Riding Magic by Kelly Starling Lyons

 While the gorgeous illustrations in this brief, impactful book are reason enough to savor it, it also illustrates an important life lesson. In it, an adolescent girl from a family of horseback riders overcomes mixed feelings about learning to ride, resulting in a significant developmental milestone.

There is one horse Dom loves to spend time with in her uncle's barn, but she is afraid to ride horses, and she envies the ease with which the other family members do it. It takes the better part of a summer, but after gentle encouragement from her uncle, mother and older sister throughout the summer, she has an unusual dream one night that finally enables her to push through her ambivalence and out of her comfort zone. 

Then, wow! What joy she feels on her first ride! There is no going back. Dom's confidence in herself soars. Her world and her self perception have changed irreversibly; she knows that she and the horse she has been building a friendship with all summer in the barn have now crossed through a special portal. "We can do anything. Even fly through the sky" - she thinks. 

This is a book to inspire readers of any age to try that thing they are longing - but afraid - to do, and to experience the exponential growth in self agency and self esteem that can result.

- Marianne W.

The Lion's Run by Sara Pennypacker

From a literary standpoint, our small library in Ferguson is not a sleepy place. In a steady stream throughout the year we add thousands of carefully chosen new books of every variety to our collection. Here is one that I immediately checked out for myself as soon as we acquired it last week; it looked so appealing. And what a story it tells! This novel - written as historical fiction for middle schoolers - grabbed me in the first words and drew me right into a tense and dangerous world: that of Nazi-occupied France in 1944. 

Thirteen-year-old Lucas Dubois - so named because he was found in the woods as an infant (dubois meaning "of the woods") - lives in an orphanage. Daily life is routine and tedious, everyone is always hungry, and a couple of the other boys are a constant menace to him. After he gets a job delivering produce to local institutions in his small French village, however, the quality of his life begins to change dramatically. The people this lonely boy encounters and the relationships he builds outside of the orphanage begin to elevate a life that had previously seemed to hold very little promise. 

The German occupiers in his village have imposed a suffocating stranglehold on everyday life. On his vegetable delivery rounds, Lucas begins to see things that disturb him. He sometimes hears secrets discussed among adults who don't always notice this quiet boy as he makes the daily deliveries. Before long, he has seen and heard enough to compel him to join the underground resistance to the Nazis. The more deeply this resourceful boy gets involved in subterfuge, the more dangerous life becomes.

The Lion's Run is categorized for readers aged 8 to 12. A good story is a good story however, and this suspenseful and beautifully written novel has a universal appeal not restricted to age. 

I have read many novels about the Second World War and I have hiked mountain trails on the French side of the German-French border, where some of that war's most vicious conflicts were carried out and where barbed wire, stone and iron remnants of it are still prominent along the mountain trails. In this novel I learned more than I ever knew about the Germans' systematically brutal and exploitive treatment of the French during that war. Moreover I found unsettling echoes of some of the worldwide threats on today's horizons: the rise of racial supremacy sentiments in both the US and Europe, fears about people's safety, the official aggressions, detainments and deportations of people the government deems undesirable, the increasing US use of government surveillance on citizens, and the race-based pronatalism expressed by white supremacists. There are echoes of The Handmaid's Tale in this novel, as the Germans under Hitler were indoctrinated that "boy babies are only future soldiers and girls are only future mothers of more soldiers." Therefore in order to replenish the German population, during this military occupation thousands of teenage French girls were systematically romanced and impregnated by German soldiers and then separated from their babies. 

In an echo of that human predicament, even the poor orphanage cat - "a good mouser" - was immediately, forlornly separated from the kittens she bore each year - though for the opposite purpose. I also learned things about horses I'd never known, and fell deeply for one particularly winning horse in this novel.

After extraordinary twists and turns, the book concludes with an ending that is triumphant for Lucas and sad for other characters. The story's end is a new beginning for him, leaving him with much more confidence in himself and his future. 

This is a book I didn't want to be done with. I want a sequel!

-Marianne W. 

Poems & Prayers by Matthew McConaughey

 

In his new book Poems & Prayers, the actor Matthew McConaughey offers up some intimate thoughts in both prose and verse, divided into themed sections. I found this work to be a mixed bag. Some of the poems seem contrived, while others are beautiful, simple, and insightful. The pages of prose often make for thoughtful reading. Overall, the book cries out for the guidance of a sharp editor. 

In some poems the wordplay is quite clever, while in others it's overwrought. In a poem called "Daymares" - about small, almost unnoticeable daily habits we have that wound those close to us - McConaughey remixes a common expression in the line, "the pets that we peeve." This made me laugh; after all, who hasn't left a beloved pet feeling that way? This is McConaughey at his most witty.   

There's also wordplay that reads more like word salad: "I take a scroll down the Rolodex of my memory's lane." You really have to work to wrap your mind around this awkward line. It sounds to me - who spent several years in an earlier career creating and evaluating therapeutic programs for nursing home residents - very much like something a person with dementia might say.

Some poems are so packed with metaphor and cryptic symbolism that the meaning is lost on me. The poems "Fallen Leaves" and "The Mess I Made" are examples. Removing a few stanzas would make these poems more polished and coherent. A poem called "Capably Able" is full of clever rhymes and imagery, but there is so much going on in it that I can't make sense of the whole.

Then there are the prayers, most of them written in verse form. McConaughey expresses a traditional Christian religiosity, in which he offers prayers to a father figure, examining his own flaws and asking forgiveness and redemption. These felt a bit exhibitionist to me, yet his discussion of why we pray is perceptive. 

What I found much more interesting in both his prose and his poetry is the expression of another kind of spirituality he has but never labels as such: a distinct sense of the yin and yang in the operations of the universe. In a reflection on page 75 he wrote: "Consequences go both ways. With every decision, choice, action, there will be a give with the take, a credit with the debit...something good and something bad." On another page: "If you make a profit in one place, you're gonna get a debt in another."

Elsewhere, a yin/yang sensibility is expressed by an entire poem called "Back to the Future," every line a reference to complementary opposites. On another page is an untitled, elegant little poem about doers and dreamers; they have opposing qualities and the world needs both types of people. McConaughey's book highlights his belief in and practice of Christianity while not overtly acknowledging this more intuitive side of his view of life.  

McConaughey's prose feels less forced, and in places is just as lyrical as his best poems here while summing up some worthy insights. He believes in the necessity of difficulties in life in order to mature. He believes in post traumatic growth for those willing to take a hard and critical look at themselves. He is big on personal accountability.  

Crown Publishing slipped up with this publication, though; the book needs tighter editing. There are grammatical errors throughout - apostrophes where they shouldn't be, and redundancy of both words and thoughts within single sentences in several places, as well as excess in some of the poems. Correcting these errors and trimming away some of the confusing lyricism would result in a more polished book.  

- Marianne W.