Luster by Raven Leilani

Rating: WARTY!

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

Erratum:
“...a totem of a realm where sticker price is incidental data, a realm so theoretical that when I consider what I would have to do enter it...” This sentence appears to be missing ‘to’.

Raven Leilani has to be one of those most charming author names I've ever encountered, but I have to say up front that I wasn't charmed by this novel. It started out well enough, but went downhill for me rather quickly.

Part of my problem with it was the disconnect between what the back-cover blurb says and where the novel actually went. I know that unless they self-publish, authors tend to have little input into the blurb and cover design, but to have a blurb promise me I'll see "a young black woman fall into art" and then read a significant portion of the story and have this woman, Edie, give only the most cursory attention to art was a real disappointment to me.

The real problem though, was that Edie didn't present as an artist to me. She had no eye for color or light, or for nature, people, or architecture - or at least if she did, none of that ever made it into her first person voice, which is yet another reason why first person is almost always the wrong choice for a novel. This story never gave even a hint about her artistic leanings or interests; yes, there were cursory mentions, but it was far too busily focusing on her social commentary which was not as amusing as the blurb-writer liked to pretend it was, and on her obsession with this guy she met online. From what I read, I remained unconvinced that she had any real interest in art because it took a very distant back seat. I didn't believe an artist would have the take on life that Edie did.

So for me, reading those first few chapters, the story wasn't about art at all. It was about a rather sordid sexual obsession, and while the blurb did suggest the sexual component of the story, it didn't hint that that would be all she wrote - so to speak! I mean Edie was literally obsessing over having sex with this guy she 'met' on line and she was doing that the whole time. It failed the Bechdel-Wallace test dismally, and this wasn't even two women talking! It was tedious to read after a short while, and it was a problem because I wasn't given any reason whatsoever as to why Edie became so obsessed with this guy. It didn't feel real to me because the reader wasn't offered anything to support this kind of intensity. If anything, it felt stalker-ish and dangerous, which is, I assume, the very opposite of what the author was intending, if the blurb is to be believed. But maybe it isn't.

Like I said, I didn't read all of this and things may have changed later in the story, bringing it more into conformance with what the blurb writer says is going on, but if that's the case, then there really needed to be more offered up front to render some sort of a reliable promise of a better future. I got nothing, and there are two solid reasons why I quit when I did.

The first, but by no means the most important reason was the severe let-down when a crucial point in the story was reached: the first encounter between Edie, the young black woman who tells this story, and the wife of the man with whom she is having an affair - of sorts. Right when that's about to open wide, the story comes to a screeching halt while we're dragged back over Edie's sexual history! What?!

I'm in no way a fan of flashbacks for this very reason, but this was one of the most irritating I've ever encountered and I had zero interest in her sexual history. I skipped that section completely, but once I finally got back to the wife versus the mistress part, it was a total let-down. Instead of something engaging: a fight, a tearful breakdown, an intelligent grown-up discussion, an unleash of female passion, something interesting and original happening, the story lost its way and meandered into a party. Of all things. I felt seriously let down, and worse than that, the events of this particular party made me serious doubt the main character's intelligence and humanity. That's never a good thing.

What happened immediately after that was worse though. The guy of her obsession drives Edie home. He's angry with her and he hits her and she takes it and almost literally begs for me. That's when I called 'Check please! I'm done here!'. I'm not about to read that. I mean that was bad enough, but let's consider this relationship overall, given the month that I read this in was black history month! I was torn between wondering if his violence was worse, or if his treatment of this young woman in general was worse, or if her mute acceptance of all this was worse.

This is a very one-sided affair wherein the guy gets everything he wants and Edie gets next-to-nothing, putting her into a very needy and subservient position. I was wondering, is this really a story that you'd really want to promote during black history month? A white guy effectively enslaving a young black woman? He makes all the rules; she whimpers and conforms? She effectively becomes a maid to this white privileged family where the guy is ruler and the women are his subjects? Maybe it's a story some people want to read, but not me. Maybe it changed later, but I'd already lost patience with it along with any interest in reading any more.

I can't commend this at all based on what I could manage to read of it. I felt cheated by the book description and even more cheated by the story itself. I lost interest, but worse, I lost faith in it. There was no artistry here - unless we were expected to accept the tortured without the artist.

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by Marion Chesney Gibbons aka MC Beaton

Rating: WARTY!

I bought this book - which is part of a series about a British amateur detective named Agatha Raisin - based on my love of the British TV series derived from it. Normally I would not give a novel like this or a series like this the time of day and I was interested only because the TV show was so enjoyable. Sadly, the book isn't quite the same.

We expect this. You can't translate a book, no matter how loved it is, directly into a screen format without losing things and changing things, and even adding things, but the discrepancy between the delightfully lush grape of a TV detective and the sad Raisin of the book was quite startling. The Agatha of the TV show was, unfortunately, but predictably younger (by a decade) and much more pleasant. The Agatha of the novel is rather obnoxious at times. There's no reason at all why an actor of similar age could not have been hired, but TV and movies favor youth (or the appearance of it) over anything else, it seems.

