Review: Short story: "The Price of Admission" by Dustin Thao

The Price of Admission by Dustin Thao
Published June 2026 via Amazon Original Stories

Evan's life isn't easy, but he makes do: between scholarships and part-time jobs, he's confident that he can move up in the world and fulfill his mother's dreams for him. And there's a boy—one who comes from an entirely different world, but who seems to see Evan for who he is...at least, behind closed doors.

This is one in a collection of coming-of-age stories, and one of the most interesting things about it is the ambiguity of the role of Dalton, that boy from a different world, for so much of the book. Evan is not ashamed of who he is or who his family are or the world he comes from (immigrant background, tight financial situation), but he's aware that Dalton might have reservations about their different financial backgrounds, and he responds accordingly, bending over backwards to fit better into Dalton's world. I wondered, for much of the story, how far he might be willing to go to excuse Dalton's behaviour, and at what point one of the boys would have to change their tune.

The telling is a little bit removed—the story isn't long, but it covers a significant chunk of time, so a lot of the events of the story are told through summary rather than scene. I think I might have preferred to see fewer events, but in more detail; or maybe just a longer work where the individual elements of the book could be given a bit more room to breathe. (Also interesting, in the end, who Evan chooses to criticise, and what type of work he chooses to pursue in the long run; I'd have loved to see that explored more.) Still, it explores interesting themes and allows most of the characters to have some complexity.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Dreamland" by Sarah Dessen

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen
Published 2000
★★★★

When Caitlin's sister rejects the life that has been set out for her, Caitlin finds herself floundering in the shadows. With attention elsewhere, she throws herself into new things—cheerleading, a new boyfriend. Cheerleading she hates. The boyfriend, though, takes up more and more of her time...and gradually leaves her with more and more bruises.

Dessen made her name on summer (or summer-like) romances set in North Carolina, but once upon a time, before she'd settled into the rhythm of YA romance, she wrote Dreamland. I was twelve when this came out, and I probably read it that year or the next. I read (and loved) a lot of Dessen's books, but this one still stands out—darker, not a romance (or not really), a time in Dessen's writing when her heroines were allowed to make mistakes and find themselves in unhealthy relationships and not be squeaky clean. It's so interesting to see reviews from people who read some of Dessen's later work first and prefer that, because I have always felt that this is one of Dessen's stronger works—no healthy happy romance, a heroine who get wrapped up in drugs, etc.

I realized I'd grown out of Dessen's books some time ago, when I read yet another book about a heroine with problems that weren't her fault and concluded that I wasn't likely to see another heroine who got to be at all messy (and definitely not one who was poor or fat or queer or political or from somewhere other than small-town-but-not-too-small-town North Carolina). I remember this one as one of Dessen's only books that allows for that messiness (an abusive relationship isn't Caitlin's fault, of course, but she at least goes willingly into her experiments with pot and class-skipping—agency, yay?). But, rereading it now, it's perhaps not so big a difference; Caitlin is still a White, wealthy (or wealthy enough to never worry about money) teenage girl with an enormous safety net. I'm still so happy to see a YA character who gets to make some mistakes, but even the dramatic drug plotline feels quite late-90s these days; while I wouldn't recommend that high school students go get stoned, an author writing this in the 2020s would probably have to get Caitlin hooked on something stronger for it to carry the same weight that it did then.

Because this was published 25 years ago, it's interesting to see what else still feels contemporary and what doesn't—Caitlin calling every number where she thinks she can reach Rogerson, for example, is a distinctly pre-cell-phone vibe. A few word choices and targets of not-quite-snark would give me pause today but aren't so out of line for 2000s NC. Late in the book, there's some stuff involving residential treatment and characters who are in said treatment for months, even more than a year—partly a sign of changing times (contemporary insurance companies would likely give most of the patients the boot within weeks), partly a sign of this being a world populated by people with a certain degree of financial comfort, partly perhaps just that Dessen might not have considered insurance policies when writing the book back then.

As a nostalgia read, this was a win, and I can still imagine it resonating with teens, especially those in unhealthy relationships. But...these days, I'd probably recommend something else.

Review: "Brighty of the Grand Canyon" by Marguerite Henry

 

Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry
Published 1953
★★★★

Yet another childhood reread. I'm not sure how it came about, but I was obsessed with this and King of the Wind (which I have yet to reread) and Brighty of the Grand Canyon; although I had (and read) some of the Misty books, these two were the ones that I came back to over and over again.

This is definitely one to be read in the context of time and place; the hunting material isn't really contemporary (though...the focus on guns might be...), and personally I find the good-guy-bad-guy material a little reductive, but eh, I don't think that part really has to do with the age of the book. I love the emphasis on Brighty's independence, which feels like a reminder to readers that not everything must, or should, be tamed.

