Walking with Miss Millie

Bundy, Tamara. Walking with Miss Millie. 2017. 227p. ISBN 978-0-399-54456-9. Available at FIC BUN on the library shelves.

It is 1968, and Alice and her family are moving to Rainbow, Georgia. Rainbow is a sleepy little town, and Alice, her younger brother Eddie and her mother. Her father has remained behind in Ohio, but they haven’t seen him for six months, ever since Christmas last year. Alice is upset that the family has to move down to her parents’ birthplace so they can help grandmother. After all, grandmother looked fine the last time she came to visit. Rainbow is small, it is hot, and it is in the middle of nowhere.

Straight upon arrival Alice notices that her grandmother is not well. The house smells, the garden is mostly dead, and she is wearing her nightgown outside in the afternoon. Alice’s hope for a reconsideration of their move is dashed. Then her brother Eddie runs in the neighbor’s yard. Eddie is deaf and sometimes does not pay attention to what he does. Alice goes get him, and she meets the next door neighbor, Miss Millie. Older even than her grandmother, Miss Millie seems stern. When the telephone rings, Alice picks up, forgetting that it is a party line. She eavesdrops on a conversation between Miss Millie and a friend. Told to apologize by her mother, she goes over there the next morning and is asked to walk Clarence, Miss Millie’s dog. Unfortunately, Clarence will not walk if Alice holds the leash, so Miss Millie goes with them.

Over the course of the summer, Alice gets to know Ms. Millie and her struggles as a black woman in a white neighborhood in the South. She learns of her family history, of segregation, and of the racism that still pervades the town. In turn she’s able to share with Miss Millie the pain and anxiety that comes from being rejected by her father, who neither calls nor writes.

As their friendship grows, Alice realizes that life in Rainbow might not be as bad as she thought it would be.

Tumble & Blue

Beasley, Cassie. Tumble & Blue. 2017. 390p. ISBN 978-0-525-42844-2. Available at FIC BEA on the library shelves.

Blue Montgomery is a loser. Not in the metaphorical way, in the real world way of losing at everything. Blue always manages to lose any game or activity he participates in, even if it is a one-player game. His father, by contrast, is a winner and never loses. A car racer by profession, Blue’s father is always on the move, looking for another race. This year, however, he decides to drop off Blue at his grandmother’s house in on the edge of the Okefenokee swamp in Georgia. Abandoned in Murky Branch (population 340), Blue discovers that the Montgomerys have been cursed. An ancestor decades ago entered the swamp on a red moon and made a pact with a strange golden alligator named Munch. But the wish went wrong. Half of the Montgomerys are blessed with abilities or talents that make them the envy of the world. The other half? Their talents are deadly, obnoxious, or, like Blue and losing, completely dangerous to their lives.

Now the red moon arises again, and Montgomerys from all over the world are congregating once again in the hopes of being the one to whom Munch will give a wish. Blue finds himself in the frenzy that plagues his grandmother’s house as more and more relatives arrive. Trying to escape them all, he runs into Tumble, a girl who has moved down the street. Her parents are renting a small cabin but Tumble has decided to continue living in their RV. Upon seeing Blue, Tumble makes the decision to save him from his curse. For, you see, Tumble herself follows Maximal Star’s advice to always be the hero. Let the heroing begin!

As they learn more about the curse, Tumble and Blue realize that it will not be as easy as they thought to rid Blue of his bad fate. Great-grandmother Myrtle Montgomery is the only one that knows exactly when the red moon will occur, and she’s making everyone entertain her before she tells her handpicked choice the time. With no hope of being picked, Blue must discover how he can transform himself from a loser to a winner without depending on a mythical golden alligator. But what if that alligator really did exist?

Lyrical and beautifully written, Blue and Tumble’s adventures through the small town of Murky Branch show that fate is never fixed and can always be altered, with a little help from friends and family.