I had what I call my 'robot reader' read this ebook to me. It's actually Apple's Voice Over technology, and it does a pretty decent job when you figure out how to use it wisely (the trick is never to turn it on until you are actually in the ebook, and to turn it off before you exit the ebook!), but this thing has no idea of a 'quiche' so it gets egg on its face! Naturally that word was used effusively, since someone died after eating one, but the robot reader pronounces it like it rhymes with swish, and like the word begins with 'kw'. It amused the hell out of me every time I heard it. We take our joys in life where we can, right? Otherwise it would be miserable and we'd probably all end-up being like the Agatha of the book instead of the Agatha of the TV series.

Anyways, Agatha has retired from her job running a PR firm in London, and moved to a small village named Carsley in the English Cotswolds region. Of course it's one of those tiny places where, ridiculously, the murder rate rivals Detroit or some major city. It's absurd, yes, and this is only one reason I'd never follow a series like this.

So the village has a quiche competition. Agatha cheats and buys a quiche at a store out of town and enters it as her own creation. She's miffed when she doesn't win and considers the contest rigged. She tells the organizer she doesn't want her quiche and requests they throw it away, but the organizer of the contest - the guy she doesn't like - takes it home and dies of poisoning after eating a piece. Naturally, she's a suspect and so gets dragged into the investigation.

The story kept going off at irrelevant tangents and was consequently boring, plus I didn't like Agatha at all. I gave up on it before I'd listened to very much and cannot commend it as a worthy read. I'm done with this series, and with this author.

Harriet Tubman Conductor on the Underground Railroad by Ann Petry

Rating: WORTHY!

Adopting the same title as an earlier book: " Harriet Tubman, Conductor on the Underground Railroad" by Earl Conrad, this is a middle-grade book about America's first super hero. Forget Captain America. He's fiction. Tubman was the real thing. In many ways, as this book reveals, it's insulting to use the name she's most commonly known by. Harriet Tubman was born in slavery as Araminta Ross, and as a child was known as Minty. She became Harriet Tubman when she married John Tubman, who was a free man, and who had no interest in moving north with Harriet so she could be free as well. When she started talking seriously about running, he threatened to turn her in!

She decided to go anyway, but feeling bad for those she'd left behind, she became 'Moses' as she was known back then - a conductor on an underground railroad - which some had thought was a real railroad, really underground! Today she'd be known as a mule, but that often has negative connotations. There was nothing negative about Harriet, who was both physically and mentally strong, independent, determined, and who became expert in avoiding authorities, hiding out, reading the lie of the land, and successfully ferrying people to freedom.

The pro-slavery crowd thought Moses was a guy, but it was Harriet leading people to the promise land of the free north. She began freeing her family, but when she came for John, he was already shacked-up with another woman and had no interest in Harriet. Despite set-backs like this, she continued to free her family and many others, and over a dozen trips or so, delivered three-score and ten people safely to the north. She worked in winter, when nights were longest, and she would bring them out late on Saturdays, so the newspapers would not be able to print notices of their escape until the following Monday, giving them plenty of time to move.

When the civil war began, she was of course on the Union side, initially working as a cook and a nurse, and later as a scout. She personally guided the raid at Combahee Ferry that freed ten times as many slaves as she herself had conducted north. After the war she was thanked for this in no way at all, and had to eke-out an existence by selling fruit and vegetables she farmed, and from the proceeds of two books which were written about her by a friend who wanted to help her. The union would not pay her a pension, and the only income she had was the pension her new husband - a man by the name of Davis - earned because of his role in the war. This helped to sustain her after he died prematurely of tuberculosis.

Tubman herself died in 1913 having lived to a ripe old age - probably her early nineties. I fully commend this book as a worthy read and a great introduction to a real hero.

Let's Fly a Plane by Chris Ferrie

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Friends, red kangaroos, children, lend me your engineers! Having just seen Fantasy Island at the movie theater, (the plane the plane - yes they did use that phrase and the movie was great!), how could I not want to review this book with such a bold and maybe even a teensy bit reckless title?

This was a short and fun little book about a kangaroo who wants to fly, but who can't seem to get off the ground. She seeks out author Chris Ferrie who has a doctorate in applied mathematics and who is a senior lecturer at the University of Technology in Sydney. Dr Chris explains the four forces involved in flight (drag, gravity, lift - or was it Uber? - no it was lift!, and thrust), and does so in simple terms. The lift component to flight is the one that's most often misunderstood, even in textbooks, but the explanations here are kept simple and straight-forward.

Red Kangaroo still can't manage to propel herself into the air, but she gets to fly in an airplane! This was a colorful and easy book, useful for introducing young children to a complicated idea without straining young minds. Hopefully a few who read this will become engineers and make some wonderful things because their interest in science was piqued by books like this one, I commend it as a worthy read.

Weird Little Robots by Carolyn Crimi, Corinna Luyken

Rating: WORTHY!

Written delightfully by Crimi, and illustrated by Luyken, this was a middle-grade book that I had access to only in the audiobook format, so I cannot comment on the illustrations. It was quite amusing despite being not aimed at me as an audience. I got interested in it because of the amusing title, so I bought it and listened and it was an easy listen, a fun story, and an empowerment inspiration for young girls. Women are tragically under-represented in many traditional male fields and engineering is one of the most glaring. It was encouraging to find a book aimed at middle-graders and which showed girls interested in sciences and in particular this one girl who made her own little robots out of bits and pieces she put together herself.

