. Raven Queen is the daughter of the Evil Queen from "Snow White". Apple White is the daughter of Snow White. Cedar Wood is the daughter of Pinocchio, and Madeleine Hatter is the daughter of the Mad Hatter. Cerise Hood is the troubled daughter of red Riding Hood.

I think Maddie is my favorite character because she is so unapologetically nuts, and at several points actually has exchanges with the narrator of the novel, which I loved. Raven runs a close second as my favorite, and is an outstandingly intelligent and strong young woman. She's balking at being an evil queen like her mother was. She's supposed to feed the poisoned apple to Apple, but she doesn't want to be evil, and this makes people nervous because they think if she doesn't fulfill her role, then others' stories might fail and the whole of fairyland might collapse, so the plot is engaging, too.

The book ain't cheap! It was priced at fifteen dollars, but I recall picking it up at bargain discount at Costco several years ago. It intrigued me, but it seemed so juvenile that I hid it away until now. It's a hardcover which was printed in all these pastel shades, with the edges of the paper colored, and the pages having a colored border. After several years of looking at it and turning away, I decided to take the plunge and it proved so entertaining that I wished I had not let it sit for so long! It was a breath of fresh air and I enjoyed it for its irreverence and endless diversion - never boring, always...entrancing! I commend it fully.

The Secret Notebook by DA D’Aurelio

Rating: WORTHY!

This book had some minor issues, but the power of the message overwhelmed those in my opinion. Also it’s aimed at middle grade, so that audience may very well not view it as I did!

It's nice to see a female engineer portrayed in a book aimed at middle-grade students, but I have to confess some issues with having kids do the things this kid was shown doing. Naturally, the best advice is for kids to trust reliable adults and authority figures to resolve issues like these, but writing a story about that would be boring for kids who want to see themselves taking center stage, so of course you have to give them some free rein and put them into some danger.

There are wise ways and foolish ways of doing this, just as there are similar ways of making your main character look smart or dumb, and this book walked a fine line between them. I think on balance it succeeded, but I would liked to have seen a stronger message about wise conduct threaded lightly through the text.

Riley Green is an inventor who has created a lie-detector pen, and is ready to proudly show it off at her school's science fair, hoping it will prove that she belongs there despite being in a lower income group than the rest of the kids. The problem is that the school's privileged troublemaker has stolen her idea, and worse: her favorite teacher has had her office trashed and has disappeared! What is going on? Was the office simply vandalized, or did the intruders expect to find something important there? And who put this ragged old book about birds in Riley's backpack? Or is it about birds? And who is leaving those 'cease and desist' notes for Riley and her teacher?

This isn't just a thriller of a novel, with a strong female character and some fun problem-solving, it’s also a history lesson with some nice back-story concerning Nikola Tesla. Personally I feel Tesla is often elevated to a higher pedestal than he deserves, but there is no denying his contributions to knowledge and his abilities as an engineer. He deserved a lot better than he got out of life and certainly more than the overrated patina that Edison uncritically gets! So on balance I commend this as a worthy read.

A Girl Like Me by Angela Johnson, Nina Crews

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a rip-roaring lion of a book in which young women of color stand up for their right to be whomever they want, and we've never needed that more than we do now with a groping, misogynist of a racist president in office backed by a bunch of weak, white old sheep of 'men' in his party and yes-men of that same aged hue in his cabinet.

Defying the nay-sayers, who tell her she can't fly so high, or swim so far, or climb so strongly, the girl at the heart of these stories carries on not out of rebellion or defiance (that comes later when she goes to by a new cape!), but because she knows without a doubt that she can do do the very things others would have her believe she can't and deny her the right to even try. This is affirmative action at its best! I loved this book, the photo-collage illustrations, the powerful text and the strong females who inhabit this world. Angela Johnson and Nina Crews? You rock!

The Story of My Life by Farah Ahmedi, Tamim Ansary

Rating: WORTHY!

