Prisoner 88 Leah Pileggi Charlesbridge Publishing ISBN: 978-1-58089-560-6 In 1885, a ten-year-old boy named James Oscar Baker was convicted of manslaughter and placed in the Idaho Penitentiary. Author Leah Pileggi wondered what it must have been like for James, a mere child, surrounded by convicts in the difficult world of […]
Will Sparrow’s Road Karen Cushman Clarion Books 978-0-547-73962-5 —♦— Karen Cushman has long been my favorite middle grade historical fiction author. She’s written eight novels in this genre, including Newbery winner The Midwife’s Apprentice and Catherine, Called Birdy, which won a Newbery Honor. Until last year, all her novels featured […]
May B Caroline Starr Rose Schwartz and Wade Books ISBN: 978-1-58246-393-3 — ♦ — Twelve-year old Mavis Elizabeth Betterly, May B for short, lives in a soddy on the Kansas prairie around the year 1870. Her family’s crop failed, and in order to survive financially, May’s parents hire her out to help […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.