ABAW May Edition

A.  Book.  A.  Week. (with echoes. echoes. echoes.)  We read bits of several different series this month. Also, slim notes this month. Winging it on memory.

Books I Read to Myself that Had Little or Nothing to Do With my Children

Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman

Through touchingly frank stories about her own experience as a parent, Ayelet Waldman tries to get at what it takes to be a good mother in America.  The threshold is incredibly high.  In fact, it might be impossible.  Even when we work ourselves to the edge of mental breakdown, work as hard as we can to please everyone and do everything, someone still thinks we’re not doing it right.  By that unattainable standard, we are all bad mothers.  Waldman’s stories are funny, heartbreaking, honest, and rich with detail on topics such as learning disorders, depression, abortion, religion, breastfeeding, maternal boundaries, sex, and GUILT.  Waldman’s style and tone are engaging and familiar, and I found myself jotting down phrases and sentences here and there as I read.  My favorite:  “I always tell my kids that as soon as you have a secret, something about you that you are ashamed to have others find out, you have given other people the power to hurt you by exposing you.”  So wise.  I couldn’t help but reflect on my own experiences with motherhood as I read.  I admire Waldman for sharing these very personal experiences.  She’s a great writer and strikes me as smart and tough, and I would throw myself in with bad mothers like her any day. 

America’s Cheapest Family by Annette and Steve Economides

This was a straggler among the books I read for our personal finance checkup last month.  Unlike some of the others last month, this one was more oriented toward practical, everyday actions to improve family finances, plan for the future, teach our children how to handle money, and dig out of debt. 

Jane Slayre by Charlotte Bronte and Sherri Browning Erwin

I resisted this one for a while.  Okay, for about a week.  I resisted mainly because I love the original.  It’s one of those books that is a sort of memory anchor for a particular personal transition in my life.  So I resisted, worried that this derivative would tamper with that memory anchor.  Turns out I had nothing to worry about.  Jane Slayre is fun.  It doesn’t have the musty atmospherics of the original, but Erwin exploits the spaces around Jane’s story in clever ways.  I preferred the innuendo-packed camp of Pride and Prejudice with Zombies, but I think I may be finished with the supernaturalization of the classics.  I wonder if there’d be any interest in rewriting classic horror and suspense novels to remove the supernatural elements?  No?  Didn’t really think so.

Grave Sight (Harper Connelly Book 1) by Charlaine Harris

Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Book 2) by Charlaine Harris

An Ice Cold Grave (Harper Connelly Book 3) by Charlaine Harris

Harris has received notoriety as the creator of the Sookie Stackhouse universe, but she has other notable characters in her repertoire as well.  The main character of this series, Harper Connelly was struck by lightning as a teenager, and since then she’s had the uncanny ability to find dead bodies and know how they met their ends.  Of course, most people think she’s a fraud, but she and her step-brother Tolliver now travel the country trying to make a living with Harper’s talent.  They fall into creepy situations, dance around their own personal family mysteries (including a sister who disappeared many years before), and try to help the dead be found.  Whereas the Sookie Stackhouse books trade in camp, dark humor, and a delicious (pun intended) kind of vampire hypersexuality, the Harper Connelly books have a milder, more serious tone.  Harper is a more or less regular woman with a very irregular ability.  Though she occasionally meets other people with different types of extra-sensory perception, Harper’s world is not populated by vampires or supernatural monsters—only the occasional human one.  The books are well-plotted, with each volume working as an independent mystery, while still feeding the overall arcing story of the series.  There are no uber-villains, just crimes and mysteries to be solved, skeptical and downright mean people to be faced, and relationships to be negotiated.  My favorite character is the much-pierced and tattooed young man who shares some kind of intuitive awareness about people with his flamboyant grandmother.  All of Harris’s books grab me by the ears and don’t let go.  I always read them in a day or two, sneaking pages here and there throughout the day.  The fourth volume in the series is due out later this year.  Great beach/vacation reading. 

Storm Front (The Dresden Files Book 1) by Jim Butcher

Fool Moon (The Dresden Files Book 2) by Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only openly practicing wizard.  His world looks a lot like ours, only there’s magic and monsters, and an enigmatic place called the Nevernever.  The tone of the books very much echoes hard-boiled detective fiction.  Like the Harper Connelly series, I can’t put these books down.  Well-plotted and well-paced, every chapter ends with a hook that won’t let me go.  I find Harry’s character charming without being smarmy.  There are moments of sarcasm and levity, but also some pretty grim scenes as well.  The series numbers at least twelve books so far, with more in the imaginings by the author.  Another great choice for beach/vacation reading.  

