Jennifer Ann MannRecensioni

Hard, deep, disturbing Novel in Verse that shows the effects of an addiction to Roxy. I felt like the story was all over the place, Eve’s story, but it make sense because of her addiction to Roxy. Was her attraction to THomas real? Her memories of her friendship with Lidia real? Made up? Definitely a story that should be included in the HS library collection.

Told from four different POV. Amazing story of four survivors who were true survivors. Four young women institutionalized for being “different”, only because their families believed it to be. How they were labeled “imbeciles” when they were truly the smartest people. I didn’t expect to be so affected by this story, rooting for them to escape.

A well researched revolutionary war story that centers on the battle of Minisink Ford. Does a good job of bringing the time period and day to day lives of colonial citizens to life, in quite a short book. Not all that fast paced, but a solid read.

So well done, giving the reader a visceral sense of the wrong done in these deplorable institutions, it’s appropriately difficult to read at times but worth investing your heart in.

I deeply cared for these four girls (and some periphery characters as well) pretty much from the moment they were introduced. I loved London, how tough she is by necessity yet she’s all heart with a tender and protective streak running through her. Rose was just as wonderful, she has down syndrome and while there are those in the novel who underestimate her the author certainly never did, Rose is every bit as savvy as she is sweet. Maxine is Rose’s older sister and perhaps the most vulnerable of the bunch as she still holds out hope for a bright shiny future away from the institution, like Rose’s friends I spent much of the book hoping she wouldn’t be crushed by reality. Lastly there’s Alice, the book never loses sight of the fact that as a black girl she has it even worse than the others, the cost of her breaking a rule would be that much greater and so Alice tries to maintain a hard shell around herself but she also can’t help falling in love, feelings that due to the time period and circumstances are mostly kept under wraps though there are a couple scenes that are as heartwarming as these girls deserve.

Dark AF. The author’s note that she used direct quotes from medical records is key, because otherwise it would seem over the top. For people who loved The War That Saved My Life and want to level up with far more upsetting realism.

J. (for Jen) Albert Mann paints a heartbreaking portrait of life inside the Walter Fernald School in Waltham, Mass. nearly 100 years ago. The school was home to all the victims of the Eugenics movement, which promoted the strengthening of the human race by removing all "defectives," all children who were differently abled, from general society and placing them, for life, in institutions. Although Fernald and other institutions billed themselves as schools, very little was being taught. Instead, the residents did all the manual labor required to keep the school going, their lifetime incarceration. Residents were classified as idiots, imbeciles, and morons. This determined where they would be housed and what would be expected of them. Frequent intelligence testing went into this classification method.

The story centers around four girls: Maxine, a lesbian, her sister Rose, who had Down's Syndrome, Alice, with a club foot, and London, an orphan who becomes pregnant by the butcher's son. After she beats up Alby, the father of her baby, she is arrested and consigned to the school for life.

What begins as a grim story becomes a tale of courage and adventure, as the girls concoct a plan to change their fates.

While I liked this book a lot, and will recommend it, I felt the ending, well, one part of the ending, was unbelievable, the kind of ending that makes you think the author realized she was getting close to the limit of pages for a YA novel and had to wrap it up.

As a side note, one of my favorite walking trails, at the Beaver Brook Reservation in Waltham, passes by a small, old graveyard, that sits on land formerly belonging to the Fernald School. The old stones in this woodland setting were divided into two groups--half of them for Catholics, half for Protestants. They were the graves of some of the residents of the school, which didn't finally close until 2014.

The year is 1779 and critically wounded 16-year-old Noah Daniels, through a series of flashbacks, describes the events prior to a violent battle between the local militia and a Mohawk raiding party. Bibliography.

Follows the life of four young children through the terrible life of mental health in Boston Fernal School in the 1940's

TW: pregnancy and infant loss, verbal and physical abuse, police abuse, racism, homophobia..

There are a LOT of trigger warnings for this book. And had I known of some, I probably wouldn't have read it. So please consider that before choosing this book. A sad bit of historical fiction all about the story of eugenics. Truly disgusting and embarrassing.
However, this story also shows the beautiful world of sisterhood and girl power.

Gritty and a slap in the face look at what hundreds, possibly thousands of girls experienced in the early 20th century. You're pulled along by four very likable girls who find themselves in an institution for simply being different, Alice is there because of her club foot and her brother's unwillingness to care for her any more. London's there because she lost both parents and made the mistake of kicking the butcher's son who got her pregnant in the family jewels. Maxine and Rose are sisters. Rose is mongoloid, but loving, happy and a lot smarter than most realize. Maxine's her fierce protector and thinks she's hiding a secret from the world. The four share equal billing in this tale that doesn't shy away from just how ugly and dehumanizing conditions were for those who were institutionalized. The ball starts rolling when London makes her first escape attempt with help from Rosie. By the end of the story, you can't help rooting for all four girls to experience freedom and a bit of happiness. Read the book to discover whether that happens.
This is an excellent book for any library to consider where historical fiction for teens is important.

There aren't enough children's books on the American Revolution, so it's good to see a new one on the shelves. I liked this one, just not as much as [b: Woods Runner|6795756|Woods Runner|Gary Paulsen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320552751s/6795756.jpg|7000800] or [b: My Brother Sam is Dead|122756|My Brother Sam Is Dead|James Lincoln Collier|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328867125s/122756.jpg|1207057]. The interesting thing about this book is that it starts in the present, then goes back a few days, and works forward to the present.

