Fact Friday and E-Arc Review: The Cat I Never Named: a true story of love, war and survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess.

Image: Bloomsbury

The Cat I Never Named: a true story of love, war and survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess. 352 p. BloomsburyYA/ Bloomsbury, September 8, 2020. 9781547604555. (Review of e-arc courtesy of publisher.)

Fact Friday features an astounding memoir, The Cat I Never Named: a true story of love, war and survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess. The author was sixteen-years-old when war broke out in Bosnia in 1992. She lived in the multicultural city of Bihac but tension between the various ethnic groups was always high. She and her family were non-practicing Muslims and faced racial abuse every day. One night, all the Serbs in the city left and the Muslims that remained learned the city was surrounded by the Serbian Army. The author was a top student at a math and science high school with dreams of attending university. Her education was derailed and survival became her goal. 

The immediacy of Dr. Sabic-El-Rayess' writing make this memoir a gripping read. I read this arc electronically (something I detest doing.) and could not tear my eyes away. I needed to read through tears more than once and often needed to remind myself to breathe. Even though this war occurred nearly thirty years ago, the root cause - ethnic hatred - is still the cause of unrest and conflict globally. The vivid descriptions of war, the constant threat of rape and abduction and the struggle for survival make this title more suitable to a YA audience. 

The Cat I Never Named will publish on September 8 and is not to be missed.

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Lovely War by Julie Berry

Image: Penguin Random House 

Lovely War by Julie Berry. Unabridged e-audiobook. ~11 hours. Read by Jane Entwhistle, Allan Corduner, Dion Graham, Nathanial Parker, Fiona Hardingham and Steve West. Listening Library, March, 2019. 9781984838278. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from public library. Arc courtesy of publisher.)

Teen Tuesday features Lovely War by Julie Berry. This sweeping historical romance begins in December of 1942 in an elegant New York City hotel. A gorgeous couple are caught by the wronged husband. The paramours happen to be Aphrodite the goddess of love and Ares the god of war. The cuckold is Hephaestus. He ensnares them in an breakable golden mesh net and intends to put them on trial on Mount Olympus; but Aphrodite asks to plead her case directly to her husband. So she tells the story of her two favorite love matches - Hazel and James and Colette and Aubrey.  

In 1917, Hazel, a pianist, played at at dance where she met James, a builder turned soldiers, who was shipping out to fight in France. The two fell quickly in love and Hazel promised to write. She joined the war effort as an entertainment volunteer and also shipped out to France soon after. There she met Colette, a Belgian refugee with a tragic past who sings like an angel. Colette crosses paths with Aubrey, an African American jazz musician and those two fall in love. 

As Aphrodite weaves the two stories together, she's joined by Ares, Hades and Apollo, who all had a hand shaping the events of the war and its consequences.

Immersive and epic, this is definitely one for the reread pile. There is just so much to love here from the gorgeous writing to the characters. I am not a fan of most romance novels but I am a fan of this one. It's smart. It's compelling. It's an exquisite read that I couldn't rush through because I was reading with my ears, but I wanted to. I needed to find out what happened to these four young souls. And yet, I didn't want the book to end. 

Lovely War is a first-purchase. It's a must-read for your patrons who love mythology; for your romance fans; for your war-story fans. Really, it's a must-read for just about any reader. 

Teen Tuesday and Review: The Good Son by Pierre-Jacques Ober

Image: Candlewick Press

The Good Son: a story from the first World War told in miniature by Pierre-Jacques Ober. Illustrated by Jules Over and Felicity Coonan. 104 p. Candlewick Studio/ Candlewick Press, May 14, 2019. 9781536204827. (Review of finished copy courtesy of publisher.)

Happy book birthday to The Good Son by Pierre-Jacques Ober. This picture book for older readers is remarkable. Spare and evocative text combine with photographs that are as devastating as they are striking. 

A young soldier named Pierre leaves his post to visit his mother at Christmas. When he returns after two days, he is arrested and told to prepare to be executed for desertion. His friend, Gilbert brings food and wine. Otherwise, Pierre is left alone to contemplate his fate. The reader learns that he signed up to fight enthusiastically after being promised the war would be over in a few months. The young recruit dreamed of glory until the first bloody battles. Even when he won, he felt he lost so much. He relates a cruel irony in a final letter home to his mother.

The photos are incredibly realistic considering they are of miniature toys and scenery. They have the look of old photos. Most are slightly sepia toned and they are also slightly blurred. That combined with the sturdy paper and beautiful design, gives the reader the feeling of looking through an album. Creator notes at the back reveal the challenges of making these plastic figures appear real. They used a shallow depth-of-field (a technique I could never wrap my head around when I played around with SLR photography in the 80s.), natural light and digital adjustments. 

Really, I can't do justice to the wonder of these photos. They have to be seen and contemplated. I can't even imagine the process of gathering the materials! The details present in each photo invite pause. The use of chiaroscuro lighting causes the reader to lean in and linger, perhaps guiltily.

Photos of the process shown in the back matter that include fingers of the creators help give the reader scale. A note from the author explains that he came from a military family and that his grandfather was a decorated soldier in World War I. This book started as a series of images that were a gift to his father at the centenary of the war. 

