Children’s Art Books for Summer Reading 2025

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Summer reading is well under way at Joplin Public Library. In the world of Youth Services, we have been reading lots of books, having a lot of fun, and making a lot of art. As you may recall, the theme of JPL’s 2025 summer reading program is “Color Our World.” In my last review, I shared Lian Cho’s picture book Oh, Olive! about a little girl who paints outside of the lines (literally and metaphorically).

We still have plenty of time left in summer break and it will likely only get hotter outside. For this month’s review, I want to share about a few art books that will entertain young readers and provide restless kids with some fun activities during the dog days of summer.

How To Be a Color Wizard: Forage and Experiment with Natural Color Making by Jason Logan combines art and nature activities for upper elementary and middle school-aged kids. The photographs are nature-based and aesthetically pleasing and the activities are fun and actually achievable for the target demographic. This book was published by mitKids Press, a publishing house affiliated with MIT that focuses on STEAM-based titles. Activities include making colors from natural materials such as berries and leaves, looking at colors in the world like a mantis shrimp, and making a paintbrush wand. Logan suffuses the book with magical language befitting a book a Hogwarts student might purchase from Flourish and Botts. I love that this book treats learning and experiment as serious work for kids, even when the actual experiment tasks the reader with pretending to be a shrimp.

The artwork and photos in the book are aesthetically pleasing, and the activities range from silly and easy for a preschooler to more challenging and appropriate for an upper elementary or middle school-aged reader (or even an adult reader). How to Be a Color Wizard is a beautiful, useful, and inspiring book to come back to over and over again.

Speaking of artistic inspiration, I first heard about the artist Alma Thomas through the picture book Ablaze With Color: A Story of Painter Alma Thomas. The 2022 biographical picture book was created by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art docent Jeanne Walker Harvey and illustrator Loveis Wise. Ablaze with Color tells the story of African American artist Alma Thomas beginning with her childhood in Georgia. Growing up in the early 1900s, Thomas experienced significant racial injustice. The author does not delve into the specifics of those injustices, though she does acknowledge how it impacted Alma’s family and how they responded. Her parents surrounded Alma and her sisters with art and culture, fostering a love of art in their daughters. At fifteen, their family moved to Washington D.C. so the girls could go to school. Alma taught art to local African American children, who were not permitted to attend segregated classes. Throughout her life, Alma taught and fostered art in her community. At age seventy, she began creating her own art. Loveis Wise does Thomas’ art justice through the use of patterns and bright colors, honoring, but not imitating, Thomas’ circular designs made up of colorful dashes and stripes. The writing is poetic without being overly sentimental, and it captures Alma Thomas’ aspirations and ability to see color and make art of her surroundings. The book begins with a quote from President Barack Obama that he made during Black History Month in 2015. Michelle Obama selected Alma Thomas’ painting Resurrection to hang in the White House, making Thomas the first African American woman with that honor. Ablaze with Color would be a great read aloud for early elementary-aged students and would provide many craft opportunities. Thomas’s use of patterns and colors lends itself well to creating with collages, painting with Legos or Blocks, printmaking, coloring, mosaics, and stamping. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas is home to Alma Thomas’ Lunar Rendezvous–Circle of Flowers, which is well worth the drive. Happy reading and creating!

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham

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January 28, 1986, was the day NASA’s carefully cultivated image literally blew up at 46,000 feet. If you are of a certain age, you probably recall where you were when you heard the news. That morning, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members. The inquiry that followed revealed that in order to meet its frenetic launch schedules, NASA officials were willing to overlook known problems with the shuttle’s reusable solid rocket boosters. In Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham unpacks the story with methodical detail. It’s chilling because in reading the preceding engineering and managerial decisions, you know you are also reading the anatomy of a future catastrophe.

Tragedy is nothing new in NASA’s storied history of course, with Higginbotham taking us back to the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew during a lauchpad test. Going forward, astronaut trainees were required to listen to the audio of the crew members imploring that they be released from the command module because they were burning to death. Higginbotham also revisits how a fickle public became rather blasé with repeated moon landings, with some complaining to television networks that their favorite programs were being interrupted with yet more moon-landing footage.

