Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I finished listening to Gail Carson Levine’s The Wish today, and I have to say–my 8th grade self would have adored it. I was never one of the popular kids, and the thought of wishing to be popular and then riding high on the results would definitely have appealed. (As an adult, I find myself wanting to assign a college essay comparing and contrasting The Wish with “The Mirror Has Two Faces”–and as a parent, I recognize that just because an 8th grader dreams of kissing a doting boyfriend for an hour doesn’t mean that it’s age-appropriate behavior or at all a good idea.) Ultimately, this feels pitch perfect for that 8th grade self–Wilma experiences popularity, gets her pick of boys, and doesn’t become a jerk because of it. (Points to her for recognizing which boy is worth getting, by the way.) The Wish is accessibly rather than beautifully written, and while the brevity of the timeline doesn’t allow us to get to know most of the characters too deeply, the themes explored are meaningful and completely relevant to the age and stage of life of both those characters and the intended audience. I’m passing this along to my 7th grader with high hopes that it will help shake her out of her reading rut!

While in Idaho this week, I finished reading Martha Freeman’s Effie Starr Zook Has One More Question to my 12-year-old, and to be honest, I was mostly disappointed. The premise was amazing, you know? A city girl staying with her aunt and uncle for the summer, bumping into and then confronting long-held family secrets…what’s not to love? Unfortunately, I found all of the characters to be solidly two-dimensional; instead of being a great story, it was a series of chapters of “she did this” and then “he did that” and then “they said this”, etc. It wasn’t a bad book, it just wasn’t good; it was, in a word, fine. Now, if your middle grade girl likes contemporary fiction and uncomplicated storytelling, the family secrets and the themes introduced by them make for a positive message; if you’re an adult who enjoys good middle grade, however, this isn’t terribly worth your time.*

*Also, adults are likely to wonder about Mr. Yoder’s troubling beliefs and what they would actually mean for his family, not to mention the inconsistencies of his wife’s actions in relation to those beliefs. Because seriously.

I finally finished the third ‘Dragonbreath’ book on Monday, folks, and Curse of the Were-wiener was a hoot. (I was afraid of where the humor might go, but I needn’t have worried–Ursula Vernon is hilarious and unexpected without going for the bathroom humor angle.) Having been bitten by a were-wiener in the school cafeteria, Wendell needs to find and slay the alpha-wurst to avoid becoming one of his minions. He and Danny enlist the help of Danny’s rogue potato salad–potato salad and hot dogs being mortal enemies, you understand–and storm the freezer. What’s not to love? If you have an elementary school boy, or a reluctant reader who likes humor, or a sneaking fondness for bizarre humor yourself, Vernon’s ‘Dragonbreath’ books are a must.

I’m off to exercise, folks. Look for more reviews coming soon!

Since it’s now December 30th, clearly my hopes of posting in odd moments were not realized. Here, then, is a quick recap of the rest of December…

1. So much putting off of Christmas cards. I didn’t even start addressing until Christmas week, and an entire category of my list is still waiting.

2. The switching of the bedrooms has been accomplished, with all three girls now downstairs, but the house is pretty much a wreck all over.

3. Much jam was made for neighbor gifts, but still more neighbors need treats. (See #1.)

4. Christmas Eve was kind of a hard day…

5. …that eventually got better but ended well after midnight.

6. Wonder of wonders, Santa and Mommy rocked Christmas this year. The kiddos were SO happy! (Daddy was a good sport about it perhaps not being the smaller Christmas we were thinking of, because a)he helped and b)he loves to see the kiddos happy.)

7. The kids and I did actually leave for Idaho the day after Christmas, after carefully following weather reports between Salt Lake and Boise, and we were infinitely blessed to nail our “between snowstorms” window. Much family was enjoyed by all.

8. My mother’s homemade doughnuts (made from my paternal grandmother’s recipe) were also enjoyed by all; words cannot express how amazing those are.

9. After snow all day on Wednesday and more careful weather tracking, we left Idaho by 4:15 this morning and were again blessed beyond measure on our drive home. There was a slick bit and patches of fog, but we again hit the ‘between storms’ window.

