Archive | April, 2014

The 50th Blog Post: Or Here’s What You Might Want to Check Out for Book Club or Summer Reading

11 Apr

(Fanfare!   Cheers from the crowd!  Huge rounds of applause!)

This is it!  What you’ve been waiting for!  The Hoboken Library’s 50th  post to the Staff Picks Blog.

You may wonder how I earned the great honor of writing this post.  It was competitive, you know.  Ultimately, however, I was the only one who had time, this week, to come up with an entry.

In honor of this occasion, I will NOT share with you a topical list of books on potty training, the death of pets, or any other book topics normally associated with the Children’s Department.  Instead, I will tell you about adult books I occasionally read in what I laughingly refer to as “my spare time,” and when my dog isn’t stepping on my Kindle to prevent me from reading.  These are all works of popular and current fiction (with one notable exception that I’ve been touting as a “must read,” for the past five years).  They reflect my tastes and sensibilities but, honestly, I’ve seldom had anyone tell me that they didn’t like a book I’ve recommended.  As I tell my staff often, the one thing I know how to do is pick good books.   Happy (summer) reading and discussing:

Fallen Women, by Sandra Dallas.

fallen-women

Having lived in Denver for thirty years, I have a particular love for Sandra Dallas’ books that recall the city’s somewhat wild and wooly past.  And wild it was as the nouveau riche try to hide their sometimes less than sterling pasts with new money made in the mines.  In 1885, Beret Osmundsen, a New York social worker, comes to Denver to claim the body of her younger sister, Lillie, who has been murdered while working as a “soiled dove” on Denver’s infamous Halliday Street.  Beret and Lillie were estranged because Lillie seduced Beret’s easily seducible husband. While staying with her aspirational aunt and uncle, Beret seeks out a detective, Mick McCauley, to help her investigate Lillie’s death and finds that Lillie’s downfall lies dangerously close to home.  Most of Dallas’ books are strictly historical novels, but this one adds an element of suspense that makes the history lesson go down easily.  Read this book if you are a fan of Alice Hoffman or Diana Mott Davidson.

The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, by Fannie Flagg.

all-girls-filling-station

Most people associate this author with the book, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.  However, Fannie Flagg has had a memorable career both as a writer and as a performer, having come to New York, originally, as the winner of a Celeste Holm look-alike contest.  (I’m sorry.  If you don’t know the name Celeste Holm, search IMDB and then immediately find the film Gentleman’s Agreement to see what a Best Supporting Actress really looks like).   In this book, Ms. Flagg again refers to her native Alabama where we meet Mrs. Sookie Poole who is having a partial nervous breakdown from marrying off the last of her three daughters and dealing with her contentious and more than a bit eccentric mother, Lenore Simmons Krackenberry.  While researching family history, Sookie discovers that her mother does not come from the rich Southern background she has represented, but descends from a mid-western Polish family with a gaggle of beautiful daughters who ran a women’s filling station during World War II, and also served the country as women pilots.  Sookie finds an unexpected connection to Fritzi Jurdabralinski, a feisty aviatrix with a fascinating family story to tell.  Read if you liked The Help or Where the Heart Is.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things, by Alice Hoffman.*

museum-of-extraordinary-things

Coralie Sardie lives and works in a Coney Island freak show.  Born with Syndactyly, a condition that causes her to have webbing between her fingers, her father, a sinister figure, keeps her a virtual prisoner as he displays her as The Mermaid Girl is a giant fish tank in his boardwalk show.  Coralie bonds with other performers in the show and they become a pseudo family, supporting each other in the face of her father’s cruelty.  Then, one night while swimming in the Hudson, Coralie chances on Eddie Cohen, a photographer seeking a new life away from his Orthodox Jewish roots on the Lower East Side. More than just a photographer, Eddie is a sort of “seeker of lost persons,” and becomes embroiled in a search for a missing woman after the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire.  With Coralie’s help, Eddie solves the mystery of Hannah, the shirtwaist girl, and also reveals his relationship to the Triangle Fire and the family who owned the factory.  As with all of Alice Hoffman’s books, there is a darkness to this story but also incredible detail and authenticity in the descriptions of early 20th century New York.  The tragedy of the lives of people who can earn a living only by being “freaks” is extremely sad but also inspiring in the way that they support and love one another. Read if you like Neil Gaiman or Isabel Allende.