The robots could move around, but something happened and they took on a life of their own and began interacting with the other robots and with their creator, Penny Rose, with intelligence and motive. Penny is new in town and has no friends to begin with so the robots are special to her, but soon she makes friends with Lark who, true to her name likes to study birds. Penny gets the chance to join a secret science club, but this invitation, extended only to Penny and not to Lark, causes a rift between her and her new-found friend. Also, what the heck is going on with the robots and will the troublesome Jeremy wreck them with his less than respectful play?

I loved this book and commend it highly.

Little Joe Chickapig by Brian Calhoun, Pat Bradley

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by Calhoun and illustrated by the author and Bradley, this book tells the quest of Little Joe, who is a chickapig: part chick, part pig, who lives on a farm and has ambitious dreams of going on quests, having adventures and even maybe fighting pirates. The pig part seems to be just his nose and ears, but that's not important. It takes a long and winding tale to set him straight about who inspires who to follow their dreams and the tale comes right back home at the end. I thought this was amusingly-illustrated, well-told (in rhyme yet!) and was a wonderful story. I commend it as a worthy read.

What Makes a Hero by Pamela Bobwicz, Eda Kaban

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by Bobwicz and illustrated by Kaban, this was a cute book and a good idea: having female heroes from the Marvel stable advising young children about what makes a real hero - and it isn't a costume and a cape, or super powers. In this era of intolerance, rudeness, name-calling, boorishness, misogyny, homophobia, dishonesty, self-serving power-grabbing, and general disregard for rules and common decency (and we all know where that buck stops), it's important to remember that decent behavior and consideration of others are super powers! I commend this book as a worthy read.

Alice in Virtuality by Norman Turrell

Rating: WARTY!

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

I got turned off this almost from the start, but pressed on because the topic interested me. In some ways it was reminiscent of the 1992 Al Pacino movie Simone, but whereas that was a simulation, Alice is a full AI. The book was still nowhere near as entertaining as the movie though. I skimmed bits and pieces and the more I read, the worse it got. A third of the way in I gave up on it completely.

Instead of focusing on the Alice character, which is what interested me, the author kept going off at tangents, playing virtual poker, playing a D&D type of game, launching an avatar into a virtual chat room, and all of that was tedious to me. The parts in which Alice was featured were more interesting but even those lacked something and felt repetitious at times. In the end I decided I have better things to do with my time than to pursue this when it was so consistently disappointing. I can't commend it based on what I read.

1996 by Kirsty McManus

Rating: WARTY!

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

This book was advertised in a daily book offer flyer I get, and it was free! The only problem was that the only outlet offering it was Amazon! I refuse to get even free books from Amazon anymore, so I emailed the author asking if there were other outlets, quite prepared to purchase it because the subject so intrigued me. I'm a sucker for a good time-travel novel! The author pointed me to a free copy for which I'm grateful, and we exchanged one or two emails, but that didn't affect my review of the book.

The premise of the novel is quirky, and this was what caught my attention. It's that this woman Anna Matthews, in her thirties and married, is a food blogger and she gets a trial dietary supplement from this business that she promotes. The literature with it says it 'rolls back the years' or something like that, so she tries it, and discovers that it's literally true: she ends up in her sixteen-year-old body in 1996. The effect lasts for 12 hours before she returns to the present in her regular mature body, and nothing she did on her trip back there seems to have affected her present, so she tries it a few more times.

I enjoyed this and read it quite avidly to begin with, but as the story went on, some issues arose. Anna is having some minor hiccups with her marriage, so on a whim, while her husband is off on a business trip, she decides to go back to see him as his 1996 self. He's apparently been a bit secretive about his past. He was eighteen back then and she finally tracks him down and goes to his house to meet him, but there's no answer when she knocks. Why she thought he'd be home on a weekday instead of in school is quietly glossed over. When she hears voices from the back yard, she walks back there to see if it's him, and she sees him sitting out in the sun with his then girlfriend, so she spies on him and she gets really jealous.

I don't want to give away spoilers, but it was necessary to tell you that much because the thing is that on her two previous trips she'd met this guy named Kurt and was warming to him. Given that, it felt really ingenuous of her to get jealous of husband several years before he ever met her, when she's already crushing like a 16-year-old on this guy Kurt, and she's actually a married woman! So now we have a triangle and she's behaving far more like she's sixteen than a mature married woman. This really bothered me because it took me out of suspension of disbelief.

I know this novel isn't aimed at a reader like me, but it all seemed off. It was made worse by this guy Kurt cropping-up improbably often. I know the author's likely plan was to get these two together, but he shows up with a disturbingly metronomic regularity. It felt more like he was stalking her than that these were happenstance encounters. It was too much too fast, and that spoiled the story for me. Anna's immature behavior didn't help. It was like she was already planning on breaking-up her marriage before she ever went back in time and Kurt just happened to be her manly savior. It was too YA for my taste.

On the other hand I have learned what a Queenslander is (it's a single-storey house with a wrap-around veranda), and what a City Cat is! I'd thought that was a bus, but it's a ferry. Also there really is a place called Shell Beach! I first heard that name in a movie called Dark City, but there's really a place called that in Brisbane. Probably lots of places called that, for that matter, but I'd never actually heard of a real place with that name until I read this novel. Since the author is Australian, she might give some thought to how non-Aussies will comprehend terms like 'Queenslander' and 'City Cat' and perhaps add a brief word or two by way of explanation.