If I read this for the first time now, I'd probably give it three stars and not think much more about it, but...what can I say, the stuff that stuck with you in childhood sometimes sticks with you. Would still recommend it for young readers, along with perhaps a discussion about what has changed since then and a Playmobil Wild West set.

Review: "Good Night, Mr. Tom" by Michelle Magorian

Good Night, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian
Published 1981
★★★★★

A childhood favourite—I read this so many times when I was younger that I'm actually kind of staggered that this is apparently my first reread in fifteen years or more.

For the most part, this stands the test of time brilliantly. Magorian builds characters so thoroughly and thoughtfully, and even though I knew every plot point of the book, it managed to break my heart all over again. Such wonderful details, too.

If I'd read this for the first time now, I'd probably give it four stars; it's a beautiful book, but it is also a bit of a cliché (grumpy old man with a heart of gold and all that). I'm not sure that either Tom or William ever does anything bad or even wrong—Tom never gets angry; I don't think he makes a single mistake as a guardian/foster parent; other than one upset moment, William never acts out, and on the rare occasion that he breaks a rule, there's a ton of context. (I think there's an argument to be made that some of this comes down to trauma response, but then, this is a book written in the early 80s for children, and I think it's already doing a pretty good job at addressing trauma!)

As it is, though, I'd still recommend this highly and widely...and I'll still read it again in a year or two or fifteen, and I'll probably still give it five stars then too.

Review: "Running Out of Time" by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Published 1995
★★★★

Another childhood reread: Jessie is happy with her life in 1840, but she's also worried: there's a diphtheria outbreak, and people keep getting sick and sicker. And then her mother tells her something impossible—it's not 1840 at all, but 1996, and Jessie needs to go to the outer world to seek help.

This is another one that stands the test of time (...pun not intended). Jessie has to learn so much so fast, and there are so many things that a contemporary reader would never consider—that she doesn't know how a flush toilet works, for example, or that she doesn't know about pesticides; her instinct (which fortunately she doesn't get the chance to act upon) when she meets a Black girl is to ask her about slavery, because...she's never learned that slavery was abolished. She doesn't know how a phone works, let alone a pay phone, which in some ways has come full circle—I imagine most kids her age in 2025 also wouldn't ever have used a pay phone! Jessie has to be incredibly resourceful to figure out not just how to get the help she needs but to do so without alerting anyone to the fact that almost everything she sees is new to her.

Running Out of Time was reissued as recently as 2023, and I'm glad of it; this is one that kids should still be reading.

Review: "Flight #116 Is Down!" by Caroline B. Cooney

Flight #116 Is Down! by Caroline B. Cooney
Published 1997
★★★★

The first time I read this, I was about twelve, and I had packed the book for my first-ever flight (or at least, my first flight while old enough to remember it). If you think that is a dummy dumb move, you are right! Plane crash books are not good plane reading. This did not occur to twelve-year-old me, though—not when packing the book, not when reading the book (completely unbothered), and not for a good decade or so after. I'm not the best ever traveler, but flying? No problem. The moment I'm in that seat, the only things I need to do for the next hour or six hours or ten hours are 1) read and 2) sleep.

Not so for the poor folks on flight #116, which crashes in the woods. First on site is Heidi, who lives on the property where the plane crashes and is woefully unprepared for this sort of crisis; second is Patrick, who is a trained responder but has certainly never been at a mass casualty event before.

This one stands the test of time better than a lot of the old Cooney books that I've reread of late. I know this one well—I reread it repeatedly when I was younger, so although there are some details I'd forgotten or gotten mixed up (e.g., it turns out that the waitress at the diner gives Patrick a soda, not a hot chocolate, because she can tell that he can't stand the coffee he insists on ordering), I still know what happens to every major character. And yet: even having read this probably ten times when I was younger, and knowing all of the outcomes, there are still characters for whom I hold out hope for something different. That's a matter of nostalgia, of course, but it also says something of the book, that I still feel so strongly for some of the characters.

Would still recommend this one to kids...though not as a flight read.

Review: "Princess Megan" by Trisha Magraw

Princess Megan by Trisha Magraw
Published 1998
★★

A quick dip back into the Magic Attic Club strain of my childhood rereads. In this one, real-world Megan faces a dilemma when her high-powered attorney mother wants Megan to step in for her at a volunteer event—but Megan has a volunteer commitment of her own. When she's magically transported to a version of medieval France that has unicorns and invisibility cloaks and Merlin, she has to put her problem-solving skills to use to save a unicorn. How are these two plotlines related? Nobody knows.