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I loved this book right from the start.  A multi-perspective, multi-generational, multi-country story about Oscar de Leon, an American of Dominican descent.  A literary gamer-geek to the nth degree.  Diaz gives us an epic narrative that both educates on the history, politics, and culture of the Dominican Republic (with the aid of copious footnotes), and the personal history of the life of Oscar.  No matter how different he seems from everyone else in his family and neighborhood, Oscar is both the product and the victim of his cultural history.  I found each new section a bit jarring as I tried to identify the narrative voice, and become oriented to what part of the story was unfolding.  That disorientation, I think, added to the sense of confusion and alienation that many of the characters feel.  If I neither belong here, nor there, where are my anchors?  Oscar’s sister Lola is a compelling character, but in the end, the sections narrated by Oscar’s friend and Lola’s boyfriend, Yunior, were the most thought-provoking for me.  Yunior and Oscar shared more similarities than Yunior is willing to admit, though they are dramatically different in terms of their demonstrations of masculinity and intellectualism.  I wonder in the final pages of the book whether Yunior is telling the story of Oscar as a way of understanding himself better, whether Oscar is a sort of manifestation of Yunior’s own personal struggle.  Diaz won many awards for this book, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 

Books I read Out Loud to the Children

Drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve

We loved this book.  Polly Peabody lives on a magical rhubarb farm where it rains at precisely one o’clock every Monday afternoon.  Some people think there is a logical and scientific explanation to the rain and the chocolate rhubarb, but when a life-threatening illness strikes Polly’s brother and the rain suddenly quits, Polly begins to discover for herself what makes the farm tick.  Full of literary allusions (a central trope involves a volume of Emerson), this book resonated with our young to middle-grade kids without being condescending.  The emotions portrayed are raw and honest.  Polly explains what happened and how it felt when her grandmother died, and is faced with the possibility that her brother will die as well.  Polly feels alienated in her new middle-school and has a hard time making friends.  Van Cleve creatively finds ways for Polly to act-independently, navigating a confusing set of realistic family relationships and one perceived betrayal as well as the mystery of the farm.  A really charming book about self-discovery that demonstrates that the magic inside is what really moves the world.  

The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

The kids loved this one almost as much as I did.  Check out my comments on it from last September here.

The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry

We laughed out loud at several points in this book.  What happens when a  modern writer tells an old-fashioned story about four old-fashioned children with atrocious parents?  Throw in a charming and capable Nanny, a lonely, mourning industrialist, and an abandoned baby, along with a fair dose of mischievousness, kid-humor, and an extended candy bar joke, and you get The Willoughbys.  Another smart, snappy book full of literary allusions, complete with a cheeky glossary of all the big words, and an annotated bibliography of other old-fashioned stories that inspired Lowry.  Deeelightful.  The kids quote this one extensively, but if I share their favorite quotes with you, you’ll think they’re crude.  Or you might just think they’re giggly kids.  

Sonar X9 Read a few things too!!

The Alchemyst (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel Book 1) by Michael Scott

The Magician (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel Book 2) by Michael Scott

Attack of the 50 foot Cupid (Franny K. Stein Book 2) by Jim Benton

Ghosthunters and the Incredibly Revolting Ghost (Ghosthunters 1) by Cornelia Funke

Ghosthunters and the Gruesome Invincible Lightning Ghost (Ghosthunters 2) by Cornelia Funke

What We’re Reading Now

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson  (me) This is the second try for me.  I quit after fifty pages the first time.  I was assured it will get better, and it did.  Nearly halfway through now, and I must know what happens.  

The Sorceress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel Book 3) by Michael Scott (Sonar X9)  Won’t call him that much longer. Last time, in fact.

The Mysterious Benedict Society (MBS Book 1) by Trenton Lee Stewart (out loud)  A fun book so far, full of puzzles.  Fun to read a story about gifted kids to gifted kids.  Every few pages we stop because they want to talk about something.  

ABAW April Edition

I’ve started master lists of what we’ve read this year to the navigation menu at the top of my center column.  (Warning: shameless marketing coming).  Each book there is linked to Amazon.  You know, if you’re interested in buying any of them.  No pressure.  