When She Woke, by Hillary Jordan.

when-she-woke

To me, this is the most thought-provoking book of the last five years.  In a re-imagination of The Scarlet Letter, Jordan tells the story of Hannah Payne, a religiously raised teenager who finds herself pregnant by the powerful head of her fundamentalist church.  In this dystopian world, much of the population has been wiped out by plague, and many more of the females have been rendered sterile.  Abortion is illegal and considered murder so, when Hannah has an abortion and is caught, she is branded a criminal and her skin is genetically altered red so that her crime is obvious to everyone.  Sent to a halfway house for fallen girls, Hannah is abused by her caretakers and leaves with the goal of hooking up with an underground network dedicated to getting “chromes” into Canada.  Along the way, Hannah reunites with her lover and finds that he has feet of clay.  Obviously, the center of this tale is political and feminist and will engender strong feelings on both sides of the issue.  The book also addresses LGBT rights and many other provocative issues that are present in every day’s headlines.  Prepare yourself for a heated discussion, but one of the most engrossing stories, if you choose this book.  Read if you liked The Hunger Games or The Handmaid’s Tale.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin.

storied-life-of-aj-fikry

This is a Valentine of a book.  A.J. Fikry is the most unexpected of romantic heroes.  He is a curmudgeonly widower living on an isolated New England island and running a bookstore that no one patronizes.  His late wife was the magnet that drew people into the store.  A.J. was merely the man in the back room. However, her death causes him to assume a more active role in the operation of the store and it’s not going well.  Then, one day, a customer leaves A.J. a “package,” a small, bi-racial child who, the mother says, should be raised in a bookstore.  At first, A.J. does everything he can to divest himself of Maya.  However, slowly he is drawn into fatherhood and, by association, into the life of the island town.  He also has an encounter with a sales rep, Amelia, who comes to the island only once a year, but finds herself falling in love with the older, evolving owner of the remote bookstore.  This book will leave you with a warm and mellow feeling about the transformative power of love, family, and community.  Read this book if you like the novels of Elizabeth Berg or enjoyed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Some of these titles may provoke your reading group to have heated discussions, while others may cause more heart-felt consensus about characters, themes, plots, historical accuracy and current events.  Whichever books you choose, I hope you’ll visit the library and ask our staff for further recommendations to expand your reading horizons.  Also, don’t forget that we now have an adult Summer Reading Program, as well as programs to encourage children and young adults to stay in touch with books when school is on recess.  The Hoboken Library is a reading oasis for all of our valued patrons.

-Written by Lois Rubin Gross, Senior Children’s Librarian

*Ed. note: This is the second time a staff member recommended this particular book. That means it must be good. 🙂

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Lights Among the Nations

2 Apr

This year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will remember the 12 million people killed by the Nazis during the Days of Remembrance (April 27 to May 4).  Like many Jewish commemorations, this is not a fixed holiday since Yom HaShoah, the Jewish day in which Jews around the world remember the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah follows a lunar calendar.

Many people who wish to introduce the subject of the Holocaust to young people worry about how to approach the subject and at what age.  There are actually picture books for young readers that address the events of the period, and also chapter books such as the award winning, Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry.  However, for sensitive children, even these books may present challenges for caring adults who want to discuss human injustice and intolerance with readers.  Since the 1950s, it is common for young people to first learn the story of the Holocaust by reading Anne Frank’s diary, arguably the most famous document to come out of World War II.

Another way to approach the subject is to talk to children about the good people, the Righteous Gentiles, who saved the Nazis’ targets by hiding friends and neighbors, or helping them escape. By discussing and reading about the heroic saviors of the Holocaust, adults open the door to discuss why people make the choices they do, and what we as individuals can do to prevent aggression and bullying even in our everyday lives.

The following books are mostly for ages eleven and above.  I suggest that any child who reads about the Holocaust also have the opportunity to discuss their inevitable questions so that the lessons of those dark days are not lost.

Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family, by Miep Gies.

