Tag: books

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE
By Barbara Kingsolver
HarperCollins, 2007

Category: Non-fiction for Grown-ups

“Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used.”

I’ve been thinking for days what I could possibly say about this book, and I keep coming back to this single word:

Life-altering.

Confronting our food life—and by our food life I mean the food life of my own little family—is something I struggle with. Like so many others, I want to make choices that will keep us and our planet healthy. This isn’t easy. It is the opposite of easy, actually. But Barbara Kingsolver and her family reminded me why it is imperative to keep trying. For one year, they ate nothing but food produced in their own neighborhood; if they couldn’t grow it or find it locally, they lived without it. This book is a memoir of that experience.

“It’s the worst of bad manners—and self-protection, I think, in a nervously cynical society—to ridicule the small gesture. These earnest efforts might just get us past the train-wreck of the daily news, or the anguish of standing behind a child, looking with her at the road ahead, searching out redemption where we can find it: recycling or carpooling or growing a garden or saving a species or something. Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren’t trivial. Ultimately they will, or won’t, add up to having been the thing that mattered.”

Buoyed by this book, I’ll keep making small, stepwise changes … and believing with all of my heart that they matter.

 

FLOTSAMETRICS AND THE FLOATING WORLD
By Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano
HarperCollins, 2009

Category: Non-fiction for adults and TRACKING TRASH fans!

I first met Curt Ebbesmeyer through an AP article that ran in my local newspaper in the spring of 2003. His story—a scientist whose passion was tracking debris around the world ocean in the name of science—inspired my first book for young people. Between reading that newspaper article and publishing TRACKING TRASH (a period of four years), I got to know Curt fairly well. I interviewed him, learned from him, watched him work the fair circuit, and even beachcombed by his side. He is a smart and generous man, and his passion for all things that float is truly inspirational. Which is why I am excited to tell you that today is Curt’s big day …

FLOTSAMETRICS AND THE FLOATING WORLD, his first book, is officially published! Congratulations, Curt!

You can learn more about this “captivating account of the man who turned beachcombing into a science” at its official website. You can buy a copy, of course, from booksellers everywhere. My own pre-ordered copy is finally on its way, and I am rubbing my hands together in delight.

Oh, it bears repeating: Congratulations, Curt! I am giddy for you!

 

Tomorrow marks the beginning of my Grand Mexican Adventure. I couldn’t leave without a small goodbye book tip, though, so here you go:

CHANGE HAS COME, An Artist Celebrates Our American Spirit
The drawings of Kadir Nelson
With the words of Barack Obama

Kadir Nelson’s pen and ink drawings are paired with lines from various speeches Barack Obama gave during the recent Presidential campaign. The combination is a stirring reminder of the Obama message, and it was a perfect book for this somewhat overwhelming week. (Overwhelming personally, as I prepare for my trip, and overwhelming generally, as our new administration begins the difficult work of moving the country forward.)

Treat yourself to a nice cup of tea and a look at CHANGE HAS COME this week; think of me when you do. I’ll see you all in about a week…

 

I have been without internet access since Monday. Initially I stomped and grumped and whined. But a funny thing happened midweek: while trying to distract myself, I slipped deeply into a WIP. Very deeply. It felt so good. And as my working hours acquired a steady beat, I warmed to unplugged life. What a fine, unencumbered and productive feeling it is to work without the pull of the world wide web! Now that reconnection is imminent (if you are reading this, I am back online), I am searching for ways to reinforce this beautiful (and productive) rhythm I’ve found. What luck to have had this book on my nightstand:

THE TRURO BEAR AND OTHER ADVENTURES
By Mary Oliver
Beacon Press, 2008

I basked in Mary Oliver’s poems and essays as I learned to bask in the quiet these past few days. To me, this is a book about slowing down, about taking the time to see, about encountering awe in every cobweb, embracing it with your eyes and ears and mouth, with your hands and your head and your heart. My favorite entry is an essay called “Swoon”, which starts this way:

“In a corner of the stairwell of this rented house a most astonishing adventure is going on.”

And, oh yes!, it is astonishing. I am reminded of my friends Jean-Henri Fabre (who is quoted, to my delight, in the frontispiece of this volume) and Sue Hubbell. I am reminded, again, that in order to see incredible things one must look. Only look.

Here’s to looking and to embracing the quiet … in spite of the internet.

 

THE HUNGER GAMES
By Suzanne Collins
Scholastic, 2008

Category: Young adult science fiction

This past December I was on the hunt for a special book. It needed to be riveting. It needed to be thought provoking. It needed to appeal to me and, most importantly, it needed to appeal to my twelve-year-old friend Alison. I planned to give Alison a book for Christmas and I wanted it to be something we would both adore and want to talk about long after we’d finished reading. When I read this review by Kate Messner, I wondered if THE HUNGER GAMES might fit the bill.