We read some books in April people.  Yes, how we read some books! These are random jottings from the notebook.  My apologies if they lack coherence or depth or any resemblance to a book review. 

Books I read to myself.  Without a child audience.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

I love Nick Hornby’s novels for two reasons.  1.  He juggles characters brilliantly, giving even the small players depth and interest in a few words.  Who is the main character of this book?  Is it Tucker, the reclusive, formerly-famous songwriter who is finally trying to be a good father?  Is it English Annie, the museum director who realizes after fifteen years that she has settled for something less than she had hoped?  I think perhaps it is the album, Tucker’s Juliet, the object that connects so many of the characters to each other, creates the circumstances for their coming together and apart.  Brilliant characters abound: Tucker’s crazy neighbor, dubbed Fucker by many who know him, the aging clubbers who wield their own minor celebrity, the various children, wives, and girlfriends of Tucker, and not least, Annie’s own pathetically obsessed Duncan.  We all know a Duncan.  Someone who knows more than is healthy about something that most of us deem trivial, someone who invests a bit too much of himself in someone else’s life or work.  I suspect we can all find someone we know in a Nick Hornby novel.  2.  Hornby writes private dialogue between two people that is incredibly believable.  There is an honesty to these conversations that is sometimes painful, but also hilarious.  Hornby relates the meandering, often absurdly illogical trajectory of emotionally charged moments so well that I often feel like I’ve had conversations eerily like those.  

Music, like other Hornby novels, plays a big part in this story.  By the end, you might just feel like you’ve heard Tucker’s music before.  I can’t say that I’m totally satisfied with the ending of this one, and Dan (who read this right after I did) concurs on that one.  But like those lifelike dialogues, life doesn’t always have a neat conclusion.  Things just keep moving on, day after day.   

Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon

This is a collection of essays about Chabon’s own writing, about his varied reading interests and influences, with bits and pieces of memoir thrown in for good measure.  I found some line or idea in nearly every piece that struck a cord in my readerly or writerly heart.  In an essay appealing for better new comics for kids, Chabon suggests a few simple ideas to make stuff kids will want to read: “twist endings, the unexpected usefulness of unlikely knowledge, nobility and bravery where it’s least expected, and the sudden emergence of a thread of goodness in a wicked nature.”  On ghost stories, in particular the work of M. R. James, Chabon defines ghost stories as about a “state of perception … in which the impossible vies with the undeniable evidence of the senses.”  There’s also a very funny metaphor in there about James’ pre-post-modern tendencies.  On fiction and lies: “It is along the knife-narrow borderland between those two kingdoms, between the Empire of Lies and the Republic of Truth, more than along any other frontier on the map of existence, that Trickster makes his wandering way, and either comes to grief or finds his supper, his treasure, his fate.”  Chabon touches on the psychology of writing (putting your work out there and accepting how it’s received and treated and behaves, writer’s block, inspiratioin) without ever feeling like he’s giving instruction about writing, and yet I felt I was learning.  He talks about Jewish cultural identity, the nature of truth, fatherhood.  These many destinations are found in essays about widely varied topics, yet every piece works together with the others, and I felt certain from the beginning that Chabon was navigating a logical path from one place to the next, with a clear destination in mind.  He makes an overarching argument about the value of the short story and genre lit in particular, but also about creating new stories, or at least new variations, at the edges and intersections of what has come before.  I found myself repeatedly wanting to go reread something he discussed (Sherlock Holmes or The Turn of the Screw for example).  Except with McCarthy’s The Road.  I can’t go back to that one, but I did come to understand one reason I found the story so difficult (and perhaps why Dan refuses to read it), that the story, as Chabon argues, is a horror story, playing on base fears.  A slasher flick might play on the essential fear of violation for a young person.  The Road exploits the guilt and fear a parent has that he might not survive long enough to protect his child from a world fraught with peril.  Anyone who enjoys reading or aspires to writing will find something worthwhile in this very smart book.  Don’t let it intimidate you.  Let it inspire you.  

Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod

This was a very quick read, built around the business-card drawings of MacLeod, and based on a successful blog.  I didn’t feel like I found anything new in the encouragement (the title was my favorite piece of advice), but some of MacLeod’s drawings are very funny.  

