Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I do have a book to review, but I was up before 5 with my sick 4-year-old, whose 9 am appointment confirmed my third girl with strep in as many days.  That doesn’t do much for my brain to begin with, and what coherence I have is taken up with wondering if I’ll end up waking up early with my son tomorrow and taking HIM in.  (He says his throat feels fine, but that could change at any time, right?)  You’ll have to wait for your review; in the meantime, may this plague pass you by!

Seriously, folks.  Britt read All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook years ago and more or less informed me I was borrowing it because she knew I would likely love it even more than she did.  It’s been sitting on my shelf ever since, awaiting its turn–and now that I’ve read it, I wish I’d given it that turn long ago.  I loved this like I loved Gary D. Schmidt’s Okay for Now, and I had some of the same sorts of feels at the end.  (I’m not giving any spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that.)  GO READ THIS BOOK NOW!

Of course, that doesn’t tell you much about it.  Perry and his mom live at Blue River Coed Correctional Facility in the tiny town of Surprise, Nebraska; his mom is up for parole shortly and a new life seems within their reach when the district attorney discovers the details of Perry’s existence.  The DA is immediately convinced that Perry must be removed from such an environment, and suddenly life as he knows it has turned completely upside down.  Perry longs for his mother–and the rest of his unconventional but very real “family”– from his new foster home.  How Perry, his mother, and the rest of Leslie Connor’s memorable cast of characters find their way forward is a difficult, beautiful, joyful, and amazing journey to experience.

This book ought to be read by the world.

Sheila Turnage’s third Mo & Dale mystery, The Odds of Getting Even, was a pleasure to listen to (I can still hear the narrator’s lovely North Carolina drawl).  Mo and Dale of Three Times Lucky–plus Harm and a few other characters we met in The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing–are back; this time they’re worrying about testifying at Dale’s daddy’s trial when Mr. Macon escapes instead and (apparently) goes on a far-reaching crime spree.  Add in a newly (and suddenly) arrived newspaper reporter, a boyfriend for Miss Rose, a litter of imminent (royal!) puppies, and massive amounts of collard greens, and you’ve got a story full of poignancy and laughter that parents will be loving right along with their middle graders.  Don’t miss this series, folks–it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

My second girlie picked out Jennifer L. Holm’s Swing It, Sunny at the library over the summer; this week I finally got around to reading it myself so that I’m ready for Sunny Rolls the Dice when it gets released next month.  It’s been a few years since I read Holm’s first Sunny book, so I can’t make fair comparisons, but I probably liked this one about as much as its predecessor.  Holm’s graphic novels are good books; the Sunny series particularly tells stories that ring true in a style that’s both accessible and compassionate.  I don’t think her graphic offerings are quite the caliber of Raina Telgemeier’s, Valerie Jamieson’s, or Svetlana Chmakova’s, but she has some pretty amazing traditional novels, which makes her talent impressive in its scope.  Swing It follows Sunny after her troubled-teen brother is sent to a military-type boarding school; she misses her brother the way he used to be, but when he comes home for visits he isn’t that person at all.  Sunny’s support people help her along, however, and the ending is a hopeful one.    If you have mid- to upper-elementary graphic novel fans–OR you know kids who are dealing with a sibling’s poor choices–don’t miss out on Sunny.

Today is my 4-year-old’s first day of preschool (her second year of preschool, to be precise), and since I didn’t manage double blog posts on the 31st/1st like I’d planned, I’m using my first couple of hours of child-free time to force myself to write a review I’m been putting off since June.  Patricia Harman’s The Midwife of Hope River was actually a hand-me-down from my friend Britt, who decided she wasn’t likely to get around to reading it herself; I love historical fiction, and so I took it off of her hands to read myself before either passing it on or deciding to keep it.

It’s getting passed on.

The short version is that while it kept me reading, I didn’t love it.  Harman practiced as a lay midwife and then a nurse-midwife for years and published two memoirs before tackling a novel; my guess is that I’d enjoy her memoirs, because (with one small exception that I hope exists ONLY in the ARE) I didn’t have a problem with her writing.  Her debut novel, however, suffers from historical anachronisms, character inconsistencies, and an optimistic view of midwifing and childbirth in a time before antibiotics.  (It also has a bit more soap opera drama than a true novel of a strong female character should, in my opinion.)  If you’re a fan of midwives and not picky about historical inaccuracies, however, you might really enjoy The Midwife of Hope River.  (Midwifery isn’t my thing, while historical fiction is my favorite genre, which makes me a particularly unforgiving audience for it.)  Patience delivers babies, forms friendships, and learns more and more about her small Appalachian community as she does so.  Her story kept me interested, and that’s never a bad thing.

BUT.

