Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I delayed a day sort of on purpose, because I spent Thursday doing housework and sweating over my treasurer’s reports with Britt’s help, and yesterday cleaning the living room with the kids, going to Costco, and doing odds and ends of things. AND I finished Jamie Sumner’s The Summer of June last night, so I can now review that for you. And it was good.

(I’m pretty sure Cynthia DiDonato would not appreciate those two sentences in a row beginning with ‘and’. If she’s no longer alive, she’s probably rolling in her grave, but hey–it’s Saturday, and realistically, standards are looser.)

June Delancey starts off her summer by shaving her head–but only because she pulls hair out when she’s anxious. Having no hair to pull out, however, doesn’t make the anxiety go away, and even though when her mom sees her, she shaves her own head in solidarity, she’s still having a rough time coping. And when she meets a few new people who want to befriend her, June is resistant, especially since a couple of her mom’s past boyfriends have made it even harder for an already anxious girl to trust people. Still, as she struggles through her choices, she eventually discovers a healthy coping mechanism, a few more ‘safe people’, and courage she’d only hoped she possessed.

I really enjoyed this one, especially since the last Sumner novel I read was a little less my thing. I have more than one child struggling with anxiety, and while they don’t (KNOCK ON WOOD) struggle quite as badly as June, Sumner’s message of compassion and healthy strategies for dealing with whatever issues we face is still a deeply relevant one. If you love someone with anxiety–especially a child–you should read this book.

That’s tonight for you, folks. I recognize that it’s already close to 9:30, but I went to the Layton temple with family this morning and spent most of the rest of the day running kids around and completing errands. (SO HOT…) When I finished my scripture study, however, I turned to Booki Vivat’s Meet Me on Mercer Street, since I was close to done with it, and thus, you have a review today. Lucky you!

My now-14-year-old and I read Booki Vivat’s ‘Frazzled’ series years ago, when it was new; we both enjoyed it, but until recently, I hadn’t seen anything else by Vivat at our library. Mercer Street came out this year, however, and I promptly used up a precious (read–possibly not even really available) hold space for it. (It’s a fast read, though, so my kiddos should sail through it.) What did I think of it? Honestly, I’m having a hard time quantifying it. I really enjoyed the feel of it–I love it when a neighborhood truly has a sense of community–and yet, from an adult’s perspective, the plot’s a bit uneven. Kacie comes back from a summer with cousins to find that her best friend is gone–another family is living in her apartment and everything–and the store her family owned is being replaced by a soulless chain (my words, but accurate). The way the adults around her are acting, it’s clear there’s something bigger going on, but what? Being an adult myself, the answer is pretty obvious; on the other hand, Kacie’s feelings and thought processes may thoroughly resonate with the book’s intended age group. It’s got a format like the ‘Emmie & Friends’ series–a heavily illustrated novel interspersed with pages of true graphic novel panels–and the message is a nice one. I’ll be interested to see how it goes over with my kiddos, but even though I was aware pretty early on that my not being the intended audience was a drawback, I still enjoyed this one.

I mean–to be fair, my niece and her hubby and kiddos–who are 1 and barely 4–stayed with us on Friday and Saturday nights and went to church with us on Sunday, so we were getting ready for guests last week. And with my older girls gone to girls’ camp, I had no buffers between my 9 and 11-year-olds, who pretty much can’t stop fighting this summer. The older girls got home Friday, my sister and parents got in Thursday, and Thursday evening was my sister-in-law’s birthday, and she just happened to be in Utah for it (even though she lives in Hawaii), which meant a drive to Clearfield. Add to that an impromptu hike with friends, a temple appointment, and a day spent at that friend’s house?

It was legitimately a busy week.

Also, Saturday was my great-nephew’s birthday party–remember how he’s “barely” 4?–so we were gone for much of the afternoon, and then we tended the kiddos that night while my niece and her hubby went to a concert, and their overtired 1-year-old DID NOT ENJOY me giving her a bath. (LOUDLY.) We survived, though, and played a new game on Sunday, and today my sister and I went out to lunch and my parents came to dinner. Tomorrow my son leaves for young men’s camp–he can’t fight with his sister(s) from there, right?–and my car’s supposed to get fixed, so there’s that. Maybe I’ll manage to finish a book, too…

Tuesdays and Thursdays, that is? I guess we’ll see…

Anyway. Our Father’s Day was discombobulated, because after going to our church we hightailed it north to see two of my nephews speak at their church; one just completed a service mission for our church, while the other is leaving on a proselyting mission to Argentina today. And yesterday? I mostly had a very slow start, and the rest of the day continued in the same vein. I used up what energy I had taking care of the last PTA check I’ll ever have to write (knock on wood) and cutting up a watermelon with a bruised side, courtesy of my 11-year-old son standing on it. (Picture eyeroll emoji here.)