Funding NASA has always been fraught, regardless of the space program. When the space agency decided to pursue flying a reusable space plane with reusable solid rocket boosters, the new astronaut class was preparing to fly missions under the very real possibility that the new shuttle program would not come to fruition. Cost overruns and delays continually tested Congress’ patience.

If you’re a space dork (like me), you’ll devour reading about the interregnum period between the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. The focus changed from swaggering test pilots manning moon-shot rockets to research-based scientists conducting experiments in orbit. The test pilots still had their place, to be sure. Someone had to land an orbiter reentering as a glider. But gone were the days when Mercury astronauts enjoyed dollar-a-year leases on sports cars.

Nonetheless, as with any space program, defining “acceptable risk” is a necessity. Engineers didn’t really know if this new space plane/truck would survive reentry. And firing rockets with solid propellants may indeed save money, but it’s also exceptionally dangerous. Once lit, the rocket fires until it’s out of fuel. Higginbotham compares it to lighting a firework. When the various shuttles did eventually launch, the percussion waves were so pronounced and damaging, high-pressure streams of water were sprayed around the lauchpad to dampen the acoustics.

Thiokol, a private contractor based in Utah, designed and built the boosters. Given their massive size, they had to be built into segments for transportation. Once at Cape Canaveral, they were made vertical and sealed with rubber O-rings. After the boosters burned their fuel, they were released from the shuttle and then retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean. In the process of repurposing the rockets, Thiokol engineers discovered that the O-rings were less than reliable. If enough gas escaped from any given segment, the results would be catastrophic for the crew.

Higginbotham provides an in-depth history of the O-ring debacle. No internal memo or meeting escapes an airing. We know where this is heading of course, and it’s amazing the astronauts were never briefed on the suspect O-rings. As we winnow our way down to the January 1986 launch, we come across every frustrating misstep. There was extra publicity with this launch as one crew member was middle school teacher Christa McAuliffe. She was the first of NASA’s “teachernaut” program, a publicity effort to demonstrate the accessibility of space flight.

The unusually low air temps that week led to the unprecedented recommendation among Thiokol engineers to scrub the launch. The O-rings, they argued, would be compromised under such conditions. Administrators decided to fire the rockets anyway. Launch schedules had to be made and all eyes were on this launch in particular. On the morning of January 28, it looked as though it would be a successful booster firing, with the shuttle ascending as planned. But then at 11:39 A.M., it exploded in full view.

NASA originally reported that the crew was vaporized in the explosion. However, the wreckage pulled from the ocean revealed human remains. So it’s quite possible the crew was conscious as the orbiter plummeted to the ocean. After a dramatic investigation, changes were made with the booster rockets and space shuttle flights resumed. Still, make no mistake, there were deep rifts within NASA.

Throughout the book, Higginbotham gives us brief histories into the lives of the Challenger crew. President Reagan, along with his speechwriter Peggy Noonan, certainly did their part to humanize the first astronauts to perish during flight. In a public address just after the explosion, Reagan said, “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.” To Reagan’s credit, he understood that space exploration holds liminal space within our minds, and as such, during times of tragedy, words to describe what is almost indescribable matter.

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Review by Jason Sullivan

Finlay is Killing It by Elle Cosimano

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The fifth Finlay Donovan book is out and reminded me how much I enjoy this series. I could tell you about #5 but if you are going to read about Finlay’s crazy life you have to start at the beginning. Each book starts where the last one ended so it is one continuous story.

The first in the series, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano, starts with a typical morning for Finlay. The nanny is late, she’s mopping up the coffee and grinds results of a forgotten filter, her two-year-old needs a diaper change, and five-year-old Delia gave herself a haircut. Of course Delia didn’t just whack off hair she took some scalp too. Finlay’s already late for an appointment with Sylvia, her editor, and the nanny is not answering her phone.

A call to ex-husband Steven nets a lecture and the news that he fired the nanny. With no time for a proper fix and at Delia’s insistence the blood flow is staunched with a burp rag then the cut hair is attached to her head with tape and covered with a cap. The duct tape, bloody rag and knife go in the diaper bag and they are out the door.

