The White Stag

I looked at this award winning book of 1938 here at The Newbery Project. I really don't get its appeal, even if you're a Hungarian patriot (which apparently author Kate Seredy was).

Was I was too hard on it? I think my disappointment regarding the difference between the Foreword and the story made me more critical than I might have been otherwise. Regardless, it was one of the least enjoyable Newbery winners I've read so far, out of 24 to date.

I did love the very elegant 1930s drawings, and I think the modern cover sucks in comparison. With all those beautiful black and white drawings - the best part of the book - they go and use this?


Mind you, the original 1938 cover wasn't all that pretty, either. I think they ruined it with the color:

Early to School

For fifth grade, my son has to be at school at 7:55 instead of the more civilized 9:00 am of grades 1-4. As winter gets closer, it is darker and darker when we get up. I do like being able to see the sunrise sometimes, though.

Julie, Wolves, Vocabulary

I have another writing deadline coming up, so my blogging is limited. I did manage to read Julie of the Wolves, the 1973 Newbery winner by Jean Craighead George, and write a review over at The Newbery Project. When you don't have much time to read for fun, YA or older children's literature is great.

My latest favorite internet time suck is the vocabulary game at the Free Rice charity site. It makes those Reader's Digest "Word Power" tests look like the pap they really are.

But I don't think anguine is a level 40 word. I mean, cruciform is in level 45 and it's much easier to figure out (and much more common). I got to 50 last night, but this morning I stalled at 43 on lustrate and ambagious.

Banned Book Week

Ahoy! The ALA says "Treasure Your Freedom to Read and Get Hooked on a Banned Book" (click on the Banned Books Week logo above for their cool link).

And here's a link to a post I did two years ago for Banned Books Week. I still love Judy Blume.

And speaking of Judy Blume, the Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books have an awesome bunch of posts up here in celebration of this week. Deenie gets a B, Go Ask Alice gets an F - fun reading. I'm on the library waiting list for The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler. Maybe I should check out And Tango Makes Three while I'm at it.

Inanity

Hey, I'm so glad that this blog is the number two source for Google searches on "inane in sentence."

Sorry about the lack of pictures for the "housewife 1 on 1." And (presumably), on the other end of a gender continuum, who Googles "my husband is an asshole" and expects advice?

Apparently I'm also the go to blog for people that spell patriarchal as "patriartical". Good to know, thanks StatCounter.

A Wrinkle in Time

I reviewed the classic children's book A Wrinkle in Time* over at the Newbery Project yesterday. Why did I wait over thirty years to re-read this book?

I like the cover on this edition better than the one we have at home. I'm going to buy a nice hardcover edition for my kids (ok, for me really), because we should have this on our shelves.

*edited 9/27/07 to add a link to And Another Thing about A Wrinkle in Time...

Learning to Drive: Book Review

Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories, by Katha Pollitt.

In the last year, I've read all of Pollitt's essay collections (and blogged here about Virginity or Death! and Reasonable Creatures). I enjoy Pollitt's political perspectives and her humor a great deal, but it's her incredible gift for words that really keeps me reading, even when she's writing about a topic that doesn't particularly interest me. The pace, the particular words she picks, the way it all hangs together, often ending with a surprise punch to your gut - it is all very satisfying. And of course it helps that I agree with most of Pollitt's views - it's always nice to find your opinions vindicated by someone who articulates what you were thinking with such color and style.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that I was really looking forward to Pollitt's new book, especially when I read that it was mostly material that was not previously published (many of her essays for The Nation can be read online here and since I got hooked, I've been reading the columns and her blog regularly). And not only is this book new stuff, it's more personal than political, which makes it quite different from her previous works.

Some reviewers apparently feel a bit betrayed by this. The most brutal review was by Susan Salter Reynolds in the LA Times, who called the collection "whingeing" and "self-indulgent at best". I don't agree (but do agree when Reynolds says "It must be my problem"); I think that Pollitt's honest and sometimes painful essays about her personal relationships, fears, and aging make for utterly compelling reading.Unlike her previous books, which I picked up and put down, reading an essay every couple of days, I read this one in a day and a half, stealing moments whenever I could find them to read the next piece. It was over all too soon.

