OUT OF THE ORDINARY

Name: OUT OF THE ORDINARY
Author: Michelle M. Barone
ISBN: 978-1-932-663105

by Michelle M. Barone ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2005

A good resource for use in upper elementary school classes, but the cover and layout may be less attractive to the casual...

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Trouble brews in a small mining community when rumors of union organization spread.

It’s 1914 in Phippsburg, Colo. Julia, a young Italian immigrant, lives with her family in a derailed boxcar and attends fifth grade at the local one-room schoolhouse. Boss Parker runs the mine; his right-hand man keeps prices high at the only store in town; and the Parker children can do no wrong in the eyes of the school’s only teacher. The boxcars that Julia’s family and many other families live in, as well as the shacks across town, are all owned by the mine. Nobody wants to risk losing their jobs and their homes, especially during the harsh Colorado winters. Covering only two days in April 1914, Barone successfully portrays the life and issues of the era. When Julia uncovers a plot at the mine and tries to protect her father, a series of events ensue that lead to a sad but pleasantly unexpected ending. Building on actual historical accounts from her grandmother, Barone envisions how the miner’s strike and massacre in Ludlow would affect smaller mining towns. The reader feels the harsh cold of late winter, experiences the language barriers both adults and children faced, and understands the social stratifications based on wealth, national origin and gender present throughout the community. Although not as charming or as colorful as the American Girls series, readers may be reminded of those books as they are treated, in an appendix, to primary and secondary documents relating to the events. These pages could greatly benefit from more pictures and facts combined with the firsthand accounts given through articles and letters.

A good resource for use in upper elementary school classes, but the cover and layout may be less attractive to the casual reader.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2005

ISBN: 978-1-932-663105

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE UNSEEN

by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.

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Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.

Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.

A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.

Pub Date: April 7, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Biblioasis

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

- BOOK REVIEW
WHITE SHADOW
by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw

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BORDERS
by Roy Jacobsen translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw

- BOOK REVIEW
CHILD WONDER
by Roy Jacobsen & translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw

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SHOGUN

by James Clavell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 1975

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In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.