Captain Frankie welcomes you to My First Travel Books #kidlit by @aothitis Anna Othitis

Take to the skies with My First Travel Books #kidlit series by Anna Othitis @aothitis

Shoutout to Children Authors! #giveaways sci-fi fantasy KidLit

Today on The Maze I am pleased to feature 

Children Authors!

BOOK REVIEW: A Voyage from Ireland in 1849 by Clare Pastore

Weary of witches and warlocks and muggles, oh my? Me, too. Don't get me wrong; I'm pleased that the Potter Phenomenon encourages more children to trade their video games for books, thereby earning lifelong benefits. But parents looking for spiritually uplifting—and educational—stories for young readers will find a refreshing alternative in Clare Pastore's description of Fiona McGilray's journey from Ireland to America.
 
For me, the year 1849 conjures visions of excited folks flocking to California to try their luck with pick and pan. Half a world away, in Ireland, hordes of despondent people mine only their blighted potato crop. Typhus and other famine-fed diseases reach epidemic proportions. And yet food sent from America rots in locked warehouses as greedy English landowners strive to keep market prices high.

Fiona McGilray, middle child of five, struggles valiantly to help her family scrape a meager existence from the recalcitrant soil of the Emerald Isle. After her oldest sister dies of typhus, her parents suggest that she and her older brother, Patrick, cross the sea to live with rich cousins in America and carve out better lives for themselves. Initially, Fiona rejects the idea because she places more importance upon being with her family than life itself.

Faith and love glue the McGilray family together, but temptation rips it asunder. One night, Fiona discovers she can wriggle through an open warehouse window. She emerges with a sack heavy with grain and a conscience heavy with guilt, until her parents justify the act as merely helping to distribute what had been meant for the community all along. Her father, Patrick and their neighbors join her in nightly expeditions. The village prospers—until the raiders get caught.

With their father languishing in jail, Fiona and Patrick must flee for America, pawning several family heirlooms to book passage. During the voyage, Fiona's understandably naive internal monologue brings to mind the refrain from a number in the animated Don Bluth musical, An American Tail: "There are no cats in America." As Fievel Mouskiewitz learned to his horror that America teems with cats, so Fiona McGilray discovers that the Land of Opportunity in 1849 teems with people harboring spiteful prejudice toward the Irish. With the inexplicable disappearance of their rich cousins, Fiona and Patrick require every morsel of wits, courage, faith and luck simply to survive. The dream of reuniting their family looms large in their hopes and prayers.

In our era, the media lauds smart-mouthed, rebellious teens, and parents often come across as idiotic boors. While the considerate-to-a-fault Patrick seems a bit too good to be true, the flawed yet determined Fiona presents a realistic portrait of a young lady willing to risk all to help her family. Brava, Clare Pastore, for giving young readers an informative and sensitive glimpse of the plight of 19th century immigrants through the Irish eyes of Fiona McGilray.

(Originally published in Crescent Blues. Reprinted with permission.)

MOVIE REVIEW: The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea

Disney reunites Jodi "Ariel" Benson, Samuel E. "Sebastian" Wright, Buddy "Scuttle" Hackett, Rene "Chef Louis" Auberjonois and other vocal talents from the 1989 classic, The Little Mermaid, to again explore why the seaweed always looks greener on the other side of the reef.
 
The happily-ever-after for Prince Eric and his newly bipedal mermaid bride, Ariel, includes the birth of a daughter, Melody. But the happiness fades when Morganna, evil sister of the vanquished Ursula, tries to kidnap the infant as barter for King Triton's magic trident and dominion of the oceans. Thwarting Morganna comes with a heavy price: Melody must be raised in ignorance of her mer-heritage.

While the 12-year-old Melody favors her father in dark good looks, she definitely takes after her mother in the self-centered yearning to be something she isn't. She confesses to Sebastian the hermit crab (again reluctantly pressed into service as a nanny) that she often imagines her legs as fins. When Melody accidentally finds a locket that raises questions about her ancestry, her actions allow Morganna to again go after Triton's trident, using a mermaid-ified Melody as the patsy.

Continuing a tradition begun in 1999's award-winning Tarzan, The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea provides an insightful porthole into parent-child dynamics. In trying to be a conscientious and protective mother, Ariel unwittingly fuels Melody's frustration about being denied access to the sea. Through her trials, Melody must learn whom she should really trust. And Ariel, transformed back into mermaid form, must not only find her swum-away daughter but determine how to repair the damage wrought by her own well-intentioned but ill-considered decisions.
From a technical standpoint, Return to the Sea improves upon its direct-to-video predecessors in its attention to detail and scripting. Parallels and anti-parallels to The Little Mermaid abound, which I'll leave to the viewer to discover, since they provide half the fun. Plenty of not-so-childish humor also helps to hold adult interest. Children should be fascinated by Melody's misadventures, though the youngest ones might find the wicked Morganna a bit unsettling.

I knocked off a half-point because most of the songs had a "filler" feel, and another half-point because I prefer protagonists, such as Beauty and the Beast's Belle, whose troubles arise from self-sacrificial decisions rather than self-centered ones. But anything that can hold my flibbertygibbet five-year-old enraptured through multiple repeat viewings gets a hearty thumbs-up from me!

(Originally published in Crescent Blues. Reprinted with permission.)