The Story of Harriet Tubman: A Biography Book for New Readers by Christine Platt

The Story of Harriet Tubman by Christine Platt
Shown with Harriet Tubman detail on my quilt
I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet

"Stories about Dreamers JUST LIKE YOU," the back cover promises. And Harriet Tubman had big dreams and with fearless courage changed her life and the lives of over 300 other enslaved persons over ten years. And she never lost a passenger on the Underground Railroad.

During the Civil War, Tubman became a spy. Concerned for the indigent and homeless former slaves, she created a home. And she worked to secure voting rights for women.

Who would have imagined that an enslaved, illiterate field hand could make such a dramatic impact?

The Story of Harriet Tubman by Christine Platt relates Tubman's dramatic and inspirational story with learning aids including a glossary, quiz questions, timelines, and discussion questions.

Platt does not sugar-coat the horror of Harriet's life as a slave. Readers read that she was beaten and nearly died and experienced 'sleeping spells' and visions after she recovered.

"How will her courageous spirit inspire you?" the back cover asks. And that is the purpose of the biography. One may be on the lowest rung of the social ladder, seemingly without power or control over one's one life, but with vision and commitment, sometimes one does the impossible.

Colorful illustrations by Lois Lora bring the text to life.

I received a free book through Callisto Publisher's Club in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher:

Discover the life of Harriet Tubman―a story about courage, bravery, and freedom.

Harriet Tubman became a celebrated leader in the fight to free people from slavery. Before that, she was a determined young girl who believed that everyone deserved to be free. Harriet Tubman bravely used the Underground Railroad―a network of secret routes and safe houses―to free herself and many other enslaved people. Explore how Harriet Tubman went from being a slave on a plantation in Maryland to one of the most important figures in American history. 

How will her courageous spirit inspire you? 

This Harriet Tubman biography includes:

• Path to freedom―Explore a visual timeline of Harriet’s life so you can see her progress over time.
• Helpful definitions―Discover a glossary with easy-to-understand definitions for the more advanced words and ideas in the book.
• Test your knowledge―Take a quiz to make sure you understand the who, what, where, when, why, and how of Harriet’s life.

If you’ve been searching for Harriet Tubman biographies for kids, look no further―this one has it all.

About the author:

Christine Platt is a literacy advocate and passionate activist for social justice and policy reform. A believer in the power of storytelling as a tool for social change, Christine’s literature centers on teaching race, equity, diversity and inclusion to people of all ages.

The Story of Harriet Tubman
by Christine Platt
Rockridge Press
Publication April 7, 2020
$6.99 paperback
ISBN: 978-1646111091

Odetta by Ian Zack

In 1978 my husband and I went to the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Our interest in folk rock turned into a deep love of folk music.

We attended concerts around Philly and bought recordings and listened to WXPN on the radio, discovering favorite singers.

One name we heard was Odetta, Odetta, and we knew she was a queen who had once ruled and was still worshipped.

I was a child in the 1950s, cushioned in my working class white neighborhood, unaware of things beyond my front door when Odetta was breaking into songs that stirred souls and feed movements and engendered a whole generation of singers whose names filled the airwaves of my sixties teenage years.

I knew so little about her.

Ian Zack's Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest  is a wonderful biography of Odetta that presents her life, her art, and her legacy.

Odetta's amazing voice spurred teachers to encourage training and her mother scrimped to find the funds for voice lessons. After high school, Odetta worked menial jobs days and studied European classical music nights, singing in the Verdi Requiem and Bach's Mass in B Minor. Odetta loved opera and art songs but knew her career options were nil because of her color.

Odetta was cast for a revival of Yip Harburg's Finian's Rainbow in 1950 which led to her work with Turnabout Theater Jr.

Folk music was the new big thing, The Weavers success spurring an interest in folk songs. Friends took Odetta to hear a concert including Lead Belly songs and it "touched the core of me," she said. It changed the twenty-year-old's life.

