Uncategorized 
Comments Off on Ouch Ouch
It was clearly more than just a week, folks. We actually spent Friday the 9th in Logan, the 10 was my youngest girlie’s 9th birthday, and then the next week saw me making dinner for neighbors two days in a row, juggling more kid appointments, and gratefully accepting wheat from neighbors who were getting rid of it. (Which involved schlepping not-light boxes up and down stairs. I also went to the temple, which was very nice.) My son’s basketball season ended with his last game on the 17th, my two older girls went to a surprise birthday party for one of their favorite cousins, which involved spending the night in Clearfield, and–you get the idea. Monday, of course, was a holiday with all the kiddos home, so there was shopping and the day got away from me (not to mention the distractions). Last night my hubby and I got to go to a BYU basketball game in Provo, thanks to tickets from his brother, and since BYU pulled off a home court victory over Baylor, who was ranked 11th to our 25th, it was quite a fun night. And that brings us up to date!
In the meantime, I don’t have to fix dinner tonight, since it’s Zupas night for the elementary school, and so I can actually review one of the books waiting for me to deal with. On Saturday night, while my blessed hubby drove to Clearfield and back to retrieve our teenagers (the younger of which didn’t want to take the train home), I finished Andrea Beatriz Arango’s Something Like Home. It was more quietly poignant than Arango’s Newbery-winning debut, Iveliz Explains It All, and there were fewer random Spanish phrases (most of which I could more easily translate). Honestly? If you take Jamie Sumner’s Tune It Out, mix it with Joan Bauer’s Raising Lumie, and throw in a dash of Cynthia Voigt’s Homecoming, you get a pretty good approximation of the plot of Something Like Home. (Maybe also a dash of Dusti Bowling’s Across the Desert?) Laura’s parents have been sent to rehab, she’s living with an aunt she’s never met, and the reality of a temporary–or not so temporary?–living arrangement/existence is complicated. Who (and what) helps, how Laura comes to terms with the upheaval she’s experienced, and what life is going to look like going forward is the crux of this verse novel, and a solid verse novel it is. I ended up feeling like Laura’s mental transition happened a bit abruptly, that there was less of a gradual transition than I might have expected, but I did read it over an extended period of time, so that may have been on me. In the meantime, this is a book for those whose families aren’t typical but are still families, and goodness knows we need those in our world. Give it a shot!