One of the things about getting books at the BEA is sometimes you enter a series in the middle. This is obviously not the first book in this series, which is based on the children’s classic, Peter Pan. This is like the “real story” the original might be based on, and has more of an explanation of things like why Peter can fly, and how Tinkerbell - who prefers to be called a ‘bird-person,” not a fairy, came to be. I am just guessing the prior book(s) go over the same ground as the original James Barrie story does, but it’s okay to start here,
enough is covered that you understand the lay of the land.



A good, rollicking story, with plenty of action, pirates, mystery, and science fiction via a substance called “starstuff” and the “Others” who covet it, though it does not feel at all sci-fi. The story moves along at a good clip, and the other boys of Neverneverland get more character development, as they cope with Cap’n Hook and his crew while Peter and Tinkerbell are off to the foggy, grimy streets of Victorian London to save his friend Molly and her family from the Others. It is 541 pages, but moves along at a good, satisfying clip, so don’t let the size fool you. Probably written with boys as the target audience, but enough in it for girls - and grown-ups - too.



And it wasn’t until the end that I realized that it is “that” Dave Barry - the guys from Miami who writes the hysterical, wry newspaper columns - who is one of the authors. And that’s why I have a signed copy, I didn’t know what the book was, but I chuckle aloud at Dave Barry’s columns, so stood in line to get a signed copy. But in retrospect, it makes perfect sense. It is a fun and worthwhile read, no matter your age or gender. And there’s nothing in it that’s too scary for younger kids who are avid readers.

Excellent book, set in nearby Boston, and aside from one instance of Mount Auburn Street being called Mount Auburn Drive, it’s accurate in descriptions of places, names and neighborhoods. The heart of story takes place over just a 24-hour span, though there are years of history in the making of that day. It is set around the story of two broken families, one rich, and one poor, and how their lives suddenly intersect.


The first of the families, the wealthier one, consists of a father, a Boston politician, and a good Irish Catholic man. His wife, Bernadette, was from one of those large, sprawling Irish-Catholic families for which Boston is known, and the story begins with her tale of the statue of the Virgin Mary that she was given by her mother, which has been passed, mother to daughter, for generations. She and Bernard has always planned on a big family, but after their first boy, Sullivan, she was not able to carry another baby full term. Determined, they started the process of adoption, and ended up, eventually with not one baby, but his 18-month-old brother as well. That they were African-American did not matter to the Doyles, and Tip and Teddy were instantly loved. Sadly, Bernadette was only able to enjoy her family for four years, before getting diagnosed with and succumbing to cancer. The story takes place 20 years later, when the “little boys” are grown, and college students at Harvard and Northeastern, respectively.


The second family is even smaller, just a devoted, some would say overprotective single mother, Tennessee and her daughter, Kenya. They are also black, and live in just down the street from the Doyles, but across the line into Roxbury, in one of “the Projects.” Kenya, who is eleven, cares only about running, and learning well in school to please her mother. The families lives intersect when Teddy, whose forte in life is memorizing political speeches but who has little direction in life, and Tip, the “serious” one who wants to be an ichthyologist, accompany their father, and Kenya goes with her mother, to a Jesse Jackson speech being given at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.


The night turns into a snowy one - as anyone who has lived here knows can happen, especially in January in Boston, and as everyone leaves the lecture, the accident happens, and the two families meet and lives are intertwined in tragic, joyful and unexpected ways.


An excellent book, and a quick, absorbing read, I heartily recommend it. Unless it happens to be January, and you’re enduring your first New England winter … And if you happen to enjoy running, politics, or biology - especially of the fishie sort, you’ll likely enjoy it even more.

I read this book back in 2004, not knowing what I was in for. I live in Newton, Massachusetts, with a large enough Russian population that the local weekly paper prints a section in Russian once a month. But most of the Russians I meet here are Russian Jews. Newton also has a large Jewish population, so that makes sense.


Though I hear of Russia, and Russian accents fairly often, I do not hear about Chechnya, except on the news. And that is a rare event, even back when The events of this book were taking place, you rarely heard anything about Chechnya, except mentions of Chechyn separatists, and violence. I didn’t even know why they wanted to separate, the religious or political reasons or any other reason being the war, I knew nothing. And if you had told me there were Russian Muslims, I would have believed you, but assumed they were a tiny minority - Russia is a huge place, there’s probably some of every religion in there somewhere. And I couldn’t have told you where Chechnya was on a map - you only see Russia as one big piece, no states or zone within it.


The book taught me a lot about Chechnya, but that wasn’t hard to do, as ignorant as I was. But its main goal was to tell the story of a doctor caught in the middle of a war, and the danger he faced every day. A moral person, he takes his oath as a doctor seriously, and was determined to treat all the injured, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. Just that decision nearly cost him his life, many time. The horrors are compounded by his compassion, his love for his family and his grief at the injustice and oppression that was tearing apart his homeland.


