Welcome to the NH Youth Services blog. I’ve been slow to the blogging scene, but one of my new year’s resolutions is to put more effort into this website that I began some time ago. I hope to discuss issues of interest to NH youth services librarians and expand on ideas that are raised in other venues.
This first entry of the new year will review two books: Sign Language by Amy Ackley and The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont by Victoria Griffith and illustrated by Eva Montanari.
Sign Language is a novel geared to teens in grades 7-10. The story is told through the eyes of Abby North, an adolescent who is struggling with her father’s illness and then his death by cancer. At the start of the book, Abby seems like a “typical” 8th grader: she plays sports, takes schoolwork seriously and enjoys the company of her best friend Spence while daydreaming about her brother’s popular friend. Her world unravels, though, as her father is diagnosed with a cancer that doesn’t respond to treatment. Abby’s home becomes a hospice, and the family is torn apart as they each adjust in different ways to Sam North’s deteriorating health and his death. Ackley’s novel explores the pain of such an experience with honesty. Although the book has an element of predictability—Abby realizes almost too late that Spence, not the boy of her dreams, is her true love—the story takes on the important themes of death and love and adolescence with candor and tenderness. This is one YA novel where parents and adults are not the enemy; the adults are fleshed out with both strengths and flaws. This book should find a good audience among young teens who like realistic fiction as well as those who may be dealing with the death of a parent.
A nonfiction picture book, The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont tells the story of Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont, who is credited with being the first person to lift off and land a completely self-propelled airplane. (The Wright Brothers’ first flight three years earlier had been helped by a rail system that propelled the plane forward.) The book evokes the colorful pilot who flew dirigibles to run everyday errands around Paris and met up with Jacques Cartier, who gave the first men’s wristwatch to Santos-Dumont so that he could easily clock his time while flying. Montanari’s illustrations compliment the text fairly well, capturing period details and even the sense of motion. I think she might have included fewer pictures of people and more of the flying machines, but this is a minor criticism. Overall, the book is a delightful look at an important person in aviation history. At one point in the book, Alberto says “these machines will mean the end of all wars. Once people are able to fly to different countries, they will see how much we have in common. We will all be friends.” Sadly, this prophecy went unrealized, and airplanes were used for much darker purposes during the years following Santos-Dumont’s first flight. Griffith’s book is suited for readers ages 7-10.