Article archive / December 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 4. Source pages: 12.
Amy Hammond, PhD Psychology Professor Centenary College The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
“The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is the first (of four so far, but there’s another due out in early 2013) of the Flavia de Luce mysteries. Flavia is an eleven-year-old living in 1950 rural England in a drafty old family mansion with her widowed father and two older sisters and a most magnificent chemistry lab. Flavia has the uncanny knack that key characters in a mystery series always seem to have to be around when someone dies suspiciously. She’s clever and persistent and always underfoot annoying the local constabulary. And she always solves the case. These are fun, light reads.”
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
“Lately, I’ve been reading some older, but wonderful books.
“Kindred by Octavia E. Butler is technically classified as science fiction, but is really about the complexities of slavery as part of our history. Published in 1979, Dana is a black woman married to a white man. Inexplicably, she is suddenly pulled back in time to the antebellum South to save the life of a young boy. She begins hopping back and forth, from the past to her 1976 present, each time, going back to save the same young boy, as he grows into a man. We ultimately learn of the connection between these two lives and the barest hint at what slavery might have been like.”
(And, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot)
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.