Category Archives: Young Adult

It remained true. With my previous post and insistence that King’s quote would hold true, Schlitz’s The Hired Girl was a book that didn’t give up all its secrets at one. The reader’s relationship with Janet nee Joan is like meeting a new best friend– one that was instant but is appreciated more with each passing day. Even Malka, the servant who is part of the Rosenbach’s family since she raised the elder Rosenbach since he was a child, is endeared to Janet and her hard-working attitude and need to please.

Janet must escape the dead-end work that will eventually kill her and her spirit at Steeple Farm. Her father has lost his wife and Janet has lost her mother. She is now the woman of the house, keeping it, cleaning it while cooking for the men, her father and brothers, without any respect, praise, or money for a new dress. And now the last straw, as her father will not allow her to attend school and left her idol, Miss Chandler, unwelcome in their home. Janet thought she’d be able to show her father her worth, but instead, he burns the few books that she had. Janet is now resolute. She will leave and never return. And leave she does.

Now she is a hired girl in the Rosenbach’s house, a Jewish home, when Janet is a Gentile. It’s an education for Janet as to how to keep a house for a Jewish family in the early 1900s but it’s also a chance for Janet to blossom. It’s her trials and tribulations and the reader’s want and need to see Janet succeed that push the book forward. There’s a beauty in Janet’s simplicity and a complexity to the characters that she interacts with.

In the vein of Jennifer Donnelly’s A Northern Light, this historical novel demonstrates the power of education and perseverance.  And while it will likely be best appreciated by adults, teens regardless of the distance of time, will fight for Janet as she fights for herself.

Eyeglasses on Open Book

Every so often, I’m reminded of the above quote when I find myself moving slowly through a book. Now, not slowly as in ugh, do I really have to pick this book up again? Or, why do people like this book? Instead, it’s because I just don’t want the book to have to be over. I’m enjoying getting to know the characters and reading the author’s words. The latter is how I’m feeling right now about Schlitz’s The Hired Girl. I’m only about a third of the way through it, but it feels indulgent and rich and full of promise.

So, I’m going to heed King’s words and go slow because I know this book won’t give up all its secrets at once.

Everyone should experience at least one time in their life, the weight and significance of a book. I’m lucky that I both enjoy reading (doing a lot of it) and that’s it is part of my job description, so having these experiences with books has happened more than once. Sometimes they are unexpected. For Perez’s book, I don’t even know who or where the recommendation came from to add it to my TBR pile, but boy am I glad it did.

The emotional toll this book took on me after eking out time to finish it as soon as I could is invigorating. Though the book’s summary discusses the school explosion in 1937 in Texas, it is about the characters and their obstacles, not closing chapters that center on the explosion that create the turmoil. Perez speeds the book up at times with fast-moving changes to the narrating characters, which include Naomi, the Mexican half sister to twins Cari and Beto, Beto, Henry, the twins’ biological father, Wash, Naomi’s Romeo to her Juliet, and the appropriately named “The Gang”, essentially town bystanders watching events unfold from a safe distance but not withholding judgement or disdain.

The tumultuous atmosphere of discrimination against blacks and Mexicans plays an equally traumatizing role as loss and heartbreak. Naomi is bursting with emotion that is pushed down for the sake of the twins until is is unleashed by meeting Wash. Wash is black. Naomi is Mexican. Henry wants to make his deceased wife’s daughter his new wife, but Naomi knows what consequences this will have and what her true feelings are knowing their dark history. But the book is layered and these are just the surface elements at play. It is dark and beautiful, rich and haunting.

This week, I’ll post six sensational emotionally draining books. I bet you’ll see one there that you already heard me discuss.

So I thought I would get a bit more reading done during ‘winter’ break– instead I spent my hours organizing the house, enjoying my family, entertaining friends, and doing some of my own work (I’ll be blogging for YALSA’s The Hub alongside this personal library/book blog and contributing to a books blog for our local newspaper).

In preparation for the book marathon that I thought I’d be enjoying, here were some of the advanced copies that stacked up in my digital to-be read pile. I’ll look forward to sharing some reviews once I’ve actually read them!

• You Were Here by Cori McCarthy
• Avonelle’s Gift by Nova Scheller
• The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock
• Welcome to Hell Damini by John Otis Biggs
• What Comes of Eating Doughnuts with a Boy Who Plays Guitar by Nicole Campbell
• Amaranthine by Lanie Jacobs