Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I’ve found a graphic novel to give my 14-year-old for her birthday! Sure, her birthday was mid-August, but things were crazy then, and I only give her graphic novels I’ve read and approved. (To be clear–again–she reads all kinds of graphic novels checked out from the library or on Sora, but since she rereads the ones she owns more times than I can count, I made sure I only gift her graphic novels with a positive message and likable people. Because she’s going to spend a LOT of time with them.) After finishing Glitch I picked Frizzy for my next graphic novel and read the first page or two, but last night when I started to read it went by so fast that I ended up staying up a bit later than I should have and just finishing it. When I was done, it didn’t take me all that long to decide that yep–this is the one. I ordered it just now, and it’s coming on Monday.

The only reason I didn’t decide on it immediately is that it’s just a little on the short side (after all, my girlie is going to cruise through it in less than an hour). Ultimately, though, its message of self-worth and self-love, combined with some compassion for even the frustrating family members, won the day. My girlie may not have struggles with family members calling her hair bad, but I know she compares herself to others in ways that affect her sense of self-worth. Marlene’s journey to understanding, communication, and a new level of happiness is an inspiring one, and it makes me happy to think of my girls being along for the ride. Don’t miss this one!

My son–who turned 11 in July–is the least enthusiastic reader of all my kiddos; every so often he gets into his book enough to read on past his 20 minutes, but he’s also been known to stop reading with 7, 4, or (it literally happened) 1.5 pages left. (Who does that?!) Months ago, however, he told me about Sarah Graley’s Glitch–I assume he checked it out of the school library–and how good it was, and assured me that his 8- and 14-year-old sisters would really like it. Since then IT’S been sitting on my library shelf and HE’S been bugging me about not having read it and passed it on yet, and so guess what? I finished it last night.

Honestly, my first impression wasn’t great–I don’t like the art. Just because it isn’t my style, however, doesn’t mean it doesn’t convey the story well, and so on I read. And really, it wasn’t a hardship. Graley’s tale is fast-paced, interesting, and has the important conversations its resolution needed; it kept me reading right on through. It doesn’t try to make Izzy’s family–quite–realistic, but it still works, and video gamers should love the plot and its action. Gamers in general should enjoy this one, but it’s an especially good option for reluctant readers. I’ll let you know how my girls like this one!

Yes, I missed both Monday and Wednesday, but I tell you what–the jam almost swallowed me up. After trying and loving both plain blackberry (seedless blackberry, that is) and blackberry-grape on Saturday, I went to Costco for more blackberries on Monday (because $1.89 for a 12 oz container!) and made all kinds of jam yesterday. TODAY, however, I’m taking at least a partial break from the jam craziness (because otherwise I really might scream) to review books I’ve managed to finish. Yay!

Andrea Wang showed up on my radar after her picture book Watercress was named a Newbery honor book; when I saw she also had a middle grade title that looked good, well, guess what showed up on my library shelf a short while later? Fast forward to last week, when I was looking for something I was in the mood to listen to, and since The Many Meanings of Meilan was available to borrow immediately on Libby, it was clearly time to dive in.

I will say that Meilan was not quite what I expected; on the other hand, it’s thought-provoking and empowering, so does it really matter? Meilan, after living her whole life in Boston with her extended family around her, finds herself suddenly moving (with her parents and widowed grandfather) to Ohio, and the difference is extreme. Her principal decides that it will be “better for everyone” if she goes by ‘Melanie’ at school, her (nice) assigned buddy has an identical twin who picks her to bully, her parents make her give up her cell phone because money is tight, and her cousin/best friend is now over a thousand miles away AND angry with her. On top of all of that, Meilan is in 7th grade, and the last Asian-American in her new school system graduated from high school the previous year. To survive while attempting to fulfill her parents’ expectations, she divides her name into its different meanings and chooses parts of herself to separate into depending on where she is. At school she is Mist, almost invisible; at home she is Basket, heavy with the weight of her responsibilities (both real and perceived); away from both places, she is Blue, able to be herself but still grieving over what she has lost.

Fortunately for all three, circumstances ultimately force her separate selves to merge again. As she battles a racist principal, helps her grandfather through his grief, and begins to work out a place and friends for herself, she finds that she is stronger when embracing all of her selves–and happier, too. Asian-American readers may find it especially meaningful, but The Many Meanings of Meilan speaks to anyone trying to make a place for him or herself in a new home, as well as anyone who has ever felt the sting of being an extreme minority in a group. This book is well worth your time.