So, there came a point where I had to put this down to read some other stuff that had a deadline attached to it, and so I did, but when it came time to resume reading it, I found I had could not raise sufficient interest to pursue it any further. It was the woman's rather juvenile behavior and Kurt's creepy stalking that turned me off, so I didn't pick it up again. Despite reading just over half of it, I really have no clue if my idea about Kurt actually took place or if she instead patched things up with her husband. If it was the former, then I have to say that she's far too shallow to be my kind of a character in a novel anyway, but frankly, by then I really didn't care enough to resume it. I wish the author all the best in her career, but based on what I read, I can't commend this as a worthy read.

A Beginner's Projects in Coding by Marc Scott, Mick Marston

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This book certainly isn't written for me, since my programming, while far from stellar is a bit more advanced than is taught here, but guess what? This isn't aimed at me. Who knew?! Seriously, it's written for any young children (or even adults who want to learn) who've never programmed in their life, and for that purpose, it's perfect.

Written clearly by Scott, and colorfully (and amusingly!) illustrated by Marston, it starts out with an explanation of what coding is and why it's important, before introducing users to the Internet-accessible MIT programming language called 'Scratch'. It advises how to log in (don't use your own name and do pick a pass phrase that's easy for you to remember rather than a complicated password). From then on, the child can assemble easy, but effective and entertaining programs like putting together a jigsaw - but simpler!

The programs can ask questions and provide answers, and even do some animation. Later the book talks about a next-level programming language called Python which is actually a professional language, but available for free and quite simple to learn especially if you've used Scratch beforehand, and got a feel for how programs are put together.

Python (which was named after the BBC TV show Monty Python's Flying Circus, but don't let that scare you!) is quickly installed on your computer so no web access or login is required once it's installed, and it's also quite simple - as long as you follow the step-by-step instructions given here. It can do a lot more than can Scratch and is perfect for young programmers wanting to spread their wings.

The book is bright, easy, and helpful, with lots of good advice, hints, and tips, and it even has a few words about web page programming too, which is a fun and useful thing to learn. I loved this book and commend it as a useful tool and a worthy read.

Small Matters by Heather Ferranti Kinser

Rating: WORTHY!

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

If the fact that bumble bees have hairy eyeballs grosses you out, then this book is not for you! Not that bees really have eyeballs as such, but you know what I mean. The book literally zooms in on animals and finds things that are too small to be seen with the unaided eye.

I don't know about you, but for me, some books are way too long. This was too short, because it was over before I felt fully-satisfied by these truly engaging images and revelations. I wanted more, but for a much younger child than me, it's probably the ideal length. It educates young children to the unseen world, and encourages them to realize that there is much below the surface to fascinate and learn. I don't doubt that the lessons taught here will be as useful in preparing us for learning about fellow humans as they are in learning about the animals presented here, from all walks - and slithers an flights - of life.

In some thirty pages, we meet a sea-snail, a shark, a butterfly, a bird or two, a snake, an insect or two, and others that each has a microscopic secret to success. For example, I'm sure many of you know that a gecko has a sort of 'suction pad' on its feet that help it climb the walls, but the details of exactly how this works are really interesting - and it's not really a suction pad! Each creature we visit here has a similar script about some aspect of its life. It turns out that 'small matters' are big deals! I found it fascinating and educational and I commend this as a worthy read.

Follow Those Zebras by Sandra Markle

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This book was definitely a worthy read. I mean who's doesn't love a zebra - and here's a British joke: who doesn't appreciate a zebra crossing?! This is about Zebras crossing scores of miles of terrain (when they're allowed to with farm fences not getting in their way). A herd (sometimes known as a zeal of zebras!) of some 2,000 animals, would disappear periodically and return just as seemingly magically.

No one knew where they went or why, so they fitted collars to some o the mares (who fight less, of course, than the stallions do, so they're much less likely to damage a collar) to track them by satellite. They made some interesting discoveries, and in the light of climate change, a scary discovery, too.

The book for me was a bit too prolix. The 44 pages could have been cut by maybe a quarter and still presented a solid and educational book, but I'm not going to bring it down because it had a few extra pages of zebra pictures, including some young 'guns. The story it told was very educational: scientistic and informative, and it handsomely explained what was happening, so I commend this one as a worthy read.

Beijing: A Symmetrical City by Dawu Yu

Rating: WARTY!

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

I found this book to be highly dissatisfying. I imagine it was not designed as an ebook, but that's all a reviewer like me ever has to judge it by, and it was less than stellar. It was also quite confusing and left me in the dark much of the time. Some of the text was misleading. For example, at one point when discussing the front entrance to the Forbidden City, the text mentions the "U-shaped Noon Gate" but all of the gates in the illustration are rectangular! The previous illustration had U-shaped gates (or more accurately, n-shaped!), so i couldn't tell if the text was wrong, the illustration was wrong, or if I was simply misunderstanding what was being said, or what. I'd specify a page number, but there were no page numbers in the book, which was another problem, at least for reviewing purposes.

Note that the book was 'adapted' whatever that means (I assume because of the fact that Chinese and English texts flow in different ways, but I may be wrong about that), by Yan Liu, and translated by Crystal Tai, so it's entirely possible that something got lost long the way. The illustrations by the author are meticulous and colorful, but they're very busy and it's often hard to distinguish exactly what's being talked about. Plus I have no idea what gender the author is. It's irrelevant to the review, except in that I can't use 'he' or 'she' to I'll stick with 'they' or something equally neutral.