When the story opens (and it's a short one), 16-year-old Noah is wounded in the woods and stumbles upon a wounded indian. At first he's angry, but then he feels compelled to help the indian since he has a medical bag with him. The indian has a scar on his face, so that's the name Noah gives him.

As the two lie there, sick and wounded, not knowing whether they will live or die, Noah thinks about how all of this started two days earlier. His settlement is raided by a group of Tories and indians. They burn houses, steal livestock, and kill a few people. A group of militia men get together and decide to go after them. Noah feels it's his duty to go along. Unfortunately, the attack does not go as planned, and Noah barely escapes alive. That's how he ends up lying on the ground with an indian in the woods.

As with so many historical fiction books that I read, the afterword is more fascinating than the story itself. That's how I know the story could have been better. It's definitely worth adding to your Revolutionary War bookshelf though.

Masha Sweet's life is going from bad to worse. Her parents are divorced, her mom made her move away from her dad, her old school, and all her friends, and her little sister is a certified genius. She's also a certified brat, as she proves by gluing plastic flowers to Masha's hair with her own, special, insoluble glue. Things go downhill from there, and eventually Masha ends up at the hospital where she gets a change of attitude - and a fake cast. She finishes up the story with a shaved head and a new understanding of her little sister, even though she drives her crazy.

This story is pure wish-fulfillment. For parents. For lazy parents. I'm going to be ranting here, and probably getting wildly dramatic, so check out if you're not interested in the Opinions of One Librarian.

So, while quite a few kids will probably be attracted by the bright colors of the cover, and a few more will enjoy the wacky antics of Sunny, the story as a whole does not stand together. It's way beyond unrealistic - Masha is given painkillers at the hospital and has her head shaved without parental permission, just to name one thing. I'm not even going to mention the "sick kids at the hospital making me realize how good my life really is" hackneyed device. The plot is scattered all over the place and there's no effective resolution, since Sunny ends the story by doing...exactly the same thing she started it with, experimenting on her older sister.

This is one of the things that annoys me, and this is a totally personal gripe; when siblings torture, tease, and otherwise abuse other siblings there should be consequences. Sure, Sunny is a little girl, but at age six she should have some basic boundaries and understanding of privacy. If not, Masha should have a lock on her door! Sunny is supposed to be this amazing genius, but it's extremely clear to me that she's manipulative and she knows what she's doing. The flowers glued Masha's hair isn't the first time she's run an experiment on her older sister, and judging from the final incident, it won't be the last. But their mother just tells Masha to calm down, and Sunny gets out of any punishment pretty much by looking cute and claiming that she's "just trying to help". In my book, that does not give you a get-out-of-jail free card, that gets you a stern lecture on not "helping" without permission, respecting other people's privacy, and possibly a meeting with the school counselor to discuss the concept of "professional ethics" since she's such a super-genius.

Which is why I call this story wish-fulfillment for lazy parents. A good parent would have disciplined Sunny and made sure she understood that she can't experiment on or "help" people without their permission the first time she did this. A good parent would have realized that Masha was suffering from some major self-confidence issues, not to mention the trauma of a divorce and a major move and at least made an effort to get her some help. A good parent would have, at the very least, said "hey, I can't deal with all this on my own" and gotten someone to help - after all, that's why they moved back to the mother's hometown, right? A good parent would, at the very least, have gotten Masha a lock for her door!

But this is wish-fulfillment for lazy parents, so no matter what the cute little brat does, it's ok, it's just an accident. The kids will work out all their feelings over the divorce, have a little sisterly bonding and some wacky hijinks, and in the end they're sisters and they love each other no matter what, they both find new friends at school, and everything is hunky-dory. No parenting needed! You can go off and do whatever it is you prefer to be doing rather than actually parenting your children!

In real life, Sunny is going to pull one of her nasty experiments on someone other than Masha and their family is going to get sued for invasion of privacy - or at the least, Sunny will be suspended or expelled. In real life, Masha is going to request that her custody gets switched to her father and never speak to Sunny again. In real life, Masha will get angrier and angrier at Sunny, at her mother, and life in general and probably end up either in therapy, with an ulcer, or on drugs or all three. Because life is not a Disney comedy and books shouldn't be either.

Verdict: Wish-fulfillment is fine, suspension of disbelief is great, and everybody loves wacky hijinks and pranks. But there's a fine line between socially awkward and immature children doing silly things and extremely intelligent children learning how to manipulate the people around them and consistently doing so, over and over again. A lot of kids probably would find this funny, and like I said it's an attractive cover. There could definitely be a feeling of "well, at least my sister isn't that bad". But, frankly, the book isn't good enough for me to get over my feelings of outrage. You can say I lack a sense of humor about pranking (you're probably right, although I firmly hold to my belief that if everyone's not laughing it's not funny) but there are plenty of other humorous books, books about sibling rivalry, even books about a super-intelligent younger sister, that are better choices than this book.

ISBN: 9781599909776; Published October 2013 by Bloomsbury; ARC provided by publisher at ALA Annual 2013