Mrs. Nelson's Toy and Book Shop

I'm glad to see this title is number one on SoCal Indie list. It is a great read as a mystery: Who is this eccentric woman scientist really and why won't she send the rest of her results on the child-bearing old women in the remote Amazonian tribe she was sent by a pharmaceutical company to study? It's also a questionable romance between the young woman narrator, former student of our mystery scientist, and her boss whom she always addresses as Mr. Fox. Another theme is the requirements friendship with her missing co-worker and his family presents to her..Woven throughout are the cultural and environmental contrasts of Minnesota, India and the people of the Amazon.

For those of us brought up on traditional Pilgrim and Indian stories this is a revealing, deeply moving historical fiction based on the actual life of the first Native American to graduate from the newly opened Harvard College of colonial america. Told through the voice of a daughter of an early Pilgrim minister who wanted to treat the native people with respect and fairness in contrast to the prevalent contempt of many European settlers,the story takes place on an island off the coast of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Brooks uses actual records of the interactions between the inhabitants and later in the early years of Harvard to compose this beautiful tale of the complex motivations of Caleb in making the "crossing" between the cultures and the two groups with which he must deal as well as the issues facing a woman child in that patriarchy of early New England. The reader is led to identify and empathize with even those we would normally condemn.

For those 2-4 year old precocious brains and their adults to share love words and Raschka's lyrical pictures - great for Valentine's!

A picture book that gently illustrates what one generous child in the African country of Cameron did to help the children of New York City during the Great Depression.