There was a guide in the back of the book which highlighted greyscale drawings with colors to indicate specific parts of earlier illustrations. If only those had been included along with the text, it would have been a big improvement! It didn't help to have them in the back - and especially not in an ebook because unlike with a print book, it's a nightmare trying to go back and forth in a ebook and keep your place readily.

Some of the illustrations were oddly chopped-up, too. For example, regarding the aforementioned Forbidden City issue, this was also where it looked like one image had become trapped behind another, so maybe the text was right, but the image it referred to had become hidden behind the next image or mangled or something. But there were other issues, and again the transition point seemed to be they Forbidden City page.

Initially (and I was reading this in Adobe Digital Editions on an iPad FYI) there was one page per screen, but in landscape mode, it was possible to slide the image across and see a seamless 'full-page spread' as it were, whereas other images had a vertical white line down the screen marking the page transition. Right after the Forbidden City page though, the layout changed so that double page spreads were included on one screen, making them much too small in portrait mode, and comfortably visible only in landscape.

Again, this is not a problem you would have with a print edition, but publishers insist on sending out only ebook version for review unless you happen to be a top tier reviewer. What this means is that books can get electronically-mangled and publishers all-too-often fail to make sure the book is readable. This clearly happened here, but even ignoring all of that, the book as still confusing and sometimes indecipherable, and frankly I disagreed with the premise that Beijing - even ancient Beijing - is symmetrical. At least if it is, the author failed to convince me! I found the book not acceptable, and I cannot commend it as a worthy read.

Search and Find Unicorns by Georgie Taylor, Maaike Boot

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by Taylor and illustrated by Boot, this book seems designed to endlessly entertain. The deal is that there's a hidden unicorn on each page that can only be discovered by 'painting' the page with water! Once the water dries, the magical unicorn disappears, and so it remains to be discovered again next time. Each illustration contains a clue as to what to look for.

It seems to me that a book like this will not only be magical to a child, but will encourage confidence and perhaps draw-out (so to speak!) a budding artist. Yes, I'm coloring up after such a bad pun. I commend this one as a worthy read.

French Fairy Tales by Jennifer Afron

Rating: WARTY!

This book for young children was a bit bland and boring. Perhaps young children might find it interesting, but I prefer my fairytales with a bit more oomph than these four or so very short, but illustrated stories pretend to. Although very colorfully and entertainingly depicted, these stories didn't really seem to have much of an ending, to say nothing of teaching a moral. Aargh! I said to say nothing of it and then I went right ahead and said it! Oh well....

Work It, Girl: Michelle Obama by Caroline Moss

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Part of the "Become a leader like..." series, this book covers Michelle Robinson, lawyer, scholar, activist, and who also happened to become married to the president of a few years back (and before he was president!). She came from quite humble beginnings and was sometimes discouraged from pursuing her dreams, but she refused to let others' opinions dictate what her goals would be or where her sights would be aimed, and she achieved every one of them that she set herself, graduating Princeton and Harvard and working in a law firm before moving into more community-spirited occupations.

She met Barack Obama in that first law firm and traveled with him to the Senate and the White House, despite having some doubts about both places! This book tells a fascinating story and makes it all the more a pity that her aversion to politics will prevent her from running for president. If she did, I do not doubt that she would win hands down without question. I commend this book as a worthy and inspiring read for young chidlren.

The Not Bad Animals by Sophie Corrigan

Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
p17 has 'bast' instead of 'bats' in the 'facts' section! Bast was a cat god of the Egyptians.
I don't know of any scorpion that's poisonous, but several are venomous! The difference is that if you eat a scorpion (and people as well as animals do eat them) you won't be poisoned, but you can get its venom injected if one stings you!

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

Here's another educational book about animals. This one tries to improve the undeservedly bad reps of certain critters such as spiders, sharks, and vampire bats. Good luck with that! But it's intelligently written and amusingly-illustrated by an author who is evidently English as judged by her lingo (or perhaps Australian?) and whose last name maybe ought to be 'Incorrigible'? I ask this because I'm by no means convinced that cats have anywhere near the negative reputation she seems to think, yet here they are, right up front, getting a PR job. I find that highly suspicious!

The book even features hyenas, so if you're a fan of the recent (as of this blog post!) Birds of Prey movie, in which Harley Quinn had a pet hyena (not recommended!), you may find this entertaining! I did. But then I loved that movie. The book also features skunks, which I agree are very cute. I'll never forget this one episode of Mythbusters in which the stated task was to determine the best method of removing skunk smells from clothing.

In order to do that, they had to get a skunk to spray, and they had this cute little thing that refuse to spray no matter what they did! It was hilarious, It was like the anti-skunk, but having encountered one walking in to work one dark morning (I was walking in to work - the skunk was already quite busily at work), and noticing how it turned so its back was always toward me as I passed it, the very opposite of what most wild animals will do, I would never trust one as a coworker! That said, it did not spray me since I kept moving and made no threat to it, so I thank that skunk for its forbearance and restraint under trying conditions.