After dropping Delia at pre-school and Zach with his dad, Finlay just makes it to meet Sylvia hoping her wig-scarf and sunglasses are enough to hide her identity. Finlay is banned from this Panera for fighting with her exes fiancée, formerly their real estate agent and Steven’s mistress. As she and Sylvia discuss the progress or lack of for her latest thriller, the occupant of the next table notices the duct tape, knife and rag in Finlay’s bag. Sylvia leaves as does the woman from the adjacent table. Finlay then spies a note left on her tray.

$50,000 cash, Harris Mickler, address and a phone number. Intrigued by that dollar sign and all those zeroes, Finlay calls the number. It’s the woman who sat next to them and what she says is confusing. Her husband is not a nice man and has done terrible things so she wants him gone. She was going to take the money and leave him but it’s better this way and she wants Finlay to do it. Do what? After telling her Harris will be at The Lush that night she hangs up.

A confused Finley notices the bloodied items in her bag and starts to recall her conversation with Sylvia. Realization dawns that Mrs. Mickler thinks Finlay is a hit woman.

Even though she is desperate for money with bills unpaid and Steven threatening to sue for full custody of their children, Finlay is not a killer. But she is curious about Harris. Once her sister reluctantly agrees to babysit, Finlay dons her wig scarf and heads to The Lush.

When she observes Harris spiking the drink of his companion Finlay switches the drinks and Harris is the one drugged. She manages to get him out of the bar but he passes out by her minivan. Finlay’s intent is to take him to Mrs. Mickler but she adamantly refuses so Finlay heads home to figure things out. She parks in the garage but leaves the van running, it’s cold out, to go inside and call her sister. When she comes out the garage door is closed but the van is still running and Harris is dead.

As she is trying to do CPR the babysitter shows up to collect her belongings. Vero is ready to bolt and Finlay is going to turn herself in but then they find that Harris was involved with some very bad people. People who would hurt Finlay and her children if they find out Harris is dead.

For a cut of the money and room and board, Vero becomes her nanny again and her partner in crime. They have to hide Harris’ body and figure out who killed him so Finlay can stay out of jail and finish a novel she hasn’t even started.

Even with plenty of bodies, bad guys, and suspects this is a light-hearted read. There is a lot going on but Cosimano does a great job with the flow of the novel so you never get lost in the details. If you are a Stephanie Plum fan, you should check out Finlay Donovan. You won’t be sorry.

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Review written by: Patty Crane, Reference Librarian

Culture: the story of us from cave art to K-pop by Martin Puchner

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It can be easy to dismiss popular culture as trite and inconsequential. Superhero movies, fantasy television shows, romance novels, Korean pop music; it can all seem a little meaningless, even to the fans. I, personally, have been known to lose interest in something if I sense that it is becoming “too popular.”

But Martin Puchner’s CULTURE: THE STORY OF US, FROM CAVE ART TO K-POP invites readers to take a deeper look at these fluffy topics from a historical perspective.

Consider this: novels have always been popular culture; all of the works that we think of now as classic literature survived because they were popular. Don Quixote was so popular when it was published that an unauthorized sequel became widely circulated – an early instance of what we would now call fanfiction.

As Puchner’s book shows, culture is often developed by borrowing. Interpreting traditions that you do not understand and giving them a new meaning. He illustrates this point by examining the ways that the Romans adapted Greek gods to suit their own needs.

The Chauvet cave paintings (which have intrigued me for a long time because of their significance in the history of animation) were created over a period of thousands of years. Each generation of humans visiting the site and adding new images to instruct or entertain future visitors.

Puchner appreciates this collective experience of culture and argues against the possibility of ownership over a culture. Culture is evolving, changing as it is passed from one group of people to another.

Modern viewers think of Hokusai’s Great Wave as being indicative of Japanese art because it became so culturally significant, but printmaking is actually a technique they borrowed from China.

Traditional Japanese art was generally created with watercolors and ink, but an interest in cheap, reproducible images brought printmaking into the country. Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji took this popular technique and managed to show its versatility — and the potential it had in the hands of a master.

Cultural shifts are generally a result of this natural evolution, people passing down knowledge or rebelling against what came before. It changes to fit the needs of those currently using it.