I am an Emotional Creature: the Secret Life of Girls Around the World by Eve Ensler

You might recognize Eve Ensler as the author of The Vagina Monologues.  Ensler’s latest book is a collection of monologues, dialogues, poems, short stories, and statistics that speak about the interior life of girls and the physical and emotional challenges that girls face every day.  Some of the pieces are very emotional, very difficult to read.  Though the short format of the book makes it quick-reading, I could only read it in bits and chunks.  I needed a break to process the emotions they inspired.  Girls struggling with eating disorders, with sexual slavery and abuse, with female genital mutilation, with finding their voices, their place in the world, and with assertions of their own identities.  But not all is hopeless and horrible in this collection.  The pieces gradually build, finally inspiring and hoping and encouraging.  My very favorite poem in the book is “Refuser,” an almost anthemic piece about the ways in which women do stand up every day.  And here are two favorite lines from different pieces.  From “My Short Skirt”: “But mainly my short skirt / and everything under it / is mine, mine, mine.” From “I Am An Emotional Creature”: “And I love, hear me, / love love love / being a girl.” The V-Girls website has a beautiful introductory film made up of pieces of this book, and links to programs around the world designed to help make this a better world for girls to grow.   

Books I sort of skimmed because the idea of them made me twitchy.

I did some spring cleaning on our finances this month and browsed through a few books to see what tweaks I might be missing.  Turns out we’re running about as lean as we can around here and moving in positive direction.  Five cents a month, but positive nonetheless.  

The Busy Family’s Guide to Money by Sandra Block

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

Start Late Finish Rich by David Bach

The Smart Cookie’s Guide to… Blah blah blah money.  You get the idea.  

Books I read out loud to the kids. 

Mossflower by Brian Jacques

If you’ve been following this reading project for any length of time, you’ll know that we’ve been reading Mossflower for months.  This month we finally finished it.  Hallelujah.  

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

This was my second time through this lovely little book.  Odd joins Gaiman’s other great protagonist Bod (from The Graveyard Book) as a great, not perfect, clever, funny boy character who doesn’t need to act stupid to solve his problems.  (say that five times fast) The injection of Norse mythology into the Sonar’s imaginative repertoire is refreshing and hilarious.  This book also inspired a most fabulous ongoing conversation with the Sonars about Absent Parent Syndrome in books.  How do authors solve the problem of getting kids the independence they need to have adventures, solve problems, assert themselves, and explore the world?  Well, as the Sonars have very astutely pointed out, the authors often kill the parents, even though the incidence of orphanhood is not quite as common as these books might lead us to believe.  This is not a criticism of any particular murdering author, mind you.  Some of our very favorite kid-lit involves orphans (Harry Potter is alive in this house).  Odd himself is (with a perfectly acceptable justification) missing a father in this book.  But the Sonars have also very astutely asserted, that sometimes orphanhood is a cop-out, and they pay very close attention to every story they read now, to figure out what trick the author uses.  Back to Odd.  This short book will appeal to readers at many levels, and works very well as a book read out loud (especially if you are willing to give different voices to the bear, the fox, the eagle, and the frost giant, among others).  

Sonar X9 is Kicking My Butt (but it’s not a contest, Mom. Um, yeah, I know, honey). 

Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger by Kevin Bolger

Yes, every booger and fart gag you can think of is tucked into this book.  X9 and X7 have both read this one and they snorted, snorked, and belly-laughed all the way through it. 

The Cabinet of Wonders: the Kronos Chronicles Book I by Marie Rutkoski

This one was slurped up so rapidly, you’d have thought X9 had fallen down a rabbit hole in search of Oz.  No, that metaphor doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, but I use it only to convey how carried away he was with the fantasy world of this story.  

Mossflower by Brian Jacques

Jacques and his Redwall books are lovely, but I swear, I lived with this book for so long that I don’t want to talk about it anymore.  Unless you want to talk about the moles.  Then I’d be a roight noisebag of wondermus blathering.  

Seekers: The Quest Begins by Erin Hunter

He has dabbled in Ms. Hunter’s world here and there, and yet doesn’t seem to want to read every book like some of his classmates.  Not sure why.  

Final Crisis (D.C. Comics) by Grant Morrison et al

Each of the Sonars spent some time with this graphic novel.  I browsed it a bit, shut my eyes to the more horrifying illustrations (including Batman, sans face flesh), and found it a bit disjointed and confusing.  Perhaps I’d have liked it better if I’d started at the beginning.  

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson

Hunting for Max, we found this instead.  Another one that he read in two days.  

