Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Yes, I’ve been gone for more than half a month, and yes, I have events to catch up on (now that I’ve done the laundry), but we don’t have internet at home right now, so I’m choosing to start by composing and posting book reviews–or at least, one book review–at Britt’s house. Which probably means that it won’t have a working link until Sunday, but we’ll survive, right?

So.  Before we ever left on our Barlow family cruise–which is a big part of what I need to catch up on, but not all of it–I actually managed to finish reading Planet Omar:  Unexpected Super Spy.  (We’re definitely not going to talk about how long it’s been sitting on my shelf instead of being handed off to my son.)  Unexpected Super Spy picks up more or less where Planet Omar: Accidental Trouble Magnet leaves off; Omar and Charlie having become friends with Daniel, the three of them are planning epic Nerf blaster battles when Omar discovers that his family’s mosque is going to close down unless they can raise enough money to replace the roof.  Determined to save it, he embarks on an equally epic fundraising journey (with Charlie and Daniel’s help), only to have the money they raise turn up missing.  Who’s the thief?  Can they find it?  Can the mosque be saved?

The solution to the mystery is kind of fabulous, I have to say.  More than that, however, I appreciate the reality of the sibling dynamics and the portrayal of solid friendships.  (Also the lack of bathroom and gross-out humor.) Omar’s world is an enjoyable place to be, and I love that it’s accessible to my kiddos.  (And me.)  Now, here’s hoping the delay in getting the sequel to him won’t detrimentally affect my son’s enjoyment of it…

My 13-year-old who still enjoys read-alouds prefers realistic fiction over pretty much anything else; when I tell her we need nonfiction for a change of pace, she generally picks books about animals. She never picks books about war or sad things. Which is why you could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when, out of the four nonfiction choices I offered her a few weeks ago, she picked Doreen Rappaport’s Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust. (I threw that in as a choice because I wanted to read it–I never expected her to actually choose it!) She studied Anne Frank this past school year, however, and so she was interested. Even more surprising? She didn’t bail when it got sad, and she was motivated to keep reading. As a result, we finished it together last night.

Unsurprisingly, it was a poignant, fascinating, heartbreaking, and triumphant reading experience. So much death and horror; such carefully laid plans that sometimes succeeded but often–at least partially–failed; so much loss; and yet, amidst it all, such triumph when some survived. The Jewish committee deserves to have these stories told; it deserves to have its bravery remembered. Full of fascinating facts, photographs, and stories–some untold by anyone until now–Rappaport’s record should be on middle school shelves (and in middle school classrooms) everywhere.

In the meantime, today ends the first week of summer break, and while it’s possible my children are unimpressed with the general lack of group outings, I’m getting stuff done. Go me!

It’s seriously been a week, folks. Starting with my two teenagers leaving all their bathroom stuff in Clearfield after staying over last Sunday night (including prescriptions, retainers, and braces elastics), DESPITE my pointing out to them that mid-Memorial Day, when no cousins were over and nothing much was going on, would be a good time to pack that stuff up–yeah, I was frustrated. We had our four day last-week-of-school, including random PTA things, a birthday party, and 5th grade graduation (not a huge deal, but still a thing), and then last weekend my oldest babysat and ended up having a really rough weekend, a hailstorm necessitated bailing water out of the girls’ bedroom’s window well, and my hubby and I taught Sunday School. Yesterday I drove my odd-numbered children all over creation to all the things–I’m pretty sure I had at least three bouts of home-for-20-minutes-only-to-leave-again–which brings us to today. There are still errands, but (thankfully!) fewer of them.

In the meantime, I finished I Funny: A Middle School Story–by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein–yesterday, and sadly, I was unimpressed. I know I’m not the target audience, but I read a great deal of middle grade fiction. Middle grade can (and frequently does) inspire an incredible range of emotions; at its best, it’s full of depth, feels, and awesomeness. (Can you tell my kids are home for the summer and my concentration for this review is a bit off?) I Funny, by contrast, was full of a LOT of jokes, a Roald Dahl sort of family, and some very notable gaps. It isn’t fair to give away key plot points, but multiple key bits of relationship development between Jamie and multiple other people were just–missing. As in, wait. How did we get HERE? And whoa, how did a whole bunch of people switch from one distinct emotion to another completely different and distinct emotion without any actual cause? Add to that the contrast between, on the one hand, the tone of the book and Jamie’s character and, on the other hand, Jamie’s backstory, and you get a book that makes wild and nonsensical leaps from one emotional place to another. Now–to be fair–I can see more than a few middle school boys accepting those leaps and enjoying the book; once again, it’s full of jokes, the underdog triumphs (although with less effort than a good underdog movie portrays), and that age group often finds emotions baffling anyway. That said, however, there are better books out there. My son says he’s interested, so I’ll let you know what he thinks, but I’d stick to interested or reluctant readers for this one.*

