A Night Divided

A Night Divided, Jennifer A. Nielsen, middlegrade historical fiction about a family tunnelling from East to West Berlin under the Berlin Wall in the mid-1960s. Good stuff - the very physical, concrete action of the tunnelling paired with abstract thinking about freedom, some good tense thriller-y stuff with the Stasi (but handled in an age-appropriate way), and for Junie it's an entire era of history she's probably never heard of before. Junie tells me it's been very popular with her friends at school. I am now up to four MCBA books - I realized I had already read one - I guess one more and I get to have an opinion, is the theory? (I mean, not a voting opinion, but just an informed opinion.)

What Elephants Know

What Elephants Know, Eric Dinerstein. A boy in late-20th-century Nepal (which I feel *ancient* saying, but "pre-satellite", which this felt like, in terms of connectivity/remoteness, really is a different historical period than post-satellite. Anyways, sometime during the reign of King Birendra, probably 70s or 80s) is raised by the head of the king's elephant stable and has various experiences with his fellow elephant handlers, a white teacher/naturalist, and others. A fast, enjoyable read, and the (white) author apparently did biology fieldwork in Nepal for a number of years in the 70s and 80s and so may have some idea of what he's talking about. Content note for animal harm. I thought Junie had read this one but it turns out she hasn't (she became reluctant when it opened with a tiger hunt, although no tigers end up harmed, and also was put off by the male main character), so I'm actually ahead of her now. Not to claim that as an accomplishment - I am an adult veteran of many college-level literature classes and she's a nine-year-old - but just to note where we are. Anyways, I've hit five, so I'm going to start ranking them:

A Night Divided
Curious World of Calpurnia Tate
Wolf Hollow
What Elephants Know
Raymie Nightingale

Although I may re-rank as we go. None of them have been *bad*; I guess I would rank them all above No Award, if that was a thing here, which it is not.