I finally finished my first 2023 Newbery on Wednesday–Andrea Beatriz Arango’s Iveliz Explains It All–and despite how long it took me to read, it was still an emotional experience. (Which tells you something about it right there, because it takes an extraordinary book to still be impactful when read over a long period of time.) My oldest daughter has been struggling with depression for the last year or more and my father has vascular dementia, so a story about a teenage girl dealing with depression whose grandmother with Alzheimer’s moves in with her family? It was guaranteed to pull at me. The need for Ive to get (and be willing to accept) the help she needed drove me throughout the reading of her story, and her journey is one that teens all over the country–I’d imagine all over the world–need to experience. Our struggling children need to know there is hope and to understand how and when to ask for help; those of us who love people who are struggling need as many resources as possible in order to know what to do to help them. This is a story that matters.

My one struggle with it, however, was the quantity of Spanish involved. I took enough Spanish in high school and college that I don’t need translations of simple phrases, and yet I found myself googling words and phrases frequently enough to slow my progress through the book. My struggling daughter is in AP Spanish right now and will likely do just fine; her 14-year-old sister, however, loves verse novels but hates feeling like she doesn’t know or understand what’s going on, and I have a hard time imagining her making it through Iveliz. (She hasn’t taken a language at all yet; she’s planning on French at some point.) It makes perfect sense for the Spanish to be there–Mimi has just moved from Puerto Rico, which is where Iveliz’s mami is from–but without translations included, I feel like the book is going to reach a smaller audience than it should.

On the other hand, I’ve spent some time wondering how the translations could be included without interrupting the flow of the story, and no easy solution is presenting itself. Asterisks interrupt, flipping to a back glossary interrupts even more, and adding English translations across from any Spanish phrases would certainly affect the look of the text, messing with the effect of the blank verse. The best solution I can come up with is including translations at the bottom of the page–like footnotes–in a separate line for each use of Spanish WITHOUT numbering them. (Because really, readers are mostly going to figure it out. Although Spanish words and phrases could be written in a slightly different font if translations are going to be included?) That would make the book a good deal longer, however, and do you include translations for even the one or two word instances? That would start to feel clunky.

Ultimately, Iveliz Explains It All is poignant and heart-wrenching and important and hopeful, and I’d recommend it to anyone struggling with depression–or grief. If you’re one who likes to know exact meanings when you read, however, make sure you keep Google Translate open!

So–if you get the Costco magazine and are intrigued by the ‘Oven-Roasted Ranch Carrots’ recipe from August, so was I, and we tried it today. I doubled everything but the oil, which I maybe one-and-a-halved (I didn’t measure exactly), and while I liked the flavor, they were oily. They also took decidedly longer getting tender than the recipe implied, which didn’t surprise me (350 for 25 minutes was never going to be enough unless the baby carrots were all skinny, which mine weren’t). My advice? Use less oil and regular carrots cut into sticks. Anybody else out there try them?

I’ve been buying cheap books whenever I can to donate to our school’s literacy night; the catch, of course, is that I want to read (or at least skim) most of them before they actually get donated. To that end, I gave my 8-year-old a choice between a couple of recently acquired books for our next read-aloud, and she went with Ulf Stark’s The Runaways. Published in English in 2019, it had a very European-ish feel; the author is Swedish, so I’m assuming it was written in his native language. (The title page, however, only included the original title. It didn’t name the original language, as far as I could tell–and it was, weirdly, at the end of the book.) Gottfried Jr. loves his big, cranky, foul-mouthed grandfather, and when Grandpa talks about how much he hates the hospital, they plan together to run away. Their adventure–right down to Gottfried Jr.’s confession to his father–doesn’t develop quite as I expected it to, but ultimately, there is a surprising degree of poignancy and ultimate understanding–at least, of the most important things.

It’s hard to accurately recommend a book that isn’t going to fit with most American kids’ expectations of how a story proceeds; on the other hand, it’s less than 130 pages (including multiple full-page illustrations) and yet provides plenty of material for discussion. I’d actually be tempted to teach this one.

On the homefront, the older girls had a cousin sleepover this weekend, but my youngest hasn’t been feeling well (she threw up last night, but only once), so it’s been a bit of a different experience all around. Still, thank goodness for cooler weather–bring on fall!

