Isabel and the Miracle Baby, by Emily Smith Pearce, $15.95. Grown-ups marvel at her new little sister, born after Isabel’s mother endured cancer and its enervating treatments. But Isabel, jealous of the baby and deeply worried that the cancer may return, shares no part of their joy.
She won’t call her sister by name, but calls her only “the baby,” and is not above surreptitiously yanking that downy infant hair.
“The miracle baby didn’t feel like a sister. It was like some grunting animal that wasn’t potty-trained. The baby never had to be patient or quiet or play by itself.”
New elder siblings — and parents who expect them to share their own delight with baby brothers or sisters — will find a sympathetic, feisty protagonist in Isabel. Her short temper with the “sick ladies’ meetings,” as she calls her mother’s cancer support groups, and the confused anger and anxiety Isabel feels regarding her mother, will be familiar to the families of cancer patients as well. (And she does eventually come around to baby Rebekah.) Ages 9 to 12.
The Tallest Tree, by Sandra Belton, $16.99. Before boards covered windows, before vandals scribbled graffiti on the buildings, before broken bottles littered the neighborhood, real luminaries visited theaters and other businesses that once stood tall in Little Catfish’s neighborhood.
Among the most illustrious visitors was Paul Robeson, the phenomenally gifted athlete (football, basketball, baseball and track), scholar, lawyer, author, actor, activist and celebrated bass singer.
As a neighborhood elder teaches Little Catfish about the great Paul Robeson, a new idea takes hold that transforms the broken blocks into a place of pride. Despite setbacks, including a vicious vandalizing by the community’s own youths, the revisionists persevere. An excellent bibliography follows Belton’s revealing story. Ages 8 and up.
Spud, by John Van de Ruit, $16.99. John Milton’s nickname — Spud — is decidedly less poetic than his given name, and his prose is equally frank. His daily chronicle of life at a South African boarding school remains unromantic and precise. He unsparingly describes one inspired but alcoholic professor, a hapless classmate who rotates between the dormitory and an asylum, the hormones raging within him and his romance with a girl he nicknames The Mermaid.
The narrative is as breathless and indirect as adolescence itself, as Spud repeatedly locates and loses his footing. Even those who never attended boarding school will recognize themselves here. Ages 12 and up.
After Tupac & D Foster, by Jacqueline Woodson, $15.99. These girls divide their childhood by the death of rapper Tupac Shakur and the event that diminished their trio into a duo.
Adults measure events by global disasters — assassinations of leaders like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.; the events of 9/11; the U.S. government’s indifferent response to Hurricane Katrina. Children and adolescents use a different yardstick, not only in assessing time but also in gluing their relationships and in gauging their own places in the word.
An ominous current seethes under Woodson’s graceful storytelling, a sense of portent that underscores the fragility of childhood but also its imperishable memories. Ages 12 and up.
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com