The long version of my review is going to be a bit of a rant, I’m afraid.  If that’s not your thing, you can call this blog post done and move on.  Otherwise…

1.  THIS SENTENCE.  I’m desperately hoping it was fixed in the final edition, but how did it get written in the first place?  “It’s one of those crisp, clear, cloudless days of autumn, with little boats of white clouds sailing across the blue sky…”  Ummm…
2.   As a narrator, you can either be 30-ish and “too old” for drama, first love, fill-in-the-blank-with-whatever, or you can be constantly mentally dithering about your capability to be a midwife in a 19-year-old kind of way.  You can’t–believably–be both.
3.  IF you’re going to constantly question your current life choices in a “what made me think I could be a midwife?!” kind of way, you can’t then know exactly what to do in every birthing situation, saving every woman and child you attend (unless one or both were already well past saving before your arrival).  Also, the number of times that Patience’s mothers experience “no tearing” made me want to hit something.
4.  IF you are making your living as a midwife, you ought to want to be called to attend births, instead of frequently feeling a little put out.
5.  IF you are living in Appalachia at the start of the Great Depression, and you have no electricity, gas, telephone, or car, AND you “only have a few dollars to your name” and “not enough wood or coal to last the winter,” you should not mention MORE THAN ONCE that you may as well go out to do something because “what else are you going to do with your afternoon?”.  People with barely any cash who have toast for breakfast have to make their bread first.  People who do farm chores have to wash things by hand, heating the water over the fire to do so.  If you are living alone with your animals on a farm, even a small one, there is never going to be an afternoon when you don’t have something pressing to do.
6.  And while we’re on that subject, who lives on a farm for a year and FORGETS to feed the livestock just because she’s been out all night attending a birth?  I’m not talking about just being held up; I’m talking about coming in after being out all night, sitting down with tea, and then FINALLY noticing the sound of the animals in the barn and thinking oh!  I forgot about the animals!  I don’t actually think this is a thing.
7.  And if you only have a few dollars to your name, and you only mention getting paid in food and labor, how are you actually surviving?  There is no mention of financial desperation, and yet even farm owners have to pay TAXES.  In CASH.
8.  Linguistic anachronisms.  They bug me.  Moving on.
9.  Who lives in Pennsylvania for years, moves to West Virginia and lives THERE for at least a year, and is THEN surprised multiple times at the racism she sees around her?  It’s 1929, for Pete’s sake.  Have you been living under a rock?
10.  No, she hasn’t, because Patience has apparently been impressively present for multiple mining events and catastrophes.  I’m pretty sure that reviewers commenting on how “well-researched” this book seemed confused the occasional history-lesson segments about coal miner disputes, complete with dates and statistics, with actual extensive research into the lives and culture of the peoples involved.
11.  And again with the she-can’t-have-been-living-under-a-rock, because she’s apparently known several lesbians and isn’t shocked when she finds out the midwife and friend who took her in when she was destitute are lovers.  Again with the 1929.  She seemed more shocked when a married employer tried to rape her, and I’m pretty sure it should have been the other way around.
12.  For a woman who insists that the idea of being waited on “makes her skin crawl,” her attitude toward her black roommate/friend/assistant is all over the map.
13.  Why does the nurse in town fall apart in any and all birth-related emergencies?  This doesn’t ring true for an experienced nurse in a rural community.
14.  Also, if you got pregnant out of wedlock in the early 20s but lost the baby, you’re not likely to bring that up in a first social event with someone, because 1929!

Okay, okay, it’s probably time to stop (especially since I have to do preschool pickup in less than half an hour).  I will say that reading Goodreads reviews of the book before I was finished likely influenced the degree to which I noticed some of these issues, but still.  The Midwife of Hope River drove me bonkers in SO MANY WAYS–and yet I’m annoyingly curious about the sequels, so do with that what you will.

I am rarely a fan of movie tie-ins.  When I worked at Borders (may it rest in peace), I’d look at new copies of established books coming in with actors and actresses on the cover and usually wince, and not just because it meant more copies to fit on the shelf; I wanted Tolkien’s own drawings, not Liv Tyler!  (Not that the editions with Tolkien’s drawings are still in print, but those are still my favorite.  Even if my secondhand copies have seen some seriously better days.)  The cover art chosen by the author/publisher/whomever tends to express something about the book in question that a still of an actor doesn’t, and I want the idea, not the still.

For me, this often (but not always) holds true regarding the trend towards photographic covers as well.  I just finished Kathryn Erskine’s Mockingbird, and my copy is a lovely blue hardcover; the current paperback available on Amazon is a photograph of the back of a girl’s head in front of a tree, and I’m just not feeling it.  Current cover art aside, however, Mockingbird is a pretty amazing book.  Caitlin’s Asperger’s makes her an incredible naive narrator, and the school shooting aftermath that frames the plot was timely and beautiful, despite my initial misgivings.  (The inside cover told me Caitlin’s brother was recently dead, not how he died, and so that was a surprise.)  As a parent I wanted to shake her father more than once, and yet the man lost a wife to cancer and a son to a school shooting in a 2-3 year period; he’s also dealing with a grieving special needs child.  That’s rough.  It was a privilege to tag along during part of a community’s journey to healing–even a fictional one–and Erskine does an excellent job reminding us that communities grieve as both communities AND as individuals.  Caitlin’s path to closure is not an easy one, especially since kids are not always kind to the different, but she treads it while we cheer.

