Bartok, Mira. Wonderling.

Bartok, Mira. Wonderling. Candlewick Press    2017 450p $21.99   ISBN 978-0-7636-9121-9    ms/hs     Fantasy  VG-BN      

Number 13 is a groundling, part human, part animal, and an inhabitant of Miss Carbunkle’s Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures, an orphanage that houses those who have nowhere else to live. The groundlings are forced to work in the classroom learning only what suits Miss Carbunkle, and then in the factory, making widgets for hours.  It is not until the fox-like Number 13 saves a newcomer, a bird named Trinket, that he gets what he desperately lacks, a friend and a name of his own. Now known as Arthur, he and Trinket manage to escape into the wider world and search for Arthur’s true gift, that of family and song. This book is a combination of the travails of David Copperfield and a tale of magic. It is an engaging suspenseful, well-written fantasy with excellent characterizations and a well-paced plot.  This solidly written fantasy will hold the reader's attention from beginning to end.
 
This solidly written fantasy will hold the reader's attention from beginning to end.

Summary: Number 13 is a groundling, part human, part animal, and an inhabitant of Miss Carbunkle’s Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures, an orphanage that houses those poor beings who have nowhere else to live.  This book is a combination of David Copperfield and a tale of magic.

Orphans-Fiction                                                                                             --Susan Ogintz

Bartok, Mira The Memory Palace

Bartok, Mira.      The Memory Palace

Free Press (Simon & Schuster) 2011  305p  25.00

978-1-4391-8331-1 hs/adult                E-BN 

 

Bartok, artist and children’s author, has written a memoir about having  an

increasingly mentally ill mother and the effects of this on her life. This well-written narrative is disturbing, well-written, and heart wrenching.     Bartok, an artist and children’s author who has published 28 books, has now written a memoir about having an increasingly mentally ill mother. She offers vignettes of what it was like for her and her sister living with a musically gifted mother who descends into madness. Her mother’s diagnosis, paranoid schizophrenia, played out in  nightmarish ways. As they got older and went to college, things got worse. The mother would threaten them and appear at their jobs and cause outrageous scenes, so they finally severed all contact with her for many years. 

When Bartok had a serious car accident that caused a brain injury; she had to

relearn certain skills and wanted to reconnect with her former life. So, she

contacted the homeless shelter that she thought her mother was in and she found

that her mother was dying. Then, Bartok and her sister returned home and

reconciled with her mother. While they were there in the hospital, Bartok

discovered a key that opened a storage unit that her mother had kept for years

and discovered a plethora of family memorabilia that created new meanings to her past life. 

This narrative is compassionate, disturbing, well-written and heart wrenching. This title is recommended for Tristate Books of Note for its

sensitive portrayal of debilitating madness, its affects on a family, the power

of love, and the need for a better mental health system. This book would be most appropriate for mature readers at the high school level.          Weinraub, Tina