Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

Hale, S. (2008). Book of a Thousand Days (Unabridged, 6 discs). Full Cast Audio.

ISBN:1599900513

Price :$17.95 hardback

Reader's Annotation: The Lady Saren and her maid Dashti are locked in a tower for seven years, because Saren wouldn't marry the man her father chose for her.

Summary: On her first day as a lady's maid, Dashti chooses to endure confinement with the Lady Saren. Saren is to be locked in a tower for seven years, as punishment for refusing the man her father has chosen for her to marry. Though they are locked away from the world, Dashti and the Lady Saren have food and supplies enough to last. Dashti tries to keep Lady Saren's spirits up, and she keeps a journal of their time in the tower. Then the girls get two visitors. One is the man Saren would like to marry, and the other is the man her father had chosen. In both cases, Saren makes Dashti pretend to be her, to speak to the men through the small opening in the wall of the tower. Saren and Dashti eventually break free of the tower, but the land they knew is gone, replaced by scorched fields of war. Dashti leads Saren on a quest for answers.

Genre: audiobook, action, book, fairy tale, family, fantasy, fiction, friends, love story, identity, royalty, war

Series : This book is not part of a series.

Evaluation: Another fantastic adaptation of a lesser-known fairy tale by Shannon Hale.

Why it belongs in a Tween Collection: Shannon Hale already has a strong following of tween readers, for her books The Goose Girl and The Princess Academy, among others. Her fans will be anxious to get her hands on this books as well.

Readalikes :

• Princess Ben by Catherine Murdock
• Fairest by Gail Carson Levine
  

Other Useful Info:

• Shannon Hale's Website

Reviews:
from Booklist

The author of the Newbery Honor Book Princess Academy (2005) offers another captivating fantasy filled with romance, magic, and strong female characters. The story, based on a little-known fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm, takes place in an imagined ancient Central Asia. Orphaned Dashti is a hardworking, pragmatic girl, who grew up in the open, windswept steppes. She finds work in the city with a young noblewoman, Lady Saren. Then Lady Saren refuses an advantageous marriage, and as punishment, she and Dashti are sentenced to seven years in a sealed tower. A tiny window is the tower’s only connection to the outside world, and it’s there that Saren’s two suitors, the terrifying Khasar and the handsome Tegus, come calling. Written in diary form in Dashti’s voice, the gripping tale follows the two young women through their imprisonment and their escape into a grim world of warring societies. Readers will quickly embrace Dashti, an invincible storybook heroine with a healer’s touch, who accomplishes battlefield heroics while nurturing a powerful, secret love for a lord. Fans of Gail Carson Levin’s Fairest (2006) will embrace this similar mix of exotic, fully realized setting; thrilling, enchanted adventure; and heart-melting romance.

— Gillian Engberg

Princess Ben by Catherine Murdock

Murdock, C. (2008). Princess Ben. (p. 344). Houghton Mifflin.

ISBN:0618959718

Price :$16.00 hardback

Reader's Annotation: Benevolence never wanted to be a princess, but when her parents were killed she became the unwilling heir to the throne.

Summary: Princess Benevolence led a fairly quiet life. She and her parents lived in town, rather than at the castle, and she stayed out of the way of the court. Until the day her parents and the king were all killed by assassins. Ben moved into the castle and under the watchful eye of her Aunt Sophia, who is determined to turn the grieving Ben into a "proper" princess, and a puppet monarch. Sophia has ideas about Ben's demeanor and her figure, and her methods are harsh. Then Ben discovers a secret room off behind her own tower prison. Inside there is a spell book, and Ben begins to study magic. Ultimately, Ben will have to use all her royal skills, and her unroyal skills, to save her kingdom.

Genre: book, fairy tale, fantasy, fiction, family, love story, magic, war

Series : This book is not part of a series.

Evaluation: This is a good modern fairy tale with a spunky heroine. I was slightly disappointed that I didn't end up loving this book as much as I loved Dairy Queen and The Off Season, but it was still a good read.

