The Moon Over High Street

The Moon Over High Street by Natalie Babbitt 148 pages

Please don’t hate me when I tell you I have never read “Tuck Everlasting.” When it was originally published in 1975, I was already a grown woman and never felt the need to read it.

I’m not sure how I wound up with a copy of Babbitt’s “The Moon Over the High Street.” This short novel is aimed at what I call middle-schoolers, grades 4-9. Its themes of family, friendship, rich versus poor and the working class still resonate with readers all these years later.

Twelve-year-old Joe Casimir has only known his grandmother as his family. His parents died in an accident when he was a baby, and the only other family is a cousin of Gran’s, Aunt Myra.

When Gran breaks her hip, she sends Joe to live with Aunt Myra in Midville, across the state. I didn’t envy his long bus trip. Anyone who has taken a long bus trip knows how awful it can be. Midville is a tiny town with clearly delineated lines of where its citizens reside based on class. Class is an important theme in this story.

Joe meets and becomes friends with the girl, Beatrice Sope, who lives across the street. Through Beatrice, Joe meets the town’s millionaire, Mr. Boulderwall. Boulderwall takes a shine to Joe and offers to adopt him. He wants Joe to be his protégé. Joe is forced to decide whether to live a life of wealth and abandon Gran and Aunt Myra or stay with his family and chase his dreams.

There aren’t a lot of characters in this book, but the supporting characters provide Joe with the skills necessary to make this crucial decision.

I thought the book was a quick read with surprising depth. However, it does tend to meander a bit. That’s why “The Moon Over High Street” receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

Dominicana

Dominicana by Angie Cruz    336 pages  I read a galley 

This is a thoughtful, heartfelt portrait of immigration, family, and self-resilience. It's also a glimpse into the social upheaval of the 1960s in America, through the eyes of an immigrant and new resident of New York City.  Great for readers who enjoy historical fiction, as well as stories of immigration told from a first-person point of view.
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Ana Cancion is 15 and has never dreamed of moving away from the Dominican countryside. When Juan Ruiz proposes, promising to take her to New York City and set her up in a new life, she is reluctant. After all, Juan is twice her age and she doesn't even like him very much. However, under pressure from her family, she accepts. So, Ana leaves everything she knows behind and becomes Ana Ruiz, moving to New York City in 1965, in the midst of social and political upheaval in both the United States and the Dominican Republic. Trapped in her cold apartment, Ana recklessly plans to escape. However, Juan's brother Cesar convinces her to stay, pointing out that when Juan returns to the Dominican Republic for a business trip, Ana can finally leave the apartment on her own and even take some lessons to learn English. Soon, Ana is imagining a different kind of life in America, where she can be free to make her own money, and do as she pleases.  However, when Juan returns, Ana is forced to choose between her dreams and her duty to her family.

This book is a bit of a slow start and at first, I wasn't sure if I liked it enough to continue. However, I was curious about Ana and what was going to happen. And, as I kept reading, I started to enjoy her first-person account of what was happening, and what her life in New York City was like. Before I knew it, I was wrapped up in this story. There are parts of this story that are heartbreaking, but other parts that are uplifting, where I found I truly had hope that Ana would have a better life. It's hard to imagine leaving everything and everyone you know behind to move to a new country, with a man you don't like very much, and where you don't know the language. Ana's perseverance was inspiring, and I found the story very compelling.

The Day of the Peacock

The Day of the Peacock: Style for Men, 1963-73 by Geoffrey Aquilina Ross   144 pages

This book, filled with text and great photos, focuses on the 1960s in England, a period of spectacular fashion for men. This movement in men's style was called "The Peacock Revolution" by the media and the book explores not only the change in fashion, but many of the designers, tailors and shop owners who made this style revolution happen. Included are profiled on people like Tommy Nutter, Mr. Fish, shops like Granny Takes a Trip and much more.

This is an interesting book because it focuses on such a narrow slice in time. The author does a great job of explaining the move towards this "dandy" style and how it borrowed from previous fashions. It's not just about fashion, but about the change in society in the 1960s.  And then, when the 1970s dawned, this fashion movement dropped away. As the author observes, "Fashion comes and fashion goes; it was ever thus."

A Drifting Life - Yoshihiro Tatsumi

A Drifting Life - Yoshihiro Tatshumi - 834 Pages

Yoshihiro Tatsumi (calling himself Hiroshi in this autobiographical memoir) is the man behind the alternative style of manga gekiga. Gekiga refers to manga that transcended flights of fancy, action, and humor. Gekiga is about drama, and change, and real life! He wanted the world to experience manga the way he did: as an emotional experience and not just pure entertainment. Gekiga has depth. This manga paralleled those themes perfectly.

A Drifting Life follows Hiroshi from is early days of creating manga to becoming a manga editor and professional mangaka*. The more he read, the more he wanted to create. And the more he created, the more he wanted the medium to evolve. Hiroshi started submitting his work to local manga publishers, which led him to meet his hero Osamu Tezuka. From then he realized that manga was his passion. He drew inspiration, not just from other manga, but from films, from prose novels, and even from the people around him.

I loved this book, but I will say, it's a LONG one. It's so detailed! My favorite kind of manga and anime is 60s, so this was right up my alley. Tatsumi also does a great illustrative job showing Hiroshi's age progression throughout the manga.

A Drifting Life inspired me to create more. Hiroshi would spend so many nights awake, and take on so many projects, and deal with so many toxic people in his life, and yet his love for manga still remained. It may have waned and grew as life took hold of him, but it always remained.  Another great part of A Drifting Life was that Tatsumi included current events mixed in with the story. This helped me understand what Japan was going through at the time and how it may have inspired or deterred him from writing.

Which brings me to why I felt sad for him as well. He spent so much time trying to get people into the idea of gekiga all the while trying to make ends meet, that he ended up not writing as many long form stories in that style. He never felt like he did gekiga justice. He felt as if he kept coming back to those ideals, but real life kept getting in the way. Even if he didn't feel that way, he certainly made a lasting impression on readers.

I would definitely recommend this book if you're interested in the history of manga. It's a very specific sect of manga, but if you want to follow the story of a man hoping to stay inspired and hoping to inspire others, definitely read this!

RIP Yoshihiro Tatsumi (1935-2015)

*Mangaka: is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese.
Other Gekiga Mangaka:
Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, Kimba The White Lion)
Rumiko Takahashi (Inuyasha)
Tetsuo Hara (Fists of the North Star)
Kazuo Koike (Lone Wolf and Cub)