All Kinds of Trouble

Two books I read this summer deal with Trouble with a capital T. In Tracey Porter's book, Billy Creekmore, young orphans are in trouble at the orphanage. In this early 1900s story Billy and other orphans and abandoned children at the Guardian Angel Home for Boys are sent to work in the glassworks factory as young as ten years old. Their dangerous jobs lead to crippling or fatal situations. Billy, abandoned by his father, is determined to escape this fate. Just in the nick of time his unknown aunt and uncle appear to take Billy to live in a coal mining town. This seeming salvation doesn't last long, for the miners are organizing to strike for better wages and conditions. When his uncle is killed in a raid by mine owner troops, Billy is on the run. He finds temporary shelter with a circus and a friend from the orphanage. This, too, is short lived when Billy's father appears working for a rival circus that cheats its customers. Will Billy ever escape the trouble that seems to follow him and find a real home and family?

In Gary Schmidt's book Trouble, Henry and his family have moved far away from Trouble, but Trouble seems to have found them anyway. Henry's older brother is killed when he is struck by a truck driven by a Cambodian classmate. To honor his brother Henry decides to fulfill his brother's dying wish that he climb Mount Katahdin even though his brother claimed Henry couldn't do it. The journey that Henry and his best friend take to Mount Katahdin involves all kinds of trouble including getting a ride from Chay, the Cambodian refugee who killed his brother. The journey makes Henry take a good long look at his life, his brother, and his family and the Trouble that seems to be all around him.

Billy Creekmore is on Oprah's Kids' Reading List and is already in the Lakeview collection. Trouble is a 2011 Rebecca Caudill nominee and multiple copies will be added to the Lakeview collection in the fall.

Two Fairy Tales Retold

There is a lot of buzz in the young adult literature world about looking back to traditional fairy tales, folklore, and legends for story ideas. note the success of Rick Riodan's Percy Jackson series. I just finished two such books and enjoyed both of them.

In Elizabeth C. Bunce's book A Curse Dark as Gold, we have a retelling of the Rumpelsliltskin story set in a small English village. The village grew up around a river-operated mill owned by the Miller family through many generations. The Millers have had all kinds of tragedies - breakdowns at the mill, unexplained accidents, and deaths of male children in the family. Finally the last of the Miller family, Charlotte and Rosie, are trying to keep the mill going through debt, accidents, and sabotage. One dark night a strange-looking man calling himself Jack Spinner appears and offers to help. Well, you know that part of the story, but Bunce adds witchcraft, mystery, and romance to this fairy tale and gives us a compelling story. This book is already in the Lakeview collection and is listed on Oprah's Kids Reading List.

Shannon Hale has retold a little-known Grimm's fairy tale in Book of a Thousand Days. While I didn't recognize the fairy tale, I was quickly caught up in the story which Hale has placed in a central Asian setting to add an intriguing element. The story is told in a journal/diary kept by a young servant girl Dashti who follows her royal mistress Lady Saren into banishment for not marrying her father's choice. This banishment is to be sealed up in a tower for seven years with enough food and fuel, but little light and no contact with the outside world. The girls are able to escape after about four years but find their world completely changed. The kingdom has been reduced to rubble. No one is left alive. To find out what has happened the girls travel to Lady Saren's true love's city and disguise themselves as kitchen maids. While there is a happy ending, it may not be the one you expect. This book will be added to the Lakeview collection in the fall.