In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee

In Limbo is touching memoir about growing up caught between two cultures, 

Deborah (Jung-Jin) Lee believes that she can look like those around her. As she gets ready for the first day of high school, her struggle to put on eyeliner simply highlights how different she looks compared to everyone else.

Thankfully, Deb has her friend Kate Pearson to walk with into high school on the first day. In her Honors Physics class, the teacher can't pronounce her Korean name, Jung-Jin. It's the same in other classes as well.

Elementary school orchestra was always Deb's safe space, where she fit in. But in high school she finds her hopes dashed when she's told that she will have to earn a spot in first violin. The conductor, Ms. V. also adds to the stress by stating she has high expectations for her.

Deb arrives home to see that her mom has SAT books - a test Deb won't take for another three years. Her mother states that Deb needs to show she's one of the smart kids and then reminds her to practice her violin since her teacher, Harry has called. However, Deb finds that her interest in violin is waning.

While Deb's friend Quinn continues to excel in Honors Physics and begins taking Korean lessons, she struggles in class and in orchestra. The pressure continues at home from her mother who reveals that she's discovered Deb is "doodling" instead of practicing violin. When Deb's father suggests she quit violin, this frightens Deb because she would lose all her friends.

During her sophomore year, Deb is sent to art classes in New York City on Saturdays, instead of taking Korean class. Her mother also asks her to consider the possibility of double eyelid surgery at the end of high school, something she did and is very popular in South Korea.

But as Deb continues through high school, her struggles with mental health issues only become more intense. This leads to fights with her mother, an second suicide attempt and a breakdown in her friendship with Quinn.  It is only as Deb matures and with the help of therapy that she begins to build up the supports she needs and to move towards healing and self-forgiveness. 

Discussion

In Limbo is a graphic novel memoir which explores the author's struggles during her teen years with mental health issues, with parental expectations within the Asian diaspora and with teen relationships. Deb Lee came to America as a young girl, from Seoul, South Korea, with her parents and her brother, first living in Alabama and then moving to Summit, New Jersey. From the very beginning, Deb struggled to fit in, both at school and in her own Korean community. She was sensitive to the differences between herself and others. While her parents definitely cared for her, Deb's mother was often emotionally and even physically abusive. 

One of the main struggles Deb portrays in her memoir, is the immense pressure she encountered from her parents and even the Korean-American community to excel. As is typical for many Asian children, she studied violin and was enrolled in high level courses in high school, neither of which she enjoyed. When she did well but not up to her parent's standards, Deb was accused of  not trying and her mother accused Deb of shaming her. Her mother eventually learned that Deb enjoyed drawing and enrolled her in art classes in New York City. However, this was done in a somewhat passive-aggressive manner, with her telling Deb "It's a mother's duty." to help her with her passion. The only person who seems supportive of Deb pursuing her passion of art is her violin teacher, Harry.

Even outside of school, the pressure to excel seems to be everywhere. For example, during a trip to the dentist, Deb encounters the assumption that she is taking honors or AP classes and that she is getting  "As" in every subject. Her dentist's daughter has skipped another grade and may be accepted at Yale and will be playing at Carnegie Hall. Upon learning this, Deb's mother makes her disappointment clearly known to her daughter.

In her relationships with her peers, Deb also struggles, even to maintain the friendships she has. Her two best friends are Kate and Quinn but her relationship with Quinn breaks down when Deb blames her for her suicide attempt. At this point in her life, Deb sees herself as a victim and doesn't really take responsibility for her own choices. Ultimately, it is therapy that helps Deb build the supports she needs, and to work on self-forgiveness, growing in maturity and acceptance, and acknowledging her own mistakes. Deb's memoir demonstrates her remarkable resilience to keep going and to eventually come to find her place. It is a journey that has had many ups and downs.

In her Author's Note at the back, Deb Lee notes that she began working on this memoir in 2018 and that it went through many edits. Despite this, she was able to focus on the messages she wanted to get across to her readers with her memoir. She notes that life is now good and that although her mental health issues may always be present, with therapy she has learned to manage them in a more healthy manner. While Lee has managed to maintain her friendship with Kate, her relationship with her parents remains distant. It is wonderful to read that Lee acknowledges that "they truly have done the best they can, even with the stressful circumstances of immigrating to the States with a toddler and a 10-month-old in their arms." and that they supported her work as an independent illustrator.  Although Lee doesn't really focus on the racism she (and likely her family) experienced in America, this was probably a significant factor in her growing-up experience. 

In Limbo tells Deb's story through the beautiful illustrations which were created using an iPad and iPhone using Procreate, Adobe Photoshop and photos taken by a Canon DSLR and Photobooth. The cover is simply beautiful; the rich colours drawing the reader in.

Book Details:

In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee
New York: First Second     2023
340 pp.

Global by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin

In this graphic novel, two teens living in very different parts of the world, must deal with the effects of climate change.

Twelve-year-old Sami lives with his grandfather in their village on the Bay of Bengal in India. Due to the rising sea level, they once again have to move their home further inland. Each season sees them having to work harder to catch fewer fish, further out into the ocean. Sami has no idea why this is. If they don't catch fish, they cannot eat. The next day Sami and his grandfather land a huge catch of fish.

When they come to shore, they find there are new people from Myanmar in the village. Grandpa gives away some fish for these starving people to eat. But they also see that someone has stolen their home while they were away. While talking to the people, a deadly storm strikes. They take the family who tried to steal their home to the safety of higher ground.

A mudslide following the heavy rains destroys the village and Sami's home. They work together with the new people to clear away the mud and rebuild. Sami finds an old shirt that reminds him of his father and the loss of his parents, and his mother's lucky knife. Against his grandpa's wishes, Sami sneaks out in the canoe to see if he can find the knife on the ocean floor. But his determination to find the knife places him in danger as another storm approaches. Can he make it safely back to shore before disaster strikes?

