Playing Catch-Up With Autumn

Well, the world is on fire and I'm deeply upset about it, but this is not a blog about world events and politics, so let's escape for a bit with some books for the younger crowd....

 

 Temple Alley Summer, by Sachiko Kashiwaba: This is a charming middle-grade novel translated from the Japanese.  Kazu lives in a big old house in an old neighborhood, and one night he sees a girl in a white kimono walk through.  The next day she is in his class -- and she has always been there.  Everyone but Kazu has known her for years.  And then he learns that his street used to be called Kimyo Temple Street, which implies that people can be brought back to life.  This is going to be a summer of adventure for Kazu and Akari, as they become friends and figure out what's going on.

This is an unusual story, and I enjoyed it a lot.  It won the Batchelder award for translated literature.

 

The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera: Petra Peña lives in New Mexico and wants to be a storyteller, like her beloved grandmother, but her scientist parents aren't so sure about that.  But their lives are all derailed when Halley's Comet is pushed off-course and is about to hit the Earth.  Space travel is just far enough advanced that the government can pack three ships full of people and send them off to a new planet, Sagan, which they hope will be habitable.  Most of the people will sleep for the 380 years the trip will take, and the ship will be staffed by about 150 monitors, who will spend the next several generations doing their job.  When Petra wakes up, she'll have a head full of science to use and stories to share.

But the monitors are taken over by a political faction that believe that humanity would be much better off if there were no differences and no history or stories to create differences.  Generations on a spaceship shape them into a different kind of people; will they even be able to survive on a planet?  The Collective is not sure they want to find out.  And Petra wakes to a dystopia, one whose leaders have been wiping the sleepers' memories to turn them into good servants of the Collective.  Sagan is a beautiful (and dangerous!) planet, but will Petra and her companions even make it down there to live?

It's an excellent story with lots to think about.  I think my favorite thing was what generations on a spaceship, with no sunshine or normal life, might do to a population.  Some of the changes are due to the Collective takeover, but also -- living on a spaceship for nearly 400 years is going to have its own consequences.  Also, a lot of the technology is so new that it often doesn't work quite right; nobody had time to test and perfect it.  

The Last Cuentista won the Newbery and a slew of other awards!

The Book Scavengers trilogy, by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman:  This was a fun middle grade trilogy!  Emily's family has just moved to San Francisco; her parents are writers/editors and they do freelance work, but they also have a long-running project of trying to live in all 50 states.  Every so often they pack everything up and surprise the kids with a new place to live, which older brother Matthew does okay with, but shy and bookish Emily doesn't, really.  Her great love is the online forum/game Book Scavenger, in which people hide books and then post puzzles to lead searchers to them, and since SF is the home of the publisher who runs the game, she's excited about that.  And Emily accidentally finds the book that the publisher dropped when he was attacked in a BART station, which is the basis for a new game.  Together with her new friend and neighbor James, Emily works at unraveling the mystery.

The trilogy spends a lot of time on San Francisco scenery and history; the second book is about an unbreakable code from the 1800s, and the third is a giant escape room game set on Alcatraz.  This is a pre-Covid SF, one which is also magically safe for 12-year-olds to run around on their own.  (Their families do at least worry about money.)  I'd say it's a highly educational trilogy, between all the history and the codes, but also very fun and with plenty of tween friendship drama and adventure.  I liked them.

 

Daedalian Depths, by Rami Hansenne: Not really a story at all, but a puzzle book.  Enter the labyrinth on page 1, and use the illustrations on each page to figure out which of three doors to take.  Beware the traps!  It's like a visual Choose Your Own Adventure puzzle.  There are three 'levels,' and subtle clues to let you know when you've graduated to a new one.  It was a fun way to spend a summer afternoon.

 The illustrations are a combo of pen-and-ink and some photo images thrown in, like a collage.  They're fun, but if I have a complaint it's that better resolution on the images would have been helpful.