Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

That’s honestly what happened last night, folks. I finished reading Ami Polonsky’s Threads out loud with my 13-year-old by 8:45-ish, but after tucking her in I still had to execute my last minute ‘heart attack the kids for Valentine’s Day’ plan. (The PTA had extra hearts, and I decided my kiddos needed some extra love this year.) My hubby cut out hearts while I did my 10 minutes on the exercise bike, after which I took over and discovered that some names are easier to make acrostics out of than others. (I googled “adjectives beginning with y” and came up with–I kid you not–yawning, yielding, yodeling, and yeasty, among others. Yeasty!) By the time I finished the hearts, taped them up, and checked on the bunnies, my window for coherent written expression had completely closed. Today, however, is library day, and I decided that reviewing it this morning would be totally worth the effort, since it means it can LEAVE MY HOUSE today!

So–Threads. I can’t remember how long I’ve had a library copy floating around my house, and I can’t remember how it popped up on my radar; I only know I was thrilled to realize that it would make a solid read aloud, since I kept not getting to it on my own. The premise sounded fantastic–12-year-old Clara finds the note and photograph that 13-year-old Yuming tucks into a purse made at her factory-prison in China, and, still reeling with grief from the death of her adopted-from-China sister, is determined to find and save her. The direction of the novel, however, was quite different from what I was expecting. Clara and Yuming are not the only significant characters, and their stories mingled differently from how I had anticipated. That said, however, the subtlety of the story ultimately made it feel more real, and the alternating viewpoints helped structure our read-aloud time. Middle graders (and their adults!) should take a look at this one.