10. My fabulous mother-in-law has my children now, and while my house is absolutely still a wreck, it is at least blissfully empty (and with a running dishwasher!). My hubby is working and feeling sniffly, so our anniversary celebrations will be small, but a peaceful house is never to be underestimated.

11. That’s the bulk of December, folks–the Lord sure has been good to us.

I tend to have trouble posting on Saturdays, because everyone’s home OR needs shuttling and there’s always laundry and cleanup yelling for my attention. Today, however, while my 2nd or 3rd load of laundry is in and my littles are finishing lunch in silence (because arguing), I am determined to review at least ONE of the two books sitting and waiting for my attention. (It’ll give me a break from harassing my 12-year-old to DO her chores and do a decent job, rather than just veg as soon as she thinks no one’s paying attention.)

Once upon a time many moons ago, I LOVED Kara LaReau’s first installment in the “Unintentional Adventures of the Bland Sisters.” (That would be The Jolly Regina.) I started reading its sequel–The Uncanny Express–by myself forever ago, but I wasn’t far enough in and got distracted by other things; recently, I decided to fix that by using it as my next read-aloud with my 12-year-old. We managed to finish it night before last, and now it’s another book I can remove from my currently-reading list. Wahoo!

As far as the book itself, I’m of two minds about it. Part of me got a huge kick out of its parody of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express; my enjoyment was only dimmed by my daughter’s inability to appreciate it. (She’s not a passionate mystery lover, and why else would a 12-year-old have read Christie’s book?) The other part of me missed some of the general punny humor of the first one, because it felt like the author’s energy was mostly focused on the Agatha Christie angle. I’ve been awfully tired lately, however, and so I may be feeling more critical than it deserves. Either way, Jaundice and Kale are still entertaining, and if you’re an Agatha Christie fan, you really shouldn’t miss this one!

I told you–December is going to be a “you never know when I’m blogging” sort of month, and so today you get a second book review. Why?

1. Because I’m a bit behind.
2. Because it’s supposed to snow all day and so I’m staying home and doing House Things.

I guess I should clarify that–I’m not working ON my house, I’m just doing things IN my house that need doing. Like laundry (I just put the second load in!), dishes (my dishwasher’s running and I washed my old (no removable inner pot) crockpot AND my rice cooker inner pot by hand), book reviews (my second today–go me!), prepping fruit leather base (next on my agenda), and wrapping for Christmas (I’ll be doing that while my fruit cooks down). And SO, in the interest of moving on down my list…

I decided to listen to Word of Mouse primarily because I was considering it as a Christmas gift for my son; by the time I finished it, however, I’d run into a snag. Apparently his teacher brought 5 or so of her favorite books to school–wrapped, perhaps?–and read teasers from them aloud before having interested students pick numbers to see who was closest and won the book in question. My son told me he was second closest but the first closest guesser had already gotten a book, so he won a book in school about a mouse.

That wasn’t by Beverly Cleary.

And that’s all he could remember about it. LITERALLY.

So. He said he’d bring it home and show me, but we’ve been crazy here and I don’t know if it’s even made it home yet. Good thing I realized he’d probably like the “Flashback Four” series as well, because I can’t order Word of Mouse for him unless and until he brings home the other book and I verify that it’s something else. Good times!

In the meantime, Word of Mouse was, to pick a cliche, good clean fun. Isaiah the blue mouse escapes from the “Horrible Place” with his family, but the rest of them are all caught again, leaving him free but alone and trying to figure out how to fend for himself. Luckily, he ends up joining another mouse ‘family’ and finding there’s far more inside and outside of himself than he ever dreamed possible. At almost 300 frequently illustrated pages, it’s a nice longer book for more reluctant readers, transitioning readers, and readers looking for adventures that always end safely. (Also animal fans.) Maybe if the book from his teacher is something different, he can get it for his birthday?

We have a winner, folks–my graphic-novel-obsessed 12-year-old is officially getting Katie the Catsitter for Christmas. Not only is it a perfectly age-appropriate story about friendships, trying to work for something you want (but not always succeeding), and some middle grade changes, but there are animals galore; the author is even PICTURED WITH HER PET BUNNIES in the back! (If you know my girlie, you know how perfect this is.) Katie is a completely likable heroine, and I LOVE the cats; the superhero angle is a bit different from my daughter’s usual fare, but I think she’s going to enjoy it. If you’re looking for female heroines, want a graphic novel appropriate for a 12-year-old to read approximately 500 times, or just love cats, this is most definitely the book for you.

