Hey, Little Ant, Phillip and Hannah Hoose, Illustrated by Debbie Tilley

To squish or not to squish—such is the question explored in Hey, Little Ant. A bespectacled boy taunts an ant on the sidewalk with the death he is about to inflict on him, thinking of it as “squishing” and not murder. The ant explains why he shouldn’t die: he is not so unlike the boy in that he loves and feeds his family, and though others may think of him as a nuisance, a chip can feed his whole community (and the implication is that there is no reason for the child not to share one chip). When the boy says that all his friends are waiting for him to squash the ant, the ant asks him to imagine them switching places, which gives an opportunity for one of the most wonderful images in this charming book: a giant ant, with glasses, his foot poised above a little boy. The book ends with an ambiguous note-we never know whether the ant is squished or not-and thus this book easily invites discussion with children. It is a mainstay of Born to Read’s Peaceable Stories curriculum. (Diane Magras)

About the Authors & Illustrator: Hannah Hoose was nine in 1992 when she and her father wrote a “musical conversation” about a child preparing to step on an ant. Their recording of this song was popular, and in 1998 the book came out. Phillip Hoose is the author of works including The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (about the Ivory-billed woodpecker), We Were There Too! Young People in US History, and the baseball memoir Perfect Once Removed. He is also a founding member of the Children’s Music Network. Debbie Tilley has illustrated many children’s books, including E is for Elsa, Summer with Elsa, No Ordinary Olive, and Babies Don’t Eat Pizza.

Spoonhandle, Ruth Moore

Want a good Maine read for summer, or for that matter, any season? If you have read The Weir by Ruth Moore in our “Mirror of Maine” series for Let’s Talk About It, you will be delighted to know that another book with her finger on the pulse of early twentieth century Maine coastal communities is available. Spoonhandle takes place on fictional Big Spoon and Little Spoon islands, but they are so recognizable that you will be tempted to look for them on a map. Moore’s ability to capture a sense of place and to give us characters that we recognize in emotional places we’ve been before make this a book that calls to you from the shelf again and again. It deals with perennial themes: leaving, staying, or coming to Maine, the clash of classes, the individual versus the community, surviving in hard times. It’s also a great present for Mainiacs who don’t have the good fortune to live here. (Carolyn Sloan)

About the Author: Ruth Moore was born in Maine in 1900. After college in New York, she worked for the NAACP and James Weldon Johnson. Her first novel, The Weir, was published in 1943. Spoonhandle, her second novel, was published in 1946 and made into the movie Deep Waters. The financial success of these novels enabled her to return to Maine full time with her partner Eleanor Mayo in 1947. She died in Bar Harbor in 1989.

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust

This Republic of Suffering looks at the Civil War through the lens of death, which at first seems quite depressing...not good summer reading! However, Faust is a masterful writer, incorporating individuals’ experiences to illuminate her arguments. She successfully shares the incredible impact of the Civil War on the American population, while putting faces on the sheer magnitude of destruction. She gets into the complex reasons behind the Civil War, but even more successfully describes the complicated implications of the results. This text is being used in the summer’s Teaching American History program. (Martina Duncan)

About the Author: Drew Gilpin Faust is a historian who specializes in history of the South, specifically the antebellum period and the Civil War. Her other works include Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery, and A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South. Faust is also President of Harvard College, the first woman to serve in this role.

Soul Catcher, Michael White

I heard Michael White read an excerpt from this novel at the 1st Anniversary event held by the Portland Freedom Trail on July 11, and was interested enough to get a copy from the library. The title is taken from the slaves’ term for “slave catcher,” which is the chosen trade (if it can be called a trade) of the book’s protagonist, Cain. I learned a lot about Civil War-era firearms from the story, and squirmed at some very graphic descriptions of fighting and injury; this book is not for the faint-hearted. It takes some moral fortitude, also, to endure the ruthlessness of the slave masters in the story. But White’s writing is authentic and confident—the Stonecoast MFA program is lucky to have him on the faculty. (Brita Zitin)

About the Author: Michael White is a New York Times Notable author. His works include the novels A Brother’s Blood, The Blind Side of the Heart, A Dream of Wolves, and The Garden of Martyrs; and the short story collection Marked Men. As well as the Stonecoast MFA program at University of Southern Maine, White teaches at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson

Set in Norway, this is a quiet story of Trond Sander’s late life reflections on a fateful childhood summer when he accompanied his father to live in a remote country cabin. As remote as it is, the presence of World War II drawing to a close permeates the memory, as we learn about his father’s mysterious role in the war cause. There are few characters in this story. Aside from the father, there is Trond’s close friend in that summer who invites him to “steal horses” with him, and from there, a tragedy unfolds that Trond’s reflections bring us back to, repeatedly, within the context of his later life. There are two mothers, two fathers, a neighbor or two, several children, and as large as these characters are the natural elements of the woods and the river with Trond’s relationship to them as an adolescent and as a man in his seventies shaping the sensibility of his perceptions.

The art of this narrative is in the way Petterson interweaves past and present, so that the reader is always waiting to learn more and never sure which part of his life will be revealed in the coming pages. I kept waiting to learn about the rest of his life-those central adult years most of us consider the most central to our identity- and as I neared the book’s end, I realized that part of his reminiscence would be permanently missing, but for a few tantalizing morsels sprinkled throughout that make us want to learn more. At the end, one wonders about that larger middle chapter in our lives; is Petterson telling us that ultimately they are less powerful in shaping our ultimate sense of self? Petterson’s prose style is both rich and spare; the deliciously long sentences adding to the haunting poetic nature of the narrative. (Denise Pendleton)

About the Author: Per Petterson, born in 1952 in Oslo, Norway, was trained as a librarian and worked in a bookstore, as a translator, and a literary critic before turning to his writing full-time. His first book was a short story collection: Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes (Aske i munnen, sand i skoa), published in 1987. Out Stealing Horses (Ut og stjæle hester) was published in 2003 and is his latest of five novels. It received numerous awards: in Norway, the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Booksellers’ Best Book of the Year Award; and the English language translation (published in 2005) received the 2006 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and a spot on the December 2007 New York Times Book Review 10 best books of the year list.