VVMBookBlog

Sometimes I think I learn more from reading young adult books than many other ways in my life. This time while reading The Art of Keeping Cool by Janet Taylor Lisle, I learned more about World War II and how the war that was being fought on battlefields in other countries, also threatened our own U.S. ocean coastlines.

Robert’s dad is a pilot flying missions out of England against Germany. With his dad gone, Robert, his mom and sister can’t keep up with all the work on their farm in Ohio, so they go to stay with his grandparents–his dad’s parents–in Sachem’s Head on the coast of Rhode Island. There he soon meets his rather odd, but artistic cousin, Elliot, and his very strict and mean grandfather. Seeing how stangely everyone interacts with each other soon raises questions in Robert’s mind about his dad and what happened long ago between his dad and his grandfather.

But first there are other exciting things happening as the navy was moving in 2 HUGE naval guns and setting them up on the hillside at Fort Brooks, aiming them out towards the ocean. There had been sightings of periscopes from German submarines off the coast, and fears of being attacked were running high.

Those fears also affected how people felt about the German people, even German people living in our country. In this book, Abel Hoffman, a famous German artist, was trying to live quietly outside their town. Since both shared a love of art, Elliot and Abel secretly became friends which would soon cause problems for Elliot. Robert and Elliot learned about Abel’s life in Germany and how his expressionist art was NOT approved of by Hitler’s people. He had to escape from Germany in order to survive…and now he’s in danger again!

Family secrets, problems of war, and no news from Robert’s dad after he was shot down–so many reasons to keep on reading this book!

The Angel Factory by Terence Blacker is a futuristic book about Thomas, his parents and sister, and their nearly perfect life. When things begin to feel a little too perfect, Thomas shares his thoughts with his friend, Gip, who gets on Thomas’ dad’s computer. Gip finds and downloads an encrypted file which hegives to their brilliant-but-geeky math teacher to decode. And there the image of perfection starts to unravel!

And now I don’t want to give away any of the things Thomas finds out about himself. Well, okay, I’ll tell you that he finds out he is adopted. But the reason THAT is important has to do with the title of the book and why being adopted is important to the whole angel thing! And sometimes taking on a mission to do good can result in some very bad things happening!

This wasn’t exactly a “feel good” book, but science fiction usually isn’t. And I can’t say I’ve ever run across the idea of creating angels in other stories. All in all, it kept my attention and I had to read it to the end. So be an angel and try this book!