Finding out your boyfriend’s mom is prejudice against Native Indians is bad, but finding 
out your boyfriend probably shares her views is devastating. Especially if you happen to be Native yourself. This is what happens to Louise Wolfe at an after prom brunch with her boyfriend, Cam. Quickly, Louise distances herself from Cam, and is ready to start her senior year of high school sans drama. However, it becomes apparent that won’t be happening. Louise is on the high school newspaper, and one of the big stories is that the theater department is putting on a production of “The Wizard of Oz.” Since they live in Kansas, this is a big deal! And it becomes an even bigger deal with the director of the play makes it clear this cast will be inclusive – and maybe won’t look much like the original production.
Suddenly, the play becomes everything in this high school. And for Louise’s family, because her younger brother decides to go out for the roll of the Tin Man, even though he’s only a freshman. Louise wants to be writing hard hitting journalism stories that make a difference, but with so many things to focus on, finding that right piece is difficult. To make matters even more complicated, she begins to like a boy named Joey on her school newspaper.
Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith is a book that is a quick read, and delves into a LOT of topics – from bullying, to racism, to censorship. Many topics are brought up and referred to, without much information to explain or help the reader understand exactly what the problem is. For example the hashtag #NDN is mentioned but not what it stands for. I looked it up and it is a shortening of Native Indian, which many Native Indians use to refer to themselves. I was thrilled to find a book with a Native Indian as the main character and her family. But often I felt like I was missing so much of what the point was, simply because I’m unfortunately ignorant of things I shouldn’t be. I do think it is possible for books to educate in such a way as to not appear to be educating. I would have liked that with this title, but sadly, I felt it missed the mark for me.
I do think the book tried to show how hard it can be sometimes to distinguish between willfully racist and discriminatory behavior, and when people step into landmines unintentionally. Louise finds this out herself when she tries to make a point with Joey. I did learn about L. Frank Baum, the author of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” and his horrible views on Native Indians, which I had been unaware of prior to reading the book. Overall, the book is a good place to start, but the reader, if unfamiliar with the history of our country’s many atrocities against its first people might miss much of the injustices referenced.
Recommended for mature 8th graders due to some mild content.
When school is taken away from Joan, it seems like the worst thing ever. How can she convince her father that school is what her mom wanted for her? How can she convince him that her learning is important – as important as her work on the farm for him and her three older brothers? It isn’t until a visit from her former teacher that Joan gets an idea. If she can only earn enough money from selling eggs, she might be able to get back to school and her dream of leaving the farm and all the hard drudgery that it represents. Yet, quickly it becomes apparent, no matter what Joan says or how hard she works, her father expects her to live out her life in servitude to the farm and to him. After one horrible night of screaming and yelling, Joan makes a brave decision. She will run away and get a job in a larger city. After all, they pay girls in the city to do the work she’s doing for free on the farm. And they pay well! But she knows no one will hire a girl of only 14. So a plan forms. She will need to change her age and her name, just in case her father comes looking for her.
This includes birds, mice, people and even raccoons! It turns out, there are a lot of pets that end up “haunting” the place they used to live. All they need is someone to help them to leave. Shelly LOVES going with her grandmother to help people and animals move to the next phase, but her mother isn’t so sure Shelly should be spending so much time with the dead and little to none -outside of family members- with the living. After all, Shelly doesn’t really have any great friends at school, and this concerns her mom. But her mom is so busy trying to work and pay rent and provide for the three of them, it can be hard to carve out that time. Still, Shelly knows her mom loves her and wants the best for her, even if she isn’t totally supportive of the whole ghost hunting thing.
to beg for the bike back and says he’ll do anything. First mistake. Bo says he wants a piece of gold from Frenchman’s Mine – an old gold mine where people have DIED because of cave ins. Is Gus really going to do this, just to get back Rossi’s bike? Sure looks that way. But how can Gus get gold out of a gold mine where anyone who has gone in it last 100 years has died?
maybe something small. If you had a chance to redo it, would you? And just how many times would you want to redo it, if the same result kept happening? How much would you change what you did or didn’t do each time?
Maya and Nicki are named after two of their mother’s favorite poets. And their father is a community activist, always helping somewhere and someone, many of them Maya and Nicki’s friends. Maya has always loved her neighborhood, but over the last four or so years, there have been changes. Many that Nicki seems to embrace, but ones that have Maya concerned. After all, how does one feel when the white people who once fled an area, now decide it is okay to start putting up speciality shops and landlords who decide they don’t want to rent anymore, but would rather sell a home that Maya’s best friend Essence has lived in her whole life – just across the street?
Bex, otherwise known as Beth Ann, is always looking over her shoulder. Why? Because most people believe her father is the mysterious Wife Collector serial killer. When Beth/Bex was a young girl, she unknowingly turned over evidence that connected her father to the murders of multiple young women. She has lived with the uncertainty of her father’s guilt for the last 10 years. After her father was accused, he left and abandoned Beth/Bex. Everyone believes that proves her father was indeed the killer, but Beth/Bex still hold out hope that he is innocent.
TEN other kids in all of the 7th grade – Caitlyn realizes her list isn’t going to help her much. There aren’t enough kids for there to be any specific groups, let alone any kid who even remotely reminds Caitlyn of anyone from home! The school is housed in an old mansion and they still have recess and at lunch all the older kids have to sit with younger kids and babysit them. It just seems to get worse and worse.
living and while her grandmother isn’t exactly warm and welcoming, she does get her a job for the summer working at a local deli not far from her grandmother’s apartment in New York City. New York is a far cry from her old home in Maine. Still the busy life at the deli helps to make Mia forget, at least temporarily, about the awfulness of her life. And on her first day there, she meets Fig. Fig with the electric blue hair and the family at the deli who is big and boisterous and so full of life that it is hard for Mia to be numb around them. Fig in turn introduces her to a group of friends, one of whom is Cooper, a boy that Mia quickly becomes fascinated with.