It is not possible to know how future generations will view the culture that we are living in right now. But reading CULTURE inspired me to look at what is popular in a new way. Each chapter is dedicated to a new waypoint in our global cultural history. It examines how that moment in history is indicative of both its time and ours.

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Book review by Alyssa Berry, Technical Services Librarian

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

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Journalist Alice Scott longs to move from writing features and profiles on minor celebrities to writing a complete biography on someone uber famous. Someone like Margaret Ives, a former media darling who comes from one of the most famous families of the twentieth century. Despite Margaret being in hiding for at least three decades, without any known sightings, Alice thinks she has finally found her. Yes, it will be fun to try something new and grow her skills, but it will have the added bonus of making her mom finally take notice of her work. 

Alice is one of the most positive people you will ever meet and she can hardly believe her luck that she has finally managed to track down Margaret.  She arrives on Little Crescent Island, Georgia and can hardly wait to convince Margaret to start working with her.  That is until she bumps into Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Hayden Anderson as she is leaving Margaret’s house. Now Margaret’s comment about having “a couple of other branches to shake” makes more sense.  

Hayden Anderson is a music journalist, but is best known for writing a Pulitzer prize-winning celebrity biography on a famous Americana singer with dementia. Alice cannot believe that she might miss out on this opportunity after spending so much time tracking down Margaret.  

Margaret invites both of them to work with her for one month. They will take turns meeting with her, and at the end of the month, they will each have a chance to pitch their idea for the book, then she will choose who she wants to work with.   

Neither are happy about having to audition for this opportunity with Margaret, but it’s the chance of a lifetime, so they both agree to move forward. What follows is a month of meetings and competition for the coveted contract. Also during this time, the pair of writers get to know each other better thanks to run-ins at the small town’s local coffee shop and restaurants. Though talking about the book is off limits because they have both signed a NDA.  

My favorite part of this novel was Alice’s perpetually upbeat attitude and the story of Margaret’s life. I adore Emily Henry and her books. What a treat to have another one this year! 

Review written by: Jeana Gockley, Joplin Public Library Director

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How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

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Louise never thought her family was weird, really. She’s always heard comments, even from her cousins, but Louise never agreed. Sure, her mom had an obsession, verging on unhealthy, with dolls and puppets. She packed their house full of them, various sizes and materials, and even created art with them, like when she recreated the painting of The Last Supper but with squirrel puppets coming out of the painting in place of the people. Louise, and her brother Mark, grew up with puppets as a big part of their lives, whether they always wanted it that way or not. When their parents unexpectedly die, Louise and Mark are forced to go back to their childhood home to take care of arrangements and sell the house. But when things start getting extra weird around the house, Louise can’t help but wonder: what is up with her weird family? This is the premise of horror author Grady Hendrix’s novel How to Sell a Haunted House.

When Louise is old enough she leaves home and moves across the country, getting as far away from her family as possible. She likes her reserved father well enough; it’s her mom that was always choosing Louise’s estranged younger brother, Mark, over Louise and insisting on filling the house with her weird art creations, puppets, and dolls that Louise couldn’t take any longer. Plus, her and Mark never get along, Louise annoyed by the way Mark always seems to get things handed to him so easily by their parents. Still, Louise loves her parents, despite their quirks. So when Louise gets an unexpected call from Mark telling her that their parents have died in a car accident, Louise is devastated.

Leaving her young daughter Poppy with her ex, Louise travels home to help Mark with arrangements. Louise is horrified to find that Mark has made all decisions and has arranged a company to come in and completely clean out their childhood home so it can be sold. Louise digs her heels in and insists on going through things herself, especially when she learns that all of her mom’s art collection has been left to her. Usually she would make a planned, organized list and get rid of the art, but because her and Mark are not getting along whatsoever she stubbornly refuses to get it done quickly (as only a sibling can). 

As Louise goes through the house questions begin popping up in her head. Why is her dad’s cane that he couldn’t get around without still in the living room? Why does the TV keep turning on with two of her mom’s dolls (named after Mark and Louise) sitting in front of it? Why is the attic access boarded up? One afternoon Louise falls asleep at the house, and wakes up to find one of the squirrels from her mom’s recreation of The Last Supper climbing onto the bed, and another curled around her throat. To be clear, these squirrels are not alive, but puppets. Louise attempts to rationalize what is happening, as our brains tend to do in high-stress situations, but after the squirrels attack Louise she isn’t sure if something is wrong with her and she is going through a mental break, or if something unthinkable is happening: haunted puppets. 

