First, a big thanks to everyone who participated in "O' Canada" day and made it another big success on our One Shot Around the World Tour. I've updated the master list at my entry for probably the last time but do check out Becky's late entry (she was sick) over at Farm School. She shares some new nonfic that should interest everyone especially those of us who love Pierre Berton (history for kids!). She also points out a new series from Penguin - "Extraordinary Canadians". You guys might remember how impressed I was by the YA novel on Susanna Moodie's life (Susanna's Quill) earlier this year, well historian Charlotte Gray who has also written about Moodie has a contribution to the series on feminist and social activist Nellie Mcclung.

I somehow missed Gray's "visual biography" of Susanna Moodie and her sister Catherine Trail. This book looks stunning and I will certainly be ordering a copy. I really don't know why Americans do not know more about them - the sisters encompass so much of our idea of successful pioneer women and were great writers (from a family of great writerly sisters) to boot.

So much thanks to Becky for her links!

I just finished Nancy Springer's latest Enola Holmes mystery for MG readers (The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets) and it's even better than the last. These books continue to be very smart (smart enough to engage teen readers) and spread around a lot of thoughts on what it was like for women before emancipation (this go-round we consider how a woman could be committed to an asylum on the basis of one male family member and a doctor signing her away - for life).

I also read Curtis Parkinson's Death in Kingsport, another historical mystery (1941) that reminds me of everything good about the Three Investigators. You've got some dead folks, a teenager with a couple of sidekicks who are trying to figure stuff out and a potential tie-in to an Amazon trip by a couple of locals post WWI. It zips along and while it might be a wee bit out there it's realistic enough to be fun. A good solid mystery perfect (perfect!) for boys.

Can you tell I'm working on a mystery column?

Sarah mentioned the other day a new biography of astronomer Maria Mitchell that has me thrilled to pieces. I first read about Mitchell ages ago in the Pamela Dean urban fantasy Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary (read all about my love for that book and Mitchell from last year's Recommendations from Under the Radar week). Female astronomers from the 19th century have also always intrigued me since Thomas Mallon's Two Moons - love that novel as well. She links to an entry at Beacon Press by the author on writing the book. Here's a bit:

When I started my book on the nineteenth-century scientist Maria Mitchell, I expected to find that she had triumphed against impossible odds. “Bias and Barriers” against women’s achievement in the science are pretty intense in the twenty-first century, and I presumed that the obstacles must have been much harsher nearly two hundred years ago. My presumptions were bolstered by earlier accounts of Mitchell that tended to emphasize her exceptional qualities and minimize the encouragement she received from her family and her community. The great surprise for me was that Mitchell faced relatively little bias. In her time, girls were thought of as naturally scientific—and science itself was considered a feminine pastime.

Wow - how unexpected is that?! We think ourselves so advanced in so many ways and yet women and science...not so much. I'm really looking forward to Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science. (And take a look at some of the other titles at Beacon Press - very impressive.)

From the recent issue of Booklist I'm tempted by Andrew Pham's The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars. From their review:

World-shaping events that most Americans know merely through schematic maps and historical summaries take on a poignantly human immediacy in this story of one storm-buffeted man: Thong Van Pham, the author’s father. Readers join the young Thong in craving even a few grains of rice during the Great Famine, caused by the Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II. We watch as the adolescent Thong grieves the death of a classmate’s father, brutally slaughtered by the French legionnaires who supplant the defeated Japanese. And we hear bullets whistling past the ears of the adult Thong when his South Vietnamese unit is besieged by Vietcong guerrillas. By juxtaposing episodes from different epochs in Thong’s life, the intercalary structure of the narrative reminds readers of how the distant past casts long shadows on the future. When Thong finally surrenders to ruthless Communist captors, readers see up close the high personal cost of politicians’ geopolitical calculations. Indeed, this gripping narrative confronts American readers with the tragic consequences of their own country’s complicity in that calculus, dispelling illusions about both America’s myopic strategies and the Vietcong’s bloody tactics. By turns touching and searing, this slice of history—like Pham’s earlier Catfish and Mandala (1999)—deserves a wide readership.

I know it will break my heart but sometimes - I don't think we let ourselves get broken often enough. It's the kind of book that needs to be read.

And finally I just finished Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland which deserves an entire entry and will get one soonest, I promise. But wow - WOW!!!! - was this book amazing. I don't know what I was expecting but folding Alice in Wonderland and the history of England into one story with so much more - So.Much.More! - and then wrapping it up in a bow about immigration.

Pardon me for bowing down to genius. Brilliant; absolutely positively brilliant. And gorgeous too. Now go seek out a copy for yourselves and become consumed like I was.

[Post pic of the Moodie "visual biography".]