My single quibble is wondering about the "based on a true event" claim of the front flap. As an adult reader, I came to the book knowing about the hundreds of men who were executed during that war for treason and cowardice when they were suffering from what we now know is PTSD. Young readers may not know this. I would've appreciated knowing more about this from back matter notes. Was there really a soldier named Pierre who went home for the holiday or was this based on a composite of stories?

The Good Son is a fine addition to all collections. Hand this to your budding military historians and give your social studies teacher a heads up. I usually donate my review copies to my school library collection, but this is such a powerful work of art, I am tempted to keep it for myself. 

Visit The Children's War blog for a much more cogent review of The Good Son that includes extra resources I didn't think to hunt down. 

Dogs of War by Sheila Keenan & Nathan Fox

204 p. Graphix/ Scholastic Press, October, 2013. 9780545128889. (Review copy provided by the pubisher)

Three wars, three dogs, three soldier handlers. Three affecting stories of war and the devotion between the dogs and their handlers. First up is Boots. His owner lied about his age and enlisted in WWI with his dog, Boots to follow his adoptive father into the trenches as a rescue team whose mission was to find wounded soldiers and help evacuate them. He and Boots get lost in the confusion and end up in a trench near Christmas, when the famous truce happened.

The next story takes place in Greenland during WWII. Maine boy, Cooper is assigned a dog-sled team to get in line, in particular a dog called Loki. Cooper's ways of training clash with his officer's, but that officer chooses him to help rescue a downed pilot in the frozen terrain.

The final story features an African-American vet named Lanford, who lives in a trailer park and who keeps to himself because he suffers from flashbacks and sorrow for leaving his dog, Sheba behind. Henry, a young boy with a lively, new pup befriends the vet, who helps him train the dog.

The artwork is spectacular - gritty and atmospheric. The speech bubbles are easy to follow. There is a three-page author's note that provides a brief history of the use of dogs during wartime, followed by two and a half pages of further resources, which include books, dvds and web sites.

This compelling graphic novel will have broad appeal, from reluctant readers to military buffs to dog lovers. A welcome addition to the middle school collection.

Personal Effects by E.M. Kokie

Unabridged audiobook on 1 MP3-CD. Read by Nick Podehl. Candlewick on Brilliance Audio, September, 2013. 9781469206677. (Purchased)

Seventeen-year-old Matt is still reeling six months after the death of his much older brother, TJ, in Iraq. He's barely holding it together at school, even knowing that if he blows it, his abusive father will force him to enlist. He's a walking time bomb of bottled rage, which he unleashes on an obnoxious classmate, whose in-your-face anti-war sentiments rub Matt the wrong way. 

While Matt is cooling his heels at home during an out-of-school suspension after sending said classmate to the hospital when he crosses the line of decency by wearing a provocative tee shirt bearing TJ's name, Matt ponders the months since the casualty assistance officers knocked on the front door to inform his dad and him of TJ's death, the closed-casket funeral where Matt was terrified of crying in front of his father, the unopened condolence cards, the missing dog tags. It seems that Matt's dad is determined to erase TJ's existence in the same way he erased Matt's mother after she left the family and ultimately died. So when three trunks of TJ's "personal effects" are delivered, Matt knows he must act fast if he is to be able to hold on to anything that was TJ.

When he does summon the courage, in addition to the familiar items, sweatshirts, iPods and hiking books, he discovers bags filled with letters that reveal TJ's life away from Matt, which leads Matt to question whether he knew his brother at all. When Matt finds an unsent letter, TJ's last to this mystery girl, who may or may not have had TJ's kid, he decides to ditch finals despite the fact that his father will surely kill him and travel to Madison, Wisconsin to deliver the letter and learn more about TJ.

This is actually an audio reread for me. I read the arc way back last April and was totally blown away by this sad, sad story. My heart broke for Matt and TJ over and over and over. Even though it was one of my favorites of 2012, I never did blog about it. Terrible omission, though I did give it 5 stars on Goodreads. 

I can't remember where, but I happened upon a review, which I believe was starred, where I learned that one of my favorite narrators, Nick Podehl, performed the story. A quick check of my library cooperative revealed that no libraries owned it, so I purchased it.

I fell in love with the recording within minutes. Matt's voice is heartbreaking from moment one and Podehl absolutely nailed it. I could feel it. He didn't just narrate; he inhabited Matt. 

The present-tense, first-person narration makes for an emotional, often suspenseful read with one's eyes. Matt is an earnest, endearing, wounded, and bewildered young man. He's a memorable character and I just wanted to hug him and call DYFS on his awful, hateful father. In Podehl's capable hands, Matt felt as though he was sitting in the car with me. (I listened in the car.) That's how real it felt. Even though I already knew what Matt would discover in Madison, Matt's shock and rage still surprised. 

That this was a debut novel is most impressive. I can't recall any "ah, no" moments, even upon rereading. I don't understand why it didn't get any Morris committee love. I've read only two titles from the list, Seraphina and one other. Seraphina, the winner, was spectacular. The other, not so much. I will get to the other three eventually. I was happy that it made the BFYA list. I'm also eager to read Ms. Kokie's sophomore novel.