Dragon Games by P.W. Catanese

He can’t wait to read another of these.  

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

The D.C. Comics Encyclopedia

All three Sonars have spent hours poring over the pages of this massive and beautiful book.  Right on the heels of Loki, they filled their brains with a gargantuan quantity of superhero lore.  All of their made-up superheroes now have some element in the name (e.g. Cobalt). 

The Celestial Globe: The Kronos Chronicles Book II by Marie Rutkoski

Just like Cabinet, this one fell quickly to X9’s eyeballs.  This was his pass-the-time-after-I-finish-my-TAKS-test-and-wait-for-everyone-else book, and he finished it in two afternoons.  He loved it and will happily tell you all about it if you ask.  

What We’re Reading Now

Drizzle by Kathleen van Cleve

A lovely book about a magical rhubarb farm, we’re reading this one out loud.  

Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman

One book often leads to another, and this one is no exception.  Waldman and Chabon are married to one another.  While I was looking up Chabon’s bibliography, I found Waldman.  And I’m really glad I did.  I enjoy her essays as much as I enjoyed his.

Blah blah blah estate planning books.  

No, we’re not planning to die anytime soon.  Just following up the financial facelift by making sure we have other documents in order as well.  This one does keep falling to the bottom of the to do list though.  It’s too hard to look at these decisions directly sometimes.  

Sonar X7 continues to read Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles and the second of the Edge Chronicles, a few pages here and there.  He is determined to finish the Whangdoodle book this week though, and I think he will. 

Sonar X5 is tripping merrily through another Junie B. Jones and just started The Dragons of Trellian by Michael Knudsen.  The Trellian is more dense than almost anything he’s read, and I’m not sure how far he’ll get.  I will not discourage him though.  Check that, I think this is the longest book he’s read by himself.  The longest one before this was The Tale of Despereaux, which also holds the distinction of being the only chapter book he’s read twice.  

Sonar X9 is not currently reading anything.  He is experiencing a bit of post-TAKS-testing book-ennui.  I don’t blame him.  

ABAW March Edition

Chronicling the ongoing attempts to read a book a week along with Sonar X9.

My list:

Firmin by Sam Savage

Savage finds an positive aesthetic in that which is usually despised and discarded, namely a rat, a hermit, a trashy neighborhood.  Firmin chronicles the life from birth to death of a bookstore rat in a doomed neighborhood in Boston.  I had a hard time getting into this book at first, though it is short and the characters are smart and well-written.  I’m grateful that I stuck with it though because there are several elements of the story that I really enjoyed.  The cultural allusions run thick.  My favorite thought from the book: people do not infest.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

I found this novel in a New York Times series about learning not to be afraid of math.  It is a quiet story about a quiet relationship.  The housekeeper tells the story of meeting and working for a man, a former mathematics professor, who, because of an injury many years ago, has only 80 minutes of memory.  Every day they must begin their working relationship anew.  The housekeeper comes to feel very affectionate toward the professor, and even though the professor can’t remember from one day to the next, he takes great joy in knowing the housekeeper’s son.  At times charming and heartbreaking, the story also includes clever and accessible explanations of several mathematical concepts important to the professor, as he teaches them to the housekeeper or her son.  Lovely, bittersweet book.  

Food Rules by Michael Pollan

This is a short, pocket book which digests (pun intended) many of the ideas Pollan discusses in his other work about food and the way we eat in our society.  One rule per page, simply stated, organized by his core motto: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”  The first section details rules for determining what is food, as opposed to “edible foodlike substances.”  The middle section is rules for moderating consumption.  The final section helps to guide people toward a mostly plant-based diet, without absolutely shunning meat.  My favorite rules include: eat all the junk you want if you make it yourself, don’t eat it if your grandmother or great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize it immediately as food, and don’t eat cereal that colors the milk. 