Louise gets her answer when their mom’s favorite puppet, Pupkin, somehow gets out of the trashcan Louise threw it in and attacks Louise, only to be saved by Mark. Now Mark and Louise must put aside their childhood dislike of one another and band together against the puppets, and ultimately learn how to sell a haunted house and confront their generational trauma. 

I appreciate the way Hendrix writes horror. He managed to make this novel spooky and funny and moving all at once. Rather than all scary all the time, Hendrix weaves in true to life emotions and situations for his characters, and adds a dash of humor. Part of the novel is horror and psychological thriller, yes – I mean come on, puppets that come to life? No thank you. However, the other part of the novel is about Mark and Louise reconciling with one another and traumatic experiences they had as children. They start the novel immersed in one set of emotions and opinions about one another, and those perceptions shift as the novel progresses. While some of the novel did read too slowly for me, I liked the combination of family dynamics and horror, and the dark humor sprinkled throughout. This is the first book I’ve read by Hendrix and it won’t be my last – I enjoy the way he navigates the genre of horror. 

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Review by Sarah Turner-Hill, Adult Programming Coordinator

OH, OLIVE! by Lian Cho

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Next Tuesday kicks off the most exciting time of year: Summer reading at the Joplin Public Library! If you are unfamiliar, the summer reading program is an eight-week, all-ages reading challenge accompanied by fun and educational events. Notable events this summer include a sourdough making program for adults, a Tiny Library Desk concert in the Teen Department, and storytellers, jugglers, and scientists in the Children’s Department.

Participants in the reading challenge must read a specific number of hours and complete 10 activities to earn a prize. Readers can also enter to win grand prize drawings at the end of the summer.

Our theme for this year’s summer reading program is “Color Our World,” and our artwork and events are focused on all things color and art. As such, I would like to share one of my newest favorite picture books with beautiful art.

Oh, Olive! is the latest release from Lian Cho, one of my new favorite picture book creators.

This book has so many beautiful and tiny details to examine. You could spend five minutes reading the story, or you could spend twenty minutes looking closely at individual details and colors, analyzing Cho’s choices. Oh, Olive! is also funny! Cho’s book tells the story of Olive Chen, “the most magnificent and brilliant artist in the whole wide world.” Olive is tragically misunderstood by her parents, both very serious artists. Olive’s square-shaped father only paints squares. Olive’s triangular mother only paints triangles. Olive, on the other hand, loves colorful, abstract art. From page to page, Olive can be seen pouring paint buckets, splattering brushes, and licking her canvas. Even her teacher tries to box her praising the shape-centric artwork of her classmates while suggesting that Olive try a shape next time instead of commenting on the beauty and color of her abstract piece.

The art elevates the story and affirms what readers will instantly recognize: Olive is something special. The art in the first three-quarters of the book is all grayscale, except Olive. Where her parents, classmates, and her neighborhood are all gray, white, and black, Olive is red, blue, and yellow. Where they have small scowls or bored expressions, Olive has a smile that takes up her whole face. Color follows Olive everywhere. She typically stands proudly atop puddles and splatters of paint in a range of colors, including orange, green, purple, pink, and yellow. Also, Olive’s art is undeniably beautiful.I read this aloud to a first-grade class last week and one of the students exclaimed, “the illustrator is an amazing artist!” First grader, you are correct. The student also opined that Olive’s parents had bad taste, which I may or may not have agreed with.

Eventually, after some encouraging words from her classmates, Olive’s color spreads from student to student, from her teacher to her neighbors. By the end of the book, everything is colorful and everyone is smiling. Oh, Olive! is the story of a tenacious young girl following her heart. It is also a gentle encouragement for kids who might think they aren’t “good” artists. I am hopeful that they will take Olive’s words to heart and understand that “anyone can do it.” You can find Lian Cho’s Oh, Olive! at the library. You can also find more information about summer reading through our website at www.joplinpubliclibrary.org/summer-reading. Happy reading!