Here's a few selections from my favorite parts. On the aftermath of her breakup with a long-term boyfriend, who lived with her for years and apparently slept with numerous other women:

...I would browse the Internet, searching for information about him. Except "browse" is much too placid and leisured a word - a cow browses in a meadow, a reader browses in a library for a novel to take home for the weekend. What I did fell between zeal and monomania. I was like Javert, hunting him through the sewers of cyberspace, moving from link to link in the dark, like Spider-Man flinging himself by a filament over the shadowy chasm between one roof and another. "Are you Webstalking him?" a friend in her twenties asked over coffee. I hadn't known there was a word for what I was doing. (p. 22)

On what people do vs. what they say, and the power and beauty of words:

You think what people say is what matters, an older friend told me long ago. You think it's all about words. Well, that's natural, isn't it? I'm a writer; I can float for hours on a word like "amethyst" or "broom" or the way so many words sound like what they are: "earth" so firm and basic, "air" so light, like a breath. You can't imagine them the other way around: She plunged her hands into the rich brown air. Sometimes I think I would like to be a word - not a big important word, like "love" or "truth," just a small ordinary word, like "orange" or "inkstain" or "so," a word that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away, like the roughness on a pebble in a creek bed, but that has a solid heft when you pick it up, and if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core. (p. 31)

As a midwesterner, I loved the insights into New York City and the east coast in general (no strollers in post offices? What are they, crazy?), especially when it came to motherhood and feminism:

And it was feminism that made it an expected, an ordinary, thing for a man and a woman to live together in their own way - they could clean the house together or just let it fall apart. Those were not ideas that you could easily derive from middle-class American family life in the 1950s and 1960s, even a family of Communists like mine. Who owned the means of production - that was nothing, that could change overnight. But who vacuumed, who brought coffee while the other person remained seated, who held forth and who made encouraging murmurs - that seemed set in stone. (p. 171-2)

I hope that people who don't read Pollitt's columns will pick up this memoir - which veers from funny, to touching, to nostalgic, and then back again to funny - and go on to read the rest of her work. As for me, I'll be returning my copy to the library, buying my own hardcover copy, and hoping that Pollitt comes on a book tour to Ann Arbor so I can get her to autograph my book.

Tags: Katha+Pollitt, books, book+review, Learning+to+Drive

Americans and Food

The Americans are the grossest feeders of any civilized nation known. As a nation, their food is heavy, coarse, and indigestible, while it is taken in the least artificial forms that cookery will allow. The predominance of grease in the American kitchen, coupled with the habits of hearty eating, and of constant expectorations, are the causes of the diseases of the stomach which are so common in America. -- James Fenimore Cooper, in The American Democrat, 1825 (cited and disagreed with by Frederick Marryat in his A Diary in America, 1839, on p. 30 of the book below).

Just a tidbit from American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes, edited by Molly O'Neill. I don't think we can say that modern American cooking is not artificial in form any more (and isn't it interesting that "artifice" is considered a good thing in 1825?), and expectoration doesn't seem to be such a huge problem any more (are they talking about spitting chew? Just spitting?), but we've certainly still got the grease and heavy eating going.

This book is amazing. It's perfect for browsing - over 700 pages of wonderful excerpts from everyone from Thomas Jefferson, H.L. Mencken, Betty MacDonald, Peg Bracken, and David Sedaris to Michael Pollan, organized historically, a with wonderful section of sources and a meticulous index that starts at abalone and ends at Zuni breadstuff.

A lot of my favorite authors are in here. Frederick Douglass talks about ash cakes and hunger, Walt Whitman describes feeding ice cream to wounded soldiers in a Union hospital in Washington, D.C., and Emily Dickinson provides a recipe for her favorite cake. John Steinbeck talks about breakfast. Russell Baker describes franks and beans. Wendell Berry, Raymond Sokolov, Daniel Pinkwater- all here, as well as any famous food writer you can imagine.

The only problem with this book? It's so big that I'm not going to be able to finish it before it's due back at the library. Ah well, I really need a copy of my own to be able to consult whenever I need it. Did I mention that the recipes that interleave the excerpts are historically intriguing, often droolworthy, and that someone with a wonderful sense of graphics and balance arranged these recipes?

Fossil Park in Sylvania, Ohio

Fossil Park, just south of the Ohio-Michigan border, is a great place to take your kids on a fall weekend. It's free, you get to keep all the fossils you find, and all you need are some buckets and old toothbrushes (and maybe sunscreen, drinking water, and mosquito spray). They supply the fossils (crinoids, tons of different species of brachiopods, horn corals, and some trilobites) from the Devonian seas, portajons, and a couple of friendly college students who are knowledgeable about local geology and ecology.

Even a five year old can break apart the chunks of shale and recognize the shells within, though they may not have the endurance needed to keep going long enough to find a trilobite. Every time we've been there, though, one of the regulars has shared some broken trilobite bits with my enthusiastic ten year old, who in turn shares his knowledge of paleontology with anyone who will listen.