Fourteen-year-old Yuki lives in a town in northern Canada, inside the Arctic circle. Global warming has changed bear behaviour in the far north. Polar bears and grizzly bears are interbreeding creating a new bear, called grolars who do not have the skills to hunt on ice or catch salmon in the rivers. Yuki wants to do something about this. Lately there have been more bears in town, looking for food. Yuki believes these bears are grolars and not polar bears. With her mother at work, she doesn't go to school but decides to see if she can find out.

Yuki and her dog Lockjaw (Locky) are attempting to track the bear. She hopes to get one good picture of the bear to get one good picture of the bear to prove that the bears are grolars. However, when Yuki and Locky are attacked by a bear she is knocked onto a small ice floe in a river. Locky confronts the bear but is also knocked off. When Yuki awakes, she and Locky now find themselves lost. With few skills to survive in the snowy, cold Arctic, Yuki encounters dangerous ice, methane lakes and hungry bears as she struggles to travel home.

Discussion

In this graphic novel, Colfer and Donkin tackle the topic of global warming and climate change. To accomplish this they present two stories, one set in Canada's high Arctic and the second in India's Bay of Bengal. In these stories, both characters, Yuki in the High Arctic and Sami in the Bay of Bengal relate how their villages have experienced drastic changes due to climate change. 

For Yuki it's the presence of hungry bears in town, bears she believes are grolars - a cross between polar bears and grizzly bears. Yuiki notes that these bears are starving because they do not have the hunting skills to feed themselves. Global seems to suggest that this hybridization is the result of climate change, but in fact hybridization has occurred in the past but generally doesn't persist. In other words, it is an ongoing behaviour between the brown bear and polar bear populations in the Arctic but tends to be temporary. It therefore,  is not necessarily the result of climate change. Dr. Evan Richardson, a polar bear research biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada states that polar bears evolved from brown bears to live in the far north and notes that hybridization has occurred before. According to a recent article by Richardson (2021) there hasn't been a grolar or pizzly observed since 2014.

What has changed however is the number of polar bears sighted in towns like Churchill Manitoba, as they forage for food. The change is due to the changes in the way sea ice is forming and melting in Hudson Bay, possibly as a result of climate change in the high Arctic. Ice is forming earlier in the late fall, allowing for bears to cross over to Churchill on their way to their winter hunting of seals on the ice in Hudson Bay.

Yuki's story does focus on the impact of melting Arctic ice and how this creates problems for bears who need the ice to hunt seals in the winter and early spring. The warming climate has affected the permafrost as well, leading to the abandonment of roads and the release of methane.

For Sami, increased storms and rising sea levels are directly impacting his entire village, meaning that homes are being lost to the sea. Sami has lost his parents during a storm and is now living with his elderly grandpa, trying to earn a living by fishing. The storms are also impacting the fish populations, driving them further from the shore. Sami and his grandpa note that there are fewer fish and they must travel further out to sea to fish. 

Research has shown that the sea level in the Bay of Bengal has been slowly rising over the last few decades and could significantly rise by the end of . This rise in sea level affects the mangrove forest which is located along the Bay of Bengal and which protects the shoreline from the storms. The rise in sea level also means a loss of land to those living on the shores, forcing them inland and changing the dynamics of families and communities. Colfer and Donkin describe many of these impacts through Sami's story. Sami and his grandpa are often forced to move their home inland. Their impact of their displacement is shown when a mudslide after a storm destroys the village. They work for five days to reclaim the land, rebuild and then repair their nets. 

Global offers young readers a good overview of the complexity of the issue of global warming and climate change while telling an exciting and engaging story. It shows how rising sea levels due to warming ocean temperatures and melting glaciers can directly impact many different communities around the world. The focus on this graphic novel is of two communities especially at risk, highlighting the human impact as well as the environmental changes. A map at the back shows the locations of Yuki and Sami, demonstrating that the topic is a worldwide issue. The beautiful illustrations were created  by ink on paper with digital colouring from Photoshop and really enhance the story telling. 

The authors have included a short graphic note at the back titled What is Global Warming? While this covers the basics of global warming, the solutions offered such as moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy are controversial and by no means the definitive answer. It's unlikely that we can power modern society entirely by renewable energy options. Most of the materials we take for granted such as items used in medicine, in construction, agriculture, computers, transportation and other sectors, rely heavily on fossil fuel production. Modern life has come about because of the use of petroleum products. These cannot be easily and quickly replaced. And some forms of renewable energy, such as the production of EV batteries rely heavily on the use to very toxic heavy and rare earth metals. 

While it is evident our climate is different from the climate decades ago, this may also be a natural part of Earth's history, with fluctuations between periods of colder climate and warmer climate. Humans are a part of a much larger system. We need to focus on better, sustainable stewardship of our beautiful planet. Still, Global offers a starting point for young readers to consider the issue, to see the human impact, especially on children and to consider potential solutions to the climate change we are currently experiencing.

Overall, Global is another great effort by this author duo!

Book Details:

Global by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin

Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks Young Readers    2023

Food For Hope by Jeff Gottesfeld

In Food For Hope, the founder of food banks is profiled as well as the topics of food insecurity and poverty.

John van Hengel was waiting in line to enter a dining room for the needy. The food wasn't great - soup, rice and beans  but John was hungry and he was happy to be able to eat.

John had grown up not knowing hunger. His father owned a drugstore and his mother was a nurse. He grew into a handsome, athletic and successful man. He moved to California, got married and had two sons, living in a house near the ocean. But suddenly life got difficult and he lost everything. He found himself so poor, he wasn't able to feed himself. 