I'm not sure I read this one as a kid—it rings very few bells. (I just read it now because I wanted to see what they'd do with a princess plotline.) I don't think this is one of the stronger books of the series; in some, the characters are magically (and temporarily) given the skills and knowledge they need to function in their magic-attic roles, but here, Megan is basically just herself. She's immediately befriended by a servant her age (who doesn't think it at all odd that Megan knows nothing about their world, and who tells Megan all the secrets that could presumably get the servant's family banished or killed), and the girl just...tows Megan around and tells her all the things that Megan should already know.

I rather wish this one hadn't gone into fantasyland. Seems like there was a chance to add to the historical background and information, no? We get bits and pieces about what life might have entailed in medieval France (e.g., servants sleeping on straw on the floor; Megan learns that not everyone can read), but then Megan has to go steal an invisibility cloak and chase down a unicorn, and that's kind of the end of the historical information.

Back in the real world, Megan manages to have an adult sit-down conversation with her mother, with the satisfying-to-them result that her mother's commitments are spread between Megan and her friends. Who are ten. Because it's great parenting to have to get elementary schoolers to take over an adult's job...

Review: "Twins" by Caroline B. Cooney

Twins by Caroline B. Cooney
Published 1994
★★★

I was a huge Cooney fan as a pre-teen—I read every one of her books that I could get my bands on. This was one of my favourites, and I can't tell you how many times I reread it but it was many. I'm pretty sure that once upon a time when I played the Sims (that would be the Sims 1, back before the Sims had numbers) I had sims named Mary Lee and Madrigal.

The premise here, if you've never read the book: Mary Lee and Madrigal are identical twins, and their lives are completely entwined...until Mary Lee is sent, alone, to boarding school. She's devastated—and then she's devastated again when Madrigal comes to visit and Mary Lee realizes that Madrigal is thriving without her, and that perhaps it's not so much that they are reflections of each other as that Mary Lee is a reflection of Madrigal. And then, finally, she's devastated once more when she finds herself stepping into Madrigal's life...and realizes just what that life is.

For nostalgia factor, this gets nearly full stars. Cooney is brilliant at the little details; I still remember the way Mary Lee thinks about her hair, and the hair clip she bought once upon a time, and the way she talks about ski clothing:

Madrigal's ski outfit was stunning.

Jacket and pants looked as if they had begun life as a taffeta Christmas ball gown: darkly striking crimson and green, plaid with black velvet trim and black boots. Madrigal was no oddity, but a trendsetter. Every other girl on the slopes was now out of date.

Including Madrigal's twin.

For Mary Lee wore the same neon solids everyone else had that winter. Hers was turquoise. The color, which had seemed so splendid, which would hold its own against the lemon-yellow and hot-orange and lime-green of other skiers, was now pathetically out of style.

She was ashamed of her turquoise. She felt obvious. She felt loud and lacking in taste. (loc. 262)

Maybe it's just the nostalgia speaking, but I still feel that viscerally: how new and stylish the neon turquoise must have felt, and how immediately out-of-date it felt against Madrigal's Christmas taffeta.

Of course, there are some other things that don't really hold up. There's a whole plot point with the "bad part" of town, where apparently rats run rampant and the thought of being left alone there makes teenagers go mad. Cooney's books aren't exactly diverse to begin with (as far as I can remember nearly all of them feature thin, straight, well-off white girls with thin, straight, well-off white friends), and although the residents of this "bad part" of town aren't described, I don't think I'm wrong to be reading racial implications into the story. Separate from that, I question the way Mary Lee's parents handle things, including (spoiler alert!) having all of her things disposed of even though they know that it's Madrigal, not Mary Lee, who has died.

And: This time around I am left wondering about Madrigal, and wondering about the way things went down on the ski slopes. We're told what Madrigal intended...but how things go so terribly wrong for her? Makes me question whether there's supposed to be some level of redemption for her, as though at the end she couldn't go through with it. That's probably giving Madrigal too much credit, but I wonder.

Oh. Did I mention Madrigal's boyfriend? His name is Jon Pear. Never Jon, always John Pear. Do we think this is a play on the name Jean-Pierre? (But why?) I've concocted a whole long backstory about how the first time Cooney heard the name Jean-Pierre she thought that was the spelling, but of course that's just me cheerfully making things up.

At any rate, it did its nostalgia job. I'm glad so many books from my childhood have been digitized and are available at libraries again—makes it easier to go down certain kinds of memory lane.

Review: "Jo of the Chalet School" by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

Jo of the Chalet School by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
Published 1926
★★★

Book 2! In which the Chalet School has grown exponentially (conveniently, every time the school grows another chalet, perfect for their needs, becomes available to let), the Middles battle the prefects about slang (and go full Elizabethan English as a result), the girls have a new singing teacher but manage not to fall in love with him, and there's a flood. Probably some other things, but I'm writing this a week after finishing it, so, you know. Some things have been lost to time.

