Book Review

Book Review of Feathers & Trumpets

Middle Grade Favorites

by

 

At the Bath Book Bash in Bath, Maine, I met some author friends and added a few children’s books to my collection – no surprise.

In author Anna Jordon’s debut middle grade historical novel, SHIRA & ESTHER’S DOUBLE DREAM DEBUT, Shira and Esther don’t know each other. But they soon will, thanks to Benny, the hotel bell hop who discovers that Esther has a twin living in the same town.

Formatted as a stage play with an overture (introduction), three acts (chapters), and a curtain call (glossary of Yiddish words), the book invites the reader into the different worlds of two girls with gumption. Esther longs to study Torah, but her stage star mom urges her to be a performer. Shira dreams of being on the stage, but her father, the Rabbi, urges her to practice for her bat mitzvah. When Benny arranges for the two girls meet, they realize that a little mix up could help them realize their dreams, but can they pull it off? As they get to know each other, and their respective parents, they learn, not only are they each other’s mirror image, they were born in the same hospital on the same night!

A delightful deli man named Morty narrates the story and offers occasional commentary sprinkled with Yiddish, becoming a beloved character himself. Anna Jordan skillfully weaves the girls’ stories together, enabling each one to achieve her dream debut, and sets the reader up for a surprise ending which doubles the satisfaction. A charming read and highly recommended not only by me, but also…

  • Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade 2023 (starred review)
  • Publishers Weekly Best Middle Grade 2023 (starred review)
  • Tablet Magazine “The Best Jewish Children’s Books 2023”

 

 

 

LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN

by

LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN – a Book Review

This book review comes an admission – Author Toni Buzzeo is a personal friend! She is a New York Times best-selling children’s author who has published twenty-nine picture books, including the 2013 Caldecott Honor ONE COOL FRIEND, illustrated by David Small. I am delighted to recommend Toni’s first Middle Grade novel, LIGHT COMES TO SHADOW MOUNTAIN, published this summer by Holiday House.

Cora Mae Tipton yearns for electricity to come to her Kentucky mountain in 1937. Convinced of its benefits, she and her best friend set out to educate their classmates through a school newspaper, in hopes they will persuade parents to join the electric cooperative. Resistance to change comes from where it matters most – Cora’s and Ceilly’s own homes. As much as Cora loves her rural mountain life, she knows that the future will require communication dependent upon electricity. Her dream of becoming a journalist also depends on light for nighttime exam studies. Cora will win readers’ hearts as she navigates the demands of a mother suffering from depression, the near tragedy of an injured brother, and her own sorrow in her quest to bring light to Shadow Mountain.

Author Toni Buzzeo has created a detailed setting for well-developed characters in this story of friendship, family, loss, and personal motivation. While the action keeps the reader turning the page, Light Comes to Shadow Mountain is a rare gem of a book that invites reflection. Readers who love Lauren Wolk’s Echo Mountain will love Light Comes to Shadow Mountain.

You can visit Toni on her website: https://tonibuzzeo.com/

Reader Review by Becky Goodwin

by

What a simply beautiful book. The ongoing themes of fear over loss, fear of sexuality, fear of pain and that God will ask too much of her (Hildegard) made her character feel human, approachable and profoundly accessible, even though the details of her life are so foreign to today’s audience. The details of the time period – the specific mention of everything from the furniture in the monastery to the herbs used in the infirmary made the 12th century come alive and created texture to the story – the space itself became real for me. I couldn’t put it down!

Catholic Fiction.net Review

by

Reviewer Mary Woods says…

“One of the remarkable things about the book is Joyce Ray’s skill in portraying Hildegard as a character with whom the reader can sympathize.”

“As a young adult novel, it does an excellent job of turning a character who would at first seem foreign into a person whom the young reader can care about. Under Joyce Ray’s pen, the monastic life becomes a drama of love between God the Creator and his created. Feathers and Trumpets is a worthy tribute to this unique and wonderful saint.”

Reader Review by Carol Armstrong, Pennsylvania

by

With profound sensitivity, the author of Feathers and Trumpets breathes beauty and contemporary relevance into the life of the 12th century historical personage Hildegard of Bingen. A religious visionary, Hildegard is well-known today among students of sacred medieval music for her ethereal Gregorian chants, and among scientists for her learned treatises on natural history and the medicinal uses of plants, trees and animals to cure human disease. But it is her deep faith and her strength of character that inspires author Joyce Ray and which she unfolds to us in this book. With language and images that are poetic and lyrical, and with a structure which is unconsciously simple and straight-forward, the author transports the reader from the ordinariness of the material and mundane to that of spiritual beauty, power and grace.

Although the book is catalogued as juvenile fiction, readers of all ages will find a quiet beauty in the telling and a source of inspiration in the reading of Hildegard’s courage, unflagging spirit, deep intellect and self-discipline in facing the social, physical and gender obstacles in her life and of her time.