Two Tribes

Two Tribes is a fun graphic novel by Emily Bowen Cohen inspired by her own life.

The two tribes in this novel refer to the Jewish people and the Muscogee Nation.  She is Jewish Native American.  This book is written based on her own experience growing a part of two tribes.

Mia is living with her mothre and her stepfather, but misses her father who has moved far away with his new family.  As she is feeling out of place in her Jewish Day school and her mother refuses to talk about her father with her, Mia hatches a plan to visit her father in Oklahoma.  

In this novel we learn the origin story of the Muscogee story, the traditional account of the creation of the Muscogee clan from Mia's grandmother.  We also learn the Jewish text shared by Mia's Rabbi Goldfarb.  Both of these stories are sacred and important to each tribe.

After Mia travels to visit and meet her father's family, her mother realizes that it is important to bring everyone together.  Mia can share both of her family traditions and everyon can learn from each other wheen they share Shabbat dinner. 

Colorful drawings and well defined characters in an easy to read graphic novel style with well laid out pages and simple font.

My Last Innocent Year

 Daisy Alpert Florin has written an incredible coming of age story about the life of a college student.  We are watching the life of Isabel Rosen as she traverses life as a student in her last year of college.  We are there with her in her mind seeing the experience from her viewpoint.

My Last Innocent Year was a great novel.  It brings back the to mind the college years and how we had to navigate so many things at the same time.  There were the classes and studying, balanced with time to party and socialize.  Dating and finding the right social circle to be apart of.

Then there are always the dangerous pitfalls, that this book deals with, goin g back to a dorm room with a guy and what to expect.  Is it a date, or just friends?  How far should you take the relationship sexually and today is saying no good enough.  Is the sex consensual or forced.  Then there are the professor student complications of sexual relationships.  There are so many nuances to work through.

Florian puts inside th mind of Isabel Rosen as she navigates all these different relationships and feelings in her head and heart.  Balancing her desire to find love and her need to fit in with her girlfriends.  

She comes from a very different background than many of the other student at her New Hampshire college and she is trying to work out the logistics of fitting in.  Her New York City, Lower East Side childhood living and working in a Appetizing store and growing up Jewish, makes her a minority at this school.

Well written and very entertaining.

Ferris

 Kate DiCamillo has written another engaging and important novel for young people in Ferris.

This the story of a young girl nicknamed Ferris, younger sister Pinky and their family.  Ferris is very close to her grandmother , Charisse, who is living with the family.  Now Uncle Ted has moved into the basement after having a disagreement with his wife, Aunt Shirley.  Charisse is staying in her room more and more, not feeling well.  She also keeps telling Ferris she can see a ghost standing on the threshold of the room. Little sister Pinky is looking for attention and starts getting in trouble calling herself an outlaw.

Ferris and her best friend will work hard to fulfill the wishes of the Charisse and the ghost and bring the family together.  This story is delightful even as it deals with serious subjects including sibling rivalry and death of a grandparent.  

Kate DiCamillo writes with expression and deals with these difficult topics in a soothing way for young readers.

The Effects of Pickled Herring

 The Effects of Pickled Herring is the newest graphic novel by author and cartoonist, Alex Schumacher.

Reading this graphic novel for middle school and high school students will help any teenager who is grappling with the changes that are happening to them and the changes that happen to our grandparents as they age.  

Micah Gadsky and his sister, Alana are preparing for their B'nai Mitzvah.  As they are learning their prayers, Torah and Haftorah portions, they are also learning many life lessons. This story follows Micah as his voice cracks while practicing his Hebrew prayers, as he worries about not remembering what to say when he gets up on the bima and as he struggles to get up the courage to ask a girl he likes to his Bar Mitzvah.

