Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

After a speedy trip to Idaho and back for the first half of spring break, we’ve been to three doctors in three days.  Twice at the pediatrician’s office (we saw two different people), where my youngest and second oldest got (different) antibiotics for (respectively) badly infected eczema and strep, and once at Primary Children’s Hospital, where a very nice emergency room doctor reassured us that my oldest daughter’s mild concussion (!) showed no indication of requiring a CT scan.

I feel somehow that I should fill in some details, but I haven’t got it in me tonight.

Instead, I give you Andrew Clements’ The School Story, which I actually own (courtesy of an Andrew Clements pack from a Scholastic book order a few years back) but checked out of the library on audio for our aforementioned drive to Idaho.  Topically, it wasn’t the best fit for my (very young) first grade boy, but my 9-year-old was completely enthralled and my oldest was enjoyably distracted from the drive (I’m not counting my 4-year-old’s vote).  It’s really a lovely little book, too–it’s a little bit about writing, a little bit about grief, a little bit about parent/child relationships, and a whole lot about good friends, supportive teachers, and working hard to make dreams come true.  Natalie and Zoe are a lovable team as they work to get Natalie’s mom’s publishing company to publish Natalie’s book without Natalie’s mom suspecting a thing; being along for their ride made ours feel a whole lot shorter.  Mid-elementary school girls are the best audience for this one, but try it with boys as well (after all, it’s by the author of Frindle!).  Read it yourself while you’re at it, because it’s short, just sweet enough, and entirely worth it.

It’s Spring Break for my kiddos, and so I’m taking a break as well.  Family time for us–I’ll see you on Wednesday!

I recognize that, in the scheme of things, that isn’t such a glowing endorsement, but books with (well) over 400 pages take time.  To be perfectly honest, I still wouldn’t have gotten to The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey if I hadn’t found it available to be checked out on audio.  I did, however, and I finished listening to it last night while working on a puzzle, and now I get to pass it on to my oldest, who has been more patient than I would have been in her place.  It’s an excellent second installment in a trilogy, too–Mr. Benedict has organized a treasure hunt of sorts for the children only to be abducted by Mr. Curtain while setting it up; what was meant to be pure fun becomes a race against the clock as the children follow the clues in the hopes of discovering his whereabouts.  There is good characterization, more time spent with supporting characters, and a satisfying climactic encounter with their archenemy; my oldest should enjoy it even more than I did.  (Best of all, the third book is also available on audio, meaning she won’t have to wait nearly as long for the 3rd one.)  If you aren’t familiar with this series, go get yourself the first book today!

I imagine there will be a few more of those this spring, right?  On the next one, you’ve really got to try this delightfully simple White Bean Soup.  It’s an easy, hearty, smoky bean soup that’s finished off with lemon zest, lemon juice, and parsley, adding a brightness that made me want to close my eyes and savor it in appreciation.  (I didn’t, though.  Because kids.  At mealtime.)  I used regular bacon–it’s what I had–and cooked up the whole pound.  Guilt-free snitching, right?  I also skipped the ‘wipe out the pan’ step, because my oldest had to be at a Broadway kids performance at 6, and ain’t nobody got time for that!

Because I was worried about getting her fed and out the door on time, I completely forgot to squish up some of the beans until the end; given how perfectly lovely the soup was, however, I’m guessing that wasn’t a big deal.  Leftovers required a bit of water splashed in, since soup liquid magically disappears overnight, but they were delightful still.  If bacon, lemon, and parsley hit all the right notes for you, you’re pretty much guaranteed to love it.  Make it soon–before it gets hot and the mere thought of soup makes you want to climb into the refrigerator!

Last night was my oldest daughter’s final Broadway Kids performance–she’s been rehearsing with other 5th and 6th graders at 7:30 in the morning (4 or 5 days a week) and after school (for 1 or 2 days a week) for at least a couple of months, and it showed.  The kids sang, they danced, and they were fun to watch, but my daughter about blew me away.  Two different people told me afterwards that she lit up the stage, and it’s no coincidence that they both used that phrase.  She glowed.  She smiled from ear to ear as she danced (and sang, but she was in the half of the group that did more complicated dances), and she danced with her whole body.  She kept her tension and poise all the way through her fingertips (which is partially a tribute to her former dance teacher’s campaign against ‘noodle arms’), and I reveled in the pleasure of watching her.

