Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I just finished (as in on the couch, just now) Kat Fajardo’s Miss Quinces as a possible Christmas gift for my 14-year-old; after reading it, however, I’ve decided to donate it to our local retirement center for a resident to give as a gift instead. (Our local congregation collects gifts for that purpose every year.) It isn’t that it wasn’t good–I was thoroughly engaged–but it is incredibly important to me that my children speak nicely and respectfully to each other, and I didn’t love Sue’s older sister’s treatment of her in the first half of the book. It eventually shifted, which I appreciated, but since the child I was considering gifting it to has a past history of NOT speaking nicely to a younger sibling, well…she’s a lot better now, but why have her reread and reread something that might encourage backsliding?

Still, Miss Quinces is a fun story of a NOT-girly girl trying to cope with family and cultural expectations, not to mention the frustration of not feeling fully American while not feeling Latine enough either.* Sue’s relationship with her grandmother is fantastic, and her extended family is loving and supportive, in their own hectic (and slightly biased) way. And reading the author’s note offers further insight into how the story came to be, which definitely adds to the reading experience. I did struggle, however, with how abrupt the transitions in the book–especially those regarding attitude shifts–are. Ultimately, I liked Miss Quinces and I put it on hold at the library for my own girlies; it doesn’t need to live in my house forever, however, and hence–donation.

* By the way, I did like how the color of the text indicated the language being spoken; that’s an excellent way to tell the story you want to tell without frustrating readers with no real second language skills!

I don’t even feel bad about missing Friday, folks. I spent half of Thursday updating our PTA’s checkbook register, filling out my treasurer’s report, and making two tres leches cakes; on Friday we had a PTA meeting at 9, and while it didn’t actually GO until 11, that’s about when I left the school. I had an hour to whip cream and do whatever else needed doing before heading back at noon (with the cakes) to help set up for the teachers’ luncheon, and I probably didn’t get home from that until close to 3. I put what was left of the cake away, did dishes, took care of small details, and exercised before leaving with my girlies a bit before 5 to head up to Northridge High School to see my niece (their cousin) in “Hairspray.” I was going to have my neighbor fill up my low tire but I didn’t get to it; on the other hand, traffic was unexpectedly fine and weather wasn’t an issue, so we drove around the high school until we found a gas station with air, and my 17-year-old filled up the tire while her sister used the gas station bathroom. Good times! The show was impressive, with a boy playing Motormouth Maybelle and ROCKING it, but reality hit afterwards–the weather had become an issue. As I told my girls on the long and tense-ish drive home, I’m actually not bad at driving in snow, but nobody LIKES driving under those conditions. Thankfully, we made it home without incident, but it was a late night.

As for the rest of the weekend–Saturday we all slept in, making the day seem oddly short, but we did fit in my oldest’s birthday breakfast (finally!), and yesterday my hubby and I said the prayers in church and taught Sunday School, making it a perfect day for a nap after church. And for a bonus–my nephew’s in town for a couple of days and ate and watched the Church’s Christmas Devotional with us. Yay for family!

On the book front, I’ve been frantically trying to find the right graphic novels to gift my children for Christmas, and I’ve got at least two waiting to review, so here’s the first–The BIG Adventures of Babymouse: Once Upon a Messy Whisker, which I scored for $3 at Britt’s kids’ elementary school’s fall book fair. My youngest is definitely going to be getting this one, which is classic Babymouse–humor, pitfalls, friends, an aggressive locker–but it may be for her birthday, since by then she’ll have finished the 20 regular Babymouse books. This first BIG one (it’s listed in all caps on the book itself) deals with possibly the most prevalent issue facing girls today–body image. (Whiskers are part of a mouse’s body, right?) I love the Holm siblings’ ability to balance positive messages with humorously realistic outcomes, and while the last handball game might have been pushing it, I’ll let it slide, because the Babymouse books are just plain good. If you’ve got older elementary or middle grade kiddos, you can’t get much better than Babymouse in the graphic novel department. The books are short and doable for reluctant or struggling readers, but my youngest is a fantastic reader, and she devours them. Try putting Babymouse under your Christmas tree!