When I started reading Anna Humphrey’s Megabat to my youngest last Friday, I was expecting it to take a while. Yes, the font is bigger and there are not infrequent illustrations, but still, 176 pages of reading aloud usually takes longer than a weekend. Here it is Monday, however, and I just finished it with her. (The cough I kept her home for on Friday has blossomed, she sounds more like a frog than a 6-year-old when she talks, and she’s possibly running a low grade fever.) I read a chunk of it to her yesterday while the rest of the family was at church, and then we finished it over lunch today, because why not? And I thought it was cute. (She says it’s a thumbs middle, although I don’t know that she’s feeling terribly enthusiastic about anything in her current state.) Daniel makes a good regular-kid protagonist, and a talking bat with a wonky way of speaking does a pretty good job of distracting him from the difficulties of moving. A loyal pigeon, a new friend next door, and her (possibly overly) evil younger brother round out the main characters in this simple book. It should appeal especially to animal fans or those struggling with moving, but the font size and illustrations also make this a good choice for the transitioning-to-longer-books-but-still-young-enough-to-be-overwhelmed crowd.

Okay, my sentence length and overall writing in this review leave something to be desired, but it took me forever to fall asleep last night, so I’m just going with it. Have a great day, everybody!

I’ve been putting off my review of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir for months and months, not because I didn’t love it but because I did and I’ve been struggling with how to characterize it. At this point, however, I’m just going to jump in, because needs must! So, without further ado…

This book was delightful, but in the most substantive way possible. (I’m hoping you know what I mean by that, because it’s now officially the holidays, and explaining it feels too time consuming.) I can’t help comparing it to Dear Mrs. Bird, which is also a debut novel set in England during WWII, but where Dear Mrs. Bird focuses on the young adults of the time, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, if anything, focuses on a village. Within that village we have a group of protagonists, including a few children, one young (barely) adult, a widow whose son has just gone off to war, a devious midwife of indeterminate age, and various other adults of various ages–in other words, it’s a story about a community. Some members are thoroughly unreliable narrators, which provides some of the comic relief necessary in any story that deals with war and loss; others are more reliable but still manage to grow a good bit over the course of the novel.

You know what? I think I’m going to leave it there. If I were to try to summarize the various villagers’ stories and how they weave together, we’d be here all day–and at the end of November, ain’t nobody got time for that. Suffice it to say that Jennifer Ryan does an impressive job with the weaving; there’s a lot going on here, but it’s skillfully handled and connected. This is a book that balances tragedy with triumph, heartbreak with humor, and gravity with a solid dose of the absurd, and I’m not sure I can recommend it highly enough. Prepare to cheer for Mrs. Tilling and the members of Chilbury’s new Ladies’ Choir!

Okay, folks. I’m sure y’all noticed that I did other things over most of Thanksgiving week rather than blog–things like make pies, and play games, and eat way too much pie, and spend time with family–and December is a busy month for everybody. Let’s just acknowledge, then, that between now and New Years, posts will not happen with any regular order or consistency!

Anyway. I did, however, finish Dusti Bowling’s The Canyon’s Edge this past week, and it was unexpectedly intense. Nora’s recent past is traumatic enough–her mom died in the same shooting that lamed her father–but when she and her father are separated by a flash flood during a hike in a slot canyon, she must fight her way through the desert’s dangers as well as her own (literal) nightmares to find her way back to the only parent she has left.

Okay, that sounds dramatic, which it is, but it’s NOT overly or melodramatic. It’s taut and raw and hard for a mother to read, and yet the level of triumph in adversity–rather than over–is endlessly moving. I honestly wish I could give this to both of my older daughters to read; neither, however, is currently up to that level of raw emotion. (My older daughter is struggling to regulate her mental health at the moment, and my younger daughter has been anxious since a boy in three of her classes was hit by a car and died on Halloween weekend.) At the moment I’ll have to settle for recommending it to friends and teens who don’t have extenuating emotional circumstances, because it’s completely and totally worth your time.