The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser is a charming realistic fiction tale about the true meaning of home. When I first picked up this book, I had doubts about reading it; the cover art was only a bunch of tall buildings with a few tiny human silhouettes depicted in the windows. However, there’s so much more to those small shadows. The phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” has never been truer. The first book in a series of four and counting, The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street follows the action-packed life of the boisterous Vanderbeeker family, consisting of five children aged four through twelve: Isa, Jessie, Oliver, Hyacinth, and Laney, and three pets: a dog, a cat, and a rabbit. Set in a loving brownstone in modern New York City, the life of the Vanderbeeker family never gets boring; something is always happening. On a fateful afternoon just eleven days before Christmas, the children discover that their highly secretive landlord refusesto renew their lease. They quickly become determined to save their beloved home. They come up with plans, some ridiculous and some not, to win over their landlord who lives on the third story of their brownstone. The siblings make many failed attempts, and several only cause their landlord to be even angrier. The blend of suspense and typical family life are perfect in this book. The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street is peppered with details that make the overarching plot seem believable. I also enjoy how the book is told from different perspectives – although the story is written in third person, it reveals the thoughts and opinions of all five children. The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street has amusing subplots, in this case separate goals that each child wants to achieve besides rescuing their home. They range from Laney teaching her pet rabbit tricks with her adored senior neighbor, to Hyacinth preparing the perfect Christmas gifts for her family, to the twins Isa and Jessie cooking a flawless holiday dinner without any burnt dishes. Better yet, a surprising plot twist comes up about two-thirds of the way through the novel. It shocked me when I first read it, but when I thought about it, there had been foreshadowing embedded into the earlier sections of the novel. While the book is officially recommended for ages eight to twelve, I feel like it would resonate better with slightly older children, perhaps ages ten to thirteen. To me, some of the plot might be too complex for an eight year old; the characters are also more relatable for older readers. This book is also ideal for fans of The Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall; it has several similarities, including the aspect of a large family with many children. After reading both series, I found that a few of the characters in The Vanderbeekers series had a loose resemblance to the characters in The Penderwicks. For example, the independent and responsible character of Rosalind in The Penderwicks reminded me of Isa from The Vanderbeekers. Still, the plots of the two series are quite different; The Vanderbeekers series focuses more on family life with a sense of mystery while The Penderwicks series shifts more between family and school life. Overall, The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser is an excellent read and a warm and satisfying story. The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser. Houghton Mifflin, 2018. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
Book Reviews
How to Sharpen Pencils, Reviewed by Brais, 11
How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Angle smiths, & Civil Servants by David Rees, is a gold mine for anyone wishing to sharpen a pencil. David Rees is a celebrated cartoonist, television host, writer, and artist. From listing the essential supplies for pencil sharpening (at a reasonable $1000!) to describing the anatomy of a pencil, to explaining how to preserve a freshly sharpened tip, this manual has it all. This truly is the ultimate guide to pencil sharpening. Rees’s guide walks the reader through different sharpening styles and how they may apply to different styles of people and professions. One of my favorite sections describes how to sharpen a pencil with a pocketknife. For example, he recommends producing a steep-angled pencil tip for people with heavy hands, as this will make it harder to break the tip off. He also advises exposing a lot of the graphite in pencils for artists, as this will make for a light sketch that can be easily erased. Rees’s love of manual pencil sharpening is only surpassed by his hatred of electric pencil sharpening and mechanical pencils. Here is one hint: Rees’s feelings about electric pencil sharpeners involve the use of mallets. Without giving away all of this guide’s secrets, I must mention Rees’s most prized pencil-sharpening possession: An El Casco M430-CN. Created by a company that once made firearms, this double-burr hand-cranked machine, Rees declares, is the best pencil sharpener on Earth. I enjoyed reading Rees’s tongue-in-check manual not just for its jokes and wisecracks, but also for its factual information, and even its lifestyle recommendations. By reading this book, I have learned the proper hand-stretching exercises to do before long pencil-sharpening sessions, that a correctly sharpened pencil is an object of beauty, and that mechanical pencils make for good firewood. This book is where I will always look to for pencil-sharpening guidance and inspiration, and it is where you should too. Recommended for middle school and up. How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Angle smiths, & Civil Servants by David Rees. Penguin Random House, 2012. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
The Girl of Ink and Stars, Reviewed by Pragnya, 12
Maps are interesting little things. They make use of the stars and the sky and a quickly fraying memory to create a drawing of a world, from the crevices and geographical notches to the stories behind them. Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s debut novel, The Girl Of Ink And Stars, creates a surrealistic novel about friends, myths and tracing your own star-touched story. Set in the fictional island of Joya, our protagonist, Isabella “Isa” Riosse is a fierce and curious thirteen year-old with a knack for creating vivid drawings of the world around her. Map-making, or cartography as she likes to call it, runs in her blood, with both her parents the town’s most renowned cartographers. On the day that everything changed, Isa was on her way to school with her best friend Lupe, the governor’s daughter when word reached her that Cata Rodriguez, a girl in their class, was dead. Killed, to be exact, when Lupe had sent her to find dragon fruit for her. Spurred by the sudden news, Lupe’s guilt creates a rift between the two of them and decides to find out the reason behind Cata’s unfortunate death. Isa, conflicted, decides to follow her best friend, and travel into the forbidden territories. She’ll have to navigate her way through wild wastelands and a labyrinth of emotions to face the myths that weren’t as fictional as she initially thought them to be. The worldbuilding is rich and well thought-out, Joya and its divisions a vivid setting for the tangential action to follow. I thoroughly enjoyed the character development and characters in general, filled with traits that mirror everyday life and plot twists that undermine the character for the greater good of the story. Something that stood out to me was the intricate foreshadowing, little clues dropped in unsuspecting moments, that, if paid attention to, gave way to a very interesting climax. The first-person point of view only helped the reader to experience the story as their own, along with enthralling prose and evocative description. “But you always have to finish stories, even if they aren’t all with happy endings.” From the very beginning, I was hooked onto Isa’s adventures and this book will leave you with a lasting impression long after the final chapter. The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. Yearling Books, 2018. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