For my last review of 2019 I have found a real cracker! Books like this are essential reading because such a book almost comes with a guarantee that no matter how bad you think your life is, no matter how badly you think you've been treated, there's always someone worse-off than you who has struggled through their difficulties and found a life worth celebrating on the other side.

This book was also highly educational in that it reveals the shortcomings of groups that while admirably seeking to help refugees, also inadvertently fail them in really taking care of newcomers, leaving them feeling lost and abandoned just when they were starting to hope their troubles were over. No one in their right mind wants to stand around handing out peeled grapes to someone reclining indolently on a couch, but once you have taken charge of someone's welfare, it is incumbent upon you to see it through to the point where the people you are supposedly helping can stand unaided and take care of themselves. Rescue followed by abandonment halfway through the job does no-one any good, least of all the nation that's adopting the refugees.

Farah Ahmedi was born in Afghanistan - where the people are called Afghans, and they don't speak "Afghani," which is not a language, but their currency! A dozen or more languages are spoken there, the most common of which is Dari, also known as Afghan Persian and Farsi, which is what this author calls it. Farah was born into the Hazara ethnic group, the third largest, concentrated toward the center of the country. She had her earliest years in quite a large family in the time right before the Taliban destroyed Afghan culture, and so had the chance to experience a life without being hidden under a blanket, and which included school, but she had very little of that, because at the age of around 7, running late for school and taking a shortcut across a field, she stepped on a landmine.

She spent the next two years or so alone in Germany being fixed, which in her case meant having pins put into her good leg, because her knee was infected, and having a good portion of her other leg amputated because it was too badly damaged to fix. So she had a 'good' leg she was unable to bend, and a leg she was able to bend, but which was artificial. The Germans took good care of her and fitted her with a prosthetic leg and foot. Returning to Afghanistan, she felt a certain amount of alienation because her own culture now seemed so small and primitive compared with her mind-expanding experiences in Germany, where she had begun learning their language and forgetting her own.

Any relief she may have had at returning was soon stomped on by the Taliban which moved into Kabul like a disease. While out shopping for Afghan clothes now that Farah had decided to give up the western outfits she had worn in Germany, a rocket landed on her home, killing most of her family and leaving only herself, her mother, and two brothers, who quickly had to flee the country because the Taliban was enforcing military recruitment: every family had to give up a son to the Tali-whackers. The problem was that the Taliban would rather shoot than recruit the Hazara ethnic people, so the two young boys fled to Pakistan at their mother's insistence. Farah never saw her brothers again nor learned what happened to them.

'

This began a nightmare for Farah and her mother because they too, were forced to flee, and were lost to a system of deprivation, endurance, bribery and hopelessness. They made it to Pakistan, and learned of a faith program aimed at helping war-torn Afghan families move to the USA. The problem was that they were approved right before 9/11 and so lost their chance to go, but later they managed to make the trip, dreaming of a better life only to find they were largely abandoned once they had been settled in the USA.

Farah seems to have placed far too much faith in her religion which did practically nothing for her, and little to none in people who were really the ones who helped her. Despite barely speaking any English and having no money and no jobs, and no facilities, they were essentially told, after the settling-in period, that they must fend for themselves now. Finally, due to the kindness of one family in particular, they were able to properly make the transition, and Farah wasn't done overcoming obstacles even then. Fortunately, she had a facility for languages and a dedication to achieving her goals which was beyond admirable, and she almost single-handedly kept herself and her mother afloat until life, finally, eased for them.

This is a story of triumph and heroism that the likes of Marvel and DC comics can never hope to match and that alt-right assholes can never begin to understand or appreciate. People like Farah Ahmedi are not a burden on a nation, but the backbone of it, and one can only hope and dream that a disturbingly large forty percent of the US population will one day come to understand that.

The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, LeYuen Pham

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by the Hales and illustrated exquisitely by Pham, this short, large print chapter book tells the story of a cute little princess who fights monsters under the guise of The Princess in Black! Definitely empowering, especially for female readers, I felt this was an inspired story designed to quell fears of monsters under the bed and at the same time tell a story to entertain - and it's not all about the princess! There's something in there for boys, too. It was well-worth the reading.