Tag: books

GOOD MASTERS! SWEET LADIES
Voices From a Medieval Village
By Laura Amy Schlitz
Illustrated by Robert Byrd
Candlewick, 2007

Category: Middle Grade Nonfiction

I almost titled this post Saturday Morning Bliss, because my husband and the kids went out for the morning and left me in a quiet house with a hot cup of tea, a cozy blanket and a copy of GOOD MASTERS! SWEET LADIES! Bliss.

Let me say—now that I am done lounging—that if the kids had been here, draping my blanket over the couch to make a fort and, in the effort, spilling my tea and, in their dismay, squabbling and bickering, I would still have experienced bliss. Because this book, this slim and gorgeous book, has left me breathless. GOOD MASTERS! SWEET LADIES! is magnificent! Hooray for the Newbery committee that labeled it this year’s “most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” It was an incredible choice.

I don’t have a theatrical bone in my body, and yet I am longing to gather together a group of players to perform these monologues and dialogues. I am especially keen to hear the dialogues. The voices are woven masterfully and I can’t help but want to hear them spoken by actors. Schlitz blends period language, interpretive comments, and brief contextual summaries equally well, and she knows just how to draw her readers deeper into history. (What in Heaven’s name could have happened to Saint Erasmus? What could be “too disgusting” to share?)

Congratulations to Laura Amy Schlitz and her lovely Newbery-winning book. If you haven’t read it yet, you are in for a whole lotta bliss.

 

THE GOLDEN COMPASS
By Philip Pullman
Knopf, 2002

Category: Young adult fiction/fantasy

A few months ago, before the film version of THE GOLDEN COMPASS was released, I received an email—received the same email several times, actually—warning me not to let my kids see the movie or read the book. The email included links to several websites that further admonished parents to keep their kids away from THE GOLDEN COMPASS. Nothing, NOTHING, ticks me off more than other people telling me what I can and cannot read. Except perhaps when other people tell me what I can and cannot let my children read … and especially when those people have clearly not read the book in question themselves.

Anyway.

These emails inspired me to read THE GOLDEN COMPASS, and I enjoyed it tremendously. Not because enjoying the book would annoy detractors (although I do like knowing the slanderous e-campaign backfired when it reached me), but because THE GOLDEN COMPASS is a great book. It is an adventure fantasy with a feisty female protagonist and a compelling good versus evil plot. Nothing to be afraid of, lots to think about. I am looking forward to THE SUBTLE KNIFE and THE AMBER SPYGLASS.

If you are interested, there is an absolutely fascinating interview with Philip Pullman at the Filmchat blog of journalist Peter Chattaway.

 

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Knopf, 1988

Category: Adult Fiction

I read this over the Christmas holidays. I didn’t want to, really, but my friend Dawn has this Book Discussion Group and I like to hang out with the cool women who are in it. And since they won’t let me in unless I read the book, I put aside my piles of middle grade and young adult novels and my piles of research tomes and, for the first time in a long time, read an honest-to-goodness adult novel.

I read LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA fifteen years ago too, back when I had no husband and no children. It was astounding how differently I responded to the book this time around. The touching love story I remember was nowhere to be found; in its place I found a pitiful delusion. (I am referring to Florentino Ariza’s half-century of pining for Fermina Diaz here. And yes, I know that the delusion sort of-kind of worked out in the end. But still.) These reactions gave me a lot to think about: what I think about love and relationships … both now and when I was twenty-three.

Another reason I enjoy Dawn’s book group, by the way, is that they always pick books that have been made into movies. Once the book has been discussed, a field trip to the local theatre is planned. Someday soon, when we can find LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA at a second-run theatre, or can rent it, we will get together to watch the screen adaptation. I told you these women were cool!

 

MOKIE AND BIK
Written by Wendy Orr
Illustrated by Jonathan Bean
Henry Holt, 2007

Category: Elementary Fiction

I planned to tell you about MOKIE AND BIK today, even before I discovered that someone else had the same idea.

So I will send you instead to the blog of writer Linda Urban, where you can see why I simply had to buy the book in the first place.

And then I’ll send you to the blog of writer and poet Kelly Fineman, where you can read an in depth review of MOKIE AND BIK.

And I may as well say, since I had planned to anyway, that I found MOKIE AND BIK quite a fun book to read aloud, what with all the delicious made-up and mixed-up words. I read it to my three fiskies in one sitting: the wordplay kept my older two interested, and the wholly unexpected (and heretofore unimagined) drama of children living on a boat enchanted my younger.

Thanks for the tip, Linda. And thanks for doing the hard part, Kelly.

 

THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS
By Deborah Wiles
Harcourt, 2007

Category: Middle-grade Fiction

I read and fell in love with EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS ages ago, and although I haven’t yet managed to read the first book in Wiles’s Aurora County trilogy (LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER), I couldn’t resist this third book when I saw it at the bookstore. The comfortable summer-day cover art, created by Marla Frazee, comes complete with slouchy baseball players and a pink tutu-sporting pug, the perfect combination for bridging the gender gap in my house. (The boys are nine and baseball is King. The girl is six and tutus—especially pink ones—are in.)

