By the way, the Finalists Are Out!
as well as the other categories!
OK, these are the ones I made it 100% through by the time the bell rang. Thanks to all my fellow panelists for their hard work and recommendations. This year was a hard one, since we were basically one panel doing the work of two, but I had a lot of fun and an excuse to avoid so much housework. By the way, thanks to my family for putting up with me these last few weeks!
I'll have at least one more post as I finish up all the books I skimmed through in a frantic attempt to peek at everything before the timer ran out.
High School Nonfiction
Housing, Race, and the Law, Duchess Harris & Deirdre R.J. Head. Another solid entry in this series, if not my favorite of the run. This looks at the many legal or challenge attempts to keep non-white people (which are defined in different ways) out of white enclaves through either explicit restrictions or specially coded regulations. It continues into the habit of public housing support to also steer people according to their race, so that housing support requests in neighborhoods with good schools but mostly white residents are denied to African American people. Thin bibliography but good sources.
The publisher provided me with an ebook for review.
Earth Day and the Environmental Movement, Christy Peterson. Wow, I love it when the insides excite me more than the cover promised. There was a lot more to Earth Day than I associate with it now, where schools plant a tree or something. Peterson brings in some of the disasters that inspired the grassroots movement, such as the repeated oil spills outside California, and then ties that to the politicians and local activists who brought environmentalism to the main stream. I also appreciated the discussion of how race interacts with the Green movement.
Radium Girls, Kate Moore. The girls who licked the radium paint off their brushes and then died of horrible jaw diseases are often mentioned in histories of radioactivity or the Curies, but this book stops to actually exam what happened to them, and it's not pretty. Yes, the deaths from radiation poisoning were real, but what history doesn't mention is how long the companies employing them knew about the problem but either kept quiet or actively lied to the women about the risk. Their fights for compensation or justice were a big part of new regulations that forced companies to take responsibility for the harm they do to their employees, especially when these companies lie about the harm to shave costs. The book keeps a strong narrative focus on specific women so that the reader cares about them and their problems.
The publisher provided me with a book for review.
Walk Toward the Rising Sun, Ger Duany. There's this awkward feeling in reading a memoir, because people are telling about their personal experience, picking the things they feel have the most importance or resonance to tell the story about their lives in the way they want. And sometimes I'm interested in parts they aren't telling, either for noble reasons or really just prurient ones.
The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, Candace Fleming. I enjoyed both the details of Lindbergh's life and the insights into how society itself created his pedestal and then knocked him off. His accomplishments were mostly physical and immediate; he never showed much aptitude for deeper analysis. Yet after his success in the Spirit of St Louis he was hailed as an innovative genius and who was he to disagree? So his science experiments were assumed to be rigorous, his detective blunders overlooked, and his diplomatic naivete ignored (to the joy of the Nazis using him for their propaganda). Nosy and intrusive reporters really did cause him deep emotional pain, especially during the kidnapping and murder of his son, so his rejection of the idea of a free press came easily to him and he eagerly signed up for the other policies that sympathetic press-haters offered, such as eugenics and elitism. The revelations of his lovers and children that he kept secret from his wife and her kids makes sense in that even as he proclaimed honesty and character he had a deep belief in himself as correct, so whatever he did would be right. It's only other people who needed rules to make them better.
Middle Grade Nonfiction
The Many Lives of Eddie Rickenbacker, Andrew Speno. Rickenbacker, if you forgot, was the founder of Eastern Airlines. He was also a World War I flying ace, a racecar driver, a cars salesman, an elementary school drop-out, and the survivor of several plane crashes and a ship wreck. Speno conveys his drive and his relentless energy well, and the story itself keeps the book hopping. It's a good read that respects its audience without condescension or jargon.
Modern Art Explorer, Alice Harmon. A walk through some abstract art, conceding that the first glance might be a dubious one but challenging the viewer to sit for a while to see what the art is saying. Some was familiar to me but some pieces make much more sense after Harmon explains where they come from and what the artist was doing when making them. It starts with a discussion of terms to explain why "Modern Art" no longer means "recently created art" and keeps up with a lighthearted tone to jolly the reader into concentrating a little bit more.
Normal, Nathaniel Newman & Magdalena Newman. Remember the book Wonder? When Palacio went to talk to the doctors about craniofacial issues, she saw a poster of one of the kids they were working with. And Nathaniel Newman was that kid. They met after the book was written, so, as Nathaniel points out a lot, he is very clear that is is different from August Pullman. For example, Nathaniel is real and August is fictional. They also have completely different personalities, experiences, and reactions to their medical treatments and condition. But there is no doubt that kids who enjoyed Wonder will be drawn to this book, and I found Nathaniel and his mother's account of their lives very engaging. As they discuss the progress of their lives, inevitably influenced by the long medical journey Nathaniel needs in order to survive (he needed a tracheotomy to ensure he could breathe for a large part of his life) they also look at what is considered normal, by their family and by society. And a lot of the differences come from Magdalena's history as a Polish immigrant who was an accomplished pianist, not just from the large time they spend in hospitals. I enjoyed the perspective into a unique family, one which many kids will be able to emphasize with as they grapple with sibling rivalry, screen time rules, and moving a lot.
Wolfpack, Abby Wambach. (Young Reader). I read the adult version a few months ago, but this kid version was a slimmer version of the same thing. Some of the examples were dropped, which may have improved things -- now it's just a cheerleading effort towards setting goals and expectations and then moving towards them in an ethical manner. But I'm still grumpy about the muddled metaphors; the Wolfpack terms is used just because wolves are cool, which I'm fine with, but don't try to draw on fake wolf facts or even worse, bad fairy tale analysis. Yes, don't take lessons from Little Red Riding Hood on the need to stay on the path and avoid risks, but maybe don't decide that the Wolf was the one to emulate in that particular story. The wolf in Little Red Riding Hood was not cool.
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