The shy girl whose voice was a powerful instrument sang with her eyes closed as she inhabited the songs of her people.
She eschewed straightening her hair, cutting it short and leaving it natural, unwittingly engendering a movement.

Pete Seeger became her biggest fan and promoter. Generations claimed Odetta as their spiritual mother including Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, Carly Simon, The Kinks, Grace Slick, and Janis Ian.

There are so many interesting stories in these pages. Odetta was on the TV Western Have Gun--Will Travel because Richard Boone was a fan. The script was a "clear endorsement of black rights," Zack writes.

With the arrival of the Beatles, popular music took a new turn and Odetta struggled to attract the new audience--basically, my generation. She had a series of flops. Her love life had its ups and downs, mostly downs, with a failed marriage and unsustainable relationships.

And yet with age, she became more comfortable with herself, confident on stage, celebrating her African American heritage. President Clinton awarded her the National Medal of the Arts and Humanities, confessing that she had inspired him as a boy.

I enjoyed this biography as a vehicle for learning more about this iconic singer and the role of folk music in American history. It was also a nostalgic trip 'down memory lane', recalling the first time I heard many of the artists who inform the story.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through Edelweiss. My review is fair and unbiased.

Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest
Ian Zack
Beacon Press
Publication Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN 9780807035320, 0807035327
Hardcover $28.95 USD, $38.95 CAD, £22.50 GBP

from the publisher:

The first in-depth biography of the legendary singer and “Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” who combatted racism and prejudice through her music.

Odetta channeled her anger and despair into some the most powerful folk music the world has ever heard. Through her lyrics and iconic persona, Odetta made lasting political, social, and cultural change.

A leader of the 1960s folk revival, Odetta is one of the most important singers of the last hundred years. Her music has influenced a huge number of artists over many decades, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Kinks, Jewel, and, more recently, Rhiannon Giddens and Miley Cyrus.

But Odetta’s importance extends far beyond music. Journalist Ian Zack follows Odetta from her beginnings in deeply segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to stardom in San Francisco and New York. Odetta used her fame to bring attention to the civil rights movement, working alongside Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and other artists. Her opera-trained voice echoed at the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery march, and she arranged a tour throughout the deeply segregated South. Her “Freedom Trilogy” songs became rallying cries for protesters everywhere.

Through interviews with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, and many others, Zack brings Odetta back into the spotlight, reminding the world of the folk music that powered the civil rights movement and continues to influence generations of musicians today.

Godshot by Chelsea Bieker

What I was reading repulsed me but I could not put down Chelsea Bieker's debut novel Godshot. Lacey's narrative voice drew me in, her conflicted nativity and faith struggling to survive as her family and community fails to protect her. The novel reaches into the deepest questions of life and illustrates the limitations of love and faith.

The tragic series of events and abuse endured will be hard for some to follow; this is a dark story. But just when it seems that Lacey has lost everything, including control over her own life, she finds salvation.

Drought has hit the town of Peaches, the orchards turned to dust. Pastor Vern finds the community ripe for hope and promises to deliver rain if they believe in him. Isolating the community from the world, believers allow him total control.

Pastor Vern brings good to some. Lacey's mother found strength to overcome her alcoholism. Pastor Vern also destroys as he wields his total power. His plan to create a perfected church involves assignments, special purposes that believers long to be given. They want to be Godshot. Lacey's mother's assignment takes her on a downward spiral until she abandons Lacey to run off with a man filled with false promises.

Lacey is taken in by her grandmother, one of Pastor Vern's unthinking believers. Lacey desperately misses her mother and endeavors to track her down, her search to learn taking her into the world beyond the Godshot.

Lacey's assignment begins her journey of doubt. Would God require such things?

The novel touches on so many hot-button issues relating to the social status and role of women, the persistence of human hope placed in unreliable leaders, the love of a child for her mother, and the awakening of a young woman to see beyond her community’s  teachings.