Push: A Novel by Sapphire

This has been one of the hardest books for me to read this year.  Like a poem, every word counts, every word has emotional impact.  Push is the story of Precious, a teenage girl who has been emotionally, physically, and sexually abused by her mother and father as long as she can remember.  At sixteen, she already has one child, and is expecting her second.  She is drowning in life, but a teacher throws her a lifeline and then teaches her how to build a boat.  The central metaphor is in the title, first seen as Precious recounts the birth of her first child, when a paramedic gently tells her what she has to do.  The story though, is more about Precious giving birth to herself, pushing herself, finding some self-determination in her world.  Some might wonder why anyone would want to write or read about a life so abused and debased, but Sapphire does something that is essential in literature.  That which is abstract and unquantified can be ignored.  When Sapphire writes Precious into being, she makes her life tangible, concrete, and quantifiable. Push is a hard reality made visible, a reality that is then more difficult to ignore.  Push is beautiful.  No, I haven’t seen the movie.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

These short stories of various lives in Pakistan are beautiful to read.  There is a vividness and bright aesthetic beauty to the grim world Mueenuddin portrays.  I wish I’d come to this collection at a different time though.  Quick on the heels of Push, I had difficulty reading stories which continued to illustrate how much it sucks to be a woman in the world.  Though I think the characters of the stories were well-wrought and the stories of byzantine business dealings were engaging, I couldn’t read more than a few before I had to put down the book for relief.  I want to return to these stories again later, when the timing is better.  

Sonar X9’s list:

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Dead Guy Spy by David Lubar (A sequel to My Rotten Life: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie)

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis

The Real Spy’s Guide to Becoming a Spy by Peter Earnest and Suzanne Harper

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin (abandoned)

I think this book is another case of ill-timing.  I have no doubt that he will like this book one day, but now was not the right time.  

Currently Reading:

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Mossflower by Brian Jacques

Yes. Yes. Yes. We will finish this one this week. I love reading Jacques out loud, but it does take a very long time to get through one of the Redwall-mice books this way.  I don’t want to comment prematurely, but I haven’t enjoyed this one as much as Redwall, with one exception.  I love the dialect of the moles, so having Dinny and his family popping up every few pages is delightful.  Our favorite phrase is one from the moles, declaring an overly talkative creature to be a “roight noisebag.”

Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard

I think it may be a little early for Conan, but he’s plowing through this one a few pages at a time between other books.  

Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger by Kevin Bolger

Surely Sir Fartsalot will take his place alongside the Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants very soon. 

Other notable books that have passed through the house lately:

Paulie Pastrami Achieves World Peace by James Proimos

This book is clever and funny and sweet.  I love Paulie’s parents, who don’t bat an eyelash when Paulie wants to achieve world peace before bedtime.  

My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall

The illustrations in this picture book are lovely, round, cut paper illustrations, with hearts as the predominant shape.  I can’t imagine the time it took to create the illustrations, but the book might just inspire your kids to make their own pictures out of common shapes.  

Hoot by Carl Hiassen

We listened to this book (most of it) on our trek to New Mexico.  We look forward to finishing the story when we get through Mossflower. 

Alphabeasties and Other Amazing Types by Sharon Werner and Sarah Forss

This is another clever, visually engaging picture book based on typefaces.  Anyone with a passion or even a passing interest in typography will dig this alphabet book.  Each page has a creature made entirely from the first letter of its name.  All of the typefaces are identified at the end of the book.  It’s a beautiful illustration of the rhetoric of font choice without being the least bit stuffy about it.  Many of the phrases feel quite lovely in the mouth as well. 

The Pigeon books by Mo Willems

What kid doesn’t love yelling “No!” at the increasingly absurd pleas of the Pigeon to do things he’s not supposed to do?  These picture books make reading a two-way street.  Check out Willems’ other great books as well.  

The Magic Treehouse books by Mary Pope Osborne

I’ll be honest and tell you that I haven’t read any of these chapter books, but Sonar X5 has read 28 of them.  All of the ones that he’s been able to get his hands on at the library.  Osborne’s project to introduce history, geography, and literary canon into stories about a pair of time-traveling siblings is really rather awesome in it’s scope.  There are more than 40 books total now, and Osborne keeps writing.  

The Spiderwick Chronicles, including the novels, their continuations, and Care and Feeding of Sprites by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black

If you know anyone who likes fairies, suggest these chapter books to them.  They  are fun and a bit edgy, with a touch of scary and dark around the edges of both the story and the beautiful illustrations.  The Sonars really love the Care and Feeding of Sprites companion book, which has inspired them to make up their own wee fantastic creatures. 

What we’re thinking of reading:

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Clockwork by Philip Pullman

The Other February Books

A Book a Week continues. 