Can you even imagine having your life in danger daily, being told you are a traitor for saving lives just because the person you are helping is of a different religion than your own? Can you imagine your family being in danger, but knowing you have to keep doing your job, as lives are at stake? How hard, when we just take life, and the access to medical care, pretty much for granted.
I know I am spoiled, being an American, living in a major metropolitan area - I could expect to receive care at any number of facilities a short distance from my house, and no one
is going to check my religious affiliation before deciding whether to save my life.


You still don’t hear much about Chechnya on Western news, nothing much has changed. But this book will teach you far more than you think, and I recommend it to anyone who cares about his or her fellow human beings. It’s amazing, heartbreaking, horrifying, informative and absorbing all at once. And it was so burned into my brain that I have just written this without even opening the cover, having read in over four years ago.

by Sherman Alexie

Okay, so I read a lot of books about teenagers and kids, but hey, I read what I pull out of the box!


This is a fun, funny book, completely with plenty of “drawings by the main character,” actually illustrations by Ellen Forney. But the main character, Junior, likes to draw, and her cartooning style suits his character well. Junior isn’t strong, handsome or buff, he’s a scrawny kid who nonetheless loves basketball, and plays with his best friend, who has all those attributes and a serious anger, too.


The book has plenty of dark, serious issues, but still manages to be fun, and the main character, with all his flaws, and screwed up circumstances in life, manages to keep a bouyancy about himself. He’s a Spokane Indian kid living on “the rez” and dealing with all the normal struggles a teenage boy goes through, but multiplied by about ten.


Dealing with the broken people, alcoholism, the broken hearts and fading dreams of those around him, and trying to make his way in the world outside the Rez, while still trying to stay part of his Rez community makes a story a lot of kids who have felt like an outsider will enjoy. Adults, too. Based on the author’s experiences growing up, it stays funny but has a strong and serious heart. A quick, fun read, but not fluff - read it if you can.

It’s not that I haven’t been reading, life has just been a bit busy to be reviewing books. I finally finished this one recently, it was given to me by a friend, and I’ve had it by my bedside for night time reading when I didn’t have much else. It was just a book that didn’t seem to need to be rushed, there wasn’t much anything urgent about it, so I’d just read a few pages at a time.


It’s a thick book, over 540 pages, and that’s the soft cover version. I had read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse before and enjoyed it, so was looking forward to this one as well. It just seemed to move slowly along, and if you’ve read Labyrinth, it all seems kind of echoey, like “oh, another one of these ‘people haunted by ancestor’s troubles, driven by mysterious urges to solve past mysteries. It’s always a genetically connected individual, again a female main character trying to find out about her own past and stumbling across her ancestor’s troubles, and getting involved with a man from her own time connected to ancestor’s past love as well.


Always a young woman in the past is the hero of her times, and the current-day woman is somewhat adrift, finding her own self.


There’s a good bit of history of the Carsacone region of France, and some Paris history around the time of the French revolution. This one focusses on Tarot cards, and Tarot readings, so maybe that’s why I wasn’t too wrapped up in it, as Tarot (forgive me, true believers) has always seems kinda hokey and made-up to be sinister or believable. So that part didn’t grab my attention, maybe if it interests you, you’ll find the story moving along a bit faster. As it was, it was just okay, and the ending, while pretty darned predictable if you’ve read Labyrinth, was somewhat satisfying. It just wasn’t suspenseful.


If Tarot fascinates you, or French history, or Carsacone France region, maybe you’ll enjoy it more, I just found it a pleasant but not thrilling diversion, worth reading if you don’t have to spend a lot to get it.


I know, damning with faint praise, but it was just okay. Labyrinth was so much better, that this kinda disappointed me.

I received this little (just 75 pages) book to review, and completely enjoyed it. Being as I am a “pet person,” couching any lessons in animal terms is always a way to get me to pay attention. This is a little book aimed at teaching business principles, and life lessons learned from he author’s 6-pound Min-Pin, Tazie.


Tazie is a Min-Pin, or Miniature Pinscher, and she’s even more “mini” than most, being 6 whole pounds full grown - usually adults are 8-11 pounds. But in true pinscher form, she’s never learned that she is a small dog, and has a tenacious, optimistic and indomitable spirit.


The author does a nice job presenting ten simple “lessons,” and giving examples of how they can be applied in everyday business situations.


Yes, there are a lot of “leadership” books out there, but this one is more cheerful and far less dry than most others. It’s simple enough for just about any reading level, and a quick read. If you are anyone’s boss, or are going to be, it’s worth a browse. There are a few typos, but I am sure they will be corrected in future editions, and the cartoons that head each chapter are adorable and appropriate.

Fun, grown-up book, with a sympathetic main character, and lots of intrigue involved. The main character, Beverly Parmetier, is a small business owner, who imports crafts, antiques and handmade goods from several countries in Central America. She lives in New Mexico, and loves her little Albuquerqe home, her shop, and her life for the most part, though her love life isn’t spectacular and she always is worrying about finances.


All this changes, after a vacation to Mexico with her beloved “crazy” Aunt Magdalena, the one family member who has always supported her. The rest of her family is still solidly ensconced in the UP - pronounced yoopee - Michigan’s Upper peninsula. Beverly instead served in the Peace Corps, speaks fluent Spanish, and is extremely knowledgeable and a scrupulously honest business woman.