At the dining room, John met many of the people also eating there - veterans, homeless, poor families and those with disabilities. With the help of Father Ronald at St. Mary's Church, John found faith, and he was hired at the kitchen. He also found a place to live above a garage.

John wanted to offer the hungry more variety and better food. He drove an old truck to the nearby orchards east of town and with a volunteer crew, collected the grapefruit that had fallen onto the ground. There was so much fruit that he was able to give to other charities. 

At one of the charities John overheard an unemployed mother claim that her family ate very well from the supermarket dumpster. She took a disbelieving John to the dumpster and he saw it was filled with damaged tins and boxes of food as well as bruised but edible vegetables. She told John she wished she could "bank" the extra food.

This encounter gave John the idea of creating a food bank - "a place to share food that's being thrown out." Father Ronald thought it was a wonderful idea and encouraged John to act on it. When John protested that he was too busy, Father Ronald told him it was his choice to act. And so he did.

St. Mary's Food Bank opened in an abandoned bakery six months later. The food came from supermarket warehouses. In its first year of operation, St. Mary's sent one hundred twenty-five tons of food to various charities. Even John's adult sons came to help.

John soon started another charity called Second Harvest which opened many food banks throughout America. Large amounts of food were donated to his charity and volunteers we able to distribute it all.

Discussion

The world's first food bank was St. Mary's Food Bank which opened in 1967 in Phoenix, Arizona. It was founded by John van Hengel.

Van Hengel was born in 1923 in Waupun, Wisconsin. He graduated from Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin and went on to attend graduate school. He then studied broadcasting at UCLA. John had many jobs including working as a magazine publicist, in advertising and even driving a beer truck in Hollywood. He married Beverlee Thompson, a model, and they had two sons, John and Thomas. At this time he was a division sales manager.  

But in 1960 his marriage ended in divorce and van Hengel returned to Wisconsin where he lived a very different type of life. He worked in a quarry and ended up injuring his back breaking up a fight. Van Hengel moved to Arizona, hoping the warm, dry weather would help. A devout Catholic, he took a vow of poverty, volunteering at the St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen and working as Immaculate Heart Church in Phoenix.

As Gottesfeld relates in his picture book, it was an unemployed mother who told Van Hengel about the surplus food being discarded by grocery stores. After convincing store managers to let him have the food, van Hengel had so much food that in 1967 with a three thousand dollar donation from St. Mary's Catholic Church and the use of an abandoned bakery, the St. Mary's Food Bank was born.

In 1975, van Hengel received federal grant money to open more food banks and in 1976 he started Second Harvest. Today the food bank concept has spread throughout the world, often with mixed opinions about whether they are helpful. The first food bank in Canada opened in Edmonton, Alberta in 1981.

Food For Hope offers young readers the back story of the food bank movement. Most young people have heard of food banks, and in these difficult economic times, it's very likely there are many young readers whose families may use food banks to supplement their meals. Many schools in the United States and Canada have food drives, as do many churches and other organizations. This picture book shows how the movement began, with the determination of one man to help those struggling to find enough to eat in a country of plenty. In the process, it also focuses on the topics of food insecurity, poverty and food wastage.  

To write Food For Hope, Gottesfeld  used published newspaper accounts and interviewed van Hengel's sons, John Jr. and Thomas as well as Stephen Morris a friend and volunteer at St. Mary's, and Jen Tresinski, a historian at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Waupun, WI. The colourful digital illustrations were done by Michelle Laurentia Agatha.

To help readers learn more about John van Hengel's life and food banks, Gottesfeld has included an informative Author's Note and Terminology which defines what a food bank is. A timeline of the food bank movement is also included. 

Food For Hope shows how one person can make a huge difference in the world. Food banks have an impact directly on the lives of individuals: children, single parents, the elderly and the very poor. Van Hengel initially felt he was too busy to take on the development of a "food bank" but he was told that the call had come, and he was the one to answer it. The choice was his. As he said, "The poor we shall always have with us, but why the hungry?"

Book Details:

Food For Hope by Jeff Gottesfeld

Creston Books      2023

Nothing Could Stop Her. The Courageous Life of Ruth Gruber by Rona Arato

Ruth Gruber was born in 1911, to David and Gussie Gruber who had immigrated from Russia. Her father owned a liquor store and their family of five children lived above the store which was located in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.  The Grubers were Jewish and in their village, people spoke Yiddish. They celebrated Jewish holidays, but on Saturdays - the Sabbath, Ruth's parents kept their store open. 

In public school, Ruth's "first grade teacher was a young Black woman who taught a class of Jewish, Irish, Polish, and Black girls." Her teacher encouraged Ruth's parents to care and support her because she was sure she was going to be a writer.

Ruth's family moved into a German neighborhood in 1921 where she and her sisters and brothers made good friends. But meanwhile, in Germany, Adolf Hitler was on the rise. 

Ruth was an exceptional student: she entered high school at the age of twelve and New York University at the age of fifteen. While majoring in German, Ruth had many interesting opportunities to explore the world outside of Brooklyn and to enter a summer program at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. In this intensive German program, Ruth did everything in German.

After completing her studies, Ruth won a fellowship with the University of Wisconsin's German department for the full tuition for the year-long master's program in German. She hitchhiked to Wisconsin and initially lived in a dorm named German House. Experiencing anti-Semitism from both the woman in charge of the dorm and the head of the German department, Ruth ended up boarding with a Norwegian family. 

After completing her masters thesis, Ruth won a one-year exchange fellowship to the University of Cologne. But her parents were not keen on her accepting, and tried to dissuade her from going. They were concerned with the rise in anti-Semitism especially since Ruth would be there in 1931. In Cologne, Ruth stayed with Frieda Herz and her family. As the situation in Germany continued to worsen, Ruth decided to stay, especially after she was invited to earn a Ph.D. by Professor Schoffler, head of the English Language and Literature Department. Her research would be original and on English author, Virginia Woolf.