-edited in Aug 2009 to fix the park system's link, and to add that Google Maps doesn't take you to the right location when you enter "Fossil Park, Sylvania, OH" in their search box. The park is located at 5705 Centennial Rd. (just south of where it says "Silica Quarry #1 on the Google Map), down a little gravel road on the right when you're heading south, just past the Mayberry Square stripmall (which is on your left). If you're coming from Michigan, exit US-23 at Sterns Rd. - the last exit before the Ohio border - and take Sterns Rd. to Clark Rd., which turns into Centennial Rd. in Sylvania.

Maximum Ride #3: Book Review

Generally, I only post reviews of books that I either absolutely love and want to share with the whole world, or books that annoy me so much that I don't want a single other person to waste their time with them - even with used copies that are "free with shipping & handling" online. Reviews are surprisingly easy when you have such strong feelings about a book.

But then I sold out (see here), and starting taking remuneration - in this case, an amazon.com gift certificate, as well a free copy of the book, from the savvy women at MotherTalk. The first book that came my way was James Patterson's Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports. I thought I was pretty well qualified to review this book.

I'm not a literary snob (I love good romance, chick lit., and mysteries), I read lots of current bestsellers, and one of my favorite genres is fantasy/sci-fi. In the last year I've been reading lots of children's and YA selections, reviewing lots of different kinds of kids' books for The Newbery Project. One of the most recent Newbery winners that I read - Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown - reminded me of just how much I like fantasy, and since Patterson's Maximum Ride series is aimed at about the same age group (12 & up), I was really looking forward to it.

Well, if I'd picked this up on my own - perhaps to see if it was appropriate for my ten year old (and it was, for the most part), I wouldn't have bothered with a review. It was just....well, totally (to the max?) mediocre.

I didn't hate this third installment in the Maximum Ride series. I was intrigued by the premise: a group of runaway gene-engineered kids with wings save the world from evil mega-corporation scientists. I actually sought out Patterson's almost-parallel adult book, which I somehow completely missed nine years ago. (Maximum Ride was spun off Patterson's When the Wind Blows).

I didn't finish When the Wind Blows, though. Even the addition of sex didn't make up for a way too-predictable story and clichéd characters. And after reading about half of When the Wind Blows, I definitely felt like Maximum Ride was the better book. During both books, I felt like I was reading one of those X-Files or Star Trek adaptations, with a couple hundred extraneous pages of padding - mostly witty banter and stereotyped descriptions of laboratories. In fact, I can imagine the (proposed) movie, with its cool CGI graphics and nearly non-stop action.

I did enjoy many of Patterson's descriptive passages, and I can see how his writing style would appeal to most teenagers:

Well. If sudden knowledge had a physical force, my head would have exploded right there, and chunks of my brain would have splattered some unsuspecting schmuck in a grocery store parking lot down below. (p. 94)

"Okay, the second they undo us, make sure all heck breaks loose," I said when everyone was awake the next morning - at least I figured it was morning, since someone had turned the lights on again." (p. 115)

But was it really necessary to substitute heck for hell here? I mean, he's talking about evil experiments on children. If you're old enough to read about that, surely h-e-double hockysticks is old hat. Teenagers are supposed to be reading this, not second graders (though I'm sure quite a few second graders know the world hell, too). It grated on me, like many other things in the book.

I couldn't help liking Max, the main character, who was snarky and plucky and strong. But really, she needed some depth. And what's with the two to four page chapters? It makes it easy to put the book down and pick it up again later, but it was the literary equivalent of commercial tv - a book of sound bites.

Furthermore, I'm a little sick of the evil scientist stereotype:

I won't describe the scariest things we saw that morning, 'cause it would depress the heck out of you. Let's just say that if these scientists had been using their brilliance for good instead of evil, cars would run off water vapor and leave fresh compost behind them; no one would be hungry; no one would be ill; all buildings would be earthquake-, bomb-, and flood-proof; and the world's entire economy would have collapsed and been replaced by one based on the value of chocolate. (p. 337)

Do you really think that our world would be perfect if scientists were better people? What about politicians and company wonks and half the people who voted in the last presidential election? Didn't Patterson see Who Killed the Electric Car? Don't go blaming the scientists, people.

Anyway. If I were giving this book a grade, it would get a solid C. I wouldn't discourage any teenagers from reading it - I'm solidly in the "almost any reading is good reading" camp, and there's nothing really offensive in this book, and plenty to redeem it - but there's nothing really great in it, either. Steer your kids to Jumper, by Steven Gould, or Sunshine, by Robin McKinley, either before or after (or instead of) reading Maximum Ride. That's the kind of YA fantasy that's worth keeping on your shelves and re-reading.