And cry.  But I blame that on parenthood.

Anyway.  This is a relatively brief but profoundly beautiful read, and one I highly recommend.  (Read the print copy, though.  I did NOT love the narrator on the audio.)  I don’t want Mockingbird‘s plot to be timely and relevant–none of us do–but we live in the world we live in, and this book is at least one beautiful thing that was created as a response to a tragic one.

I finished Booki Vivat’s third Frazzled book last night–Minor Incidents and Absolute Uncertainties–and it was a beautiful thing.  Abbie Wu stresses and worries about the kinds of things that I did at that age, and Vivat’s illustrations are an amazing part of her storytelling.  I love that she focuses on adjusting to changes and learning how to remain yourself as things change, rather than boy/girl drama; yes, that’s also a part of middle school or junior high, but Abbie’s problems and the solutions she finds are relatable (and helpful!) to a far wider audience.  We didn’t all have boy- or girlfriends in junior high, but who didn’t have to learn to deal with shifting friendships as people’s interests change?  Who (that HAS siblings) hasn’t struggled to see their siblings as complete people, instead of the parts of them we become accustomed to focusing on?  Who hasn’t felt like Abbie Wu?!  (It’s possible I enjoy saying “Abbie Wu” in my head a little too much.)

This third book sees Abbie headed to “Outdoor School,” at which her Popular, Perfect brother Peter is a counselor.  How she finds her place there is a delight from start to finish–and on that note, I’d better pass the book on to my 10-year-old before she realizes I finished it last night and comes to find me.  If you’ve got a latter elementary schooler, definitely give Vivat’s series a try!

I picked up Suzanne LaFleur’s Listening for Lucca several years ago; the BYU Bookstore was offering 75% off of their bargain books and Lucca took place on the Maine coast.  Sold!  What’s more, elective mutism has interested me since I was in college, so I was really expecting to like this book.

Meh.

Yes, what details LaFleur gives about the setting ring more or less true, but the setting doesn’t feel like a major part of the story.  Yes, the main character’s little brother doesn’t talk, but a)he’s four and b)there didn’t seem to be a solid story there, not one that made sense.  Yes, Siena collects lost items that she finds, but that doesn’t seem to be comprehensively explored.  Yes, she has a 6th sense of sorts, but THAT doesn’t feel fully explored, either.  Even the portion of the book that takes place in the past doesn’t feel fully told.  It isn’t that there’s just too much going on; yes, there are different story strands, but they are perfectly capable of fitting together into an excellent novel.  It’s more that Lucca feels like a long short story.  Nothing is developed enough to work nicely as a cohesive whole, not for a novel.  Siena and Sam’s relationship didn’t make sense to me–what on earth led him to spend time with her, given her complete lack of friendliness or conversation?–and Siena’s attitude about her mother was straight up irritating.  At the end of the day, I was unimpressed enough that I’m donating this to the library instead of passing it on to my kiddos, and that’s saying something right there.  The premise really was fabulous–it could have been a contender!–but, well…meh.

Kara LaReau’s The Jolly Regina (The Unintentional Adventures of the Bland Sisters #1) is a delight for a plethora of reasons.  The dry humor, the vocabulary words at the beginning of each chapter (each of which is most properly used before the chapter is done), the puns (oh, the puns!), and the nod at the end to Melville’s Bartleby (which made me squirm in sheer delight)–they make for a lovely reading experience.  Jaundice and Kale Bland are a pair of sisters whose daily activities include mending socks, watching the grass grow, eating cheese sandwiches, and staring at the wallpaper; their kidnapping by an all-female band of pirates is quite the shock to their systems.  How they manage to come out on top in the end is a testament to inner resilience, sea shanties, and the usefulness of children’s dictionaries.  If you’re looking for the adventurous absurd–and who isn’t?–you really can’t miss this series, folks.  It’s the perfect antidote for the back-to-school blues.

My oldest asked me to get Mustaches for Maddie for her at the beginning of the summer; it wasn’t available in e-audio for me, but my fabulous hubby ripped (I think that’s the word?) the book-on-CD for me and made it so I could listen to it on my phone after all.  Yay for being able to enjoy books while exercising!

Anyway.  Mustaches for Maddie is based on the true story of the authors’ daughter, who was diagnosed with a tumor on her pituitary gland that was pressing against her brain and causing escalating problems for her in the process.  It’s a lovely first-person telling of how Maddie faced two surgeries, figuring out problems with friends and school on the way.  Kids should love Maddie’s genuine voice and fabulous flights of imagination, while parents–well.  It’s based on a true story about a girl with a tumor, folks.  If you’re a parent there are ALL the feels, which is why I was sniffling when I started this post.  I could go on, but my new 7th grader just got home from the last day of her first week of junior high, so really–just read it.  It’s totally worth it, I promise.

Just make sure the nearest tissue box isn’t empty.