Oh, this is also the book in which Robin shows up, and everyone immediately falls in love. Madge does collect the strays, doesn't she? In book 1, Juliet was abandoned to the care of Madge and the Chalet School; now it's Robin, who is not abandoned but is given over to the total care of Madge. I guess Brent-Dyer wanted a little sister for Joey. And of course Madge gets engaged, though with a promise that she'll be Head for some time yet.

It is all predictably Sweet and Good (any of these girls can be reformed by a good scolding) but compulsively readable nonetheless. In this one Joey makes an effort to write an Elsie Dinsmore book, and I'm almost tempted to go reread one myself—we'll see. Will definitely be rereading more of the Chalet School books, though—how could I resist?

Counts:
Pretty: 38+ (the pretty pale-green curtains, her pretty French, your pretty Christian name... count does not include "prettiest", "prettily-embroidered", etc.)
Fresh: 4 (looking very fresh and pretty, looking fresh and dainty, looked fresh and trim... count does not include "fresh wind", etc.)
Honest injun: 2. Neither of which anyone objects to, despite the injunction against slang.
Little: 255 (gregarious little soul, the little white steamer, a dear little girl, a quiet little mouse, a little sallow face—includes "little sister" and "a little freedom" and the like, but dear god)
Dainty: 5 (its dainty yellow curtains, neat and dainty, a dainty little collar)
Delicate: 6 (the delicate face, her delicate face, delicate fingers)

Review: "Danger on Midnight River" by Gary Paulsen

Danger on Midnight River by Gary Paulsen
Published 1995
★★★

Oh gosh, okay. I've been going through a...not really a Gary Paulsen phase, but a childhood-rereads phase, and I'm in the Gary Paulsen phase of my childhood-rereads phase. I think we must have owned a copy of this book—I know I read it multiple times, and some parts (eating pine cones warmed by a fire) I remembered pretty clearly.

Spoilers ahead. But also, the book is 30 years old, so chances are good that if you're on this page you too have read the book before.

As a kids' book I still think this is pretty great. It's lively, and it's a story where not only does the underdog prove his worth, but the bullies voluntarily (eventually) come to their senses. Plus, you never know; maybe one of these days I'll get lost on a mountain and survive by eating pine cones, and I'll have this book to thank for it.

But I reread it as an adult. And with an adult's eyes, I have some questions. Like: When Daniel crawls out of the van, he doesn't think for a second about the other boys? He gets to the bank and starts a fire and starts to dry out his clothes...and only gives the others (dead or alive) a second thought when he hears voices. (And even then he takes the time to build up his fire before going to check it out.) Granted, Daniel owes the other boys nothing (they've been consistently terrible to him), but my gosh.

The number of perils these kids face is wild. In addition to their van crashing and the driver dying (Paulsen really liked to kill off the adults, didn't he?), one of the boys is trapped and almost drowns. The boys split up (TERRIBLE DECISION, CHILDREN; LEARN FROM THIS), and the three of them who are not Daniel immediately get lost, get sprayed by a skunk, and spend a miserable night in the rain...and then one of them falls off a cliff and breaks his leg. Daniel shows up just in time to save the day, of course, and performs a heroic and improbable rescue with some belts. (I've read my fair share of wilderness rescue memoir, and I rather suspect that a real-life version of this would have the injured kid screaming quite a bit more rather than just the occasional wince.) And if that's not enough, there's still a rabid dog and another near-drowning to keep the boys on their toes.

Again, this is a kids' book. The fact pace makes a certain amount of sense, and you can do away with occasional logic. But as an adult I'm bad at doing away with logic (well, except when I'm very good at doing away with logic, but this is not one of those times), so here we are. When Daniel insists that they boil their water before drinking it, how? Like, sensible, I'm not complaining, but... Earlier in the book we see that he's found "a large rock with a hollowed-out center", and somehow if there's a small fire nearby this will boil (would love to test this in real life—can you boil water by just putting it next to a fire, not above one? How big a fire is required to boil how much water?). But that was ages ago in the book, and even if they found that rock again (he hasn't been lugging it around), how did they move enough water from the river to the rock that they could drink boiled water "until they thought they would burst"?

I miss being a kid and not questioning these things.