But I digress. The book covers crocodiles, vultures, rats (which I personally adore, having had pet ones and started a children's book series - The Little Rattuses™ - about them), wasps (which, call me waspish, but I certainly do not adore), scorpions (which I adore even less, having found one in the bathtub one night that had apparently been enterprising enough to climb up the bath drainpipe, but then stupid enough to find itself in a slippery bathtub with no exit!), snakes, toads, wolves, ants, and so on, you can see that the animal kingdom is well covered and it's not just all about mammals, as far too many young children's books are.

This book is very well done - amusing, entertaining, nicely put together, hosted a wealth of animals in its eighty-some pages and was very educational. Yes! It's correct, for example, when it advises that peeing on a jellyfish sting will not help. It might even make it worse. The best treatment for such a sting is to pour vinegar on the affected area and then remove the stingers with tweezers (don't scrape them off with anything). What's not to like? Okay, apart from the vampire bats, what's not to like? Okay, vampire bats and scorpions, what's not to like? Really? I commend this as a worthy read.

Play Like an Animal! by Maria Gianferrari, Mia Powell

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Maria and Mia what a team! The author amusingly explains why animals do some of the crazy things they do, and the illustrator (Powell) illustrates them with verve and passion. The idea is of course, to talk kids into exercising their right to be animals as well, playing like these amusing creatures do, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The book covers a variety of animals, but as usual with young childrens' books, it's mostly the mammals which are favored, such as peccaries, rhinos, monkeys, gorillas, and so on, but there are also aquatic mammals featured such a dolphins and otters, along with a couple of birds - ravens and keas - and who wouldn't mourn a kea?! (Sorry, I could not for the life of me resist.)

The behavior of the animals is explained in growing - they need to learn to defend themselves, to get a mate, to stalk prey, to escape being prey, and even to develop their minds, as is the case with ravens. The book was gorgeously illustrated and amusingly written, and I commend it as a worthy read.

Vivienne Westwood by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vergara, Laura Callaghan

Rating: WORTHY!

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

I've enjoyed very many of these young children's biographies about a host of different people, all written by the same author but often with a different artist. In this case it was Callaghan who contributed some beautiful and bright illustrations, in keeping with the subject matter since Westwood is a British fashion designer, who all but single-handedly brought punk and new wave fashions (so-called!) into the mainstream.

I should say right here that I have less than zero respect for the modeling-fashion industrial complex, which is why I like this book. Westwood was very much a rebel and her spirited approach, even though in many ways buying into the shallow and pretentious world of fashion, was to turn things on their head. She also preferred books to fashion magazines, and encouraged a recycling sort of an attitude by suggesting people buy fewer clothes and wear therm more often.

This book tells an interesting and colorful story and I commend it as a worthy read.

Bob Dylan by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vergara, Conrad Roset

Rating: WORTHY!

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

I've enjoyed very many of these young children's biographies about a host of different people, all written by the same author but often with a different artist. In this case it was Roset, whose work was good and very entertaining.

This one talks about folk legend Bob Dylan who unintentionally became the voice of an era as he produced his songs about life and war throughout the sixties and for several decades beyond. I commend it for any young children who are interested in music and making change.

Alan Turing by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vergara, Linzie Hunter

Rating: WORTHY!

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

I've enjoyed very many of these young children's biographies about a host of different people. This one is about computer scientist Alan Turing, who was responsible for breaking the secret of a major German coding machine in World War Two and who was subsequently persecuted for his homosexuality.

Way to thank a war hero, UK! He was, at long last, pardoned, but he should never have been arrested for it in the first place, and the pardon came long years after his suicide. If he'd been hailed as the hero he was and funded, he could have put Britain at the forefront of computing.

This book doesn't pull any punches and tells his story simply and in enough detail for young minds without overdoing it. It's nicely-illustrated by Hunter and is well worth the reading. I commend it. There is one small glitch which hopefully will have been fixed before this goes on sale. At the back of each of these books is a timeline with actual photographs of the subject at different points in their life. This book is no different, but the person featured in the photographs isn't Alan Turing; it's Astrid Lindgren, author of the Pippi Longstocking books! While Turing might well have been amused by this, it really needs to be fixed.

Even More Fantastic Failures by Luke Reynolds

Rating: WORTHY!

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

I had some issues with this one (not least of which the sub-title 'people who changed the world'? In some cases, yes, but for most, not hardly!), but I support its aims, and so I commend it as a worthy read. The book has thirty chapters, not all of which are devoted to a person. Some chapters have a secondary story (called 'The Flop Files') about someone or something, as well as inset boxes with very brief stories, so it's packed with information.

That's where my issues came from though: some of the information is somewhat misleading or doesn't tell the whole story. The chapters cover these topics:

