The Art of Keeping Cool by Janet Taylor Lisle

My dad gave Jimmy this book for his 10th birthday this summer because it's written by a woman who lives in Little Compton, RI, where we spend our summers. Jimmy is an avid reader, he gobbles books up like candy, a trait which I'm particularly proud of.

This one, though, he read and seemed to have some reservations about. I hadn't picked it out for him and didn't know much about it but as he told me the story and how very sad parts of it were I decided I really needed to read it myself, if only to share the experience with him and be a sounding board if he had any questions.

So the premise is a small coastal town in Rhode Island (clearly our Little Compton) during World War ll. The narrator, 10 year old Robert, has recently moved to the town with his mother and sister, to live with his dad's parents while his dad is away in Europe fighting the war. The town is in a strategic coastal location so forts are built near the beaches, with hidden guns and secret hideaways. Robert's cousin Elliot befriends Abel Hoffman, an old German artist who appears in the town one day and makes his home in the woods living in an old boat frantically working on his art and also mysteriously seen on the beaches with a pair of binoculars. With the war raging and submarines spotted off shore the townspeople quickly become suspicious of Abel and his motives for living amongst them. Abel tells the boys his story, that he was an artist living in Germany targeted by the Nazis for his radical ideas and forced to escape to America.

The inevitable happens, Abel is attacked by the townspeople and is killed.... then Robert's dad's plane disappears over France.

SO this is what probably gave Jimmy pause about the book. Lots of different themes and events which are frightening for a 10 year old. Happily, Robert's dad is found and is ok (thank goodness) and Robert and his family are reunited.

No mention of the Holocaust which was just fine with me, there will be a time and a place for that and I'm thankful it wasn't included in the book. We talked about it and he seemed to learn from the book, sad lessons perhaps, that people aren't always kind to each other.

Even sadder, for me anyway, is that for him not every book can be Percy Jackson or Captain Underpants.