I will note that earlier in the book Daniel suggests that they have three options—stay put and light a signal fire, try to continue on the road they were going on, or try to cross the river again and go back the way they came. The other three boys want to continue on the unknown road, and Daniel wants to go back the way they came. And I just don't know what to make of this. Daniel estimates that they went maybe a hundred miles in the wrong direction and took random turns along the way, so I can't possibly imagine that he thinks they'll happen upon the right turns and so on. I suppose he's hoping they'll get onto a bigger road and run into someone. But I can't help but think that the smarter thing to do would be to start with a signal fire—Daniel's proven himself perfectly capable of starting that fire and keeping all four boys fed and watered, and they'd have a lot fewer chances to fall off cliffs and almost drown if they just stayed put and built a smoky fire.

Oh well. It was fun, anyway. Ooh, one of these days I'll have to find that Sweet Valley High book where there's an earthquake and Jessica tries (and fails) to use her belt to rescue someone who's fallen down a chasm in the earth...

Review: "The River" by Gary Paulsen

The River by Gary Paulsen
Published 1991
★★★

Book 2 in the Hatchet books, which I read as book 3 because that was the order that makes sense to me. Here, Brian is asked to take on a government project—to return to the wild and show a psychologist, in real time, how he did what he did. Things go well, maybe even too well...until they don't. And then Brian has to take on a new task: get the psychologist, who is unconscious after a lightning strike, some 100 miles downriver.

As with Brian's Winter, this is an interesting addition to the series but doesn't have quite the same power as Hatchet. By this point in the series (again, book 2), Brian is an old hand at it all—anything outdoors that he sets his mind to he more or less immediately achieves. Not that I want a perfectly inoffensive character to struggle unduly, but Brian very much goes into this challenge thinking (and then executing), "okay, we need X, then Y, then Z". Might have been more realistic to put Brian in an environment he wasn't quite so familiar with and have him need to look for different kinds of berries, nuts, etc.? I'm not sure. Then again, even when Brian has to make a raft that will safely navigate two adults, one unconscious, down a river, it's nothing more than a half-day's work to him even when this is well outside his normal skill set. Maybe it would just be more realistic for a couple of months of ad-hoc survival to not turn him into an expert at all things outdoors.

Still glad to have given this series a reread, but next time I think I'd probably be okay with sticking with book 1 and then moving on to other things.

Review: "Brian's Winter" by Gary Paulsen

Brian's Winter by Gary Paulsen
Published 1996
★★★

This is book 3 in the Hatchet books, but I skipped ahead because in my fuzzy memories of childhood, this was the second of the books that I read, and it's a more direct follow-up to Hatchet.

Brian's Winter reimagines the end of Hatchet: instead of the survival supplies Brian pulls out of the submerged plane leading to his rescue at the end of summer, they improve his odds—but he's still lost in the wild when summer rolls into autumn and then into winter.

While still a reasonably gripping read, this one felt a bit more "checklist" to me than Hatchet. By the time winter rolls around, Brian is confident in his abilities; he's justifiably worried about winter, but pretty much every time a concern comes up he thinks about it and finds a way to solve it. Perhaps that's partly because this is so short a book, with less character development and so on than the first one; it's also not one that I'd want to read without the context of the first book. But as a nostalgia read, I'm on board.

Review: "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Published 1987
★★★★

I read Running Wild and got a yen to reread this. They're very different books, of course, and Hatchet is ultimately a nostalgia read for me. (How many kids of my generation read this in middle school?) It's the ultimate survival story: a boy unprepared for the wild crash-lands alone in remote Canada after the pilot flying their small plane has a heart attack. At first he thinks he'll just have to survive a few days, and then it becomes clear that he'll have to learn to be sufficient for rather longer.

I'm thinking now that Hatchet played at least a supporting role in my love of wilderness and survival stories. This is so unlike a contemporary survival story, even one written for the same age group (YA and MG lit were not the same established categories in 1987, when this was written, that they are now). I mean, just the fact that Brian has a hatchet on his trip to visit his father! He's not terribly resourceful to begin with, but he gets there—he has to grow up so quickly, because it's immediately obvious that just about anything in the wild can kill him.

Curious now about what the contemporary equivalent of this is; Running Wild is grand but also spans only a few days, and with kids who are better prepared to face the wild. And now I have a yen to reread Island of the Blue Dolphins as well...and maybe some more Gary Paulsen...

Review: "The School at the Chalet" by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

The School at the Chalet by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
Published 1925
★★★

Nostalgia reading at its finest. My mother grew up reading these, so my siblings and I grew up reading them too—we had piles of them. They were a huge part of my desire to go to boarding school (and a huge part of the reason boarding school—not in an idealized version of the Austrian Alps, and not in an idealized version of the 1920s/30s/40s—was so disorienting when I did eventually go).