1. Barack Obama with a sub-story about Ta-Nehisi Coates.
2. Kehkashan Basu
3. Alan Naiman with a sub-story about Virginia Apgar.
4. Nick Foles with a sub-story about fireworks.
5. Emma Gonzalez with a sub-story about the 54th Mass. volunteers.
6. Ryan Coogler with a sub-story about George Lucas.
7. Bryan Slat
8. The Reggae Girlz with a sub-story about the USNW soccer team.
9. Lin-Manuel Miranda
10. John Cena with a sub-story about Michael Phelps.
11. Joan of Arc
12. Socrates with a sub-story about Mary Shelley.
13. Phiona Mutesi with a sub-story about Queen Victoria.
14. Stephanie Kwolek with a sub-story about penicillin.
15. Robert Indiana with a sub-story about Specks!
16. All American Girls Professional Baseball League
17. Carvens Lissaint with a sub-story about Bette Graham.
18. Christina Martinez
19. Ayanna Presley with a sub-story about William Wilberforce.
20. Mohammed Al Jounde
21. Mindy Kaling with a sub-story about Kalani Brown.
22. Patricia Smith
23. Carl Hayden Community High School Robotics Squad with a sub-story about The Toronto Raptors.
24. Jeremy Stoppelman with a sub-story about Norm Larsen.
25. Beyoncé Knowles with a sub-story about Bruce Springsteen.
26. Greta Thunberg with a sub-story about Angela Zhang.
27. Lois Jenson
28. New Orleans Superdome
29. Grace Hopper with a sub-story about Janet Guthrie.
30. Haifaa Al Mansour with a sub-story about Roxane Gay.

As I mentioned, I had some issues with some of the information presented here. I don't undertsand some of these pairings. Putting the US Woman's national (soccer) team with the reggae Girlz (also a soccer team) makes sense, but pairing Emma Gonzalez with the 54th Mass. volunteers? Does the author not realize that rampant ownership of military grade weapons is the driving force underlying Gonzalez's campaign? I doubt she'd want to be associated with an actual military outfit! Phiona Mutesi with a sub-story about Queen Victoria? However, those are just quirks so I really not much bothered about that. Below are some examples of the issues I'm really concerned with.

The achievements of the US women's national soccer team (USWNT) have been extraordinary, but they went out of favor with me after strutting all over the Thailand team which they beat 13-0 in 2019. I never thought I'd see a women's team behave like Donald Trump. The book has nothing to say about that, attempting to silence critics of their unconscionable behavior by quoting Mariah Burton Nelson who apparently claimed that criticism of the women's team stems from a fear of successful women! That's not only arrogant, blinkered, and presumptuous, it's plain wrong to blindly tar everyone with the same ill-advised brush. Personally I don't fit into that pigeon-hole.

I've been highly supportive of the women's team and enjoyed their success for many years, but I can't support a team harshing like that on fellow women when that opposing team was quite clearly outmatched. I didn't even have a problem with their scoring of 13 goals. What I objected to was the theatrics after every goal, as though the goal had been scored miraculously against impossible odds when there had been no such achievement. The insane strutting and posing after every single goal was shameful exhibitionism shaming a team that was clearly being overwhelmed.

If the USWNT had done that same thing against a more equally-matched team like the Brazilians, or the Germans, I would have had no problem with it, because then it would have been earned, but this was not, and it diminished the US team to behave like that. I support women in sports and equality, especially in pay and especially for the USWNT after all they've achieved, but that same team has fallen steeply in my esteem after that shameful and embarrassing exhibition.

On the topic of Charlotte Brontë, yes, Robert Southey did tell her that "literature cannot be the business of a woman's life," but what this book doesn't mention is that he did praise her talent. I found that omission to be dishonest. It makes it sound like he was completely negative and dismissive of her when all he was doing was expressing the prevailing sentiments of the day among men. Yes, that's unacceptable, but back then it was the norm. It's misleading to portray him as some arrogant jerk of a guy walking all over a novice female writer.

I'm not sure why Stephanie Kwolek was paired with a sub-story about penicillin, but since Kwolek worked for Dupont which has, at best, a questionable record with regard to what I shall call 'chemical abuse', a word about those failures might have been a better use of space than one about penicillin. Not that Kwolek was involved in the invention or the ill-advised use of Teflon, but still!

I'm not sure why basketball player Kalani Brown was included as a sub-story with comedy writer and actor Mindy Kaling, but Brown's story is hardly one of failure! She missed four free throws in a row? So what? She came from a family of sports players so she had a leg-up into her sporting life, and was no doubt not a stranger to losing a game here and there much less to missing a throw. That story seemed odd and hardly fit into the theme of the book.

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus was hardly the failure it's represented as being here. No, it did not take off as a best-seller from day one, but it was well-received (despite some criticism) and it sold well in her lifetime. A better story would have been to tell how Mary bounced back after her husband drowned.

One of the inset box stories talks about Eliud Kipchoge, a marathon runner, but the box makes no mention of the sponsorship he got from Nike, and the fact that he wore controversial and specially-designed running shoes for his attempt! These are the same kind of 'augmented' shoes that were under critical review recently, and which several other people have broken records while wearing.

That's all I'm going to write about the issues I had. I think the book in general is well-written and tells an important story about not giving up, but I'm not sure it makes it clear enough that giving up on one thing to turn attention to another is an important part of life and success. The diversity in the book is commendable, but it's also very sports-heavy and once again it's very USA-centric as though only important success stories occur in North America, and the rest of the world not so much, but while I dislike that kind of dangerous nationalism, I do consider this a worthy and inspiring read overall.

A Bowl Full of Peace by Caren Stelson, Akira Kusaka

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This was a short and well-illustrated (by Kusaka) picture-book about a family which (kind of) survived the H-bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on 9th August 1945. I say 'kind of', because the family really didn't, and today only one of them remains. The rest of them died either in the initial explosion or from radiation which spread afterwards and made people sick before anyone fully-realized what it was or what it could do.