Today my littles and I are meeting friends at the park, since my 14-year-old left for Girl’s Camp yesterday (she was on the youth planning committee) and my oldest left this morning. (I’m pondering Taco Tuesday for dinner.) Since that’s not until more like 11, however, I have time to review Angela Cervantes’ Lety Out Loud, which I ended up reading aloud with my 14-year-old. It’s a Pura Belpre (picture an accent over that last “e”) Author Honor book from several years ago, which is why it was on my radar; I picked up a cheap copy at a library sale, I think, and my girlie picked it from the group of choices I presented to her last time we were starting a new book.

Here’s the thing–I think she really enjoyed it, while I thought it was, you know, good. Lety and her friends are thoroughly likeable, and the idea of volunteering at an animal shelter worked well for a setting; the conflict worked as well, although the turnaround by the end was possibly unrealistically positive. I think my problem is just that I wanted more, you know? A little more depth, a little more background, a little more detail in general…you get the idea. And yet, it was certainly enough for its target audience. I suppose the bottom line is this–animal-loving kids will really like this one, but it’s not a must-read for an adult reading on his or her own, partly because it skews a little young. Beyond that, you’ll have to be the judge!

I was an extreme bookworm as a kid. I also lived a good fifteen minute drive from the closest library, and my mother wasn’t the sort to go to the library every week, which meant that I read a goodly portion of the novels we owned multiple times. (Except Gone With the Wind. I spent a significant bit of one summer reading that, but believe me, once was enough.) I reread the books I loved (the Anne books, much of Louisa May Alcott’s children’s fiction, A Little Princess, The Lord of the Rings) and the books I mostly really enjoyed (The Secret Garden, Huckleberry Finn, Black Beauty, my brother’s Black Stallion books); I also read library books, random books acquired from used bookstores, borrowed books, and whatever I felt most in the mood for that was on hand at the time. I even–because I was a fast reader, and I had a quiet childhood, and I didn’t start to get sick reading in the car until I had graduated from high school–read books more than once that I wasn’t that into, just because they were there.

One of those books was Harriet the Spy.

I have a memory of the copy we had having belonged to my mother, although I’m not sure now that that makes sense. It had a blond, stocky, androgynous kid in a red hoodie on the cover, and since it was one of those books that people talked about as being so good–and we owned it, so it was readily available–I read it multiple times. Every time I did, I came away wanting to like it more than I did, but hey, I was a kid, right? And because there are books I completely appreciate now that I didn’t appreciate as a kid, I decided (a month or three ago) to listen to it as an adult, to see what I thought of it now

I still don’t particularly like it.

To be fair, I did find some of the bits I’d completely forgotten about to be entertaining. The parts I vaguely remembered as not liking, however, I mostly still didn’t like, and other parts I’d forgotten about were downright exasperating. Harriet isn’t extraordinarily likeable, although she’s more so if you think of her as on the autism spectrum. I remembered Ole Golly to be more likeable than my adult self found her to be, and her exit from Harriet’s life is far more abrupt (somewhat arbitrary?) than I’d recalled. What really bothers me, however, is that the whole premise is just–wrong. As a spy, and then as the–if I recall correctly–editor of the school paper, Harriet is actually a dismal failure–and no one acknowledges it. No one ever, EVER makes the point that Harriet isn’t writing down facts at all. She’s writing down her opinion of what she sees, as well as frequently speculating based on her opinion, with no effort to self-regulate or fact check. When she’s playing at being a spy, of course, that’s sort of her business, although the kind of person we’re meant to see Ole Golly as would almost certainly have made that point to Harriet multiple times. When she’s writing her speculations in a school publication, however–it boggles the mind. How did no one complain about what she wrote?

It did occur to me that–given what I read about Louise Fitzhugh when determining if I cared about the sequels, which I don’t–she may have been intentionally rebelling against the expectation, for girls, to always be “nice”. My parents were married the year after Harriet was originally published, and my mother was certainly raised to be gracious and tactful, rather than blunt and tactless. Gracious and tactful, however, can easily become (and did in my mother’s case) distinctly passive-aggressive, and if that’s the point Fitzhugh was trying to make, I agree that it’s a point that deserves to be made. Her book, however, fails to make it. Honesty absolutely matters, but true honesty–which sees the good as well as the bad. Harriet doesn’t write down anything positive about ANYONE, as far as I can tell. Her speculations are all negative, to some degree, and although one assumes she sees good things around her OCCASIONALLY, she doesn’t write about them. Harriet isn’t nice, certainly, but she also isn’t honest; she’s negative and self-absorbed.