Mmmm, Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets

If you're from southeastern PA, or you like baseball, Tastykake Krimpets, or magical realism, check out my review of Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli over at The Newbery Project. There are lots of other interesting new reviews over there, too.

On Vacation

Living down here south of I-94, I forget how beautiful it is in the northern part of the mitten. Just a little above where the thumb is attached to Michigan's hand - and definitely above where the fingers separate - the pine trees, the birch trees, and the ferns appear, obvious even when you are speeding by on the interstate. It is cooler and drier and the farms are less frequent, except on Michigan's west coast, where there are beautiful rolling hay fields, patches of corn and pumpkins, and orchards of grapes and cherries.

Things we saw on the drive (not even trying): a flock of wild turkeys crossing the road, a mother deer trailed by a fawn, and two very large-bottomed teenagers on ATVs mooning the highway, who were just down the road from a straw-hatted farmer with three Clydesdales pulling a hay mower.

If you're ever near Charlevoix, I recommend driving south and getting a cherry pie from Royal Farms in Atwood. The pie we got there was as unlike a pie made with canned filling from your grocery store as that really cheap waxy chocolate you get at the dollar store is unlike the good stuff at Zingerman's. I didn't even think I liked cherry pie, and now I wish I'd bought a dozen.

Monarch Life Cycle

All pictures taken this July, hands and arms provided by my kids (who also found the caterpillars). If you want more information, check out John Himmelman's A Monarch Butterfly's Life (check out these pictures!), and some of the links at the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project.

Is this the 50's?

I called to arrange home delivery for milk today, then put up a clothesline and hung a load of laundry out back. My son caught a frog in the nearby river, and had pbj for lunch.

My daughter and I had hummus, though, which I don't think would have happened here in the 50's - even in a town with a cooperative farm like Saline Valley Farms. Check that link for some very cool old photographs from 1932-1953.

Newbery Winners: One Recommended, One Not

I've done reviews for two more Newbery winners over at The Newbery Project: A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers, by Nancy Willard (1982 award), and The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley (1985 award). I can hardly imagine two more dissimilar books - one is aimed at older kids, and I think the other is meant for parents to read to their younger kids. Both are fantasy, but they are still as different as chalk and cheese.

Another Literary Meme

I was tagged by Bookworm Julie, who lives a few miles northeast of me. I think these answers are going to make me look very lowbrow, but I'll try to be honest anyway. I read a lot of non-fiction, and I'd love to meet a lot of the people in those books, or the authors, but noooo this is all about literary characters. Or is it possible to have a literary character in a non-fiction work?

1. If you could host a party with 7 literary characters, who would they be and why?

- Cutuk from Ordinary Wolves, because I want to hear about Alaska, and he'd be happy with pizza.

- Joshua from Lamb, because who wouldn't want to talk to the historical Jesus? Especially if he's anything like the character in Lamb.

- Abby Normal from You Suck (why yes, I do like Christopher Moore's books), because I want to read her descriptions of the party afterwards.

- Maye Roberts, from There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell, by Laurie Notaro, because she would be a lot like her creator, I think.

- Stephen Maturin (Julie can have Jack Aubrey and Awkward Davies and the rest), because I love natural history and medical trivia.

- Ranger, from Janet Evanovich's books, just because.

- Anthony Bourdain - I know his books are supposedly non-fiction, but honestly, he must at least exaggerate himself in those books, right? And I want him to cook.

2. Who is your literary role model?

Harriet Vane (from Dorothy Sayers' classic mysteries), though I don't want to be put in gaol (or jail).

3. Which literary house would you like most to live in?

Misselthwaite Manor, probably because I read about it at such an impressionable age (in A Secret Garden).

4. Which literary couple would you like most for parents?

Aral and Cordelia Vorkosigan.

5. Pick 3 literary characters you would like to have as siblings.

Well, with Aral and Cordelia as parents, that would leave Miles as a brother, which would be entertaining. I would still need a sister or two, or another brother, though - and most of the good ones seem to be from children's literature. Hmm, is there even any adult fiction out there with happy sibling relationships?

I guess I'll take Sam Gribley from My Side of the Mountain, and Claudia from The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I could get the best of both nature and culture then.

6. Who is your favorite literary villain?

Frankenstein's monster.

7. Name a character that most people dislike, but that you do not. Why do you like them?

Poor Frankenstein's monster. He tried so hard, reading to educate himself. It was hard to hate him.

