Some 5 Star Reads

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a nonlinear story that brings together the stories of two different orphans, from two distinctly different time periods, modern and past. I really enjoyed it.

Pages: 278

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Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the best memoirs I've ever read, and I tend to be somewhat critical of the category. I loved hearing about his unique childhood, and I even choked once, when I was eating a snack and something he said just struck me so funny that I couldn't help breaking out into laughter. And then I kept laughing, while still choking, because it just tickled me that much.

Pages: 304

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The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What an absolutely stunning read on so many different levels.

Pages: 368

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

1930: Rill and her 4 siblings are stolen from their parents and put into the Tennessee Children's Home Society Orphanage where they face mental/physical/sexual abuse. On top of that they are slowly separated when the siblings begin to be adopted by the wealthy. 

Present: Avery is following the family legacy of becoming a senator while finding out that her grandmother has a big secret. She starts finding clues to the true identity of Grandma Judy. 

Rating: 3/5

Pages: 342

Yesterday by Fern Michaels

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

Callie Parker's wealthy father brought a foster son and two poor girls to play with four-year-old Callie.  They grew close, and their lives make a wonderful story.

Audio:  13 hrs. 15 min.
Print:  460 pages

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother dies just after Oliver’s birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in a home for young orphans and then is transferred to a workhouse for adults. He is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker, but runs away and travels toward London. He is half-starved and exhausted when he meets a boy his own age just outside the city. Jack takes him home with him; he lives with Fagin, a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him.

 After a few days of training, Oliver is sent out with two other boys to pickpocket. He is caught but Mr. Brownlow, the victim, Oliver to his home. Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but is captured by other gang members  and returned  to Fagin.  Fagin sends Oliver to assist in a burglary, and Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and taken in by the Maylie women who live there. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends the summer with them in the countryside.  When they come to London, they reunite him with Mr. Brownlow.   Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.

362 pages

Copyright 1837

Anne of Green Gables by Maud Montgomery

Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, elderly brother and sister, had never married. They live at Green Gables, their parents' farm on Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. A neighbor went to the mainland to adopt a little girl. Marilla decided Matthew needed a boy to help on the farm, so they asked the neighbor to bring them back a boy of 10 or 11.

When Matthew went to pick up the boy at the train station, the only child there is a freckled, red-haired, 11-year-old GIRL! He took her home, since he couldn't very well leave her at the station. She talked incessantly all the way home, and by the time they got there, Matthew was enchanted. Marilla, though, was very unhappy and the next day took her back to the neighbor. But even she had second thoughts and ended up taking her back home again.

Her name is Anne Shirley, and she is totally irrepressible. She is always getting in trouble, not because she means to, but because trouble just seems to find her. She has a lively imagination, which causes no end of complications in her life. Eventually, Matthew and Marilla can't even imagine their life without her.

This is another favorite children's book that I read because it is over 100 years old. I enjoyed it thoroughly; I had forgotten what a delight Anne Shirley was.



198 pages
Published in 1908

"After the Frost" by PG Owyns

This gentle and lovely book takes place in 1928 in the Pacific northwest and focuses on Julian Powell, who suffers from an illness that is never named but has limited his life.  He lives with his overbearing aunt, meek uncle, and cruel cousin after the death of his parents when he was a child.  Now he is a young man but has been held down by his illness and his uncaring family.  Books and writing are his solace in his lonely and solitary life.  But when an ailing childhood friend, Mark, moves back to town, he decides to move in with him and Mark's father to help take care of him.  While there, he gets to know one of their neighbors, William Neill, a WWI veteran suffering from flashbacks of the battlefields in France.  As their friendship grows, Julian and William help each other find what the other has been missing.

What an unexpected treasure this story turned out to be.  The author really knows how to write lovely descriptions, and her gentle phrases mirrored the gentleness in Julian, his love of nature, and his wonderment of the outdoors after having spent so much time inside while ill.  He also has a secret that makes the story all the sweeter.  William is also a very kind and tenderhearted man who struggles with what he witnessed in the war, and his protection of Julian is touching.  On top of all this, there are two dogs and a cat who come to enrich Julian's life.  This was a deeply moving tale of living for love and choosing a family of one's own.  175 pages (Kindle edition).

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

I visited Maine for the first time in September, and looked for some books with Maine as the setting.  Irving wrote this in 1985, and it's a pithy character study of the eccentric Dr. Wilbur Larch, obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in St. Cloud's.  The orphanage is populated almost exclusively by babies left there after their mothers give birth.  Or, if they find Dr. Larch early in their pregnancy, he will provide an abortion.  He also trains one of the orphans, once he is grown, who doesn't seem to want to leave the orphanage.  The story is really about how complex our choices and our relationships can be, how hard it can be to find love in our lives, and how we have to be prepared to live with the consequences of our actions.  552 pages