In November, Ruth read Hitler's book, Mein Kampf and was horrified at his beliefs about Jews and race. She personally began to experience the anti-Semitism being pushed by the Nazis. She attended a Nazi rally led by Hitler and had to leave, she was so disgusted.

In  August 1932, Ruth returned home to America. She had earned her Ph.D., the youngest in the world to do so. Ruth began writing articles for the Herald Tribune: this was the beginning of her journalism career. In 1933, Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. In 1935, Ruth received a writing fellowship and she decided to return to Germany to study women in different political systems: fascism in Germany and communism in Russia. At the same time she would be the Herald Tribune's special correspondent while she travelled in Europe. Although her parents were upset with her decision and felt she should marry, Ruth was excited and determined.

When Ruth returned to Germany, she would find it much changed. As the situation in Europe escalated to war, Ruth travelled to Poland where she was forced to leave because of anti-Semitism there, and then onto Russia where she encountered the realities of communism. She would return to Europe near the end of the war to escort a large number of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees seek safety in America and would work tirelessly for them to stay.  This would be the beginning of Ruth Gruber's life work - to advocate through her writing and action for the Jewish communities throughout the world.

Discussion

Author Rona Arato has written an engaging biography of a remarkable woman, who ignored social conventions to live life on her own terms. Told in seventeen short chapters, the author describes Ruth Gruber's early life, her education and travels to Europe in the 1930's and 1940's. The book focuses on the beginning of Ruth Gruber's life and work, but she continued to work on behalf of refugees and various Jewish communities throughout her life.

The author captures Ruth Gruber's sense of adventure, her determination to help others and her openness to learning about other cultures and peoples. Ruth had the courage to actively push back against the anti-Semitism that was spreading throughout Germany. She read Mein Kampf to learn about Hitler's plans for the Jewish population and she refused to accept her friend Johann's belief that the Nazi's were doing good for Germany. Ruth used her journalism skills and her camera to capture what was going on in Europe and for the Jewish refugees in the Oswego camp in Oswego, New York.

Included in the text are separate boxes which highlight specific topics such as Russia's Many Peoples, Siberia and the Soviet Arctic, The Great Depression, and President Truman. Arato's Author's Note at the back, tells the rest of Ruth's story after the war, including photographs. Also included are a Glossary, Source Notes, a Timeline of Ruth's life, a Bibliography, and an Index. The illustrations were rendered digitally by Isabel Munoz.

Rona Arato has authored more than twenty books for children, many of them focusing on human rights issues. Nothing Could Stop Her highlights the determination of Ruth Gruber to help combat anti-semitism. She would not be stopped by Nazis, Communists, the Arctic cold, or even the indifference of people to the plight of the Jewish people.

Book Details:

Nothing Could Stop Her: The Courageous Life of Ruth Gruber by Rona Arato

Minneapolis, MN: Kar-Ben Publishing   2023
139 pp.

Hey Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

The Prologue opens with Jarrett being taught to drive by his grandfather Joe in a cemetery. When they visit Joe's parents' grave, Jarrett wonders where his mother will end up and if he'll ever meet his long absent father in this life.

Jarrett's grandparents, Shirley Ruth Olson and Joseph D. Krosoczka were married on August 28, 1948 in Worcester, Massachusetts. They met in high school. With World War II, Joe enlisted even though he was only seventeen and spent the war building highways in Guam. Shirley broke up with him during the war but after the war they reconnected and were married. 

Joe had various jobs while they started their family: first there was Joey and then Leslie was born in 1955, the year Joe opened his factory. Stephen was born next, and then Shirley miscarried, which really affected her. They then had two more girls, Lynn and then Holly.

Jarrett's mother, Leslie became pregnant. The man she believed to be the father claimed the baby wasn't his. Although her mother was upset, Leslie had the baby, named Jarrett and moved into a house her father bought for her. Life was good for Jarrett and his mother for the first few years, but soon cracks appeared.

After being pulled over by police with Jarrett in the car, Jarret's grandparents decided to seek custody of him. Leslie had been stealing for some time and they didn't want Jarrett to end up in foster care. So Jarrett went to live with Joe and Shirley and their home became his new home. Soon Jarrett was sent to preschool. Life at his grandparents home could be bad at times too. Joe and Shirley would fight when Joe came home drunk, but Shirley also drank and swore.

Jarrett began attending Gates Lane School where he had some wonderful teachers. Jarrett thought his mother would be back but she would never return. They wrote letters to one another, his mother making her own cards. His mother missed his birthdays, but the rest of the family were always there. Jarrett also learned the truth about his mother - that she was an addict and was in jail.

As it turned out, his mother began using drugs when she was thirteen-years-old but over time things got much worse. She stole to buy heroin, had younger sisters return stolen merchandise for the money to buy drugs, and even stole from her own parents. 

But for Jarrett, the lifesaver would turn out to be his artistic talent. He used his art to help him cope as a child. Art classes at Worcester Art Museum, art classes in high school at Holy Name High School, becoming a cartoonist for the school newspaper all helped him develop his gift.

As high school came to a close, Jarrett was able to reach out to his father, establish a relationship with him and accept his mother as she was - his mother who loved him but also a person with an addiction.

Discussion

Hey Kiddo is a poignant memoir of cartoonist, artist, Jarrett Krosoczka's growing upin his grandparents home because his mother Leslie was a heroin addict. The graphic memoir which is divided into eight chapters, begins with the story of his grandparents Joe and Shirley and follows their early family life, his mother's unplanned pregnancy and abandonment by Jarrett's father and his growing-up years until college.