*To give credit where it’s due, however, I did really enjoy Jamie’s constantly changing back-of-his-wheelchair bumper stickers.

I’m very consistent about entering what I’m reading into Goodreads, peeps. And I may take much longer to review the books than I do reading them, but it happens eventually. Bafflingly, however, I completely missed marking Jane L. Rosen’s Nine Women, One Dress as ‘currently reading,’ which means that I have to guess completely at my start and finish dates. Sad story! On the other hand, it was a good enough book that it’s worth it.

So. As with Not If I Can Help It, I decided to listen to Nine Women, One Dress on a whim, despite it NOT being one of my dozens of audio holds. My friend Britt had recommended it, however, and I was in the mood for something new; this story of one particular little black dress–a size small of the must-have little black dress of the season–definitely fit the bill. Not all of the nine women who wear the dress are likable (and some of them barely wear it at all!), but who doesn’t love to hate the occasional awful character? Add to that the fantastic almost-90 designer of the dress (not to mention the size small in question’s hilariously awful demise), and you’ve got a thoroughly enjoyable thread of a story. It’s the dress that connects the characters, but their stories reach out and grab you, and the lovely serendipity of the end made me smile. If you’re looking for a book to make you laugh, cry a little, and smile with satisfaction this summer, don’t miss this one!

In other news, yesterday was Field Day at the elementary school, and I guilted myself onto the committee this year, so I went for the whole of it. How sitting in the shade in a camp chair and cutting hundreds of Otter Pops in half (while repeating “Yes, seconds, NO THIRDS” over and over and over and over and OVER) could leave me so ridiculously exhausted and sore I will NEVER know, but there you have it. It went well and I survived, however, and that’s what matters. Whether I’ll manage to guilt myself into it NEXT year? Well, THAT’S another matter entirely…

Today starts the last week of school, since yesterday was Memorial Day. Last week I managed a trip to the temple, my 8th grader had a band concert, and all three of my girls attended Saturday birthday parties. We stayed with my in-laws on Sunday night so we could meet to visit graves yesterday morning–and by we I mean my hubby and I, all three of our girls, and the two cousins who fall in between my older girls. (Our son stayed at one of those cousin’s houses.) After graves we went to the grocery store together–chips and soda were purchased along with the intended veggies–and I cut my hubby’s hair, so it was a productive day. It was an odd sort of start-of-the-summer-BBQ with our family facing school the next day, but we left at a decent time without too much gnashing of teeth, and for that I was wildly grateful.

Today has been a ‘do a random assortment of little things’ day, and the next of those little things is a review, since I finished Carolyn Mackler’s Not If I Can Help It last week. (Because when you have almost forty audio holds already, checking out a completely different audiobook is clearly the way to go.) It’s one I got at the library sale to donate to the school for literacy night, except that it came under the category of ‘sounds good enough that I want to read it first.’ My 8th grader will likely want to read it next, so we’ll see if she wants to keep it or pass it on; in the meantime, I found it occasionally frustrating but still both engaging and enjoyable. Willa’s sensory processing disorder is portrayed in a completely accessible way, and given that I haven’t read ANY other intermediate fiction that does so, it’s probably a worthwhile read for that alone. (I’m not claiming there isn’t any out there–there’s plenty I haven’t read, of course–but I’ve read enough to be surprised at how much more this does for the topic than anything else in my experience.)