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Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

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One not-small benefit of working at a library trucks with it a problem, and it can be stated the same way for both: a sizable reading list. Zero sympathy is expected, of course. As the saying goes, that’s like complaining that your shoes made out of gold are a touch too tight. Nevertheless, the problem remains, especially since this space is most often used to review new books. So what is to be done? In this instance, you just go ahead and pick up a title published 15 years ago,Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne (not to be confused with Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann).

As with his latest book, His Majesty’s Airship, Gwynne excels in conveying both social and political history with a compelling narrative. It helps, of course, that he chooses historical periods abounding with intrigue. Here, we’re taken back to the nineteenth century in what is now Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. It was ruled by the Comanches, and the land was known as the Comancheria.   Gwynne notes that given how rapidly the eastern agrarian tribes were subdued and relocated, the thought of Indian resistance west of the Mississippi River was not fully appreciated. The Plains Indians, also known as horse Indians, were war machines who—long before white settlers began moving en masse from the east—made war with each other. In addition to the Comanches, there were—to name a few—the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Apaches.

What made them so fearsome was something the Spanish inadvertently gave them: the horse. And it was an aggrieved band of people that migrated out of Wyoming who used horses most expertly, a group believed to have once been Shoshone. They would become the Comanches, and apparently they held grudges like no other. Anyone these nomads came across were subjected to absolute terror. Torture killings were common among other Plains Indians, but even the other tribes feared the Comanches.

Reading about such torture is difficult to process. We want to sort out the “why?” concerning this level of viciousness. Was the reputation the point, a cruelty that preceded them, thus clearing their path to more favorable hunting grounds? Even if that was a contributing reason, it was more than that. It’s almost as if Gwynne knows that the reader is jumping back a little, for he explains that fifth century Romans saw the Celts in much the same way. They couldn’t work out their world. The Comanches believed in many spirits. But, writes Gwynne, “there was no ultimate good and evil: just actions and consequences; injuries and damages due.” (Of course we know that whites often saw the Indians as nothing more than savages, which spurred their own orchestrated brutalities.)

As the Comanches bedeviled all comers (the Spanish and then the Mexicans), they faced their own growing peculiar problem: the Texan. Land grants are powerful enticements. And the Mexican government quite often offered them land on what would become Texas. Let these settlers deal with the Comanches, it was thought. Gwynne details a Comanche raid on an early Republic of Texas fort. It was more like a family compound than a fort, which was built too deep in Comanche territory, a reckless act to be sure. The Fort Parker massacre of 1836 was big news at the time, most notably because two children were taken. John Richard Parker would be released years later via negotiation. His sister, Cynthia Ann Parker, disappeared.

This hapless settler existence led to the formation of the Texas Rangers. Gwynne takes us through its early days, and it’s a wild ride. Basically, the Rangers were competent only when they had competent leadership, which was few and far between. One effective leader was John Coffee Hays. He understood that to fight the Comanches, you had to fight like them. He also knew they were predictable in battle to a fault. Add to that the fact that Hays was fearless and the end result was a turning of outcomes. Here’s Hays before a battle, sounding like someone out of an old western movie: “Yonder are the Indians, boys, and yonder are our horses. The Indians are pretty strong. But we can whip them. What do you say?” Well, the boys did follow him, and whip them they did. He understood surprise attacks and that on the plains there was “no expectation of honorable surrender.” The Comanches probably thought he was crazy going into a fight where he was on the wrong side of ten-to-one odds. We do know they had a name for him: Devil Jack.

In addition, Hays utilized the latest in firearm development to level the fight. Comanche warriors using bows and arrows on horseback was an overwhelming force. Hays quickly ordered the newly invented Walker Colt revolvers, which equalized a battle. Given the firearm’s effectives, it’s surprising that once Hays left for California, future iterations of the Rangers didn’t follow his lead. Even when Texas became part of the United States, the U.S. Army was slow in evolving away from the pomp of European battlefield plumage that in no way suited Indian warfare.

The Civil War meant the “Indian problem” would have to wait. The Comanches raids continued and the various tribes settled old scores with each other. It was a strange time where horse Indians raided Oklahoma reservations, where it was not unusual to see a reservation Indian owning a Black slave.