Enter the “bad guys” - a corrupt and, we learn, slightly unbalanced U. S. Customs official, who is convinced Beverly is smuggling in and dealing in both stolen and illegal pre-Columbian artifacts, and probably drugs as well. The harrasment begins with packages being searched at the borderr, and escalated through agents following her every move, her home being bugged, her store being visited repeatedly by agents trying to trap her into selling them goods she doesn’t have, asking for drugs, or just being obvious and annoying.


The harrasment escalted, no matter what she does, and her oof-again, on-again boyfriend, who is a lawyer, is no help. When the “feds” even appear on her vacation rafting trip with old friends, she gets desperate.


Following her as she struggles to maintain both her freedom, innocence and sense of humor in the face of all this makes a good story, and little side stories, like her friendship with a handicapped kid and his dog who live across the street from her all add color to a good story.


I am not sure if it counts as “suspense” or mystery, but there is plenty of both, and it is a fun read. This is a first novel, and the author has worked for years in the import business, so you end up learning bits and pieces as you read, which is always fun. I recommend the book.

Really interesting, sweet book from the perspective of an abnormal child. Merilee - who hates her name, by the way, and has heard every “Merrily we roll along” joke ever, thank you - is a little girl growing up in small town Texas, who is well aware that she is different. Through her telling the story, you figure out that she is autistic, in the Asperger’s range of the Autism spectrum. She has a very specific way she would like everything in her life to be. She likes her VOE - Very Ordered Existence.


Merilee has her routines, her place in the world - and everyone else’s place - all figured out. Her parents are strange but she knows they love her and believe in her, even if they don’t understand her. Her sister, Bug - real name Bitsey - is annoying, and is completely annoyingly normal. Bug never stops talking, while Merilee has an amazing vocabulary inside her head, she has trouble getting words out - or the right words out. The story really begins, though, when another misfit - a lonely boy named Biswick with an alcoholic poet of a father moves into town, and against her will, becomes her friend. and an older woman named Veraleen also becomes her family’s cook, and just like that, her Very Ordered Existence begins to fall apart.


How she begins to deal with change, an unlikely friendship, and learning to try to understand other people is all a fascinating and heartwarming story, and makes this “odd child” as Autistic kids are often seen, seem not only human, but like a very good person despite herself.


A wonderful story, and a good book, and while there are some heavy issues, they are handled pretty deftly, and in a pretty kid-safe way.


I heartily recommend this book, it is far more fun than I may have made it seem, and will leave you smiling.

by Peter Zheutlin

A fascinating book that is about a woman from Boston, a nice young Jewish wife with three children who decided to escape domesticity and bicycle around the world purportedly to win a bet between two Boston “sugar men” - back in the 1895 when sugar was big in Boston.

The media back then was sensationalist, women riding bicycles was a new phenomenon, and the two equally sized wheeled bike was a new thing. Bicycles were just become popular, and around-the-world trips were a popular thing for newspapers. There was no instant communication between cities and indeed countries as there is today, and fact-checking was yet to become part of journalism. The author does quite a bit of research on the real woman, Annie Kopchovsky, and digs up lots of conflicting information about her supposed trip around the world.

Annie changed her last name for the purposes of the trip to Londonderry - one of her many advertisers/sponsors who gave her money for an advertising banner or placard on her trip was Londonderry Lithia Spring Water. And besides, wasn’t Londonderry easier for people to remember and spell? So Miss Annie Londonderry - as she was known on her famous-for-the-time was created, and Mrs. Annie Kopchovsky, wife and mother of three - was conveniently set aside.

She did indeed travel the world, but that isn’t the story as much as you’d think. She rode the bicycle sometimes, quite a bit in crossing America, and France, but relied even more on steamships, and even trains when it suited her purposes. She was apparently attractive and charismatic, and that helped her in telling her many tales or derring do and hazards, many of which were completely untrue, but believed at the time.

Before her trip she worked for newspapers, and at other jobs, but if you believed her story, depending on where in the world you were, she was a Harvard medical student, a reporter (really she was selling ads), and a single woman, subject to rules she changed at her pleasure for the supposed wager her trip was settling.

It is fascinating, given the current media climate, where something that happens in France is examined, scrutinized and publicized in California, for example, in the blink of an eye, and everyone is hoping to be the one to make money by capturing some amazing event from a tornado to a celebrity sighting - with their digital camera and make a mint, to hear the stories this woman told that largely went unchallenged, mostly because she was pretty, charming and “a good story.”

You learn other fascinating bits along the way, for example what the bicycle meant for both fashion and the women’s suffrage movement, and the book has almost 100 pages of Appendix and other back matter, so is a quicker read than it first appears.

I recommend it for anyone interested in transportation history, women’s issues, or the media. She was hugely famous in her time, and largely forgotten today, but now as then, Annie Kopchovsky’s travels - and her life - makes an interesting tale.