Fortunately, however, its portrayal of SPD (I’m abbreviating it for simplicity here) isn’t the only reason it’s worthwhile. Willa and Ruby’s friendship is a shining example of friendship at its best, and it’s nice to see adults I’m not mad it. (Yes, unpleasant adults can be completely realistic, but we need both kinds in literature!) There were a few moments that tapped perfectly into my own grade school memories–one of them being the teacher bringing in Munchkins for a class party–and while you could argue that no one should wait so long to tell their children about a new romantic relationship (E.L. Kongisburg DID argue that very thing in one or two of her more recent books, as powerfully as she did just about everything), you can also look at why they did it and think ‘well, yeah, that also makes sense.’ The last dramatic conflict and its near-perfect resolution was a little too orchestrated, perhaps, but overall, this is a book that does a good job pointing out that our personal circumstances can give us completely different perspectives on the same event; it also does a good job representing how that might play out, and what can help all parties deal with that event. If you know or love someone with sensory processing disorder–OR like a good school story about friends–don’t miss this one.

I’d really prefer to be blogging more regularly than once or twice a week; on the other hand, well–life. In the meantime, highlights of the past week include:

*My oldest meeting with a psychiatrist. We liked her, she was knowledgeable and helpful, and we’ll be weathering a medication change in the hopes of better things to come. (Although we already bailed on the sleep aid that’s really a blood pressure medication, because she was exhausted and dizzy and told me she almost blacked out at school a couple of times.)

*That same oldest passed her driver’s test! We still have to take her test results to the DMV to get her license, but I’m just so dang excited that she passed. She still needs practice, which is complicated because she hates actually driving (just like her mother), but the stress of taking the test is done AND she’ll have a federally issued photo id for the cruise next month. Hallelujah!

*Sadly, our piano teacher is taking a break from teaching come fall, so she had a reception for her students and their families on Saturday. We brought cookies and visited–my second girlie made the cookies–and we’ll miss her. (Not to mention that we’ve got to find a new teacher now…)

*Other bits–my 13-year-old had an orthodontist appointment, I went to my cousin’s daughter’s bridal shower, my son came down with a spectacular summer cold, my hubby had digestive troubles all weekend, there was a PTA breakfast/sort-of-meeting Friday morning, and my 13-year-old and I finished our current read-aloud. Which brings us to…

*A review! Specifically of Merci Suarez Can’t Dance (please imagine an accent over the ‘a’ in Suarez), which was every bit as good as its predecessor. This second Merci book sees Lolo declining–which was hard for me, given my dad’s dementia–and Tia and Simon dating; it also sees a bumpy sort of evolution in Merci and Edna’s relationship. (Not to mention that with Merci being assigned to work with a BOY classmate in the school store, there are other evolutions as well–age appropriate ones, though.) If you want a book about real seventh grade struggles and triumphs, real family struggles and triumphs, and people you can’t help but care about, don’t miss Merci Suarez. We’re psyched for the third book!

I didn’t manage a third review yesterday, but I’m back again today, so I’m calling that a win.

I think I acquired The Angels of Morgan Hill as a hand-me-down a few years ago, and during one of my periodic “let’s see what random titles in this stack of books are available on audio” whims, I found it available to borrow immediately and decided to give it a try. I’m not sure I really knew what to expect; what I found, however, was a thought-provoking story with real poignancy as well as hope. As a mother myself, I identified more with Fran than I did with Jane, even though it’s Jane who’s (more or less) the narrator. Being a mother is hard when your husband is a good, supportive father and you have enough money to pay the bills and then some; being a mother with an alcoholic for a husband* and too little money to even be called frugal would be something else again. Add to that a boatload of social and cultural pressures and you hurt for Fran, who aims to do the right thing without flinching. This is a book about love, race, and community, and while I hesitate to describe the plot in detail the book flap’s description wasn’t willing to provide, it’s also a book about the choices we make that matter the most. If you’re looking for a read about the triumph of hope over hate and despair, give The Angels of Morgan Hill a try.

*On the plus side, the alcoholic’s funeral is covered in chapter one, so Fran has that going for her–mostly. (Even alcoholic husbands bring home a little money occasionally.)