Me

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

This is the 2010 Newberry Medal Winner.  Sonar X9 read it last summer, having found it in the library.  At the time, when I asked him about it, he had a hard time describing exactly what it was about.  He was clearly engaged with the story, and it obviously left him with a good feeling.  That kid loves an adventure story or a graphic novel that he can rip through quickly, but he has the sensitivity to really appreciate a book like this one as well.  It’s a smart book, that doesn’t condescend to explain every last detail, that pushes a kid to think about what it happening and puzzle out some meaning.  The book stayed with him and he mentioned things about it here and there.  I’ve wanted to read it since then, but when it won the Newberry, I knew I couldn’t put it off.  I’ve rarely been disappointed by the Newberry choices.  This one was no exception. 

I liked Stead’s first novel, First Light, but there is something distinctly different, bigger, more profound about When You Reach Me.  When You Reach Me is the story of a kid who finds a note, loses one friend, gains others, and along the way puzzles out a notion of time travel, self-sacrifice, and the way in which relationships must grow and change.  The characters have believable depth and flaws.  I particularly love the mother, who is studying for an appearance on the $25,000 Pyramid every day when she returns from her job as a paralegal. It’s good to see the portrayal of a parent that is engaged with her child but also struggling to be her own person and achieve her own goals.  I could talk about any of the characters in a similar way.  I believe in them.  They are complex, but that complexity is revealed by degrees, in elegant and simple ways.  

The story also has an elegance, though it seems far from simple until the very end.  The main character, Miranda, refers regularly to her favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time, another time traveling tale. I read A Wrinkle in Time in the third grade.  I remember very little about the story itself, but I remember the feeling that I wasn’t quite understanding the book.  I remember a feeling of flying.  I remember enough to know that this story is quite different and yet similar.  Enough to know that I want to reread it.  One book leads to another book as this book is passed to another person.  Partner is reading it now.  

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

This book was just fun.  I loved Pride and Prejudice when I read it in college, but with a kind of romantic distance.  I appreciated Elizabeth’s wit and marveled at the restraint exercised in a society of manners.  This zombie redaction heightened my appreciation of the original, particularly of the potential for reading humor between the lines.  Grahame-Smith elevates the innuendo even further.  I lost count of the number of ‘ball’ jokes.  He is able to infuse Austen’s work with something else besides zombies, a sense that the characters have actual bodies.  In the novel of manners there is a sense that anything corporal or bodily is just not talked about as if it isn’t there.  I don’t recall once thinking of Elizabeth’s body in any way beyond a holder for a gown or a hand proferred.  There was no sense of her physically.  Graham-Smith though, gives Elizabeth and her sisters bodies that fight and feel.  Oh yes, and they sweat too, though the low word ‘sweat’ does not appear in the pages of the book.  Elizabeth and Darcy at different points suffer from “exercise moisture.”  

Another word that appears rarely in this zombie book is ‘zombie.’  Epithets abound, but my favorite is “manky dreadfuls.”  That should totally be the name of a punk band.  

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This is my favorite book so far this year.  A 2007 nominee for the ALA Printz award, this book wrapped itself around me and wouldn’t let go.  Death narrates this story of a German orphan living through World War II with her foster family near Munich.  Leisl is the thief and main character, earning the title when she steals a book from the cemetery at her little brother’s funeral.  Heartbreaking.  Rich.  Nuanced.  Leisl’s best friend is Rudy.  Together they steal books and other things, both for the thrill and to fill the aching need of hunger and privation of the war.  I find myself wanting more boys in stories to be like Rudy.  Or like Marcus and the other boys in When You Reach Me.  A boy who is both trying hard to be what he thinks a boy should be, which is so much more than any stereotype of masculinity.  These boys are trying to be strong and fast, but they’re also full of love, fear, and silliness.  They make mistakes but they know when to do the right thing.  

Death tells us the story of how Leisl—I get hung up on the word here, I want to say ‘survived’ because she is a survivor, but ‘endured’ works well too.  How people live, endure, survive.  Death is most troubled by his job when he has to face those who survive.  The way that survivors react to a death is difficult and painful for Death to endure.  But of coures, he does endure.  Death is eternal.  He reminds us that we know how things end.  They always end in death.  Leisl is human, and her life will end, but she and Death are similar in the ways they learn to cope with their survival.  

I’m rambling here.  This book makes me want to outline essays about the theme of survival, the use of words to control and uplift, the notion of nourishment beyond food, the ways in which lives are balanced against one another, or any number of other things that this rich story would support.  

