Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Seriously, though. My hubby and my two younger girls are quite impressive on that front; my oldest and I are more into blowing our noses; and my son is proving to be a switch hitter (so to speak). And have we got a week coming up…

Ugh.

On the good news front, however, I have finished Svetlana Chmakova’s new ‘Berrybrook Middle School’ graphic novel, which is going to make my 13-year-old very happy. Enemies is, I’m pleased to report, another win–a poignant portrayal of the complexities of being a sibling and a pitch-perfect reminder of why friendships (especially middle school friendships) can be so hard. Felicity’s struggles make her relatable for almost anyone, even if you have to ask your husband what the gamer acronyms stand for. (He came through, don’t worry.) Will she and Tess be able to come up with a dynamite idea for the entrepreneur contest? Is Joseph Koh Felicity’s enemy? Will the kids who do the work on group projects manage to turn the tables on those who don’t? The answers are here, folks. If you haven’t encountered Chmakova before, get yourself off to the bookstore (or library) and rectify that situation ASAP!

In the meantime, it might be a good time to buy stock in Kleenex and cold medicine.

Once upon a few years ago, I started reading Tracey Hecht’s second “Nocturnals” book–The Ominous Eye–aloud to my three older children. (At the time, my youngest was too young to listen to a longer book read in chapter increments.) We’d already read the first one together and enjoyed it, so it seemed like a no brainer, right? Except that we started the second one towards the end of the summer, and once school started, it became too blasted difficult to find a time of day that worked to read to all three of them. The Ominous Eye sat gathering dust, and ultimately my oldest and my son lost interest in being read to, while my second girlie’s tastes grew more definitely towards realistic fiction. As a group, we officially bailed on it; I, however, had already marked it as “reading” on Goodreads, and my OCD really wanted me to just finish it on my own.

Reader, I finally did.

It took effort, I have to say; Hecht’s tone works better for a read-aloud, at least for me, and the plot is the type that happens to annoy me personally. I’ve never liked spending the majority of the book frustrated because almost everyone is under the villain’s spell, so to speak, meaning no one’s listening to the sensible hero. And while the villain in The Ominous Eye isn’t–quite–a villain, it does take the majority of the book for the forest creatures to see the truth. Bismark’s absurdities grew a little tired–perhaps because I’m not the target audience–and Dawn felt a little less leader-like, while Tobin just seemed kindly dim and Polyphema unlikely. Young readers might fall under Poly’s spell and fear the ‘Beast’, but overall, I wouldn’t recommend this one for an adult read.*

*On the other hand, if you loved the first one and it was totally your thing, you might enjoy this one as well. Let me know what you think!

I finished listening to Katherine Center’s What You Wish For the other day, and I’m of two minds about it. On the one hand, a school librarian heroine? I’m pretty much sold. And there’s plenty of banter and wit and fun–as well as feels. On the other hand, the story felt a little creaky, if you know what I mean. The bad guy was bad in all the ways, but not all the ways made sense with each other; multiple characters’ turnarounds felt rather, well, SWEEPING; and really, pretty much ALL of the characters did things that felt orchestrated rather than organic. (A lot of “the plot needed this and so Character X will do this to make that happen”, if you know what I mean.) Samantha-the-school-librarian and Duncan-the-formerly-fun-loving-teacher-turned-military-style-principal have a fun story with a satisfying ending; just don’t examine the details too closely.

On the other hand, if you want a tasty new muffin recipe, try these Orange Muffins. They’re not exactly low-fat–we didn’t butter them, figuring the recipe had done that for us–but the taste is lovely and using bottled orange juice for the glaze worked just fine. Using part whole wheat flour messed with the texture a bit, but for my kiddos, the extra fiber is generally worth it. Make that call for yourself, as long as you also make the muffins!

Silly was what my daughter called me when I was crying during our final read-aloud session of Lisa Graff’s Umbrella Summer–the stinker. What’s a mom supposed to do when the entire book is about Annie’s progress in dealing with the death of her brother–and her parents’ progress, too? Which I suppose makes the book sound heavy and serious, but Graff balances heartbreak and humor with impressive deftness. Jared died because he had an incredibly rare heart problem that no one knew about, and so Annie’s all about caution now, because what if? Only she’s out of money for more Band-aids and her caution is starting to affect her relationships, while her parents are struggling too much with their own grief to give her quite as much help as she needs. With the help of a new neighbor, pillows, and the unexpected narrowness of bowling shoes, however, Annie manages to find her way through–even if there’s some very un-Junior-Sunbird-(read: Girl Scout)-like behavior along the way. Yes, I cried; I also laughed out loud. This companion novel to Lost in the Sun* is a journey you shouldn’t miss.