Lacey's journey from darkness into light, from powerlessness to self-determination comes to a satisfying conclusion.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Godshot
by Chelsea Bieker
Catapult
Pub Date April 7,  2020 
ISBN: 9781948226486
Hard cover $26, $38.95 (CAD)

COVID-19 LIfe: Comfort Food, Writer's Block, and Isolation

Month two in social isolation. The last time we were in public together was March 10 to vote in the Michigan primary election.

March 10 was also the date of Michigan's first COVID-19 cases.

We have been able to order delivery groceries from a local store and Imperfect Produce, and health and personal care items from the local drug store. You have to be up and online early in the morning to find an Instacart opening for delivery!

I wipe all the packages down with a virus-killing solution, repackage what I can, discard all the packaging, and then wash my hands and all the surfaces. Will this become the 'new normal'?

My hubby panic-ordered toilet paper on March 20 on Amazon, and it arrived from China April 10! We were down to one more roll.

It's comfort food time, like goulash.

And streusel-topped coffee cake like Mom used to bake. I used her cake pan, too, the one I remember from the 1960s.

My brother will be on unpaid furlough from Ford. My son is on a two month 20% pay reduction and his partner on unpaid furlough. Our retirement investments plummeted. Still, we count ourselves lucky; we all still have health insurance.

Sunny is reaching the age when she should be spade, but the vet office is closed. She will go into heat any time now. We haven't seen the grandpuppies in a month!

My husband and I take daily walks very early in the day, bundled in winter clothing. We rarely see anyone else. The young folk, dog walkers, and families wait until the day warms up.

 We did, though, see a gigantic opossum making its way home one morning. It likely spent the night rummaging through the trash set out for morning pick up.

We had several warm days in the sixties, then a snow and sleet. In other words, it's been a typical Michigan spring!

The birds are building nests and the daffodils are in flower.

My brother finds the lonely places to commune with nature. He shares spectacular photographs. Below is Dodge Park in Oakland County, MI, on a misty morning last week.

Earlier in the week he took his kayak down the canal to Cass Lake.

Meanwhile, life goes on.

I received the Advanced Reading Copy of The Preserve by Ariel S. Winter.

Book requests came in at the last minute and there was one offered by the publisher which I could not resist.

I am working hard to keep up! Writing the reviews is not coming as easily now. I am distracted.

New books on my NetGalley include

• Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put In Us and On Us by George Zaidan
• Vesper Flights by Helen MacDonald, author of H is for Hawk
• Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation by Candy J. Cooper, a Middle Grade Book on the Flint Water Crisis

My LibraryThing win to come is

• In Search for Safety: Voices of Refugees by Susan Kuklin

My mask-making abilities have proven abysmally bad. Every other quilter in the universe is mass producing masks for family, friends, and local hospitals. I have tried various patterns. I have no elastic, no twill tape or ribbon, no hair ties, no stash of batik cottons. Now it's asked we wear masks in public. I could wear one I made if need be. But I just stay home.

Sad news has come from my weekly quilt group. We haven't been together in over a month. One member lost her grandson to cancer. Another was diagnosed with cancer of the brain. She was a real creative force in our group. 

I am thankful that I can shelter safely in place, with all the food and books I need, and with my companion of 48 years. I am thankful we have a yard full of flowers and trees and suburban wildlife to enjoy. I am thankful we can safely walk the neighborhood in the early morning.

This pandemic has unearthed the great social and economic disparities in our country. I hope that they will be addressed in the future. 

The way Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmore is doing, she may be tapped to a national leadership role in the future! 

I hope you and yours are all isolating and safe. 

SIn Eater by Megan Campisi

Orphan May stole a loaf of bread and when arrested expected to die a horrible death. The Recorder stared hard at her and sentenced her to be branded as a Sin Eater. The teenager would be shunned for the rest of her life but would never again starve. She was to hear the sins of the dying and eat the proscribed foods to take their sins upon herself. The dead would fly to heaven; a locked collar kept May chained to hell.