8. Which minor character deserves a book all to themselves, in your opinion?

Becky Thatcher from Tom Sawyer. I want her to kick Tom's ass, and I want to hear things from her perspective.

9. Which character do you identify most with in literature?

Kate from Jennifer Weiner's Goodnight Nobody. Except in the midwest, with less money and a better husband.

10. If you could go into a novel, which one would it be and why?

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde. And this is really one of those cheating answers, like when you wish for a hundred wishes, because in The Eyre Affair characters get to go into any novel that they choose.

11. Name 3 — 7 books that you rarely see on people’s favorite book lists, that are high on your own.

George & Sam: Two Boys, One Family, and Autism, by Charlotte Moore - this is non-fiction, but it is as well-written and funny and touching and gritty as any fiction I've read this year. Read it, do. Don't let the fact that it's about autism scare you away.

A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews

A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck (I'm on a crusade to convince more adults to read children's literature)

A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky (yes, another non-fiction book)

The Lake, the River, and the Other Lake, by Steve Amick


12. Which is your least favorite book of those that are considered “classics”?

The Great Gatsby. I just wanted to smack all of the characters.

Tag you're it, reader with a blog!

Human Dalek Corn

Did you ever notice how the roots of corn look a lot like the head of a Human Dalek? Weird.

Corn really is a freaky looking mutant tropical grass. I wish the local sweet corn was ready. This picture is from the field corn from the farm behind our house, which is probably going to become high fructose corn syrup and starch and cow and pig feed.

Dinner Suggestions

...yesterday, from my 5-year-old daughter: a "really big" marshmallow, cookies, and cake. No, that's not what we had. I really wonder if she will ever voluntarily eat a vegetable.

In other news, my ten-year-old son and my husband spent Friday night sleeping in a tent in the backyard. This didn't help convince my husband that camping is fun, because it was the coldest night since early May. When they came in at 6:00 am, it was 46°F.

Reviews of Two More Newbery Winners and a New Mystery

The reviews of the Newbery medalists are up over at The Newbery Project: The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin, and Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, by Paul Fleischman (winners in 1979 and 1989, respectively). Check them out - for you or your kids - if you like classic mysteries or cute read-aloud poetry about insects.

I've also read A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini; Lean Mean Thirteen, by Janet Evanovich; and Origin, by Diana Abu-Jaber; in the last couple of weeks. A Thousand Splendid Suns left me pretty much speechless (in a good way), from both the writing and the story, and there's not a whole lot to say about Evanovich's Thirteen - it's like the earlier ones, but with less sex and more humor - but since Diana Abu-Jaber's new book isn't as well known as the other two, I thought I'd describe it here.

I liked both Crescent and The Language of Baklava by Abu-Jaber (a novel about Iranian emigrants, and a memoir about the author's childood) a lot, so I was intrigued when I saw that Abu-Jaber's latest was a mystery. It's a very gritty mystery - full of difficult people and uncertain relationships, freezing winter nights on the streets of Syracuse, NY, loss, and office politics. The main character, Leda, reminded me a bit of Smilla from Smilla's Sense of Snow, and a bit of Mallory from Carol O'Connell's mystery series. The story was chilling (even apart from the sections on hypothermia), unpredictable, and entertaining. The ending was a little too pat for me, but after such a good read, I could hardly begrudge Abu-Jaber for tying up the loose ends so neatly. A warning, though - there is a lot about SIDs and infants getting murdered in this book - it's probably not something anyone wants to read in their postpartum period, or perhaps even with a baby in your house if you're a very sensitive person.

Dust and Books

Rothstein, Arthur. Son of farmer in dust bowl area.
Cimarron County, Oklahoma. April 1935.
America from the Great Depression to World War II:
Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945,
Library of Congress.

I have another post up over at The Newbery Project: Dust, a review of Karen Hesse's poetic* 1998 winner, Out of the Dust.

rebel from www.sybermoms.com suggested I take a look at The Kids' Book Club Book: Reading Ideas, Recipes, Activities, and Smart Tips for Organizing Terrific Kids' Book Clubs, by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp, so I requested it from the library, and noticed happily that Out of the Dust is one of their titles for "grades 4-7". The six pages on Out of the Dust (with spoilers! yes, you can have spoilers in a book of poetry) include a recipe for apple pandowdy, some wonderful quotes from Karen Hesse, and Hesse's recommendation for Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads. My kids aren't in a book club, but I think we will listen to Woody's cd on the drive to my parents' this weekend.

*literally as well as metaphorically - the book is a collection of poems that tell a story