Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Gordon Korman’s Ungifted is the kind of ride that makes you laugh a lot but tear up a little; its sequel, Supergifted, is a near-perfect follow-up.  Donovan Curtis is back at his regular middle school after his memorable stint at the Academy for Scholastic Distinction, but bona fide genius Noah Youkilis has managed to get himself out of that Academy at last and is now Donovan’s classmate.  His social cluelessness might make you wince a bit, but watching him, Donnie, the head cheerleader, and the super-jock get tangled into a community-wide series of madcap events/situations/adventures makes for pure entertainment.  Donovan’s well-meaning impulses (and almost total lack of impulse control) ensure his likability as well as his relatability, making Supergifted an excellent pick for latter elementary and middle school readers.  If you’ve got a boy who’s hard to please, or a tween of either gender looking for a fun-filled read that stretches believability while firmly remaining in the realistic fiction/school story camp, Gordon Korman is a sure bet.

Really?  If you’re older, say in your (very!) late 30s, for instance, you may find him just as enjoyable.  Don’t miss out!

Okay, so I loved Wonder.  It lived up to the hype, which is no easy task.  But after spending 10 years at Borders (may it rest in peace!), I couldn’t stop myself from worrying that Auggie & Me:  Three Wonder Stories was going to be a case of cashing in on a one-hit, well…okay, I didn’t actually intend the pun, but if the shoe fits…

Anyway.

The thing is, Auggie & Me blew me away all over again.  (Ugh.  I’ll try and stop with the cliches now.)  Julian’s story was possibly my favorite, and I did NOT see that coming; Charlotte’s made me shake my head, alternately wincing and smiling; and Chris’s, well–I hated Chris for the first half of his, but it got better.  (His mom, on the other hand, well–not so much with the authoritative parenting.  I made a lot of faces for a while there.)  This trio gives us a better sense of Auggie’s world, but not Auggie himself, and perhaps that’s its secret; these are other kids’ stories to tell, and they’re worth the telling.  (More cliches.  I’ve decided to embrace it!)

They’re also worth the reading.  If you’ve read Wonder but not Auggie & Me, this ought to be next on your list.  (Fair warning–there are likely to be tears.)

I read Ingrid Law’s Savvy back when it was named a Newbery Honor book and loved it; I read Scumble a few years later and loved that, too.  For whatever reason, however, I didn’t learn about Switch until the last year or so.

I finished it last week.

To start off, Switch can properly be called a sequel to Savvy (Scumble is more of a companion novel).  It features Gypsy, Samson, and Tucker Beaumont, whose older siblings are grown and living their own adult lives by this point.  The catalyst for the story is their non-savvy grandmother’s inability to continue living alone, due to her ‘Old-Timer’s’ disease.  (Whether it’s officially Alzheimer’s or simply dementia isn’t specified.)  She’s never approved of their savvys (or their mother), and the youngest three Beaumonts don’t take at all well the news that she’ll be coming to live with them.  Abruptly, chaos ensues (both of the savvy and non-savvy variety).  I’d rather let you discover the specifics of the plot yourself–it’s going to be a better experience that way–but I will say that the main action feels like a subtle mashup of “Back to the Future” and “Adventures in Babysitting”, although I can’t say whether that’s completely intentional or not.  I wasn’t sure I liked this one as well as its predecessors at first, but I think it converted me by the end.  If you liked Savvy, you shouldn’t miss Scumble OR Switch; if you haven’t read anything by Law, well–summer’s a great time to start!

Seriously, folks.  Ursula Vernon’s Hamster Princess:  Giant Trouble is another laugh and a half, complete with a giant (lop), a harpster, and a side to Wilbur that we haven’t seen before.  This series is an absolute delight.

And yes, I know I’m posting early, but there are family gatherings this weekend, and I don’t know that I’ll get a chance to do it tomorrow.  If I do, great; if not, well, you’ve got this at least.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some exercising to do!

So.  I missed my last post for a legitimate reason; I’ve been trying to rearrange and declutter in our house, and Monday saw a large, clunky, and broken-in-multiple-ways entertainment center leave our living room.  I did finish a book before bed, but I didn’t manage to review it.

I’m just plain avoiding writing the review of it now.

