Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

There’s some serious upheaval going on, folks. In addition to church being canceled–and all church events–school events were canceled on Thursday. Which meant that the play my 5th grader has been diligently rehearsing for, that was supposed to run for TWO nights, only ran for one…and only her Grandma got to see it. My 7th grader had a band concert on Wednesday, so my mother-in-law took my fifth grader to her play and saw it while the rest of the family went to see the 7th grader, planning on seeing the play on Thursday. Except. She was also supposed to compete in the state FPS meet–canceled. And since she missed the school performance of her play because of an ill-timed stomach flu, my poor (and very sensitive by nature) 5th grader has had a rough week. And NOW school isn’t canceled, exactly, but the students are dismissed for two weeks. (Although I assume there will be reevaluation then, and I have no idea how that will go.) There will be no library visits, because HEY, the libraries are closed, and no preschool for my 5-year-old, and yowsers. Strange times.

Anyway. Despite the upheaval, I’m still finishing books–mostly audiobooks, but still–and yesterday morning I finished listening to Eva Ibbotson’s The Abominables, which was published posthumously. It’s got a bit of hybrid feel to it, in my opinion; it isn’t quite as given over to absurdities as her other middle grade novels, and yet it doesn’t have much in common with her dramatic youth fiction. There are absurdities, of course–the title creatures are yetis driven (by the encroaching tourism industry) to seek refuge on an English country estate. To get there they must travel in the back of a lorry across part of Asia and most of Europe, and they and their human allies manage to involve themselves with a cruel sultan, a bemused bull, and a tipsy St. Bernard (among others). When the end of their journey is in sight, however, they find themselves up against a level of cruelty they have never imagined, and while much of the resulting message is relayed with Ibbotson’s trademark comic flair, there are some poignantly serious moments as well. Whether its slightly different feel is because it was written at a different time in her career, or whether Ibbotson hadn’t been satisfied (or finished?) with it when she died (published posthumously, remember) I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that The Abominables is both funny and serious–not to mention a little bit strange–and fans of Ibbotson’s, at least, won’t want to miss it.