The book is heavy.  Situated in an impoverished neighborhood during WWII, with a labor camp right down the road.  The story itself has few moments of explicit violence, but there is a palpable tension surrounding the story.  We know that people are dying in any number of ways.  We know the fear in which people lived, especially if they’re doing something that could lead instantly to their death if discovered.  Zuzak exploits these tensions exquisitely.  He tells us more than once what is going to happen, but rather than deflating what follows, the tension is heightened, the story driven forward.  We are compelled to read in order to understand how that conclusion comes about.  To learn what happens around that conclusion.  

This is one I will read again and hope that you will read.  You will cry, but it will be the kind of sadness that is deeply thoughtful and cathartic and enriching.  

Sonar X9

Things are so busy around here right now that I haven’t been able to get even a simple thumbs up or down on any of these. I think he loved most of these, though Johnny Texas was compulsory at school and I have no idea whether he liked it.  He was enjoying the novelty of The Inferno but I think was undone by the complexity and has given it up in favor of other pleasures.  

The Secret of Zoom by Lynne Jonell

Tapestry: The Hound of Rowan by Henry H. Neff

Tapestry: The Second Siege by Henry H. Neff

Fergus Crane by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

Johnny Texas by Carol Hoff and Bob Meyers

The Inferno of Dante by Robert Pinsky

What We’re Reading Now

Firmin by Sam Savage

Mossflower by Brian Jacques (out loud)

What We’re Thinking about Reading

In Other Rooms Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

ABAW February 10th Edition

My Recent Reads

First Light by Rebecca Stead

This is the first novel by this year’s Newberry winner.  The main characters are Peter and Thea, who live in completely different worlds.  They manage to find each other and to reconnect those two worlds separated for generations by snow and ice.  A great middle-grade read.  

A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts: A Collection of Deliciously Frightening Tales by Ying Chang Compestine

A collection of short spooky stories set in China, marked “Young Adult” by our library.  The stories are arranged as a banquet, with a menu for a table of contents, and food and death are important elements in each tale. Some of these were a bit grim, others were thoughtful and creepy.  After each story Compestine has a basic explanation of the cultural significance of some story elements as well as a relevant recipe.   This is a fun collection that might appeal to fans of Goosebumps and other creepy stories.  

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

We’ve read this book twice, both times out loud.  The inventive and lyrical language of the book lends itself to fun out-loud reading.  Haroun’s father is a storyteller, but after a family upheaval dad has lost his gift of gab.  Haroun sets off on a wild fantasy to help restore the flow of his dad’s stories as well as saving the source of that flow—the Ocean of the Sea of Stories—from the nefarious plot of a fiction-hating poisoner.  With fairytale elements, imaginative characters (genies, mechanical birds, Plentimaw fishes) emotional honesty, and outright silliness, this book would appeal to middle-grade readers, but is also easy to follow for younger kids.  The glossary includes an explanation of the names in the book, many of which are Hindustani in origin.  I cannot recommend this one enough.  

Sonar X9’s List this year

As we progress through our year, I hope to have the Sonars comment on the books they’ve read.  Mostly I’ve missed them on these, but I did manage to squeeze out the most basic responses on a couple.  

Binky the Space Cat by Ashley Spires:  (Sonar X6) This one was very funny.  

Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reeves

Wolverine by Barry Lyga

Discover Mini Manga! by Christopher Hart: (from me) if the number of tiny manga scribbles around the house is any indication, this one is a worthwhile drawing book.  

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (#1) and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (#4) by Jeff Kinney:  (Sonar X6) These books are all very funny and silly.

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd Ed. Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci - Second time through (from me) I’d like to read this one just to see what keeps bringing X9 back to this one.  But I think the repeat showing is enough to recommend it.  I suspect the content might be more suited to middle-grade and higher.  

Dawn (Warriors, the New Prophecy #3) by Erin Hunter - Abandoned: (from me) No straight answers on why he quit this one.  He started it very enthusiastically, devouring the first couple of chapters in one night.  Then, meh, he totally lost interest. 

Sonar X6

This one is turning into a great devourer of books as well, but not on the one per week rate.  He finished this one last night.  

The Misadventures of Benjamin Bartholomew Piff  by Jason Lethcoe:  It was cool.  It’s the second book in a series.  I would kind of like to read the first.  

What We’re Reading Right Now

The Secret of Zoom by Lynne Jonell

Mossflower by Brian Jacques

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (2010 Newberry Winner)