*I read Lost in the Sun first, although it appears to have been published years after Umbrella Summer. I’d maybe read them in publication order if I had a do-over, but I don’t think it matters all that much.

Right? Because it’s been almost a week. (Although to be fair, April is turning out to be a busy month.) Tuesday afternoon was all about the dentist and dance; Wednesday morning I took the car in to get the dent from my oldest’s run-in with a Lexus looked at and then spent the middle of the day at Britt’s, helping with party prep; Thursday I worked on cleaning up my desk area and then had lunch with my hubby (and two of his work friends, because it was the junior high’s Cafe Rio fundraiser); Friday I knitted, made egg salad (there’s been a lot of that going around), took kids to piano, and took my oldest shopping for prom shoes; and Saturday I took my oldest to the school for a mock AP test at 7:20, took my 13-year-old to Britt’s daughter’s birthday party and stayed to help, and then went home to do Saturday things. Yesterday was a lovely Sunday, really; my hubby was sore and tired and struggled to get going, but he made it to be sustained, stayed to be my audio/visual man during my Sunday school lesson, and then got set apart after church. AND participated in the setting apart of our second girlie! (If you’re wondering, being sustained and set apart is simply part of getting a temporary volunteer assignment in our church.) Our afternoon was kind of the perfect family time–an Easter egg hunt in which the kids hid for the parents and then the parents hid for the kids, a break in which I headed over to get knitting help, a family game of Bottle Bash, and then collaboration over dinner and a couple of episodes of “Ghostwriter.”

I’m still really grateful for how nice of a Sunday afternoon that was.

In other news, I finally finished listening to Remy Lai’s Pie in the Sky this week. I honestly can’t remember why I ended up pausing it to listen to other things, but I did and just finally got back to it. (I also just got back to this post, which I started yesterday and then got distracted from. Sigh.) You know the kind of book that you find solidly good–and moving–but that you know you’d get more out of if you shared more experiences with the narrator? Totally Pie in the Sky for me. Jingwen’s difficulties with making friends in a new school when he’s barely able to communicate in a new language tugged at my heartstrings, and his grief over his father’s death was palpable. I’m not a fancy baker myself, but it was still easy to get pulled into Jingwen’s determination to bake the fancy cakes his Papa intended to sell someday, once they all moved to Australia and he opened a new bakery; I could also feel his desolation and bewilderment at having to make the move without his father. What I lack experience with is being the oldest–and being a brother. The brother thing might not matter so much–I’m a sister with a sister, after all–but I’m the youngest, not the oldest, and Pie in the Sky is so clearly Jingwen’s story. It was just, well, slightly disconnecting to recognize my likeness to Yanghao (the younger brother) while still experiencing the book through Jingwen’s eyes.

On the other hand, it was still good, and a slightly different expression of the immigrant experience than I’m used to. The illustrations (which include occasional comic panels) integrate nicely as part of the story, and yet the audiobook deals with those illustrations surprisingly well (I listened but flipped through the physical copy afterward to experience the art). This is a good book in general, but if you have a son with younger siblings who is struggling with a move or the loss of a father figure, I’d say it’s a must read.

It was a big weekend, people. On Thursday the 6th I had a Field Day Committee meeting for PTA, went to Costco, picked up and dropped off kids, and then went to the elementary school art show with my family, (except that I had to leave that early so I could go to my Stake Women’s Conference committee meeting). My treasurer’s report happened AFTER I got home for the night, because Friday morning was our regular PTA meeting (and my third meeting in 24 hours). I went straight from there to donate blood and then came straight back to the school to write a big check for our Little Caesar’s pizza cards (we sold them for our fundraiser), went home, ate lunch, picked up kids, went to piano, picked up the last kid, and went to dye eggs. By the time we got home it was scramble scramble to feed people and pack them off to bed, after which Easter things needed to happen.