I clearly missed Wednesday–can you tell I’ve been aiming for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday posts?–but I did have a good reason. After collecting money and taking it to the bank for PTA Wednesday morning I had to book it to make it to my ‘diagnostic mammogram’ on time. That (and the ultrasound) took less time than they said it would, which was good (although I have to say, it’s completely bizarre to get an ultrasound on your breast). Even better was the ‘everything looks good’ outcome; apparently my dense breast tissue, about which I’ve now gotten multiple medical letters, just messed with the imaging.

Britt and I had planned to go out to lunch afterward–I think you deserve a nice lunch after a mammogram morning–and she ended up taking me out for my birthday to a Nepali place, which was fantastic. By the time I got home it was time to pick up kids, exercise, feed kids, etc., which took me past my ‘express myself coherently in writing’ deadline for school days. It happens, right? Today, however, I get to review Muckrakers: How Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and Lincoln Steffens Helped Expose Scandal, Inspire Reform, and Invent Investigative Journalism. (Which is a mouthful of a title by anyone’s definition, right?) I started reading it aloud to my 14-year-old, but she decided to bail, so I finished it by myself. (I can’t really blame her, to be honest–I still remember enough US history from high school to provide a level of context she didn’t have.) It was an interesting read with plenty of photographs and quotes from the period and the players; it felt brief to me, but then, it’s intended for middle graders, so that’s not shocking. Ultimately, it’s one that you should read if the title (which is a decently thorough summary of the premise) interests you or if you’re looking for research materials on relevant topics; if not, well–it’s up to you.

In other news, the kids and I spent a decent chunk of the morning cleaning out and organizing the shelves in the kitchen that hold coloring books and implements, school supplies, etc., and we have donations for my youngest’s teacher as well as some coloring books for my sister to offer to her grandkids. (Not to mention more space–wahoo!) It was satisfying!

Trying to read a book during the first few weeks of school gets difficult–so many distractions! Last night, however, I managed to finish Nat for Nothing, the fourth book in Maria Scrivan’s ‘Nat’ series. It deals with typical middle school struggles–finding your thing, figuring out complicated friendship loyalties–in a solid way, and Scrivan’s art is perfect for them. I did feel like Nat’s initial attitude toward Luca was overly harsh, but given the circumstances of their first meeting, it was probably not unrealistic; otherwise, I thought the story unfolded nicely. This is a good fit for graphic novel lovers–especially artists and girls–from mid-elementary to the beginning of high school.

In other news, the PTA binder and checkbook register for this school year are officially–mostly–up to date, which feels like an achievement. Oh, the paperwork!

My indefatigable PTA president forwarded to me a second reminder that our insurance expires on September 1st; I read it today and ended up paying it with an ‘online check’, just like last year, to be sure it was taken care of on time. Last year I had no idea what I was doing when insurance came due; this year I just got caught up with other things and the time got away from me. Unfortunately, in between last year and this year I learned at PTA treasurer training that we’re not supposed to pay for things online like that; in this case, however, I decided avoiding a lapse of coverage mattered more, and the ends would just have to justify the means. At least it’s DONE.

I don’t even feel all that guilty about it.

I would have taken far longer to get around to reading Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s I Love You, Michael Collins if Britt hadn’t picked it for book club, and that would have been a tragedy, because I really did love this book. I was solidly in Mamie’s corner long before page ten, and her family members’ more frustrating qualities were nicely balanced out by Buster’s fantastic-ness. (Yes, I know it’s not a word. I’m tired and I don’t care.) As Apollo 11’s launch approaches, Mamie’s letters to Michael Collins paint a vivid picture of life in the summer of ’69 (I had to throw that in because my 8-year-old LOVES that song), with its cultural shifts and historic moon landing; they also give the reader a poignant glimpse into Mamie’s everyday life. Baratz-Logsted balances the ups and downs of being a sister deftly, and (unlike in Entrada Kelly’s We Dream of Space) Mamie’s parents are sympathetically human. This is a good book for those wanting brave girl characters, realistic family struggles that resolve hopefully, books about the space race, cats, good friends…basically, it’s just a good book.

I was, in fact, so impressed by it that I spent at least 10 minutes yesterday reading summaries and reviews of Baratz-Logsted’s other books, wanting to find another one I’d like as well. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be adult fiction (or YA romantic fiction), and there were enough negative reviews that I’m excited about almost none of them. Write more middle grade fiction and I’ll read it, Ms. Baratz-Logsted! (And based on the Goodreads reviews of your other works vs. Michael Collins, I’m not the only one.)

Hmm. This ending wants more, but I’ve got to help out at the school for a while and I’m too tired to make it better. (I’ll take suggestions if you’ve got them.) Signing off!