There are many questions surrounding that war and the bombs. People make much of the death toll those two bombs wreaked which was, with the blast and the radiation, perhaps a quarter million - about the same number that died in the St Stephen's Tsunami of 2004. The thing is that without the bombs, the toll was already astronomical. To put it in perspective, the Battle of Stalingrad alone killed two million people!

Yes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely civilian populations not directly involved in fighting (although there were military bases and munitions factories there), so there is a difference, and people can argue that it was necessary because the toll of taking Japan by traditional means was going to be high, but others can argue equally well that Japan did not need to be taken. It could have been blockaded and forced to surrender with no loss of allied life. Alternatively, a demonstration of the bomb's devastative power could have been made over an unpopulated area. That and the threat of dropping bombs on populated areas would have impressed the war leadership of Japan sufficiently without killing innocent civilians.

And yes, it's easy with the distance of three-quarters of a century, to pretend to know what was best back then; but let's not forget that a Christian country, far from turning the other cheek, is still the only nation on Earth to have used atomic bombs in war, and those two bombs back then killed more civilians than all the acts of Islamic terrorism since.

But this book isn't interested in politics because it's a very personal story of loss: of a family of children playing outdoors just a half mile from the epicenter, all but one of which miraculously survived the initial blast. It's about a family that, even though they were evacuated from the area immediately afterwards, still succumbed one-by-one to the sickness of the black rain.

Only one of them, Sachiko Yasui, survived, and now she opens the eyes of others to the horror of nuclear war. It's not just that, but all war which must stop, but nuclear war is the most terrifying act of hostility that we can do to each other and to the planet, and this story handily explains why.

Frida in America by Celia Stahr

Rating: WORTHY!

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

For a biography with this title, this books spends a lot of time delving into Frida's childhood and teen years, as well as with a couple of trips she took back to Mexico while largely living in the USA, but the subtitle of this volume is "The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist." That time she spent and the experiences she had, whether in the US or in Mexico, or traveling between the two, contributed immensely to the intriguing artist she became.

The bio starts out brightly with Frida and her husband, artist Diego Rivera, traveling to and arriving in San Francisco, but that all comes to a jarring halt as we travel back in time for a history of her life up to this point - which occupies fully a quarter of the narrative - before we get back to her life in the US. For me that wasn't so bad because I find the subject of this biography endlessly fascinating, but others might find themselves irritated when the title so boldly promises a US story and they get sent to Mexico for an extended period! Maybe such readers should learn to be less provincial?!

What did impress me was how well researched this is. I've read a variety of books about Frida Kahlo, but never one that was so delving and so revealing of her inner workings as this one is. It was impressive and truly engrossing for me. Regardless of what it meant before, her art takes on a whole new meaning once you're initiated into the symbolism she employed so often in her work. The story picks up back in the US with Diego's commission, his workaholic approach to his painting as well as his endless philandering and his absurd misgivings over his (at least initially) erroneous belief that his wife was as bad as he was. Far too many men project like that, and poor Frida has to deal with all of this largely by herself.

The book has a wealth of detail about their life both in Mexico and in the US, the people they met, the relationships they formed and the impact they had, as well as the experiences that moved them in return. They were very influential on each other too, each taking cues from the other's work, and expanding or amplifying them in their own art. In a way, their art was a way of talking to each other about topics they perhaps felt uncomfortable discussing face to face.

Frida's initial love-affair with the US was an uneasy one at best, and it quickly turned to disappointment and antagonism the longer she remained there. She missed her family and her homeland greatly which didn't help her state of mind, and her husband was very neglectful of her, focusing on the murals he had arrived in the US to paint, and working insane hours, leaving Frida very much to her own devices. She cultivated her own friends and relationships and worked on her art, showing increasing sophistication and steady improvement over her time in the USA. This books explains all of that and excavates, sometimes a bit too deeply for me!) the meaning, symbolism, and origins of her imagery.

If I have a complaint about this book, it's the same one I would have (and have had!) about any such book where art is discussed in detail, and that is the complete lack of any examples of her art, or any photographs of her which were taken during her travels. Fortunately, with the name 'Frida Kahlo' being so very well-known these days, it's possible to find on the Internet a lot of the pictures discussed in this biography, but it's a nuisance to have to halt reading and go searching for them.

Many images, in particular the photographs that are mentioned, I could not find, which was very frustrating. I don't know if the author's intention is to include the images in a print version and they were simply omitted from the review ebook. I wouldn't blame her for that, because Amazon's crappy Kindle format is renowned for mangling anything that's not plain vanilla text, but if the pictures could have been included in a PDF version of the book made available for review, that would have been truly awesome! It made it rather tedious at times to read a long and detailed description of the art or a photograph without being able to readily view it, or in some cases without being able to see it at all.

That aside, I really enjoyed this book and commend it as a worthy read. But then I'm heavily biased when it comes to Frida Kahlo. She probably the first person I'd visit if I ever managed to get my hands on a time machine! I commend this book as a worthy read for fans of art or of Kahlo.

Dark Queen by Faith Hunter

Rating: WARTY!

If this has been Dairy Queen it would have had more appeal and more chills! This is one I got along with an earlier volume in the series because the blurb on this one interested me; then I discover it's in first person, the main character isn't Asian notwithstanding the book cover, and it's filled with trope. I made it about thirty pages and ditched it beofre I yawned myself to death. I can't commend uninventive, unoriginal, and unimaginative novels like this one, so I'm done with this series and with this author.