It was also during this time when Cynthia Ann Parker was found. But far from having experienced decades of torment, she had become one of the wives to a Comanche chief. She was found in the aftermath of a battle between her Comanche band and the Texas Rangers, a fight that ended with her husband being killed. Captured with her infant daughter, but separated from her two sons, she could no longer speak English. Not that she would acknowledge her captures anyway. It wasn’t until she was asked if she was Cynthia Ann Parker, that she stood, patted her chest, and said, “Me Cincee Ann.” She and her daughter were not allowed to return to the tribe. Bereft over the loss of her husband and the separation from her sons, she tried to escape many times. In her early days of captivity, she was even tied up and made to sit in what amounted to a freak show, where passersby would gawk at the “white squaw.” She would never see her sons again.

With the conclusion of the Civil War, the same men who fought in it were now the ones holding political office. Having witnessed great carnage during the war, they had little patience with the remaining Plains Indians. Disease and white buffalo hunters had already dwindled their ranks. With succinctness, Gwynne says, “There was no such thing as a horse Indian without a buffalo herd. Such an Indian had no identity at all.”

In 1867, representatives from a U.S. peace commission, which included General William Tecumseh Sherman, and representatives from various tribes met in an area just south of Wichita, Kansas. This was it, and the Indians knew it. They would no longer be free Indians. What remained of Comancheria was no longer theirs. Sherman told them there was nothing they could do about it, saying, “You can no more stop this than you can stop the sun or the moon.”

Not all entered the reservation. Some bands still roamed free. But by 1874, the U.S. government would no longer tolerate Indians who raided and killed. The U.S. Army cornered these remaining Indians in the Texas panhandle. And with the assistance of .50 caliber rifles—also called “the big fifties”—the Texas-Indian Wars came to an end. One Comanche warrior who surrendered was Quanah Parker, one of Cynthia Ann Parker’s sons.

Quanah, once a warrior who gave white Americans no quarter (especially Texans), actually had been advocating peace within his band before surrender. Once on the reservation, he adapted fairly well, even becoming friends with the Army officer who commanded the effort to force the Comanches to surrender. This was the new reality, so he embraced it. Whereas most Comanches found the notion of private property alien, Quanah realized this was the new way. His letterhead identified him as a Comanche chief and he relished the attention he received. He met with Theodore Roosevelt and happily appeared before crowds in headdress and buckskins, often beginning his speeches with a “ladies and gentlemen” salutation.

Gwynne’s writing style possesses an energy that almost dares you to put the book down. And thankfully he doesn’t make sweeping normative judgments about what transpired. Quanah’s embracing his new reality is not presented as some sort of lodestar of achievement that other Indians were meant to follow. Gwynne notes that, unlike Geronimo, Quanah’s standing among his tribe remained throughout his life. Perhaps it’s because his existence was an unusual one from the start. When his father was killed and his mother taken, he was treated poorly within his Comanche band because he was half white. Not until he distinguished himself as a warrior did he re-elevate his status. The man who once killed many a Texan would go on to adopt two white boys, one he found working at a circus in San Antonio. He reconnected with his extended Parker relatives, and two of his daughters married white men. To Gwynne, Quanah’s optimism is impressive, especially since he once lived a life of freedom on the plains. There’s even some optimism on his gravestone:
Resting here until day breaks
And shadows fall
And darkness disappears
Is Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches

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Review by Jason Sullivan

 

Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy

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​Helen Cartwright was born in a small English village but lived the last sixty years in Australia. When she turns eighty and with nothing to hold her in Australia she returns to the place of her birth to die. Now three years later as each day passes Helen realizes that “even for death there is a queue.”

In Simon Van Booy’s latest novel Sipsworth, Helen lives a life of isolation. She tries to walk each day as that’s important, she drinks her tea, listens to the radio in the mornings and watches the television in the afternoons. She makes the walk to the grocery each Monday but she interacts with no one unless it is a necessity.

Her practice of watching the world go by has led to an oddity, Helen has become curious about what people throw away. Several times she has gone out to inspect what her neighbors leave out to be picked up. Late one night she sees the man next door bring out two bags then a large box. Even though it’s midnight Helen needs to know what’s in the box.