On Saturday morning we had our chocolate muffins and then woke the 16-year-old up at 9 so we could do Easter baskets; after that it was a hodgepodge of family scripture time, chores, lunch, more chores, my hubby’s birthday dinner, and then scrambling to leave for a Grizzlies (hockey) game at which our high school’s choir sang the national anthem. (And then reading Easter scriptures in the parking lot because we got there in plenty of time.) That was totally fun, except that it was longer than I realized to begin with and then there was a delay because some of the glass around the rink cracked, so we ended up leaving early–which was fine with everyone but my son, who wanted to stay and did NOT appreciate being outvoted.

Easter Sunday started early, since my oldest sang in the choir and left early for practice and my hubby and I said the prayers in sacrament meeting and so needed to be on time for sure; after church we made birthday treats for my hubby, prepped a salad, and then headed up to Clearfield. Easter dinner was more like lunch, which worked out better than I expected because I could feed the littles rolls and ham and let them pick at the leftover salad in the car on the way home. I thought we’d done well at bedtime, too, until I got a text from my daughter’s friend, checked on her, and realized just how depressed she was feeling–and then was too worried myself to settle to much else for the rest of the night. Yesterday was a day of do, chill, do, and chill, but at least I did two towel washes, ran the dishwasher twice, took my son to his appointment, ran an errand with my oldest, and fed people real food. Which brings us to this morning!

Today is actually going to be another day of tasks until after school, which will be a blur of the dentist and dance. One of those tasks, however, is to review Sophie Escabasse’s Witches of Brooklyn, which I started in December, put down when I decided against it as a Christmas gift, and just recently picked up again. Luckily, it was totally cute, so this review isn’t a hardship to write; the only reason I didn’t gift it to my youngest is that Effie does some adult-sassing at the beginning, when she’s grieving her mother and left to live with two aunts she doesn’t know. Understandable? Completely. It’s just that my youngest doesn’t need any ideas/help/prompts in the sass department, you know? What’s nice is that the sassing turns into a teasing relationship with one of the aunts that reminds me of how my dad and I used to be. Effie settles in quickly–because hey, it’s a kids’ graphic novel–and ends up quite thoroughly involved in the magic she didn’t know ran in her family. Her friends are fun, the crisis-to-be-dealt-with is both original and entertaining, and all comes right in the end. Mid-elementary to junior high and beyond should enjoy this one!

In the meantime, please keep my oldest in your prayers. Life is hard right now.

In the interest of full disclosure, I only listened to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats for a book group; it isn’t actually my thing. And I might be coming to this review a bit cranky, since I woke up at four prepared to roll over and go back to sleep and then spilled my water, which propelled me into actual wakefulness. (It’s now 5:30 and I’m just going to be tired today.) Even so–meh.

I like fairy tales–I really do. I just prefer a fairy tale to BE a fairy tale, and not a book that declaims “I am deep!” loudly into my ear. Even without the problematic narration, Hearing Heartbeats was just too “I’m sharing deep, mystical truths from the Far East with the unaware American” for me–and yet, the problematic narration is hard to ignore. U Ba is stereotypically poor-but-perfectly-serene-and-wise, and the contrived “I often go days barely speaking so I’m weary and must stop now” first pause in his (incredibly long) narrative is belied by the length of subsequent narrative sessions. (Also, why do male authors think it’s a good idea to describe a parent having sex to his or her child in dialogue? I’m looking at you, too, Robert Waller.)

I can pinpoint when Sendker started to lose me; U Ba is describing how Mi Mi manages to be not only graceful, but clean and neat with unsoiled clothing and uncalloused hands even though she lives in a poor mountain village and has to crawl on her hands and knees daily. His American listener reacts with incredulity–that her father would leave his family for a cripple. Seriously? THAT’S what you can’t accept? By the time Mi Mi starts rolling cheroots (with astonishing speed and skill, no less) that have a special taste because she is so beautiful and full of love…yeah, not so much.

It isn’t just Mi Mi herself that is so special and beautiful, however.* Her love for Tin Win–and his for her–is special and beautiful and magically trusting and true in spite of anything and everything that happens. (On the flip side, the characters that we are meant to dislike are absurdly devoid of likable qualities.) That, of course, is why it’s fairy tale love–it isn’t at all realistic. The problem is that Sendker instead turns it into an ideal he implies is attainable through–what? Enlightenment? Faith? Who knows.