For those of you who may love the book–well, you do you. (Some of you also probably think Scarlet O’Hara is a role model for girls.) For those of you who haven’t read it and might be considering it–I’d say don’t waste your time.

I might have managed a post yesterday–even though it was late in the day–except that my oldest daughter ended up inviting her boyfriend’s family over to play games, and it was fun–and it lasted until well past 10:30. (More like 11?) And by then, well–no coherence was happening, obviously. On the other hand, while winding down after my shower, I did manage to finish Unplugged and Unpopular, which was an entertainingly over-the-top (and relatively short) graphic novel about the “near future…”

…in which highly intelligent but physically weak aliens are mind-controlling the residents of Los Angeles through their devices, and until Erin gets grounded from screens, only the elderly are on to them. Once Erin’s ‘unplugged,’ she learns the truth–and joins up with her grandma and twin librarians (one of whom is her grandma’s boyfriend) to stop the aliens and rescue their captives, armed with soda cannons, syrup squirters, and a host of other unlikely (preposterous?) weapons. Believable? Not even a little bit. But lots of fun, regardless–especially since the aliens are unexpectedly purple–and furry. There is an occasional lack of consideration on Erin’s part that could have been addressed (or addressed more completely), but considering the general plot and tone of the story, that was probably too much to hope for. On the other hand, there’s commentary and info about managing and balancing screentime from the authors at the end, and that matters. All in all–ridiculous but enjoyable. Grab it for your kiddos this summer!

Last night my husband started the coughing, my oldest had almost no voice at all, and I couldn’t sleep or breathe comfortably through my nose again. Ugh! On the other hand, I did manage to finish Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir this morning, mostly because I was close enough to the end that I wanted to finish it and review it today. So that’s something.

As for what I actually thought of it…hmmm. It’s definitely a boy sort of book–not because there’s a whole pack of boys running around and not many girls, but because of the doses of extreme bathroom humor. (I didn’t find diarrhea terribly entertaining in junior high, let alone now.) Still, it’s an interesting sort of road trip/coming-of-age/cultural experience kind of story, and it gave me a window into Mexican/Mexican-American culture that I didn’t have previously. Pedro’s persistent view of his grandfather through a superhero lens is both humorous and poignant, and the road trip certainly ends with a memorable finale. I’d be interested to know what readers who share at least some of Pedro’s cultural heritage think; as for me, I definitely found it worth reading–but I could have gone my whole life without hearing that many euphemisms/dysphemisms for diarrhea.

Seriously, folks–this is one beast of a summer cold. My throat is starting to hurt, I had to take cold medicine in the middle of the night last night, and oh, the stuffiness and the tired!

Anyway. On the other hand, I did finish reading Stolen Science: Thirteen Untold Stories of Scientists and Inventors Almost Written out of History aloud to my 9-year-old the other day, and it was both a good length for a read-aloud and a fascinating book. And, interestingly enough, it didn’t have quite as many villains as I thought it might; in some cases, one or more colleagues of the scientist/inventor tried to make sure credit was given where credit was due. Sometimes the more villainous prevailed; occasionally, public sentiment did what it wanted to (regardless of the actual facts); and frequently it was a little more complicated. Whatever the circumstances, budding history and science fans will find a wealth of interesting information here–and history’s record is set straighter for this book’s existence. (Yes, that’s an awkward sentence, but I’m sick and tired.)

Bottom line? Middles graders–and adults who lack the time and concentration for longer works about the same topic–should definitely check out this one.

Technically, it wasn’t supposed to be–we were supposed to go to Kanosh to visit our friends there tonight. But there was vomit Saturday, there are eye crusties and sore throats, and clearly we need to hunker down and NOT SHARE whatever plagues we have going on. Which is why, at 10:05, I’m still in my jammies with unbrushed teeth; on the other hand, I’m also reviewing Haven: A Small Cat’s Big Adventure, so that’s something.

Haven is actually by the author of graphic novels Allergic and Squished; surprisingly, though, it isn’t even illustrated. It is short, though–130 pages or so–and thus it felt doable on short notice. The title gives you much of what you need to know about the plot, although it helps if you know that Haven’s big adventure involves trying to get help for her elderly, sick human. Throw in woods, a town, a fox, and a bobcat, and you’ve got plenty of drama in those 130 pages. I’m not sure what my kiddos will think–it doesn’t quite fit what any of them are currently most into–but I’d recommend it anyway.

In the meantime, I’m pondering buying tomato plants today, since I think that’s all we’ll be growing this year. We’re several weeks late, but life happens, right? There are also library books to return and laundry to do, so I imagine we’ll fill the day. (The best part is that my hubby took my car to register it on his lunch break, and my littles are cleaning out his car of their own accord!)