By contrast, finishing Leah Weiss’ If the Creek Don’t Rise this afternoon did not exactly fill me with warm fuzzies.  It’s not that it wasn’t a compelling and a well-written book, mind you–it certainly was–but Weiss’ tale of the harshness of life in Appalachia in the early 1970s was narrated by a group of people from the same community, and the abuse/explosive husband and his (possibly simple) (mostly) loyal sidekick both had bits near the end.  Spending time in their minds wasn’t exactly uplifting.  Beyond that, however, I found the solution to Sadie’s miserable life with said husband to be a startling one.  (I won’t go further into that, since I avoid spoilers, but I didn’t exactly predict the ending.)  What I will say is that the world Weiss describes for the reader is not easily forgotten.  My one criticism of the book as a whole is that it had trouble making up its mind whether it wanted to be Sadie Blue’s story or the story of a community.  Weiss might argue that there isn’t actually a difference, but the ending makes it seem like Sadie’s story is the main plot; the bulk of the book, however, meanders more as it cycles through different narrators.  It’s true that each one provides a glimpse into Sadie’s ongoing story, but only her situation with Roy sees real resolution.  If that’s what really matters, why do so many of the narrators introduce what feel like subplots that go nowhere?

Then again, perhaps Weiss is laying the groundwork for a series of connected novels?

At any rate, If the Creek Don’t Rise is well-written, thought-provoking, and thoroughly held my attention; it simply focuses on lives that are harsh and messy.  In other words?  It’s a worthwhile read, but don’t expect many conventional feel-good moments.  Go in prepared.

I rarely do this, but I find I can’t properly review Renee Watson’s Piecing Me Together (please pretend there’s an accent on the middle ‘e’ in ‘Renee’!) without quoting two of the blurbs on the back.  Jacqueline Woodson asserts that “Watson’s elegantly crafted novel speaks to the myriad of people who find themselves searching for themselves in the world,” and that is apt; it’s Meg Medina’s first sentence, however, that blows me away.  “A nuanced story about girls navigating the land mines of others’ good intentions, Piecing Me Together will make readers wrestle with every assumption they have about race, economic class, and so-called at-risk kids.”  That phrase–“the land mines of others’ good intentions”–wow.  And she was right–I did wrestle with my assumptions.  I was desperately grateful, however, not to have done so because I felt stereotyped as a white person.  Watson’s skill in portraying conflict and resolution between all sorts of different sources seriously impressed me.

Simply put, Piecing Me Together is the story of a poor black girl on scholarship to a wealthy private school.  The school is predominantly white, but there are also wealthy black girls and poor white girls, and Jade is learning the all important life skill of speaking up instead of giving up.  As her friend Lee Lee tells her, “If you speak up and they dismiss you, that’s on them.  But if you stay quiet and just quit, well–”  What Jade finds as she practices speaking up is that often people mean well but may be looking at things from a different perspective entirely–and that most of the important things in life are going to require speaking up now and then.  (Not to mention the fact that THE IMPORTANT THINGS ARE WORTH IT.)  I do have some doubts about this as a Newbery pick–while not inappropriate, many of the issues involved seemed to be issues for the teenage mindset instead of a child’s–but I have none about it being an award winner.  Watson’s story is going to stick with me for a long, long time.

After a couple of emotionally tiring audiobooks, I decided to go for a palate cleanser, so to speak–Andrew Clements’ Extra Credit.  This was my third venture into his world, and once again I found myself enjoying the book while appreciating both the depth and the simple satisfaction of it.  He tackles real problems, but he does so in a way suited to middle elementary schoolers, and he gives us endings that, while not unrealistic, contain enough feel-good factor to be relaxing.  In Extra Credit, we meet Abby Carson–a girl who loves the outdoors and struggles to do the schoolwork that forces her inside.  When she realizes that she’s about to be held back instead of moving on to junior high, she meets with her teachers to find another way; in addition to completing all of her homework and making Bs on every test and quiz for the rest of the year, she must correspond with an overseas pen pal and display/present her experiences and what she learns.  Because she loves her school’s rock climbing wall and wishes, more than anything, for mountains, she picks a pen pal from Afghanistan.  It is a choice that involves complications from the very beginning, but as those complications evolve into more serious problems, Abby’s extra credit project affects her in unexpected ways.

Extra Credit was thought-provoking in unexpected ways for me; I was expecting it to go in a different direction, but I was not disappointed by where it went instead.  This would be a lovely book to read and discuss in a classroom, but it’s also a book that individual readers ought to enjoy.  Read it, get it for your kiddos, recommend it to a friend, and most of all, tell me what you think!

Yeah, time got away from me on the 7th, and today the time change has completely sapped my motivation.  See you on Monday!