You know those days, right?  Where concentrating and being intelligent and coherent when it’s already after 9 pm seems completely impossible?  My friend and I took the kids to the Conservation Gardens in West Jordan this morning, fed the hangries at Burger King afterward, and then parted ways to do the things.  MY things involved a trip to the library, a bit of a nap, dinner and tidying and getting kids to bed, exercising in between, and (right now) acknowledging that I don’t feel up to doing much else at the moment.  On the one hand, that doesn’t feel like it should have worn me out; on the other hand, the fact remains that it did.

What were YOUR things today?

I procrastinated my dinner prep last Tuesday until it was too late to make any of the things I’d been considering; I ended up on Pinterest instead, searching out recipes with strawberries in them (because hey, I had those).  I had one muffin recipe all picked out before realizing that my plain yogurt had gone over to the dark (and fuzzy!) side, meaning I had to go back to the drawing board (okay, my Pinterest search results).

I am SO glad I did.

When I saw these Strawberry Ricotta Muffins I decided to give them a try, since my ricotta (though technically expired) was unopened and perfectly serviceable.  I figured the protein in the ricotta would make them more filling than your average muffins–perfect for brinner, right?  And OH, I was not disappointed.  They were filling, but they were also lovely–moist and vanilla-y, with delightful chunks of strawberry and that unmistakable, irreplaceable richness that comes from a dairy-based fat instead of vegetable oil.  My three older kiddos all gave them an enthusiastic thumbs up, and I ended up making them again for breakfast on Friday morning.  If you’ve got strawberries, friends, you need these muffins in your life.  If you don’t, well–they are in season.

When’s your next shopping trip?

Okay, I am seriously loving the “Hamster Princess” series.  I just finished Hamster Princess:  Ratpunzel, and I hate to give much away, so I’ll be brief; Harriet and Wilbur go in search of Heady the Hydra’s stolen egg and end up involved with Dame Gothel and Ratpunzel, with fabulous results.  If you haven’t started this series yet, go do it.  What else can I say?

Oh, and I do know that I missed my last post, but there were legitimate extenuating circumstances.

Good day, folks!

I went to a Mather family party tonight (Mather being my mother’s side of the family) to which I’d signed up to bring cookies; because it was my mother’s side of the family, I got to bring these Frosted Rhubarb Cookies and have them be a hit and not an oddity.  My aunts love rhubarb (as do I!), and buttery cookies with lovely bits of tart rhubarb (not to mention toasted coconut), frosted with homemade cream cheese frosting, always go over well.  (I love them too, by the way.)  Make these with butter, not shortening, and give your rhubarb a pretty fine dice, and you’ll be in dessert heaven.

I’d honestly love to talk for a while about my mother’s side of the family–they’re pretty amazing–but it’s late and we have swimming lessons at 9 am.  Goodnight all!

Thus proving that there’s a Billy Joel quote for everything, folks.  But seriously–I listened to Phillip Hoose’s The Boys Who Challenged Hitler:  Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club because a)I was interested and b)my oldest read it as part of a school project and wanted me to, and Knud Pedersen was a seriously angry young man.  I’m not saying he didn’t have a right to be, you understand; Hitler declared Denmark a protectorate in April of 1940, and its government submitted within hours with pretty much no fighting involved.  Pedersen was a patriotic Dane and found this humiliating, especially in contrast to Norway’s efforts to fight back against essentially the same “protectorate” deal.  His anger and humiliation ultimately led him, his older brother, and various school friends to conduct a schoolboy campaign of sabotage against their German occupiers.  They continued for months, their actions escalating, until they were caught and sent to prison–but not before their courage had ignited the spark that became the Danish resistance.  Essentially, they sowed a seed that ended up growing into a fairly respectably sized sunflower.

So–the pros:

1.  The story was fascinating.
2.  Much of it was told in Pedersen’s own words.

And the cons?

1.  Knud’s teenage boy anger (and competitiveness) was slightly wearying by the end.  (I’m clearly getting old.)
2.  That anger made it feel like the campaign was more against the Nazis than for Denmark.  (I doubt they saw it that way, but they were furious at their own country as well as Germany, and you definitely felt that.)

The verdict?  Totally worth your time, especially since it’s a lesser known piece of history.  Just be prepared to share some space with an angry young man for two hundred pages or so.