Jarrett's memoir explores the disappointment and loss he experienced when his mother spiralled out of control because of her heroin addiction, resulting in her being in jail or in treatment programs. This resulted in him having to live with his grandparents and her missing birthdays, graduations and other special family times. But it also chronicles the love and care his grandparents gave him and his journey towards a relationship with his father, Richard Hennessy.

Initially Jarrett was angry and felt he never wanted to meet his father. Unlike his grandfather however, Jarrett believed in facing the ghosts of the past. One of them was his father. When he learned his father's name, his absence became a presence to him. Jarrett didn't know what to do with this information so he did nothing.

However, Jarrett's father wrote him a letter apologizing but Jarrett wasn't keen on responding. It was a transformative experience at a camp for children with cancer that made Jarrett wonder if he had siblings through his father. This was the motivation for Jarrett reaching out to his father and eventually establishing a lasting relationship with him.

The memoir also explores the positive effect art had on his life, eventually becoming his life's work. For Jarrett, art was a lifeline that allowed him to cope with what was happening in his life. It allowed him an escape and some control, something children and teens do not have. Drawing was initially as way to get attention as a child, but eventually evolved into a way to deal with life as a teen.

Despite all the challenges Jarrett encountered growing up, the memoir ends on a hopeful, positive tone with the author recognizing what he does have in his life at the time of his high school graduation.  In his Author's Note, Jarrett tells readers the important events in his life post-high school. He writes that what happens in your childhood and teen years does not have to be perpetuated into adulthood. He also mentions the toll addiction took on his mother.

There is also an interesting note on the art in the graphic memoir. Jarrett's grandfather always wore a pocket square in his breast pocket of his suit jacket. After his grandfather passed away, Jarrett's then eighteen-month-old daughter Zoe chose a burnt orange pocket square as something she would always keep. The burnt orange became part of the limited palette for the memoir and is the colour used in the title, also a reference to what Jarrett was often called by his grandparents.

Hey Kiddo offers a touching glimpse into a childhood framed by addiction, loss, but also forgiveness, acceptance and the meaning of family. The dedication says it all " For every reader who recognizes this experience, I see you."

Book Details:

Hey Kiddo. How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

New York: Scholastic, Graphix     2018

299 pp.

Cardboard City by Katarina Jovanovic

Thirteen-year-old Nikola Seich loves to play the trumpet and he's good at it.  He learned from his grandfather and then when he died last year, from his neighbor's brother, Bosco. Nikola lives with his Baba and his older sister Saida in Cardboard City, located underneath a bridge in Belgrade. 

At the summer festival, Rika who plays with his trumpet quartet, notices Nikola mesmerized by the music and making motions like he is actually playing a trumpet. When he meets Nikola, Rika tells him that his quartet will be playing at the big brass festival in the town of Guca. Nikola is very interested in attending, so Rika tells him if he can get permission he can travel with him to the festival. Rika takes Nikola to have dinner with him and his girlfriend Almira in their trailer. Nikola loves the food she serves them She tells Nikola they will leave early the next day.

Nikola goes home to his grandmother, Ramina whom he calls Baba, and tells her his dream of becoming a trumpet player. He tells Baba how Bosco taught him more about playing the trumpet and how to play the piece, Carnival in Paris. To help him understand the music he was playing, Bosco also showed him pictures of the city of Paris. Baba has Nikola play for her on a neighbor's trumpet. The trumpet that his grandfather had was taken by his sister Saida when she recently ran away. Baba is so impressed with Nikola's playing that the next day she takes him to Rika. After satisfying herself that he is trustworthy, she gives her permission for Nikola to travel to Guca.

When they arrive in Guca, Rika and Almira's truck and trailer is not allowed into the town but forced to park in a field. To Nikola, the area around Guca smells fresh and different from his home in Cardboard City. While Rika and Nikola are in Guca for the festival, Almira goes to a restaurant down the road to get clean water for making soup. There she sees a young Romani girl singing at the bar in front of a group of rowdy men. Realizing what is going to happen to this young girl, Almira intervenes and takes her back to the trailer, feeds and clothes her. She learns that the girl, named Saida,  has run away from home after her Baba wanted her to get married or work as a house cleaner and that she has a younger brother named Nikola. To Almira, this is a strange co-incidence in names with the boy they have taken to Guca with them.

After playing on the main stage, Nikola finds himself being asked to play when he is on the street and earning money. Then he meets a trumpet player, Drago Nadic, who won the Golden Trumpet last year. Drago is so impressed with Nikola's playing that he offers him a chance to play with his band on the main stage the next day.  They part ways but it is so late that Nikola cannot find his way home.

Rika and another  man who is Romani, return to the trailer carrying Nikolai who has become very ill.  Saida is shocked to see it is her brother and Rika and Almira realize they have taken in a brother and sister. But the festival and Saida's refusal to return to Cardboard City will offer new possibilities for the young Romani brother and sister.

Discussion

Cardboard City presents the plight of the Romani people in Eastern Europe. The novel is set in a real-life slum known as Cardboard City which existed up until 2009 when the residents were removed. It is also a story about all people who are impoverished, marginalized and discriminated against.

Cardboard City (Karton siti) was located in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, beneath the Gazela and Stari zeleznicki bridges, close to the upscale, five-star hotels,  Hyatt Regency Belgrade and the Continental Hotel Belgrade. In 2007 there were just under one thousand people living in Cardboard City, all of them Roma who made their living by collecting garbage. The slum had no roads, running water, electricity or sewers. Many of the dwellings were constructed of cardboard and other non-building materials.

In 2009, the residents were removed, after several unsuccessful attempts. Some were moved to containers placed across varies Belgrade suburbs while others were dispersed throughout municipalities outside of Belgrade.