I won an advance copy of Lynda Cohen Loigman’s The Two-Family House several years ago; I can’t remember exactly when, but it had to have been some months previous to its release date in March of 2016.*

There’s a reason for the memory lapse, I promise.

My youngest was born in February of 2015 and was eating well and sleeping through the night by summer; then came the very first of our family’s infamous fall flus.  It hit us all, and it lingered, and for my baby girl, it interfered with an ear infection.  Her ears suddenly got worse instead of better and she ended up on a different antibiotic; what was worse, she threw up what little she ate and had no appetite for days.  When she finally managed to kick all the germs to the curb, she was STARVING, and suddenly I had a 7.5-month-old who was eating in the middle of the night again.  By the time that faded, her sleep habits were shot, and subsequent ear infections meant nothing could be done about that until she got tubes in April of 2016 and then grew accustomed enough to them that I put my foot down about her wanting to fall asleep in Mommy’s (and ONLY Mommy’s) arms.  (Not just at night, mind you, but during the night, any time she woke up, as far as I could tell.  I woke up one night and she was sleeping on my chest; I had NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER of getting her out of her crib, but my husband–who sleeps like the dead–was adamant that he hadn’t done it.  I’m pretty sure I got up, got her, and brought her back to bed with me without ever actually waking up at all.)  Sleep re-training had to happen then in order to save my sanity, but in the meantime, 6-8 months passed by in a foggy blur.  Would you like to guess what I wasn’t doing during that period of time?

If your answer is “as much reading as usual, especially of adult fiction that promised to be emotional,” then congratulations! because you are SO very right.  My to-be-read piles exploded, and I’m still trying to recover.  Honestly, I wouldn’t have made it as far as I have if my treadmill hadn’t died, forcing me to move to the elliptical and audiobooks.  My hubby found Loigman’s book on audio and put it on my phone so that I could listen to it while exercising (and while folding laundry and working on puzzles and so many, many more things), and so I am FINALLY able to review it here for my faithful readers’ benefit.  Wahoo!

I have to say, though, The Two-Family House doesn’t make for an easy review.  It’s hard to tell whether Loigman meant for the family secret that’s the catalyst for the story to be known at the beginning or not; her foreshadowing is heavy-handed enough that it was very quickly obvious to me.  That secret is based on a choice made out of a difficult situation and a lack of true emotional health; it only causes more difficult situations all around and worsening emotional health for at least one character, and yet the good that also comes from it is complicated and might not have occurred otherwise.  Reviews on Goodreads for this one are interestingly mixed, but when I finished listening to the audiobook (complete with accents that definitely helped immerse me in the setting!), my reactions surprised me.

1.  If I’d realized the level of complicated family dynamics and tragedy involved, I never would have read it, because that’s not really my thing.
2.  I’m DESPERATELY grateful not to have read this when I had a newborn.  Emotional roller coasters shouldn’t be ridden during times of serious hormonal   fluctuation.
3.  I was surprisingly glad to have read it, despite it not being my thing.
4.  Some reviewers complained about Loigman’s characterization, but I emotionally engaged with the main characters early on.
5.  I wanted to slide into easy judgments and dismissal of frustrating characters more than once, and yet Loigman gave me just enough for each character that   I couldn’t.  Human beings are complex, and she portrayed that complexity successfully.
6.  I was more satisfied with the ending than I ever could have imagined being.
7.  I think–I really think–that I liked it.  And considering where it went as a story, that’s a pretty impressive thing for me to say.
8.  If my description appeals to you, you should definitely read it.  If you’re on the fence, give it a try.   And if you think it’s not your thing, I respect that–but   remember, it’s not mine either.  And yet…

*Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for the advance copy and the opportunity to give it an unbiased review.

I wasn’t feeling the emotional roller coaster that is my current audiobook today–not on the Sabbath.  Luckily, my hold on Andrew Clements’ Frindle came in this weekend, and so while I got in my elliptical time and then worked on our current puzze–a 1,000-piecer this time–I listened to the whole thing.

It was a pleasure.

I know not everyone grew up in a small town, in a traditional sort of elementary school, with teachers that had been teaching for years and doing a good job of it, but I was blessed to.  Clements captures the traditional, slightly white-picket-fence growing up experience beautifully, and his students and teachers are the perfect mix of fun and discipline and tradition and innovation and–oh, all the feels.  I am a teacher both by nature and by education, and I was generally an engaged student, and Frindle was a perfect bit of homey, slightly-fairy-tale-ish nostalgia.  Nick is thoroughly likable, Mrs. Granger a teacher to remember, and the birth of a word makes for some educationally entertaining lessons on language.  I’m excited to pass this one on to my son!