We had a great meeting on Sept.18. We discussed our novel, Tree. Table. Book. by Lois Lowry first. We all agreed that Lois Lowry, who has published more than 40 books for young readers, still 'has it' and knows how to create a good story and keep readers engaged. However, a few readers were bored by the beginning and felt that this book started too slowly, and they were not really interested in knowing so many of the details of middle-schooler Sophia's life in small town-New Hampshire. Others of us thought Sophia's voice was perfect, and knowing all these details about her enhanced our understanding of her relationship with her 88-year-old neighbor Sophie who liked many of the same things she did, and shared an offbeat sense of humor...even as she was entering the early stages of dementia. But we all agreed that Sophie's stories, as she was being put through various memory tests by her information-gathering young friend, were the most engaging part of the book, and that she was actually the star of the story. We also appreciated the depth of Sophie's memories as she told of her early life during what was obviously the beginning of the Holocaust -- prompted by three words: Tree. Table. Book. We also liked the depiction of the relationship between young Sophia and her best friend Ralphie, and the way they dealt with another little boy, Oliver, who was brilliant, quite eccentric, and appeared to be on the Autism syndrome -- although it was never necessary to mention that by name. We loved that the kids were very sensitive to him and to his needs, and were protective without trying to change him. The only thing we all felt could have been left out was a whole section about an abandoned house that Sophia imagined they could smuggle Sophie into when her son wanted to move her to an assisted living facility. We talked about several more of the details from this story, but to add them here would make this Recap almost as long as the book. We agreed that the ending was plausible, and probably the best outcome for all. Some readers wondered about the target age group for this book, since they felt that kids that age wouldn't know anything about the Holocaust or Autism. But others of us thought that didn't really matter, since it was the understanding, humanity, sensitivity, and love between these two almost identically-named females -- one young, one old -- that were the strength of this engaging story.
Our discussion of our picture book, Clever Crow by Chris Butterworth was significantly shorter! We all liked the mostly-shades-of-grey-and-black illustrations by Olivia Lomenech Gill, which -- though very accurate --were not actually photographic. But many of us felt that they would have been even better with more color. Our main problem was with the text, which didn't flow in any meaningful way, and merely contained random facts presented in a dully-written manner. We couldn't really figure out why various parts of the text were presented in differently sized fonts -- from 'normal' for the 10"x10" large page size to larger to huge. However, we did feel that this book could be useful in a school setting for any primary class studies of different types of birds. We especially liked the end papers: the front ones showed pictures and relative sizes of various crows' family eggs; the rear ones showed very accurate depictions of the various birds in the crow family. Many of us had not been aware of most of them! And the short 'lesson' for using an Index shown at the very end of the book could also be very helpful in a classroom.