This is turning into a bit more of a rant than I’d intended, and I didn’t hate the book. I just found it, well–cheesy. (I revert to overusing double dashes when I’m tired–did you notice?) One Goodreads reviewer noted that people who like Paulo Coelho will probably like The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, while people who don’t, won’t. Honestly, that’s probably as accurate as anything I can think of. You can take it–or not take it–from there.

*Mrs. Didonato’s voice in my head is not pleased that I didn’t tuck in that ‘however’, but I preferred the way it sounded at the end of that particular sentence. It’s still, however, hard to defy that voice.

Not for ME, you understand. But one of the reasons I didn’t manage to post before now is that the kids and I headed up to Logan last Friday to hang with my great nephew while my niece and her hubby went to the hospital so she could get induced. (She was only at 36 weeks, but her amniotic fluid was low.) It was snowing and visibility got a little sketchy, but we’d prayed for the roads to be fine, and the roads were fine, and we were grateful. We packed a lot in–the Lazy One outlet, the Olive Garden, and Gossner Dairy–before my sister came to take over and we headed back to Clearfield for dinner and then home. (It was a longer drive than usual because Sardine Canyon was closed on the way up, and I was too afraid of people getting carsick to face it on the way back.)

Saturday and Sunday were taken up with General Conference, tasks, and family, and so you have me today! And while I DID finish an audiobook this morning, that’s not the review you get, because my 13-year-old and I finished reading Merci Suarez Changes Gears (please pretend there’s an accent over that first “a”!) last Sunday–as in, a week ago yesterday. And if I review it today, it can go back to the library tomorrow, which means it will be out of my house, and that’s always a good thing.

The simplest thing to say about Merci Suarez, of course, is that you should just go read it yourself, because it was excellent; that, however, would be a copout. Merci is smart, hardworking, and NOT one of those sixth graders who race frantically into adolescence and all of the changes it brings. She loves soccer and wishes boy-girl relations at school weren’t all weird now, but she has bigger problems; her beloved grandfather is starting to act strangely and forget things, her relationship with her older brother is up and down, and her twin cousins (who live next door) drive her crazy. At school, the queen bee of her class is making her life difficult and friend groups are shifting, which is MORE complicated because she’s a scholarship student there; her family isn’t rich like most of her classmates’ families. How she deals with what life brings her is at the heart of Meg Medina’s Newbery Medal-winning novel, and isn’t that something we all need practice with?

Seriously, though. You should read it. My girlie and I are definitely planning on reading the sequel together–and probably the sequel’s sequel. We’ll keep you posted!

War Games by Audrey and Akila Couloumbis is my second experience this year with a fiction writer writing a nonfiction family story, and both times the reading was a bit of a struggle for me. To be fair, I’ve never preferred novelized nonfiction, but it also feels like the middle grade fiction writers in question seem a bit stilted when writing something true. I guess it could be just me, but…

Anyway.

War Games is technically co-written by a Newbery Honor winner and her husband, whose story it is; it takes place at the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Greece during WWII. Petros–the character based on Akila Couloumbis–is struggling with typical frustrations, such as wanting his big brother not to treat him like a baby, as well as wartime difficulties, such as destroying or burying everything in their house that would give away the secret that he and his siblings were born in America. When his family learns that a German commander will be coming to board with them, complications abound, especially since returning members of the Greek army keep showing up at their farm. I honestly wonder if I’d have been more captivated by this story were I a boy who related to the things Petros, his cousins, his friends, and his brother do; as it was, it was an interesting story but slow going. I think, though, that if the premise interests you, you should try it yourself rather than take my word for it. If you do, tell me what you think!

Okay, I haven’t been doing individual reviews for every Babysitters Club or Baby-Sitters Little Sister graphic novel, but Karen’s Birthday: A Graphic Novel tugged at my heartstrings. All Karen really wants for her 7th birthday is her family all together, but her divorced parents (both of them remarried) misunderstand what she’s asking for. I hurt for Karen in this one–and wanted to shake her parents in a “has it not occurred to you to wonder if THIS might be the problem?” kind of way–but the ending was both realistic and positive. Elementary schoolers straddling two families should definitely read this one.