It did!

I read the entire book in two sittings, ignoring some very important tasks (sleep, for one) in order to find out what would happen to Katniss Everdeen. I read the last page in the wee hours and heaved a huge sigh, wishing already for the next installment of the story. And then, thanks to a post at the new Kidlitosphere Central, I discovered that the second book will look like this … and that Advanced Reader Copies will be available at BEA in May.

!

I will be at BEA this May!

I will be at BEA this May with Kate Messner!

What do you say, Kate … shall we plan on hunting down an ARC of CATCHING FIRE together? You (and your son and your parents) and I (and Alison) can share it!

**Edited to Add**
Huge, sad sigh. Kate–who has a much better head for details than I do–reminded me that we will not be at BEA at all. I was thinking of an entirely different conference. I will have to wait and read CATCHING FIRE with the rest of the world. Repeat: huge, sad sigh.

 

Well, that took a little while, didn’t it? I spent the last week (and then some) wrestling the bee book into finer shape. It is now back on my editor’s desk; here’s hoping she loves it!

Because the housework that has built up around here this last week is truly revolting, I have decided to do something much more fun with my lunch hour. Instead of sorting laundry I am going to tell you about my new favorite book:

CHICKEN CHEEKS
Written by Michael Ian Black
Illustrated by Kevin Hawkes
Simon & Schuster, 2009

To me, CHICKEN CHEEKS is a perfect picture book. The words are interesting and, at times, inspired. The art is lovely and runs riot off the page. But neither text nor art is completely unforgettable … until they are joined. Only when Michael Ian Black’s fiendishly funny forty-two words are paired with Kevin Henkes’s zany picture story do you lose yourself in CHICKEN CHEEKS. I think this book is a masterpiece. And I think kids will love it. LOVE. IT.

Check it out and tell me if you agree.

(By the way, I’m intentionally withholding plot information. This is the sort of book you should experience blind, so to speak.)

Okay, I’m off to start the laundry…

Although my copy of Suzanne Collins’ HUNGER GAMES did arrive today …

 

A PLAGUE OF FROGS
By William Sounder
(Hyperion, 2000)

Category: Nonfiction for Grownups

A PLAGUE OF FROGS is the sort of nonfiction I like to write, and so it makes sense that I enjoyed reading it. I found myself analyzing the author’s storytelling choices throughout, carefully noting the mix of dramatic narrative and necessary scientific details; readability can be a tough balance to strike in a book like this, and I thought Mr. Sounder did a fine job of it.

The story—a look at the amphibian deformities crisis of the 1990s—has deep parallels to the honey bee decline story I share in THE HIVE DETECTIVES, due out next year. A scientist quoted in the book describes frogs as victims of a ‘convergence of environmental misfortune’, and the same could be said of honey bees. Let me just say here—and from personal experience—that when you are crafting a scientific thriller based on actual events, a ‘convergence of environmental misfortunes’ is not necessarily the most satisfying ending. Let’s face it: if you open a book with a mystery, your readers expect you to close with a solution to that mystery. Closing with a hazy “it could be lots of things” can be a tough, tough sell.

That said, we are talking about scientific mysteries here. Sometimes scientists manage to identify a single solution to a biological problem, but more often they uncover a slew of additional problems that need investigation. Such is the nature of science. By keeping his focus on the complexity of our environment and on the absolute wrongness of frogs with no hind legs—or with six hind legs or with hind legs that are so muddled they cannot function as legs—William Sounder created a wholly satisfying read. His book didn’t tell me the exact cause of the frog plague, but it did leave me thinking hard about our environment and how I fit into it.

 

CHAINS
By Laurie Halse Anderson
Simon & Schuster, 2008

Category: Middle grade historical fiction

When I am older and my kids are grown and I think back on my parenting, I will surely cherish memories of our time reading together. At the very fore of these memories will be the winter vacation when we sat together and read CHAINS. We finished the book days ago, and still the four of us are talking about Isabel and Mistress Lockton and the twin cruelties of slavery and war.

Some might argue this book is too intense for a family read-aloud, particularly for families with younger children. They might be right. The kids were introduced to a dangerous and terrible time in our nation’s history, and they did witness atrocities of injustice. But … they experienced these things with me, in our living room, snuggled up together on the couch. They were safe and warm and free to contemplate the darker sides of humanity with Mom at their side. If they are going to experience these things—and I believe they must in order to be sure that we, as a society, don’t repeat the mistakes of our past—then I’d rather have them experience them with me in the living room than alone in the world outside our front door.

CHAINS may not be the perfect read-aloud for every family, but it was the perfect one for us. Thank you, Laurie Halse Anderson, for giving us this unforgettable story to share.