One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
I spent a good portion of the book thinking this was by the author of The Egypt Game... oops. It was my first Williams-Garcia book and I quite enjoyed it. I'm not sure if I'll be delving into her other works but who knows. This one is particularly interesting because it happens along the edge of The Black Panther movement in 1968 Oakland. I'm familiar with the Civil Rights Movement as a whole, but more-so with Martin Luther King Jr. than The Black Panther members. This book makes me want to learn more about the history - and in the end I think the author wanted that.
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
This has the feel of a much older book. It really reminds me of the Bobbsey Twins and The Boxcar Children. It takes place in the 30s so I think the author may have been purposefully emulating the tropes and styles of the early decades of the 1900s - if this is the case she nailed it. Everything from the setting (pre-tourism Florida Keys) to the climax (treasure hunt!) speaks to an earlier era. If I had any problems with the story it was the ending - this author pulled a Hans years before the movie Frozen was ever a thing. It was a twist - but it just wasn't a very good one.
Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman
Joyce Sidman had a string of poetry books in the first decade of the century with 12 books published between 1999 and 2011, then.... a big gap. It looks like there may be one or two newer publications. The audiobook put me in mind of an episode of Reading Rainbow (high praise). I think this would be an interesting book to have a hard copy of - the poems are fun and educational - but there are also non-fiction explanations accompanying each poem. I'd definitely recommend her poems for the classroom.
Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus
I loved this one! Remember how I said that Carry On, Mr. Bowditch appealed to my nerdy heart? Well... this one is in the same vein, but even better! (Huh - do I have an unacknowledged love of sailing books?) This is the fictionalized story of Manjiro Nakahama (renamed John Mung) one of the earliest Japanese to come to America. He was shipwrecked in the Pacific and picked up by a whaling vessel. What follows over the next decades cements his place and importance in history. I'd never heard of this man and his impact on Japanese Isolationism but I'm glad the author discovered him and was able to bring us this story so that more people can hear about him.
In the end I'm torn. Heart of a Samurai was ah-maz-ing... but so was Moon Over Manifest. In the end I'm fine with the committee's decision... but maybe, just maybe, I'd have been even happier to see the gold on Samurai's cover.