Being a sin eater is a constricted life, alienated from society, yet May has unlimited access to the darkest secrets of the human heart for the the dying are eager to shrug off their worst sins before judgement.

The Queen's ladies in waiting are dying. May hears their confession but is given foods for sins never confessed. Something is afoot in the palace, and illiterate, powerless May is the only person who can cipher out the truth. 

Sin Eater by Megan Campisi is set in a familiar Elizabethan-inspired alternative world with the virgin Queen Bethany jealously guarding her favorite while lords present themselves as suitors. 

The stench and inhumanity of the times are vividly described, as are the consequences of the quest for beauty and power.

May is a remarkable and sympathetic heroine whose story arc takes her from powerlessness to embracing her destiny. The story winds up to a tense climax.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Sin Eater
by Megan Campisi
Atria Books
Pub Date April 7, 2020 
ISBN: 9781982124106
PRICE: $27.00/$36.00 (CAD) hardcover
$12.99 ebook/$19.99 audiobook

Maida Heatter; Cookies are Magic and Chocolate is Forever

I used to make Maida Heatter's Blondies for an annual bake sale. My boss would come and buy up the whole plate! They have been a favorite recipe since I bought the Book of Great Cookies in the late 1970s.

Heatter passed away last year at age 102. I am relieved to know that baking desserts did not shorten her life. Because we are in the COVID-19 Lock Down in Michigan and I feel the urge to make cookies and eat chocolate like I haven't felt in years.

And yea! Here are some of Heatter's best recipes for cookies and chocolate desserts being published in new collections!

The instructions begin with all the basics--information on how to read the recipe, select and prepare your ingredients, the equipment needed, even storing your baked goods.

Cookies Are Magic is divided into drop, bar, ice box, rolled, and hand-formed cookies, and 'More!" which includes Madeleines, shortbread, lady fingers, biscotti and, well, more.

You will find Mrs. L.B.J.'s Moonrocks and Giant Ginger Cookies; Georgia Pecan Bars and Florida Lemon Squares; Peanut Butter Pillows and Coconut Cookies; Plan Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies and Checkboards; Kansas Cookies and Charlie Brown's Peanut Cookies.

I love a chewy cookie and am eager to try Oatmeal Molasses Cookies with shredded coconut and nuts.

Chocolate Is Forever includes Simple Cakes; Special Occasion Cakes; Cookies and Bars; Pastries, Pies, Puddings and More; and Candy, Fudge and Chocolate Drinks.

Heatter tells how her Oreo Cookie Cake was inspired by a USA Today reporter telling her that Oreo cookies were the most popular commercial cookies in the world.

Heatter's mother served the F.B.I. Chocolate Layer Cake when J. Edgar Hoover came to dine. He threatened an F.B.I. investigation if he didn't get the recipe!

Who could pass up Positively-the-Absolute-Best-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies? They are my weakness! Turns out that polls show they are America's favorite cookie to make at home. Heatter tweaks the traditional Toll House recipe.

Black-Bottom Pie was a favorite of Pulitzer-Prize winning Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The Yearling, Cross Creek). Heater agrees and shares a 'glorious' recipe.

I love Heatter's Homemade Chocolate Syrup with 19 drinks and variations! I imagine having it on hand for Chocolate Banana Milkshakes in summer and Hot Mocha in winter.

I am going to get into the kitchen tomorrow and try the country fair prize-winning Buena Vista Loaf Cake, a "plain and wonderful chocolate loaf loaded with fruit, nuts and chocolate chips--almost a fruit cake but not as sweet." With a crunchy crust, I think it will be great with my afternoon cup of tea.