Anyway, curiosity (and nostalgia) called, so here I am. And rereading this was...something. It's so much a product of its time and place that I'm not entirely sure what to do with it anymore: The girls are all basically (with a few exceptions) simple and sweet and good; the adults are all basically smart and sweet and good; the England Be Glad sense is real. Madge sets up shop in the Alps and immediately has people pounding on her door to enroll their daughters, because thank goodness there's now an English school in the Tyrol, how did we possibly educate our children without a good proper English school. She's making it all up as she goes—school fees are decided not by any calculation of costs but by Madge asking her brother if he thinks £120/year sounds reasonable. The local girls are considered the foreigners; the local adults inexplicably say "thee" and "thou" a lot; Madge begrudgingly appoints a "foreigner" as head girl because the English girls are too young.

Brent-Dyer doesn't seem to have been fond of Germans (she remarks that There is much more camaraderie between Austrians and their children than between Germans and theirs, and the Tyrolese middle class and upper middle class treat their boys and girls nearly conforming to English ideals), and there is an epic—not in a good way—running "joke" throughout the book about a fat German woman some of the girls meet. Everyone is appallingly rude—the kids, the German woman—but the adults who should be teaching the kids to do better seem to think that the German woman is automatically in the wrong because she's fat. It's one part of the book that has aged very badly (and it wasn't a good part of the book to begin with).

I'll read a bit farther into the series and see where it gets me. The lustre has come off a bit, though I expect I'll manage to forget some of my disappointment within a few years and do another read...

Counts:
Dainty: 10 (dainty uniform, dainty meal...)
Jolly: 38 (jolly clever, jolly man...)
Pretty: 28+ (her pretty head, her pretty little watch, her pretty broken German...)
Honest injun: 5. Joey is the culprit here, but everyone seems to think it's fine.

Review: "Island of the Blue Dolphins" by Scott O'Dell

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
Published 1960
★★★★

I fell deep into a childhood reread phase and this is where I landed. Island of the Blue Dolphins is a fictionalized attempt at the life of Juana Maria (real name unknown), who survived some 18 years alone on an island after her tribe evacuated and she was left behind.

So little is known about Juana Maria that this is really guesswork, but it feels like well-researched guesswork at least. O'Dell set himself a herculean task—not only is next to nothing known about Juana Maria's life, but this is a children's/middle grade book following a character who spends the bulk of her life alone, with nobody to talk to, and over the course of the book she ages from 12 to about 30, which is quite the age range to ask kids to stay invested in. But it works, and this stands the test of time.

Karana—as the woman is called in this story—is about as resiliant as you can get, because she has to be. She has the skills for a life largely outdoors (and when the skills she needs are traditionally men's skills, at least she's seen the work done), but she has to learn what it is to be entirely self-reliant, to have no community to fall back on. O'Dell keeps things at a bit of a distance (it's theoretically but not viscerally devastating, for example, when much of the tribe is slaughtered), but I love how he lets Karana be both practical and human. She knows what work she needs to do to carry on—to not just carry on but to thrive—and she gets on and does it, and she also does things likes explores parts of the island that she's never had cause to visit, and makes herself new jewellery, and sews herself a cormorant feather skirt because she thinks it's beautiful. She's a wonderfully strong character. (And! The book passes the Bechdel test!)

O'Dell's version ends with Karana on the cusp of starting over, again. What is striking to me is what he doesn't say in the author's note: he doesn't tell readers that by the time Juana Maria arrived in California, most of her Nicoleño tribe had died (largely due to diseases that they had no immunity to), and he doesn't tell readers that Juana Maria, too, died only weeks after arrival, struck down by dysentery. What records there are suggest that she was thrilled to be among people again, so I can't really argue that she would have been better off left on the island, but how tragic that her rescue also caused her early death, and that in that time not even her name could be communicated.

One other thing of note: in the book, when Karana sees the ship approaching, she puts on her cormorant skirt to greet her rescuers; the skirt (or dress) is true to historical record. O'Dell makes a gentle point about westerners imposing their cultural/dress/religious standards on her; one of the first things the white men from the ship do is have a dress made for her out of spare trousers—presumably, though O'Dell does not say this specifically, to cover her breasts. It's not lost on me that many of the book covers do the same (put a dress on her to cover her up though that's likely not historically accurate). Not that I'm expecting a children's book to...well...do otherwise...but with that context I'm finding that I prefer the covers that circumvent the issue by avoiding full-body depictions.

At the end of it, this stands up to time...but it's worth reading more about the story behind the story.

Review: "Mystery on the Fourteenth Floor" by Dorothy McKay Martin

Mystery on the Fourteenth Floor by Dorothy McKay Martin
Published 1980
★★★

Gosh. Okay. This was a childhood reread, and one I remembered fondly—I bought a secondhand copy when I was a teen or preteen and sympathized, I think, with Vickie's boredom and inability to rein in her imagination. But rereading it as an adult is...a bit odd.

