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Curious, Healing

Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

  • About Sonia Connolly

young adult

“North to Freedom” by Anne Holm

January 21, 2022 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

book cover

This is one of the books I’ve carried from place to place since I was a kid. I took it down from the shelf to see if it was time to pass it along, and ended up reading the whole thing. I didn’t remember much about the plot, but a few fragmentary scenes had stayed with me. It was published in 1963 in Danish, and translated into English in 1965.

A twelve-year-old child named David has been raised in a concentration camp, escapes with the puzzling help of the Commandant, and is now crossing Europe alone to get to Denmark. He is sturdy, quick-witted, and speaks several languages, having learned them from various fellow prisoners.

The writing is emotionally authentic without trying to terrify the reader. David talks about his fear, and also how he has learned to calm himself. He passes through hope and despair. He learns to be more present in his body, and connects passionately to the beauty of the land around him. He also connects tentatively, warily, with other humans.

People see him with compassion and help him on his way, and also see the strangeness in him. With his mix of social ignorance and calm self-possession, it’s obvious he hasn’t had a normal childhood.

In passing, David is noted as a rare name, which was surprising since it has been in the top 35 names since 1880 in the US, and was ranked first in 1960. I have been in a mid-size software engineering organization that literally had more Davids than women. Apparently it was less popular in Denmark in the 1960s.

When I last read the book, I was around David’s age, and simply accepted the plot. Now I see the underlying social and religious messages (added with a light hand), and the overall metaphor for healing from abuse and reconnecting with people.

David values intelligence and devalues people for being “stupid.” I could see a twelve-year-old boy having that attitude, and I wish the author had made it clear that intellectual ability does not correlate with intrinsic moral value. There is also some borderline fat-judgment. David tends to see people as all bad or all good. The plot does engage with the ambiguity of people who are both.

Highly recommended, despite those caveats.

Available at Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: fiction Tagged With: childhood abuse, survival story, trauma, young adult

“Witches of Brooklyn: What the Hex?!” by Sophie Escabasse

December 5, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

Recommended to me by: Soph

A playful graphic novel about witches in Brooklyn with an underlying message about building friendship through patience and conversation. The cast of characters is delightfully multi-racial, as is fitting for New York, and young Effie’s grandmothers are more notable for being witches than for being a couple. In fact their relationship is left a little vague, but they’re probably not just housemates.

The drawings of people are expressive and funny and the backgrounds are full of Brooklyn details.

I was just going to look at the first few pages, and got pulled into reading the whole thing. Recommended!

Available at Amazon.

Filed Under: art, fiction Tagged With: fun, illustrated, lgbt, relationship, young adult

“The Magic Fish” by Trung Le Nguyen

December 5, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

Recommended to me by: Soph

What a lovely, powerful graphic novel. Tien is growing up in the US with Vietnamese immigrant parents. He speaks mostly English, and they speak mostly Vietnamese. It’s a close, loving family and they read fairy tales together when they have time. The graphic novel interweaves slant-wise takes on three familiar fairy tales with Tien’s adventures in high school and as he struggles to communicate important truths about himself to his parents.

The art is gorgeous. Fairy tale dresses are especially elaborate, and the end of the book contains notes on the time periods the dresses are drawn from. The one thing I found confusing is that something about the proportions of the characters made them look younger to me. Tien looked like a much younger child, and his mom looked like his teen older sister, even though the story communicates that Tien is in high school and his mom is in her 30s.

The love in the book makes me cry, along with the difficult times around immigration and grief, conveyed with kindness. Highly recommended!

Content notes: brief homophobia, not endorsed by the author, and fairy tale violence.

Available at Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: art, fiction Tagged With: childrens, fun, healing, illustrated, lgbt, relationship, young adult

“Across the Green Grass Fields” by Seanan McGuire

January 30, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

Recommended to me by: Reading Every Heart a Doorway

This is book 6 in the Wayward Children series. Young Regan ends up in the Hooflands world, and has adventures. The book starts out full of drama, and also has quiet parts full of good fellowship. It seemed all too predictable for a while, but the ending was unexpected. I liked how Regan handled it.

Highly recommended.

Available at Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: fiction Tagged With: fun, lgbt, young adult

“A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking” by T. Kingfisher

January 10, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

This is young adult book with a fourteen-year-old protagonist opens with a dead body on the bakery’s floor. Young Mona is a baker with an ability to magically affect dough, and her power becomes crucial to save her city. The book is plot-driven, and also emphasizes Mona’s relationships with others (without a romance!) and her embodied experience.

This quick read resonates with current events and also provides a satisfying distraction. Recommended!

Available at Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: fiction Tagged With: fun, young adult

“In an Absent Dream” by Seanan McGuire

December 26, 2020 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

Recommended to me by: Reading Every Heart a Doorway

This is book 4 in the Wayward Children series, and it stuck with me more than the others. Katherine Lundy finds a doorway to the Goblin Market world, where everything has its price, but unlike in our capitalism, the Market ensures that the bargains are fair. Children find their way in, and the rules are more gentle for the younger ones.

To me, the ending does not seem fair. Of course, a lot of things happen to children and young adults in this world that are horrifically unfair, and sometimes we also make it look like the children had a free choice, when they did not fully understand the consequences of their choices.

Thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

I also read “Beneath the Sugar Sky” and “Come Tumbling Down” in this series. They were more plot-driven.

Available at Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: fiction Tagged With: fun, young adult

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