young adult – ~*LunaSea*~

French, Gillian. Sugaring Off. Algonquin, 2022.

Reason read: I needed a book for the Portland Public Library 2024 Reading Challenge and was struggling to find something from the North Star Award nominee list. I am nowhere near being a young adult. Sometimes I wonder if I ever qualify as adult, but that is a whole other story. I found this book and decided it fit.

The backstory: Joel Dotrice was arrested ten years ago for fracturing his daughter’s skull when she was seven years old. Imagine this – he threw her down the stairs. On purpose. Partially deaf ever since, Rochelle “Owl” Dotrice has lived with her uncle and his wife. They own a maple sugaring farm in the mountains of northern New Hampshire and life seems pretty routine…until the Dotrice family gets notice that dad has made parole and Seth hires a teen named Cody to help with the sugaring.
Whether French was intentional or not, in the beginning of Sugaring Off I felt the story of Owl moved slowly, like cold sap moving through the trunk of a maple tree. As the story heated up, like sap to syrup, it began to flow faster with more flavor and intensity. Having said that, I am not a fan of overly dramatic descriptions of characters or plots. I feel they are ploys to get the reader crack open the book. The inside cover of Sugaring Off describes Cody as “magnetic and dangerous.” Spoiler alert! For the first two thirds of the book Cody is a sullen and silent cigarette-smoking teen who wants nothing more than to stay away from adults and maybe take Owl’s virginity. Oh yeah, she’s attracted to him, too. The real threat seemed to be daddy making parole. Would he come back for revenge? It was Owl’s testimony that put him away.
As an aside, I understand why the parole of Owl’s father was pivotal to the plot, but I felt it was unnecessary trickery in the face of Cody’s mystique. More could have been done to build up Cody’s “dangerous” character because Seth’s outrage about Owl’s relationship with the teen was misplaced. If Seth thought Cody was such a threat, why did he let Owl work so closely with him? What happened to big bad dad? He drifted out of the story as more of Cody’s dark past was revealed. This was written for teens and so I thought like a teen and questioned everything.

Blumberg, Rhoda. Full Steam Ahead: the Race to Build a Transcontinental Railroad. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 1996.

Reason read: February is Train Month.

The greed of gold brought out the best and worst in businessmen. Entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to cash in on the craze. For Theodore Judah he saw the need for a transcontinental railroad, not to transport passengers but supplies to the miners and merchants who supported them. Abraham Lincoln climbed aboard the idea of a transcontinental railroad because he envisioned the transportation of troops and supplies. Central Pacific Railroad started laying tracks west. Union Pacific starting laying tracks west. And the race was on.
Blumberg paints the historical picture of the birth of the transcontinental railroad in broad strokes. Written for young adults, she steamrolls through the Chinese labor used to build the railroad, the blasting of the mountains that stood in their way, conquering the arid desert, the conflict with the “wild” Indians, even the slaughter of buffalo, until she reaches the grand conclusion of the last spike celebration.

Author fact: Blumberg has written several books on historical events, but Full Steam Ahead is the only one I am reading.

Book trivia: Full Steam Ahead is meant for young adults so there are plenty of amazing photographs and illustrations. I appreciated the portraits and the political cartoon.

Nancy said: Pearl said a great way to learn about most things is to “read a really great children’s book on the subject” (p 200) and she listed Blumberg for learning about the transcontinental railroad.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Riding the Rails: Railroad History” (p 200).