The box turns out to be a fish tank full of small boxes with a toy diver on top. She bought her son a diver just like that when he was thirteen and she recalled it was part of a set. She struggles to bring the tank into her house but on the coffee table it goes. By now she is cold and tired​; unpacking the boxes will wait until morning.

The next morning she carefully cleans the diver before looking to see what the boxes hold. Disappointingly they are empty. After inspecting each one she is left with a few toys in the bottom and one large water soaked box. Since it is wet and smelly she leaves it in the tank​. ​Just as she is ready to put back the other boxes and tote it outside a small gray face peeks out of the soggy box.

She brought a mouse into her house and that just won’t do.  After covering the fish tank with plastic wrap so the mouse can’t escape, Helen leaves for the hardware store to find something to deal with the mouse. That is after she goes back inside to put air holes in the plastic wrap.

She thinks all of the remedies on offer are barbaric but takes the glue traps. That night before going to bed, Helen takes the fish tank with the mouse inside out to her back patio. But outside doesn’t mean out of mind and Helen keeps rescuing the mouse. First from torrential rain then from the neighborhood cat. Plus the only thing caught by the glue traps are her slippers.

Within a couple of days the mouse is living in her kitchen sink in a new home she fashioned from a pie box. Finding a shelter to take a mouse proves problematic. Of course she’s not going to keep it but she has to care for it in the interim​ and call it something. Its name becomes Sipsworth.

Caring for ​S​ipsworth involves trips to the library and back to the hardware store where she finds people willing to help. Helen’s life changes as the mouse​ becomes the companion she didn’t know she wanted and those willing to help are becoming friends. Then Sipsworth becomes ill and Helen springs into action and surprises from her past surface.

With its premise the novel could have been too sweet but Helen is cantankerous and her inner musings are worth noting. I enjoyed this appealing story – when I finished it I smiled.

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Review written by: Patty Crane, Joplin Public Library Reference Librarian

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

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Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11pm tonight. But our narrator does not know that yet. In fact, he does not know anything, including his own name.

Minutes ago, he woke up in the woods yelling the name Anna, heard a scream that was abruptly cut off, and was sent back to a crumbling manor house by a mysterious stranger – probably a murderer if the scream is any indication.

No one at Blackheath Manor seems particularly worried about the potential murder in the woods. One of the men takes our narrator up to his room, trying to help with his memory loss. The narrator’s name is Sebastian Bell, he is a doctor. He is at Blackheath to attend a masquerade ball that evening in honor of Evelyn Hardcastle’s return from Paris.

Bell continues to have strange interactions all day with people who seem to know him – including one interaction with a man in a plague doctor’s mask who delivers cryptic warnings and once with Evelyn Hardcastle herself.

Evelyn makes an immediate impression on Bell; she is one of the few people willing to help him investigate the scream he heard in the woods. Everyone else in the house has dismissed his concerns, for the most part because no one seems to know an Anna.

Late in the evening, Sebastian Bell returns to his bedroom to find a dead rabbit and a note signed by The Footman, a murderer that our narrator has been warned to look out for. Bell faints on the spot. When he regains consciousness, our narrator is in the body of Blackheath’s butler and back at the beginning of that same day.

Each time our narrator wakes up, he does so in a new body. He will have the chance to live through this day eight different times, through the eyes of eight different people. At 11pm, Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered. He will witness her death multiple times, from multiple perspectives.

Our narrator has been placed in a time loop to solve her murder, but he is not the only one – there are two other people trying to find the answer to this mystery, and only one of them will be allowed to leave once it is solved.

THE 7 1/2 DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE is a unique mystery. The narrator has the opportunity to gain first-hand experience from eight different witnesses to the crime. He gains more information each time he inhabits someone new, sometimes interacting with himself in a different body.

As he races to solve Evelyn’s murder, the narrator gains more insight into why he is here in the first place. As the man in the plague doctor mask tells him, this is not the first time he has experienced these eight days. He will keep living this day through these eight people until he – or one of his rivals – solves the murder.

 

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Book review by Alyssa Berry, Technical Services Librarian