With Cardboard City as the setting, Jovanovic presents her readers with a portrayal of the Roma people, how they are shunned and mistreated in society which offers them no opportunity to escape a life of poverty.  Readers learn of the terrible living conditions which are described by the characters in the novel. Nikola talks about working all day to collect paper and boxes from schools, parking lots and other places, how his shoes wear out and he manages to find another pair in the rubbish, and how they often have little to eat, sometimes only bread with lard for lunch.  Saida describes how she steals flowers from the graveyards and sells them to people at restaurants. She talks about riding the streetcar and almost stealing the wallet of a rich lady who yells at her to get a job and that she is "Lazy Gypsies. You only steal and beg."

Neither Nikola nor Saida attend school. We learn that they did attend at one time but that Baba pulled both out after they were "humiliated for being Romani". Nikola remembers the humiliation he felt because no one would sit with him, except one girl. "They all laughed and some pretended to gag.  What Nikola wanted most at that moment was to crawl into a deep hole in the ground or to run away from the long-necked teacher and the big white building full of chalk, and the children with clean hands and white collars, who ate white bread for lunch." 

The isolation made Nikola feel different, but not in a positive way. "One day, while Nikola was walking in the school hallway, some gadji mothers moved their children protectively away from him. He suddenly felt along, like a strange wild plant."  Because they were not attending school, Nikola and Saida lived in fear that they would be taken to an orphanage, "...one of those big buildings with windows with bars on them from which Romani orphans could never escape." 

The situation for his sister Saida is much more dire. She runs away from her home in Cardboard City because Baba wants her to marry. Many Romani girls marry by the age of fifteen. She is at risk of being trafficked and is likely in that situation when she goes to Milos apartment. When Saida runs away from Milos' apartment, and is standing on the Gazela Bridge, Saida believes she will never find a place in Milos' world. "The water under the bridge had the colour of coal - visible through the rising smoke of burning tires, tall and surreal, were the tents and makeshift huts of the encampment spread out before her....she thought that maybe it was her destiny to live here forever. She resigned herself to a life there - the buckets, the walk to the fountain to get the water, the leaky hut, selling flowers, roaming the gloomy alleys to look for food."  

Almira finds her singing in a seedy bar, on the verge of being abused by a group of men drinking. Thankfully she saves Saida from that fate. Saida tells Almira about her life and that she survives through her dreams - something she calls "dream mending". We know that Saida dreams of a better life because she tells Baba so: "...I dream about food. I cannot think of anything else. I don't have the money to buy new clothes, or even soap. I want to live in a clean apartment, to smell of flower-scented shampoo and face creams. I want to go to school and eat lunch in a real kitchen. It doesn't seem to matter how hard I try or what I do, I have to live in this smoke den and eat your devil goulash."

It is Almira who effects change in Nikola and Saida's lives by working to obtain guardianship over the two, by taking them in and sending them to school. She comes to understand that their lives are very different but that despite this they are like people everywhere. "Almira came to understand that their lives - with their own laws, customs and values - though laced with sorrow, were rich with dreams."

As Jovanovic mentions in the front matter to the novel, "...These events could be about marginalized and impoverished people anywhere in the world. It could take place in the suburbs of Rome, in the favelas of Sao Paolo, in Dharavi in Mumbai, in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver - or in refuge camps anywhere in the world." Like the characters in Cardboard City, many marginalized, impoverished people do not attend school and therefore cannot improve their lives, do not have enough to eat and therefore are often ill or have much shortened lives, and often work hard for very little income. They may also use alcohol or drugs to escape the trauma and difficulties of poverty. The author does include a very informative Historical Note on the Romani people at the back.

Cardboard City is a short read, well written, with an engaging storyline that highlights the issues of poverty, marginalized communities and discrimination. Cardboard City is derived from a previous novel, Kartonac, written by the author in Serbian in 2009.

Book Details:

Cardboard City by Katarina Jovanovic

Vancouver: Tradewind Books     2023
129 pp.

Lost In Taiwan by Mark Crilley

Paul is visiting his older brother, Theo who is living in Taiwan. Paul has been there for four days but has done nothing but sit on Theo's couch, withdrawn and with attitude. He was sent seven thousand miles across the ocean by his dad, who thought it might be a good idea. Theo's girlfriend arrives early and overhears their argument. Although she is friendly towards Paul, he's glad when they both leave. 

Alone, Paul decides to hunt down a Nintendo Swoop after being encouraged by a random online friend. After searching online, Paul believes he's found one at Future Now Electronics and sets out to find it. However, after travelling all over the city, Paul finds that the shop he thought had a Nintendo Swoop, finds it is a children's toy. Furious at his friend Kyle, Paul isn't paying attention while walking and drops his phone on the street. Without his phone, Paul has no way to find his way back to Theo's apartment. Completely distraught, Paul sits down lost. That is until a young Taiwanese girl named Peijing comes along.

With Peijing's help, Paul finds his way back to Theo, but not before becoming friends with Peijing, eating real Taiwanese food at her aunt and uncle's shui jiao restaurant, meeting her grandparents, going to a temple and meeting her cousin, Wallace.

Experiencing life in Taiwan offers Paul a new perspective on life and gains him a real friend in Pei-Jing.

Discussion

The beautiful artwork of Mark Crilley tells the physical and inner journey of a young American boy when he becomes lost in Taiwan in five chapters over the course of one day.

Paul, who is visiting his older brother Theo, admits he has no friends and simply wants to sit on the couch for the entire two weeks he's there. When he gets lost, it is a Taiwanese girl, Pei-Jing who offers to help the distraught American. 

Pei-Jing who has to deliver star fruit to her family, takes Paul around Taiwan, introducing him to her culture: the delicious food, her elderly grandparents, and her religious beliefs and her cousin Wallace, who eventually helps Paul home. 

For Paul there are two journeys he experiences: the physical journey to get back to his brother Theo's apartment and the internal journey where he is forced to relate to others because he's lost in a strange city. Pei-Jing and Wallace help Paul with both journeys.

