Author: Loree Burns

Yesterday at the library, the kids (two boys and a girl, for the record) and I scooped up this:

and this:

The ride home was mayhem as the four of us debated the order in which to read these long-awaited titles. Luckily, we are not in a rush to decide, because at the moment we are loving this:

On the subject of reading together as a family, I was intrigued (to use a euphemism) by this recent School Library Journal article. The author contends that boys don’t read because men don’t read, that women can read to their children forever and a day and boys will get nothing from it but a firmer conviction that those who can (men) do and those who can’t (women) read.

Give me a break.

The idea that the (alleged) non-reading habits of a world full of boys can be blamed on the (alleged) non-reading habits of a world full of fathers is ludicrous. The idea that the reading habits of a world full of mothers can be labeled futile is asinine. There is so much more at play in the life of each boy, each father, and each mother.

Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

Click the link above to read the article for yourself, and check out this response over at Guys Lit Wire, including the comments, to ponder a little more.

 

BIRDS IN THE BUSHES,
A Story About Margaret Morse Nice
By Julie Dunlap
Illustrations by Ralph L. Ramstad
Carolrhoda, 1996

Category: Middle Grade Biography

You know that question you sometimes hear, the one that goes: “If you could travel back in time and have lunch with one person from history, who would it be?” Since reading Julie Dunlap’s middle grade biography BIRDS IN THE BUSHES, I’ve decided that my answer to that question is: Margaret Morse Nice.

I picked the book up on a whim. I am preparing for some field research that will soon have me tracking birdwatchers (actually, bird counters) for a new book, and when I searched the children’s catalog at my local library this line of flap copy caught my eye: “Even becoming a wife and mother of five daughters couldn’t keep her in the house and away from birds.”

In some ways, Margaret’s story is familiar, even today: an intelligent woman bucks tradition, goes to college, earns a degree, embarks on a science career, falls in love, begins a family, and leaves her work behind.

But in other ways, Margaret’s story is wholly unique and inspiring.

She married in 1909, at the age of twenty-four. She abandoned her plans for a Ph.D. She raised five children. But she never, ever let go of her passion for discovery. She was creative, she found a way to work within her means (think massive, eight-year song sparrow study in the woods behind her house), and she learned important things about the world around her.

If I could have that lunch with Margaret, I’d insist on packing the food so that she could spend her precious time out in the field studying sparrows. When we finally did settle down with sandwiches and iced tea—after her daily observations were finished—I’d ask her about being a woman and a scientist, about being a mother and an investigator, about doing science independent of academia. Most of all, I’d ask her about those birds in the bushes, her beloved song sparrows.

What inspirational person would you like to have lunch with today?

 

CHASING MONARCHS
By Robert Michael Pyle
Mariner Books, 1999

Category: Nonfiction for Grownups

Robert Michael Pyle wrote another book—which I haven’t read yet—that bears the greatest subtitle ever: LIFE AS FIELD TRIP. Increasingly, I see my life this way … a series of very excellent field trips punctuated with quiet time for recording those trips in words. It is a good way to live.

In the Pyle book I read over this holiday weekend, CHASING MONARCHS, Pyle takes an incredible field trip with one of my favorite insects, the monarch butterfly. He packed some snacks, his trusty butterfly net (he calls her Martha), and headed for the northwesternmost monarch breeding sites, which happen to be in British Columbia. There he scoured milkweed patches for monarchs, captured and tagged as many as he could, and paid careful attention to the direction his subjects flew off in when released. Then he hopped back in his car and followed them.

Now that is a field trip.

Pyle ended up in Mexico, which is surprising because popular opinion has long held that western monarchs migrate not to Mexico but to southern California. (A field trip with scientific implications … can this get any better? I think not.) This is not a book for the faint of heart, but anyone with a sincere interest in monarch butterflies and their annual migration will enjoy the trip.

Speaking of field trips, tonight the kids and I stepped onto the back deck about an hour after sunset and spotted a celestial triangle of the moon, Venus, and Jupiter. Many thanks to Uncle Brendan, who not only bought us the telescope you see here, but also called to remind us to bring it outside tonight!

© Benjamin Griffin Burns

© Loree Griffin Burns

Jupiter is the easier-to-see bright spot to the right of the crescent moon. Venus is harder to see, but if you squint at the above photo just south of the area between the moon and Jupiter, you’ll see it. Pretty cool!

 

THAT BOOK WOMAN
By Heather Henson
Pictures by David Small
Atheneum, 2008

Category: Picture book

This is hands-down the most enjoyable picture book I have read in a very long time. I hesitate to say another single word until you go and read it for yourself.

::considers ending the post here::

Bah. I can’t do it. I have to say just a little more …

THAT BOOK WOMAN is the story of a young boy in Appalachia, a boy with little to look forward to but hard work, a boy with nothing but disdain for schooling, a boy who never learned to read and doesn’t care a whit for staring at chicken scratch anyway … until he is drawn in by the bravery and persistence of a pack horse librarian.

The author made a brave and wonderful choice, I think, when she decided to tell this particular bit of history (FDR’s Pack Horse Library Project of the 1930s) as picture book fiction. And she nailed it. The language is perfect, the voice is honest, the imagery melds brilliantly with David Small’s illustrations. The story beats … what I mean is, it has great heart. I am smitten.