I received free ebooks from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Chocolate Is Forever: Classic Cakes, Cookies, Pastries, Pies, Puddings, Candies, Confections, and More
by Maida Heatter
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 9780316460149
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

Cookies Are Magic: Classic Cookies, Brownies, Bars, and More
by Maida Heatter
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 9780316460187
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby

For whoever looked at an elderly lady and saw the young heroine she once was?~from Miss Austen by Gill Hornby

I am old. I am older than my mother and her brothers and two grandfathers were when they died. I am two aunts away from being the eldest on my mother's side of the family, and an aunt and a cousin away from being the eldest on my father's side. I have become a living keeper of memories of times that predate most of my family's birth.

I am also the family genealogist, a role inherited from my grandfather along with his papers after his death. I know things. I know things no one else knows, things that I have kept mostly to myself. I debate about making public this knowledge but am reluctant to cast a dark shadow on the memory of beloved relatives.

I understand why Cassandra Austen was adamant about obtaining Jane's private letters, culling out those too personal, that revealed too much about her beloved sister's life. For as small a footprint as our lives may leave, some things should remain unknown, private, sacred.

And Cassandra saw now, understood for the first time, the immensity of the task she had lately set herself: How impossible it was to control the narrative of one family's history.~ from Miss Austen by Gill Hornby

Miss Austen is the story of an aging Cassandra Austen on a mission to retrieve her sister's letters from the estate of a beloved friend. For in these letters Jane had poured out her despair and depression following her father's retirement and later death, her hasty acceptance of the marriage proposal she soon broke, and the startling story of Cassandra's rejection of a marriage proposal, which had she accepted would have entailed breaking her vow to marry Tom Fowle or no man.

Church tradition allowed the relicts of the family two months to vacate the house for the next incumbent.(...)Poor Isabella. The task before her was bleak, miserable, arduous: just two months to clear the place that had been their home for ninety-nine years!~from Miss Austen by Gill Hornby 

Tom Fowle's family included three generations of clergymen who inhabited the vicarage, but the chain had ended. The widow of the last vicar, Isabella Fowle had to pack it all up, distribute family heirlooms to her brothers, and find herself a place to live--all in two months. The new vicar was pressing for an even earlier removal.

--to leave a vicarage was to be cast out of Eden. There were only trial and privation ahead.~from Miss Austen by Gill Hornby

Cassandra Austen arrives to 'help' out, but really to locate the letters she and Jane had sent to Isabella's mother Eliza, their dear friend.

The trip brings back memories. Tom was one of Rev. Austen's boarding scholars and had known Cassandra since she was a young child. When Cassandra agreed to marry him, he was impatient to gain a position to support them. When Lord Craven offered Tom a living if he accompanied him as his private minister to the Caribbean he readily agreed. Yellow Fever claimed his life.

Reading the letters she finds takes Cassandra back to when her family had to leave Stevenson. After their father's death, Jane and Cassandra and their mother had no permanent abode, little income, and no place for Jane to flourish and write her novels. Their society of beloved friends was replaced by a turnstile of acquaintances and vapid conversation.

Oh, how deeply I felt for these removals from a parsonage home! After the birth of our son, living in a parsonage became problematic for me. If anything happened to my husband, I had one month to move out! I had no job or income, a baby, a house full of belongings. It terrified me to know how vulnerable I was because of the parsonage system.

The scenes in Pride and Prejudice with Mrs. Bennett agonizing over the Collinses inheriting her home mirrors what Jane must have known, losing the only home she had ever known, the piano, the library, friends, everything that made life enjoyable.

Gill Hornby's portrait feels probable but upset me because I wanted Cassandra to have a happy ending, not the one she chooses.

Miss Austen is a dark novel, like Persuasion which Cassandra reads aloud in the book. Jane appears in flashback scenes with the wicked wit we love her for, but also in her darkest days, the Jane we would prefer to forget.

The coverlet made by Jane and Cassandra Austen and their mother

I also have to mention that during her visit to Manydown, Cassandra works on a patchwork quilt. With swollen fingers, she plied her needle intermittently.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Miss Austen: A Novel
by Gill Hornby
Flatiron Books
Pub Date 07 Apr 2020
ISBN 9781250252203
PRICE $26.99 (USD)