Pei-Jing however has the more significant impact as she challenges the assumptions Paul, as an American has about Taiwanese people and their culture. When he first meets Pe-Jing he is astonished she speaks English. When she takes him to her aunt and uncle's shui jiao restaurant, Pei-Jing encourages Paul to try to pronounce the Mandarin words properly. A visit to her elderly grandparents shows Paul the value and respect Pei-Jing has for them. At the Buddhist temple, Paul's view that Pei-Jing's beliefs are "exotic" upset her and she tells him, "Your culture isn't the 'normal' culture. And mine isn't the 'weird' culture." Gradually, Paul comes to appreciate Pei-Jing's culture, enjoying the food, appreciative of how complex the Chinese characters are, and experiencing the beauty of the rice fields and the mountains. 

Pei-Jing and Wallace are stunned to learn that Paul has few friends. But when he tells them that his fear of being rejected leads him to leave friends if there are any signs of conflict, Pei-Jing tells Paul that overcoming these obstacles makes a friendship stronger. At first Paul is upset but later realizes that his fear of failure has paralyzed his life. The helping isn't all one-sided though. Paul encourages Pei-Jing not to give up on her dream to own a tea shop in Taiwan where people can have real British tea.

Author-illustrator Mark Crilley has crafted a touching story of self-discovery when  young boy whose lost his way in life gets hopelessly lost in a strange country and must rely on the kindness of a stranger to find his way home. It is through a blossoming friendship and experiencing a new culture that he finds both himself and his way back home.

Crilley, like the character of Theo in the graphic novel, taught English in Taiwan for two years in the 1970's. The experience  in a new culture motivated Crilley to do pen-and-ink drawings while in Taiwan, several of which grace the intro to each chapter. Like the main character Paul, Crilley found the Taiwanese people kind and generous. But unlike Paul, Crilley was eager to learn Mandarin and experience the culture of Taiwan.

Lost In Taiwan is an ode to the resilient, courageous people of Taiwan, and to the possibility of friendship that can exist between peoples from different cultures. 

Book Details:

Lost In Taiwan by Mark Crilley
New York: Little, Brown and Company    2023

245 pp.

Kimiko Murakami: A Japanese-Canadian Pioneer by Haley Healey

This picture book is the story of one Japanese-Canadian's determination to persevere in the face of intolerance and difficult circumstances.

Kimiko was born in a village near Vancouver to a parents who were fishers, then farmers, selling their chickens, fruit and vegetables to hotels. They moved to Salt Spring Island when she was five-years-old. Kimiko grew up and married Katsuyori and had a total of six children. Kimiko and Katsuyori worked on the family farm until the Second World War when things changed.

Under new rules that applied only to Japanese Canadians, all people of Japanese heritage were taken by ship to Vancouver. Kimiko and her family were taken to Hastings Park where they were forced to live in barns that were meant for the animals there. 

During this difficult time, Kimiko remembered the Japanese word, "ganbaru" which means "to push on through hard times and never give up." Kimiko remembered this as her family was sent first to an internment camp in Greenwood, British Columbia and then to a sugar beet farm in Magrath, Alberta.

Life at Magrath was hard as their shack had no electricity, no running water and it was very cold. They were eventually sent to another camp in British Columbia.

When the war ended, Kimiko and her family were told they could go to Japan or live east of the Rocky Mountains. However, she and her family were determined to return to Salt Spring Island. To accomplish this goal, they saved money by opening a restaurant in Cardston, Alberta. Eventually, they were allowed to return to Salt Spring Island.

However, when they returned to Salt Spring Island, they discovered that their land had been sold and that the Japanese cemetery was filled with garbage. They were not treated well either by the residents. In spite of this, Kimiko and her family rebuilt their life, buying new land and returning to farming. Kimiko's children grew up and remembering their own hard times they helped others by donating some of their land for homes for people who were struggling.

Discussion

The focus on this biography of Kimiko Murakami is her determination to remain strong during hard times and not give despite all the obstacles racism placed in her life. 

When her family was forcibly removed from their farm and sent to various internment camps, she kept her hope alive that some day she would be able to return. After enduring terrible conditions during the war, Kimiko and her family rebuilt their lives, literally from the ground up, repurchasing land that was stolen from them. What is even more remarkable is the forgiveness and charity they gave in return for the racism and hatred they experienced! This is evident with the gift of land they gave when others were struggling later on.

Kimiko was born to Kumanosuke and Riyo Okano in 1904 in Stevenson, B.C. The Okano family moved to Salt Spring Island in 1909 but visited Japan in 1911 or 1912. According to the Salt Spring Island Archives, Kumanosuke owned considerable land and was determined to become an integral part of the local community. He encouraged the Japanese to donate to churches, give food to those in need and help fight forest fires on the island. 

Kimiko and her sister spent some years in Japan under the care of their grandmother. Being left in Japan upset Kimiko for the rest of her life. Kimiko returned to Canada in 1919. When she visited Japan in 1925, she married Katsuyori Murakami and they returned to Canada. In 1932 they purchased land on Sharp Road on Salt Spring Island. They worked hard to clear the land and develop a prosperous farm where they grew tomatoes in greenhouses. Their berries and other vegetables and fruits were sold in Vancouver and Victoria. The quality was so high that their berries were served to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth when they visited Victoria in 1939.

After enduring internment in several prison camps for Canadians of Japanese heritage during World War II, Kimiko and her husband eventually saved enough money to return to Salt Spring Island in 1954. Kimiko was not keen to return. Unfortunately, the racial prejudice that Kimiko and her family experienced during the war continued for many years after, as they sought to re-establish their farm on the island. 