It goes like this: Vickie has recently moved to "the city" with her parents and older sister Francine, a rookie reporter who is, among other things, following a case about a kidnapped young boy. Vickie hasn't made friends in the area yet, and she's bored—so when she starts seeing SOS signs in the building across the way, she's convinced that they're from the kidnapped boy...and that it's up to her to save him.

I still genuinely love the way Vickie lets her imagination run away with her—part of her knows that there are many more reasonable explanations for the signs than that this one kid the entire city is looking for happens to be in a swanky apartment building. A bigger part of her pushes that knowledge down, because it's the only interesting thing that's happened all summer; she convinces herself of it so thoroughly that not only does she disguise herself to go investigate, she makes multiple (rather endearingly bungled) calls to tip lines to get the police looking in that direction too. Also kind of love that the reason they've moved to the city is that Vickie's mother has had enough of playing the good suburban housewife; while it's a move that suits the whole family, it's Vickie's mother's art career that has the biggest step up in the city.

But.

I missed a few things as a kid: first of all, turns out this was published by a Christian publisher, which is of course fine but in this case means that a bunch of religious conversion material is shoehorned in—Vickie's father, for example, decides on a whim to read the Bible and to take every word as fact (seems odd for a lawyer to just accept it all without question, but okay), concluding that Jesus is God; also, Francine's boyfriend at one point basically goes "well, I'm not really religious, and golly gee, my religion teachers would have a laugh to think about little old me teaching someone about Jesus—but Vickie, have you thought about Jesus?"

All in all, it's not the worst early-80s example of unsubtle religious conversion attempts (the book, I mean, not the sister's boyfriend's clumsy golly-gees). But other things trouble me more. That same boyfriend (again: Francine's boyfriend) tells Vickie, more or less unprompted, that she's fat and should go on a diet to be more attractive; he's presented as the totally ideal guy, perfect for Francine, so it's not meant to be creepy or inappropriate, which is in some ways worse.

Vickie chewed and swallowed the big bite of pizza, not looking at Pete. After a moment she said in a small voice, "What you mean is that I am too fat."

"I wouldn't have put it that bluntly, but yes, you are." (104)

While the book has to be read within the context in which it was written—in this case, the 80s—it still feels gross and sad. Like, here's this lonely kid who briefly feels seen by her sister's boyfriend (who, incidentally, does not apply his diet advice to himself; he eats like a carnivorous horse)...and his advice is "buck up, kid; take the one joy you currently have out of your life and you might someday be hot too."

And then there are Vickie's investigations, which I doubt I thought twice about when I was her age but which as an adult trip a "yikes" factor. At the risk of spoiling a 44-year-old book that does not seem to have retained any kind of cult popularity...at the end of the book she follows the instructions on the signs in the window across to the other apartment to finally learn who communicating with her. It's (surprise!) not the missing boy. Perhaps more of a surprise: it's also not an adult who has been working to lure her into his clutches. I know I've become an Actual Adult because there are all these moments when Vickie thinks "should I leave a note to tell someone where I've gone?" and then decides "nah, it'll be fine." And because this is the end of a 1980 teen novel, not the beginning of one, it is fine, but it's not the smartest message ever.

I'm one part happy to have found this again and two parts bummed that it doesn't live up to my memory.

Review: "Deadly Voyage" by Jamie Suzanne (created by Francine Pascal)

Deadly Voyage by Jamie Suzanne (created by Francine Pascal)
Published 1995
★★★★

This miniseries was (spoiler: still is) some of my favourite Sweet Valley reading back in the day. In Deadly Voyage, Elizabeth and Jessica are super excited to go on a field trip...until the boat pulls away with the chaperones still on shore. (Then only Jessica is excited, and Elizabeth is worried that Something's Not Right). As it turns out, of course, Something Is Not Right, and the twins discover that (dun dun dun) the boat has been hijacked!

Cue high drama, high seas, and an impending storm. The field trip is a mix of the Unicorns and the Goody-Two-Shoes Brigade, which means that they immediately start fighting over who should make decisions (Janet thinks she should make decisions, because she's an eighth grader; Bruce thinks he should make decisions, because his father is rich; Elizabeth thinks she should make decisions, because she has considerably more brain cells than Janet and Bruce combined) while the hijackers make plans to murder the admittedly very irritating tweenagers they have on board.

Drama! Violence! Brattiness! This one has it all. Jessica and her cohort can't quite decide which is more important—their survival, or whether they're sucking up to the right tweenagers. Elizabeth and her cohort are definitely more interested in survival, but also have a habit of pissing off the baddies. And as the book ends, it's Elizabeth who is left for the sharks...