Image via Amazon

This adult book would also be suitable for Young Adults, ages 12 and up.  Mrs. Gies was an employee in the pectin factory owned by Otto Frank. When the Nazis invaded Holland, Mrs. Gies, an Austrian citizen, joined several other employees in hiding the Frank family and four other people in a secret apartment hidden behind a bookcase. Mrs. Gies has become synonymous with rescuers for her efforts to feed and protect the Franks, even to walking into German headquarters to beg for their freedom after they were captured.

Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story, by Ken Mochizuki.

passage-to-freedom

In the annals of Holocaust rescuers, the efforts of Chiune Sugihara are noteworthy because of his selfless dedication of this diplomat to the people he saved.  Assigned to a Lithuanian embassy during the war, Sugihara came from Samurai stock and took seriously the charge to defend the helpless.  When Lithuanian Jews lined up in front of his embassy asking for passage out of Europe, Sugihara signed exit visas for a solid month without rest and against the orders of the Japanese Imperial government. For his dedication to humanity, he was imprisoned, sent home in disgrace, and lost his career and fortune.  His heroic deeds were not recognized until two decades after the war.

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Survivor, by Irene Gut Opdyke.

in-my-hands

As a nursing student in Poland, at the beginning of the war, Opdyke was captured and brutalized by Russian soldiers, only to be later taken as slave labor by the Germans.  In her post as the housekeeper for a Nazi officer, she was able to hide Jews in the officer’s own home, but at a cost.  The officer took her as his mistress in exchange for protecting the people Opdyke was determined to save.  A compelling memoir for Young Adults and adults.

Irena Sendler and the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto, by Susan Goldman Rubin.

irena-sendler

Irena’s Jars of Secrets, by Marcia K. Vaughan.

irenas-jar-of-secrets

Both of these books detail the life of a Polish social worker who determinedly saved the children of the Warsaw Ghetto.  Sendler repeatedly went into the ghetto to work with families and arranged for children to be smuggled out in boxes and coffins, and hidden with Christian families.  Her efforts are particularly remarkable in that she hid the names of all the children she saved and the families with whom they were placed so that, after the war, they could be reunited with their surviving families.

The Champion of Children: The Story of Janusz Korczak, by Tomek Bogacki.

champion-of-children

Dr. Janusz Korczak dedicated his life to improving the world and living conditions for children.  In 1912, he opened a special orphanage for children that was governed by the children themselves who served on an institutional parliament, a court, and wrote for a newspaper. When the Nazis herded Jews into the ghetto, Dr. Korczak accompanied the children in his orphanage into confinement and, when they were taken to Treblinka, he went with them so that they would be less afraid. He died with his young charges in the concentration camp.

Hidden, by Loic Dauvillier, Marc Lizano, and Greg Salsedo.

hidden

This is a brand new entry to Holocaust literature and in a graphic novel format that will intrigue young readers.  It is also a heartbreaking story of a Parisian child who is hidden by neighbors and then by a rural family.  While the child, Dounia, survives the war traumatized but whole, her mother returns gravely changed and her father is killed. Years later, Dounia, now a grandmother, shares the story of her hidden childhood with her own granddaughter.

The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust, by Karen Ruelle and Deborah De Saix.

grand-mosque-of-paris

This is an important story because it emphasizes the fact that humanity came from unexpected sources during the Holocaust.  The Grand Mosque of Paris, the central place of worship for Paris’ community of North African Muslims, became an unexpected hiding place for Jews during the war. The French Vichy government collaborated with the Nazi invaders, so it was at great peril that Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the French mosque, opened its community to Parisian Jews and hid them on the grounds of the sprawling mosque.

There are many more excellent stories of courageous rescuers in libraries and bookstores.  I would also highly recommend a book called Six Million Paper Clips, by Peter Schroeder and a DVD based on the book called, simply, Paper Clips, that tells the story of a small Tennessee town that helped their children deal with the concept of six million victims by gathering paper clips from around the world.  Ultimately, the town without a single Jewish resident acquired one of the cattle cars used to transport prisoners to concentration camps and turned it into a permanent memorial for all of the Nazis’ victims.

Author N.D. Wilson said, “Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself.”  The rescuers of the Holocaust stood against evil because it was right, but often sacrificed their very lives in service to their fellow men.

-Written by Lois Rubin Gross, Senior Children’s Librarian

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