The focus of Healey's biography is on Kimiko's perseverance, her determination to continue moving forward despite hardship and ongoing prejudice, even in the post-war years. It was her spirit of ganbaru that helped her through the most difficult times. In this regard, Kimiko is a role model for young readers showing them they can succeed even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Kimiko's story is illustrated with the colourful, digitally rendered artwork of Kimiko Fraser. There is a Historical Timeline of events in Kimiko's life. The inclusion of photographs of Kimiko and her family would have been a wonderful addition to this picture book. Healey's book offers younger readers the opportunity to explore the Japanese internment and the effects of racist policy. It's important to celebrate Canadians like Kimiko, who despite experiencing profound intolerance and racism, worked to make Canada a better country.

Book Details:

Kimiko Murakam: A Japanese-Canadian Pioneer by Haley Healey
Toronto: Heritage House Publishing Co.       2023

Extra Life. The Astonishing Story of How We Doubled Our Lifespan by Steven Johnson

"The average person born in the United States a century ago could expect to live a little more than forty years. Today that number is just below eighty years. And Americans are four times more likely to live into their hundreds than they were a few decades ago." 

In Extra Life, science author Steven Johnson explores the many reasons why this is so beginning with the discovery of a way to vaccinate against the speckled monster, as smallpox was sometimes called. In Chapter 1, Johnson delves into the earliest history of how mankind worked to defeat the scourge of smallpox. 

In Chapter Two, solving the mystery of cholera, a disease common in the crowded cities of the nineteenth century, which killed millions.  In this chapter, Johnson focuses on the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. 

Chapter 3 explores the efforts of W.E.B. Du Bois, a civil rights activist and author to improve the lives of Black Americans. Du Bois mapped data in an area of Philadelphia called the Seventh Ward, that was the city's largest Black community. His research demonstrated that African Americans were "dying at a rate about 5 percent higher than their white neighbors." Du Bois showed that this shortened life expectancy was due to poor living conditions, a consequence of the way American society was organized.

The pasteurization of milk is discussed in Chapter 4. In the United States, drinking a glass of milk in the 19th century could kill you, especially if you were a child. As cities grew larger, providing safe milk became a serious problem without refrigeration. Johnson goes into detail on how many cities had large herds of cows, and the practices to produce large quantities of milk that ended up killing children. Louis Pasteur's discovery that heating liquids killed off germs was only the beginning. It would be a half century later before pasteurization was a standard practice. But it's implementation lowered the death rate in children.

In Chapter 5, Beyond-The-Placebo-Effect, the regulation and testing of new drugs is examined. Many new drugs were never tested and only pulled off shelves when there were deaths. It would be well into the 20th century before RCTs and other practices were implemented to ensure drug testing and efficacy.

In Chapter 6, the discovery and impact of antibiotics is detailed while Chapter 7 delves into the development of safety features in cars, as automobiles became the predominant mode of transportation. Chapter 8, Feed the World explores the decline of famine due to our ability to produce ammonium nitrate (a compound in artificial fertilizer) and to mass-produce meat protein. In Chapter 9, Johnson reviews all of the amazing innovations that have increased human life expectancy as well as suggesting that we need to continue working and discovering new ways to improve health and quality of life.

Discussion

Extra Life offers younger readers a shorter version of Johnson's book of the same name. In this version of Extra Life, Johnson provides summaries of the same major innovations that improved quality of life, health care and safety, that he explored in his book for adult readers. In considering these innovations, Johnson delves deeper into the backstory, either identifying unsung heroes or exploring how such innovations became a matter of public policy.

One such unsung hero was Frances Oldham Kelsey who refused to approve the use of thalidomide as a sleeping pill in the United States, thus saving tens of thousands of babies from being born with malformed limbs. Another little known hero was Nathan Straus, a German immigrant to America, who was deeply concerned about child mortality and who was determined to provide a supply of safe milk to young children. He not only funded pasteurization plants but fought to have unpasteurized milk outlawed. 

An example of how Johnson delves deeper into the backstory is the story of the development of the smallpox vaccination. In Extra Life, readers will learn about Lady Mary Montagu, who contracted smallpox at the age of twenty-five and survived to travel with her husband to the Ottoman Empire in 1716. There she learned about a custom of exposing children to smallpox - a procedure now known as variolation. It was this technique, brought to England by Montagu that allowed Edward Jenner to develop his first vaccination for smallpox. As Johnson writes, "On the one hand, we have the satisfying narrative of brilliant Edward Jenner, inventing vaccination on one day in 1796/ On the other, we have a much more complicated story, where part of an idea emerges halfway around the world and migrates from culture to culture through word of mouth, until a perceptive and influential young woman takes note of it and imports it to her home country, where it slowly begins to take root, ultimately allowing a country doctor to make a key improvement on the technique after decades of using on his own patients."

One of the main points Johnson makes about the innovations that contributed to increasing our lifespan, is that these are often not just the work of one "genius" or brilliant scientist, but often a collaborative effort. A perfect example of this is the discovery of penicillin, which is attributed to Robert Fleming. However, the story is much more complicated than that and as Johnson writes, "The triumph of penicillin is actually one of the great stories of international multidisciplinary collaboration. It is a story of a network, not an eccentric genius. Fleming was a member of that network, but only one of many. He seemed to have not entirely grasped the true potential of what he had stumbled upon."

It's clear from Johnson's book, that the innovations he highlights have made significant strides in lengthening lives around the globe. And he encourages his readers to be the next generation in this constant goal, of improving lives. Extra Life is engaging, informative and filled with many interesting but little-known stories that make it a wonderful read. 

Johnson includes a section on Recommended Reading, Notes for each of the chapters, and a Bibliography. This well-written, short book is highly recommended for young readers who are interested in medical history, and public health. 

Book Details:

Extra Life. The Astonishing Story of How We Doubled Our Lifespan by Steven Johnson
New York: Viking Life      2023
121 pp.