Why it belongs in a Tween Collection: A new generation of princess stories, with smart girls and magic, has been a hit with tween readers. This one will be no exception.

Readalikes :

• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
• The Goose Girl or The Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
• The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (for older readers)
  

Other Useful Info:

• Catherine Murdock's Website

Reviews:

from Young Adults Books Central

A Bewitching Tale
a review by Ed Goldberg

In this fairytale, fifteen-year-old Princess Ben’s mother and her uncle, the King, are killed while on their annual trip to visit her grandfather’s tomb. Her father disappears and his whereabouts are unknown. It was assumed that Drachensbett, the neighboring country, is involved in the attack as they have been trying to annex Montagne for centuries. Ben is immediately moved from her small home into the castle and, under the tutelage of the Queen Regent Sophia, she begins to learn what it takes to be a queen…or rather what it takes to attract a potential husband who would make a good strategic alliance for Montagne. This involves comportment, dancing, table manners befitting royalty (i.e. eating very little and carrying on meaningless conversation). Unfortunately, her round figure and rebellious attitude frighten away most promising suitors.

Ben was used to running free while her parents were alive; used to a very loving family. The castle and its inhabitants are cold, bossy, clammy and totally uninviting. She doesn’t want a husband. She wants to do something important. After a particularly rebellious dinner, Queen Sophia has enough and decides to teach Ben a lesson. Ben is removed from her luxurious bedroom suite, moved to a tiny room at the top of a long, round stairway of stone and forced to sleep on a bed of straw. She is at the uppermost point of the highest tower in Chateau de Montagne. Hopefully her bleak surroundings will cause some introspection.

The walls in Chateau de Montagne are made of thick stone and each room has an antechamber two to three feet wide. Unintentionally, Ben finds that these thick walls hide secret stairwells, one of which leads to a room equipped for a witch, complete with a book of spells. Ben becomes intrigued and begins studying witchcraft every chance she gets. It is with this magic that Ben will fulfill her goal of doing something important.

Murdock, author of Dairy Queen and The Off Season, two excellent books, has written another winner in Princess Ben. The characters are marvelous. The story is exciting. The action is captivating. The writing is superb and descriptive. Readers will love Princess Ben and root for her to triumph and become the queen she is destined to be. Catherine Gilbert Murdock is one of my favorite writers and Princess Ben reminds me of another of my favorite writers, Shannon Hale, author of Princess Academy, Goose Girl, and Book of a Thousand Days. You will want to read Princess Ben in one sitting, it’s that good.

The Bat-Chen Diaries by Bat-chen Shahak

Shahak, B. (2008). The Bat-Chen Diaries (p. 110). Kar-Ben Publishing.

ISBN: 0822588072

Price : $16.95 library binding

Reader's Annotation: Selected writings, diaries and letters of Bat Chen Shehak, who was killed in 1996, on her 15th birthday, in a terrorist bombing.

Summary: In the same way the diaries of Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic have illustrated the day to day lives of tweens during the Holocaust and Bosnia, the Bat-Chen diaries paint a picture of life growing up in modern day Israel. Bat-Chen began to keep a diary when she was in the fifth grade, and she wrote frequent letters and poems. Collections of her writing have been published in Arabic, Japanese, Italian, Dutch and German. Her familiar concerns, friends, school, siblings, first romances are set against a backdrop of war and an enduring hope for peace.

Genre: book, nonfiction, war, identity, friends, coming of age, siblings, family

Series : This book is not part of a series.

Evaluation: This collection of journal entries, letters, and poems is all the more touching for the places in which it is sometimes overly dramatic or simplistic. It looks like the diaries we all wrote when we were tweens, and that is what makes it so powerful.

Why it belongs in a Tween Collection: First person accounts make history and current events real to readers. Tweens will identifiy with Bat-Chen, who fights with her siblings and hates homework even while she's contemplating living in a country at war. Bat-Chen will make Middle East politics real for tweens.