“Mr. Norwood Rhinehard Beauregard Boyd left behind a collection of black-and-white photographs, a library filled with musty books, and an ancient, pug-nosed, white dog named Eudora Welty. Later, when the long mystery that was Norwood Boyd unraveled and summer revealed its secrets, some folks would say it was the note that changed House’s life forever. Others would say it was the dog. But it was neither the note nor the dog.

It was the pageant.”

House Jackson wants no part of the dastardly pageant. First of all, he and his baseball team, the Aurora County All-Stars, have but one game a year: the fourth of July showdown with the Raleigh Redbugs. They can’t be dancing when they should be practicing! Secondly, the pageant is being directed by the one-and-only Frances Shotz … the girl who broke House’s pitching elbow last summer. Although House’s insights are occasionally mature beyond his years, I came to love him the same way I loved Comfort Snowberger in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS, which is to say, completely. When his moment of truth comes, he steps into it boldly, becomes “more than he had been” and wins my heart.

 

BIOLOGY AS IDEOLOGY
By R.C. Lewontin
HarperPerenniel, 1991

Category: Adult Non-fiction

I read so many interesting things over the holidays …

This one was not exactly light holiday reading, but well worth the effort. My copy is on loan from a friend, but I have decided I’d like my own so that I can re-read and mull some more. (Yes, I officially started my 2008 Christmas Wish list on January 3!)

BIOLOGY AS IDEOLOGY got me thinking about assumptions—personal as well as cultural—and how these assumptions impact my understanding of the world I live in. Lewontin spends several chapters exploring the idea that modern biological science is marred by a particular assumption, an ideological bias: that everything we humans are is encoded by our DNA. Lewontin attacks this notion on several levels, most surprisingly, to me, by suggesting the Human Genome Project (since completed but at the time this book was written still in its infancy) is an exercise in futility.

I was especially struck by the final chapter, Science as Social Action, in which the author reminds readers that environments do not exist in isolation but, rather, are created by relationship with organisms. “The physical and biological worlds since the beginning of the earth have been in a constant state of flux and change” and so, Lewontin contends, “any rational environmental movement must abandon the romantic and totally unfounded ideological commitment to a harmonious and balanced world in which the environment is preserved and turn its attention to the real question, which is, how do people want to live and how are they to arrange that they live that way.” As my friend Dan noted, this outlook is far less paralyzing (and guilt-producing) than the one in which we humans are destroying the planet.

Don’t you love books that make you think?

 

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN
By Sherman Alexie
Art by Ellen Forney
Little, Brown, & Company, 2007

Category: Young adult fiction

I’ve been mulling over this post for a week. What can I say about this 2007 National Book Award winner that has not already been said—better—by others? My conclusion: nothing. But I can link you over to the words that most inspired me to pick the book up.

Read what Colleen at Chasing Ray had to say.

And then read what Sherman Alexie himself had to say when he was interviewed at Finding Wonderland.

If you needed just one more reason to pick up this book, check out this challenge from Melissa at Booknut (thanks to Mitali Perkins for the link).

Still not convinced? My last offer: you can win a FREE copy of the book at the blog of YA author Lisa Schroeder. Hurry, because her contest ends today.

Now, go forth and read THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN. You simply must.

 

ORANGE PEAR APPLE BEAR
Written and Illustrated by Emily Gravett
Simon & Schuster, 2007

Category: Picture book

Clever. Perfect.

These are the only two words I need to describe Emily Gravett’s four word picture book masterpiece. There is just nothing left to say.

 

BECKY’S CHRISTMAS
By Tasha Tudor
Viking Press, 1961

Category: Illustrated story

The holiday season overwhelms me, what with Christmas carols being played in October and mall traffic jams mucking up travel during November. The crush of images—in print, online, and everywhere in between—meant to define the perfect holiday are just so far from where I live that, well, I get grouchy. Thank goodness for books. This weekend BECKY’S CHRISTMAS cheered me up.

My copy of this out-of-print classic was a gift from my friend Jane. (That in itself makes me feel better. Jane, you rock!) The story is classic old-time Christmas … complete with real candles and greens, hand-made advent calendars and gingerbread ornaments, siblings who share chores willingly and make gifts for one another secretly. One might argue that this vision of Christmas is as far from where I live as those I try so desperately to escape this time of year. To which I would respond with a cold, cold glare: “Yes. You’re right.”

But striving for Tasha Tudor’s vision stresses me less than striving for decorative perfection (inside and out), greeting card impeccability (to say nothing of timeliness), and season-long, over-the-top domestic flawlessness.

So there.

Happy Holidays!