Review: "Alison on the Trail" by Catherine Connor (Magic Attic Club)

Alison on the Trail by Catherine Connor
Originally published 1995
★★

In school, Alison's impulsivity and competitiveness lead to a minor shock—but out on the trail, with a crew of young children relying on her, she finds that the stakes are much higher.

I don't remember reading this one as a child, but I love me a hiking book so thought I'd pick it up. Even after reading a few of these, I can't really tell the girls apart, but I guess Alison is one of the more strong-willed ones? In any case, she finds herself leading a group of seven-year-olds on a multi-hour hike through the woods, reliant on a map and some trail signs and her own good judgement...if she can in fact rely on that last one.

This is a book where I officially feel old: I probably would have enjoyed this as a kid, but as an adult all I can think is who is letting this completely untried child take a bunch of even younger children into the woods? Alison has a lot of knowledge about wilderness safety, which is never explained (something of a theme in these books—the girls seem to pop through the mirror with whatever skills and knowledge they need, though whether or not they retain any of it on the other side is another question), but she also makes rash decisions like taking what she thinks is a shortcut, without a map, in territory completely unfamiliar to her. Because this is a children's book, things turn out just fine, but not without some genuinely dangerous moments (literally, there are multiple chances for these children to die), and Alison gets to wave it off with an "Oops! So sorry. I've learned my lesson!" I'm not sure what I would have liked to see here, but at least a horrified adult or two?

This makes me think more generally about consequences in this series—the girls treat each scenario as though the consequences are real (which is good), but I don't know if we ever really know if they...are. Some of their adventures take place in the real world or something close to it, but some of them take place in magical scenarios, and as far as I can tell the books don't really pose (or answer) questions about what real-life ramifications these adventures have (if a girl had drowned in Alison's adventure, would she be able to find something about it in the paper when she got back to her normal life?). I mean...obviously this is outside the scope and age range of these books. But gosh. I'm not usually in it for the moral of the story, but I hope Alison learned her lesson in this one.

Review: "Cowgirl Megan" by Trisha Magraw

Cowgirl Megan by Trisha Magraw
Published 1998
★★★

I don't plan to reread a whole lot of this series, so I'm picking and choosing. Cowgirl Megan> has, I think, the strongest nostalgia vibes of any of the series for me—not so much the book itself, but that cover. Or, more accurately, that jacket—I remember so vividly how cool I thought a white leather fringed jacket studded with jewels was. Also, now that I think about it, the version of Megan on the cover is pretty much a dead ringer for the American Girl doll I had around the same time.

Unlike the contents of the other books of this series I've dipped into as an adult, this book also rings some other bells. Here, Megan is feeling slighted by her friends—who are, it must be said, astonishingly quick to cut Megan down to size when she displays the barest amount of ambition (more on that in a moment)—when she heads up into the attic to escape reality for a bit. When she slips through the fabric of reality, she finds herself in the Wild West...with a girl whose dream of showing her prowess in the competition ring is being thwarted by circumstances outside her control. It's up to Megan to help her come up with a plan—and in the process learn to speak up for herself.

Because the girls tend to adventure independently in this series, we actually see very little of their friendship—they're eager to ask each other where the mirror in the attic has taken them, and to sit together at lunch, but the books are short and so their time together is limited. But okay: let's trust that they're the best and most supportive of friends (most of the time). The other girls eventually (it's a feel-good children's/early MG book, after all) apologize to Megan and concede that having dreams makes sense. Good for them, and good for Megan for standing up for herself. What does it say about perceptions of female friendship, though, that they are so quick to encourage Megan to make herself smaller? I wonder what a contemporary book would do with this.

Review: "Keisha the Fairy Snow Queen" by Teresa Reed

Keisha the Fairy Snow Queen by Teresa Reed
Published 1998
★★★

I know I read a bunch of books in this series as a kid, but I no longer remember which ones—so I'm just rereading a few where the covers seem familiar. The contents of Keisha, the Fairy Snow Queen are in some ways familiar...but only because of Frozen! Here, Keisha is troubled over what to do when she catches another student cheating on a test. She takes to the magic attic and lands in a world with a problem—the magic crystal that powers the kingdom (or something like that) has been stolen, and the kingdom is freezing over as a result. Frozen was based on a Hans Christian Anderson story, so it wouldn't be unreasonable if the inspiration was the same here—he's not exactly obscure!

It's interesting to see that these books aren't all tied to real life—I don't know what the 'fairy' in the title has to do with it, but this one's definitely a story that relies on magic. It's also heavily moral-of-the-story-y, what with the whole plotline about cheating and right and wrong (which carries through in the snow-queen plot too), which I guess is about in line with the age range this series targeted. Will have to see whether other books in the series are quite so moralistic as well.