Readalikes :

• The Diary of Anne Frank
• Zlata's Diary by Zlata Filipovic
  

Other Useful Info:

• YouTube intro to the book
  

Reviews:

School Library Journal Review

he Bat-Chen Diaries released in February, 2008, nearly slipped beneath my notice. Perhaps because I love bats or the Chen portion may have caught my eye. Whatever reason, I'm glad that I read this title from Kar-Ben Publishing.

I know The Bat-chen Diaries have been published in other languages (Hebrew, Japanese, Arabic, Italian, Dutch, and German) and this is the first English translation of her work. There is a free teaching guide that can be downloaded from the publisher.

In March 1996, Bat-Chen Shahak was killed by a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Center. It was Purim, and it was her 15th birthday. Interestingly she had written a condolence poem to widow Leah Rabin after the assassination of her husband Israel's Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin in November, 1995. After Bat-Chen's death her family gathered together pieces of her writings in notebooks, diaries, letters, and drawings to produce this tribute to Bat-Chen's life and desire for peace.

Knowing the main character's fate and that there is no happy ending can make reading war diaries by children very difficult. Even reading grown-up accounts of tragedies is difficult to accept.

War, Women and the News by Catherine Gourley

Gourly, C. (2007). War, Women and the News: How Female Journalists Won the Battle to Cover World War I. (p. 198). Athenum Books for Young Readers.

ISBN: 0689877528

$21.99 hardcover

Reader's Annotation: This book describes how women journalists became war reporters and photojournalists on the front lines of World War II.

Summary: This book ends with a discussion of Christiane Amanpour, who has covered news in war zones for CNN for more than 20 years. She is following in the footsteps of women like Margaret Bourke White and Therese Bonney who struggled to be allowed to cover the news during World War II. Before the war began, women who wrote for newspapers were called "newshens" and their work was confined to the women's pages of newspapers. They wrote mostly society gossip and housekeeping tips. As the war began, however, a handful of brave women became the first female journalists to write and photograph from the front lines of battle. This book tells their stories.

Genre: nonfiction, war, career, women's history

Series : This book is not part of a series.

Evaluation: This book did a good job of describing how several women broke into the field of journalism during World War II, though it was occasionally difficult to keep track of who was who, or where in the War the story was. I still think it would be a great addition to any history lesson on WWII.

Why it belongs in a Tween Collection: The combination of photos, story, and clips from newspapers helped to keep what sometimes felt like a rather long book flowing. As an adult, I found it interesting to understand some of the backstory on photos I'd seen hundreds of times, but I'm not sure that same thrill would exist for tweens, but maybe it would. Also a good illustration for tweens about a time in history when women really had to struggle to break into a field dominated by men.

Readalikes :

• Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery by Russell Freedman
• The Road Home by Ellen Emerson White
  

Other Useful Info:

• Publisher's website
  

Reviews:
From School Library Journal
Grade 6–8—Gourley's passion is sharper than her focus in this introduction to more than a dozen writers and journalists who "refused to be left behind." After opening with a glimpse of photographer Dickey Chapelle, who convinced a reluctant colonel that the lack of women's "facilities" in a war zone would be a solvable issue, the author launches into a lengthy but incidental account of how the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression opened the door a crack for female field investigators and "sob sisters," some of whom, though dismissively transformed into "paper dolls" or "newshens," courageously followed the GIs overseas in pursuit of the story. Darting from Europe to the Pacific and back (with a stop to record Dorothea Lange's long-suppressed coverage of the displacement of Japanese Americans on the West Coast), Gourley provides an overview of major events, but only fragmentary looks at what her subjects actually experienced or wrote. There are also frequent disconnects between the narrative and accompanying pictures; some pictures are tantalizingly described but not reproduced, others are irrelevant or details of shots shown later in full, and a quote inset into a view of German soldiers marching through Warsaw specifically refers to other-than-Polish refugees. Capped by massive resource lists, this is a worthy work, but more loosely organized and less likely to intrigue readers than Penny Colman's Where the Action Was: Women War Correspondents in World War II (Crown, 2002).—John Peters, New York Public Library
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