Graphic memoirs for teens about college graduates aren’t always a good option for my 13-year-old, but Alex Graudins’ Improve: How I Discovered Improv and Conquered Social Anxiety is a solid exception. (Technically, I suppose, the first 20 pages cover Alex’s life before college, and the next 15-20 cover college, but she’s a graduate before page 40.) Instead of being a generalized memoir–which might have involved serious relationships and other middle-school-inappropriate activities–Improve really does focus on Graudins’ anxiety struggles and what improv did to help her manage them. (It IS possible that the number of pages devoted to describing different improv games might not fascinate my girlie, but I found them interesting, and if she’s bored, she can skim, right?) Improv as therapy might be more of a specialized idea, but Graudins’ openness about her struggle and the normalcy with which she refers to therapy and medication are a beautiful thing. We need more books–fiction and non–that normalize mental health struggles and their treatment, and this is a solid option. I’ll let you know if it inspires my older girls to investigate the world of improv!

I see it’s been a week–technically just over a week?–since I’ve been on, and yet it wasn’t AS busy a week as it has been lately. My 8th grader performed a duet at a care center after school on Tuesday, requiring a chauffeur, and Wednesday and Thursday were PTA Convention. Friday was an errand sort of day, and Saturday involved a fair amount of laundry and some time home with just my son and me. (Most of it was good, although it ended in tears.) My hubby took the girls to see their cousin in her Junior High’s “The Little Mermaid” AND did the necessary Walmart shopping for yesterday’s dinner, so that was fantastic. My mother-in-law came for dinner yesterday after dropping my father-in-law off at the airport for a trip, so we had two kinds of cake for dinner–and I ate way, WAY too much of it. (Because Rhubarb Custard Cake–as well as homemade German Chocolate Cake.) Such was the week!

In the meantime, I have at least four completed books waiting for review, and so I’m starting with the audio that’s due and not renewable tomorrow. Freya Sampson’s The Last Chance Library showed up on the newest audio titles list on Libby several months ago, and it sounded appealing enough that I went ahead and put it on hold right then–because how could I possibly resist a book about a quirky group of oddballs banding together to save a local library? And I’m glad I did, because it was totally worth it (even if I didn’t love Mrs. B’s use of the F-word). June as a heroine required some patience from me–she’s debilitatingly shy, yes, but she’s also unable to see her future realistically for the first half or so of the book–but seeing her evolve was rewarding. I think what I liked best, however, was how realistically hopeful the conclusion was. You want the fairy tale ending, of course–at least, I certainly did–and yet there’s a wholly different kind of pleasure in an ending that manages to be both likely and completely satisfying. Library lovers–don’t miss this one.

Here I am, popping in again. I’ve got to get more regular with my posts again, but it seems like I never feel mentally energetic enough. Since I posted last, I put away my long-sleeved shirts and pulled out my t-shirts, sorted through clean laundry that’s been sitting around waiting for me to make a decision about it, and projected and lunched with Brittany–that was Thursday. On Friday I knitted, went to a focus group of women hosted by Holiday Oil, and washed the hair I was too tired to wash on Thursday night before picking up my oldest from school after 2 AP tests. My youngest and I went to her close friend’s baptism on Saturday and then rushed off to a birthday party; my hubby picked her up while I took my oldest to the chiropractor. We watched “Madagascar” for our family movie night and ordered Chipotle, which was fine but less exciting than I was hoping. (Am I going to get death threats for admitting that?) Today I taught Sunday School solo, since my hubby’s back has been killing him, and after a brief walk and visit with a friend, enjoyed a lovely Sunday afternoon nap.

But–as I mentioned–I’m up now. And since I currently have three or four completed books waiting to be reviewed, why not work on that? Jamie Sumner’s Time to Roll has been hanging around for a week or more, hoping for its chance in the spotlight, and since it’s getting passed on to my 13-year-old, it feels like a good place to start. (Although if you haven’t read Roll with It, that’s a better place to start. You’ll miss things if you jump into the middle of Ellie’s story.) Ellie’s facing a summer with her dad and stepfamily, since her mom is heading off on her honeymoon, which is how her friend Coralee manages to rope her into entering the Little Miss Boots and Bows Pageant. You’ll have to read the book to find out if Ellie manages to survive the experience–not to mention see how being a Little Miss shakes up her friend and family relationships. It’s not a long read (the story itself feels a little fast, to be honest), but there are laughs and feels as well as more than one helping of honesty and growth. Put this one on your summer list!