Drawn with colorful exaggerated comic characters we follow Micah as he goes to school and negotiates  the trials of adolescence.  While Micah finds the social scene in Middle school difficult, his sister is working hard to fit in, joining the cheerleading team and be careful to stay thin and wear the right clothes.  Micah has one close friend who is encouraging and supportive.  Omar is Mexican and together they stand up to anti-Semitic taunts from the bullies at the school.

At home things are getting serious when Micah's grandmother, who he is close to, is starting to experience signs of dementia.   As Micah and Alana are getting closer to the B'nai Mitzvah date, Grams is getting more forgetful.  The novel shows how the family learns that staying strong is easier together rather than divided.

The characters are drawn in colorful exaggerated cartoon style. There are easy to read fonts and well laid out pages.  Big sound effects and bold backgrounds add a pop to the story.  There is even a dramatic dream scene similar to Tevye's dream scene with Fruma Sarah in Fiddler on the Roof.

This graphic novel covers the discussion about what a Bar Mitzvah is and why Jewish children have one at thirteen.  Other Jewish holidays are discussed also as the family goes through the year before the Bnai Mitzvah.  The family has a Passover Seder and tells the story of Passover.  

Long After We are Gone

 What a wonderfully written story about family dynamics, friendships and love.  Long After We Are Gone is written by Torah Sheldon Harris.

When their father dies, the siblings come home to save the family home and land.  It brings four siblings who have gone in many different directions back together to work as a unit and fight  a company that wants to buy them out.  The house and five acres are already sold and large amounts of money are being offered for the rest of their land.  Each sibling has a secret .  The money is very tempting to help each out of trouble.  

The characters are wonderfully developed , they have complexity and depth.  The scenery is described in detail that brings the reader to Digg.  The reader can feel the difficulty each character has letting go of the money, finding themselves and becoming true to themselves in the end.

Woman on Fire

 Woman on Fire by Lisa Barr is another fabulous novel about the artwork confiscated by the Nazis during World War II.  

Using  fictional characters , Barr sets up the situation that a young ambitious journalist becomes embroiled in an international art scandal as she searches for the missing Woman on Fire portrait painted by a new impressionist artist during the war.  

Jules Roth the young journalist pushes her way into the newsroom of Dan Mansfield, editor for the paper.  He hires her to help him find a famous painting,  missing since the war, for his long time friend, Elias Baum, a famous shoe designer.  Baum was a small child when his mother posed for the artist.  Elias remembers the day the Nazis came, took the painting and then killed his mother.  All these years later he wants retrieve the painting for his family.  

There is another person who also thinks the painting belongs to them, Marguerite de Laurent, a provocative and powerful art gallery owner.  She grew up working for her grandfather’s art gallery and he always spoke about the Woman on Fire painting and its importance to him.  She feels she is the rightful owner and wants the painting for her art collection.  She will go to great lengths to get it and is used to getting everything she wants.  This is an entertaining mystery novel set around the premise of being the first to find the painting and Jules is determined to prove her prowess as a reporter and get there first.

There are many twist and turns as the characters struggle to find and hold onto the painting .  

Ella Minnow Pea

 OK I realize this is another middle school or maybe young adult book, but this is a great story.  I love this book!  I read it when it first was published and enjoyed it just for its writing style and the uniqueness of the plot.  But now when I reread it for my book group, I was amazed at how timely and relevant it still is.

This is the story of a small,  fictional island of Nollop, off the state of South Carolina.  Ella Minnow Pea lives on the island, her name is a play on the in the alphabet, “L M N O P “ .  The island is named after Nevin Nollop who wrote the famous pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

On this island because they worship Nollop, when a letter under the statue of Nollop drops and breaks they town leaders decide it is Nollop speaking to them from the beyond.  They pass a law that each letter that drops from the statue must not be spoken or written anymore.  As the story continues author Mark Dunn drops letters from the story script.  The book written all in correspondence between Ella and others gets more and more interesting to read as letters cannot be used at the risk of public embarrassment in the stocks or banishment from the island.

So much fun to read!

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet