A March reading serendipity found me discovering a number of biographies of women in the month that celebrates their past. Curiously, every book I've opened in April features a strong woman who struggles to break through the bonds imposed by an historical period. In the past several weeks, I've traveled through time and space with six amazing tour guides.
Diane Stanley's heroine of Saving Sweetness (Putnam, $15.95; ages 4-9) returns in Raising Sweetness (Putnam, $15.99; ages 4-9) to entertain readers with silly similes, colorful Texas slang, droll irony in the old West. The storyteller is the kindhearted sheriff who adopted Sweetness and seven other orphans in the first book. He was fairly clueless before he became a single father, but now he's really lost. He wonders why the kids turn up their noses at spaghetti with peanut butter and windows seem dirtier when cleaned with lard. He's particularly confused when a thing "full of squiggles and black marks" arrives at the house. Clever Sweetness recognizes it as a letter, learns to decipher the message, and writes a return letter to the sheriff's former sweetheart. Her efforts unite the couple, bring order to the house, and rescue the children from a life of mash potatoes and raisins!
J. Patrick Lewis' Night of the Goat Children (Dial, $15.99; ages 8-10) is based on an actual 17th century event that occurred during the Thirty Years War in "Walkplatz", Germany. In Lewis' tale, Brigitta, the Brave, a clever princess, rules the kingdom. Her people believe she's met her match when a hundred Swedish thieves arrive with their cruel leader, Ubo Skald, "who wore a horned helmet and a gold ring through his nose - a man-bull if there ever was one." Protected by the fortress, Brigitta's people fend off wall attacks and battering rams, but can they survive starvation? Brigitta and five children "full of pluck and mischief" pull off a plan full of intrigue, disguise, and magic to frighten away the superstitious band. Lewis transports young listeners to long ago times with his dramatic storytelling ability.
Laurence Anholt's picture book biography, Stone Girl, Bone Girl: The Story of Mary Anning (Orchard, $15.95; ages 6-10) reads like fiction. Young Mary is intrigued when her father introduces her to "curiosities", amazing fossils hidden in the clay cliffs of Lyme Regis. This launches the nineteenth century girl on a lifelong collecting adventure. Friendless and robbed of her dear father at a young age, Mary's "treasures" support her mother. Later her discovery of "the bones of a "real sea monster, as long as a tree and more than one hundred and sixty-five million years old" change the world of science. Anholt's book is threaded with dialogue and detailing that make the period and discoveries seem real and exciting.
Sherryl Jordan's The Raging Quiet (Simon and Schuster, $17.00; ages 11 and up)takes place in medieval times when differences are considered suspicious and dangerous. Marnie is a young woman of strength, honesty, and unconventional practices. She learns much from her father, who holds a high position on the lord's estate. When he suffers a stroke, she works to protect her large family. Though people accuse her of flaunting herself and compromising her virtues, Marnie's only real crimes are passion and obstinacy.
These win her the affections and, later, marriage with the Lord's son. Instantly spirited away to a distant village, lonely Marnie detests her husband's advances, and confused by his obsession with his damaged ancestral home. When he falls to his death, she is blamed and conflicted. Her two friends, Raver, the village lunatic, and a priest, can do little to comfort her. Raver, Marnie soon discovers, is not mad, only deaf and dumb. She renames him Raven, invents a communication system, and their closeness grows. Village distrust grows to rage when Marnie's greedy brother-in-law fans the flames and Marnie is tried as a witch in a heartbreaking, tortuous scene where she must to carry hot metal in her bare hand. Physically branded as different, Marnie allows friendship to become love, understands true physical attraction, and accepts her differences. Romance, suspense, adventure, and emotions combine with courageous, haunting characters who take on a world steeped in an ignorance they have no power to change.
Minfong Ho's novel The Clay Marble is newly released on tape (Recorded Books, 4 cassettes, purchase $34, rental $11.50; 1-800-638-1304 ). Twelve year old Dara grew up in a small Cambodian village, until the Khmer Rouge bombed her home, destroyed all food sources, killed her father, and forced her to move with her brother and mother to a refugee camp. As if these troubles were not enough, the story describes how Dara faces temporary separation from her family, alienation from her brother after he becomes a soldier, and the shooting death of her closest friend. Narrator Christina Moore lends an emotional tone to of these and other horrors, as well as the pride, and measured triumph, Dara finds in survival and hard-won self-sufficiency.
Coming in May is a novel that lets young readers peek into a lesser known world. Tracy Barrett's Anna of Byzantium (Delacorte, $14.95; ages 12 and up) is based on the true story of Anna Comnena, a young woman promised rule of the vast eleventh century empire. Compelling conflict develops when Anna is caught between two warring philosophies of governing. Her mother, a woman of compassion, mercy, and justice is distraught, but powerless to thwart Anna's cruel grandmother's teachings of manipulation to gain control at all costs. Anna's pride and intelligence in learning "the chess game" of rule is her own undoing. When she publicly outmaneuvers her grandmother, she loses her promised role as empress to finally become a convent exile. Detailing of food, customs, and habits create an incredible backdrop for the drama of Anna's aspirations, struggles against the constraints of powerlessness, passion for learning about books and the human experience, and final the realization of her inner strengths to forgive, heal, and learn. The book also describes how the personal becomes political in a world where one misstep changes Anna's life forever.