Things I Read Recently That I Liked

Time Magazine article on School Lunches
Blogging for Michigan post (mostly) on taxes
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society (book)
New York Times article on how to pronounce the name of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull
Today's Detroit Free Press article on the Kalamazoo Promise

Libraries

Libraries are some of my favorite places. I've worked in two of them.
Growing up, the library in my town had a youth card. When you were twelve, you could get a card to access the whole collection. But for a long time after I turned twelve, I wondered--why would anybody want to access the adult books? There was nothing to read there--at least, nothing enjoyable. Obviously (to me), all the best stuff was in the children's room.
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I felt nostalgic when I read this article in AnnArbor.com today: 
University of Michigan Library to bid farewell to card catalogs

Sure, it's easier to search online. But I'm not sure I always get better results. Searching by author, title, subject--neat, clean, efficient--it worked well for me. 

On the other hand, the article also reminded me of a conversation I had with my oldest about investigating colleges. We were discussing an experience of some friends of ours on a tour of several colleges. 

Mom, you are not expecting me to go visit every library, are you? Because I'm not going to do it.

That's when I realized that he was right. When I went to college, the actual physical plant of the library mattered very much. And now--so much of the library is virtual. For a freshman at MSU, University of Michigan, or Wayne State, will the physical plant of the library make a difference? Not in the way that it did for me. 

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But still, there is a limit, and I hit that limit at Skyline High School.  My middle child had an assignment from English class--choose a memoir, and read it. She told me she would stop by the school library and choose one. Later that evening, I asked what she picked. 

Mom, I couldn't find anything. That library has no books!

There is a limit! Aren't school libraries supposed to support the work of the students? Would it be so hard to have books, at least to support the work of the English department? 

Outcome: We found a memoir in our home. (Angela's Ashes, if you want to know.) Actually, we found a few memoirs. 

And Skyline: If you ask for some donations from families, I would be willing to donate those memoirs to get you started. And I will bet that I am not the only parent who would do that. 

Books. We can still use them. In schools.

The Long Winter

I read on a different blog (one complaining about the winter in Baltimore, ha ha--they think they are having a long winter?) that Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthday was February 7th. Laura Ingalls Wilder has a special place in my heart. Little House in the Big Woods was the first "really long" book that I read growing up. I was seven. I read it for three days straight, and when I finished I was very proud of myself.

I really wanted to meet Laura (the author), and I used think, well she died in 1957, and I was born in the 1960s, so if she had lived just a little bit longer, or I had been born a little bit earlier, we might have overlapped! Close--but no cigar. (Laura Ingalls Wilder actually lived just past her 90th birthday.)

We think of these books as memoir/autobiography, but in reality they are fiction. Which is to say that, although the bones of the story are likely true, they were likely embellished. Which is perhaps a good thing, when it comes to the book The Long Winter.  I've lived in South Dakota in the winter, and I am quite sure that the winter she writes about was long! (And they didn't have central heat, either.) But my friend pointed out to me a couple of years ago that (despite the fun depicted in the cover illustration) The Long Winter is essentially a tale of near-starvation. I went back to the story and re-read it, and when read that way, it is breathtakingly scary.

Update: I just took a look at the Wikipedia entry for The Long Winter (should have done that first!) and it says:

The Long Winter runs from the fall of 1880 to the spring of 1881; a season of such frequent blizzards that it went down in history as "The Snow Winter"^[1]. Accurate details in Wilder's novel include the names of the townspeople (with only minor exceptions), the length of the winter, the Chicago and North Western Railway closing down business until the Spring thaw, the near-starvation of the townspeople, the severe cold, the terrible danger of getting caught in a blizzard, and the courage of Almanzo Wilder and Cap Garland, who ventured out on the open prairie in search of a cache of wheat that no one was even sure existed.

The fictionalized material includes the "Indian warning" in an early chapter and the nonstop procession of blizzards lasting on average three days each, with only two to two-and-a-half days between them from late October until early April. 

The Best Lead Ever, Or: Summer Reading

"That book has the best lead ever!" my nine-year-old says to me this evening.

If you ever do any narrative writing, you are always looking for the best lead. At least I am, so I was curious. The lead itself?

"I was born with water on the brain."

He was referring, of course, to Sherman Alexie's book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. This is a book I got him last winter, and if you've read it, then you know that it is not "appropriate" for nine-year olds. It is definitely a YA (Young Adult) book. Not appropriate, except that he loved it, and I'm not very interested in censoring my kids' reading (well, excluding pornography and other truly, truly inappropriate books).

My nine-year-old went on to tell me that even though the Alexie book is not "totally appropriate," you could still tell it was a kids' book because it had a happy ending, and he said, "the real world isn't really like that, you know?" I told him that happy endings were one of the things I loved about kids' books, but as he moved into the YA genre he would find more books that didn't have happy endings.

What can I say? I love kids books, but I don't like YA realistic fiction very much, and I think that the difference is the happy ending. These days, I read fiction to escape and to have fun. I find the "real world" frequently painful and can only stand to read the nonfiction version of reality. (I do read a fair amount of nonfiction.) For fiction, these days, my tastes run more to fantasy, mystery, and. . . kids' books.

One of the best things about being a parent? License to read kids' books, which I love.
One of the best things about summer? A little more time to read. Or maybe it's not so much time that is lacking during the school year, but energy.

If you are bored with your usual summer fare, and are looking for a few more kids' books, here are a few ideas. (These are mostly elementary-school-ish age. I love picture books but would have a hard time being selective.) I hope at least one of these is new to you.

Al Slote's Finding Buck McHenry. Perfect summer reading and it features a barely-disguised Ann Arbor. (And he has many other books too, but this one is my favorite.)

The Avion My Uncle Flew. by Cyrus Fisher and Richard Floethe. Fantastical post-WWII story with a lot of French thrown into the mix. I find this book very funny.

Louise Erdrich's Birchbark House. Set in the northwoods by Lake Superior, and featuring an Ojibway family. The setting makes it perfect for a family camping trip in the U.P.

Jill Paton Walsh's The Green Book. One of those books that falls into the science-fiction category, but doesn't feel like science fiction. This is a quick read but it is very thought-provoking.

Ida B...And Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan. My daughter told me she cried but I think she has read it at least ten times. This is the one book on this list that I haven't read--too much reality--the mom gets cancer. [My daughter and I do not necessarily agree on genres. At all.]

My new favorite book for the summer, this book reads like fiction but it has a fantasy element, and it is a YA book BUT it has a happy ending: The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper. Bring it to the beach! Or to upstate New York, where the book is set.

In a similar vein (reads like fiction with a fantasy element), but for a slightly younger audience, there is The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson.

I will read anything by Eleanor Estes, but for summer reading (ideas for what to do when you are bored) I recommend The Moffat Museum.

Wants that happy/sad mix (but with a happy ending)? Try Julia Alvarez's How Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay.

And for YA fantasy, I love Tamora Pierce (sorry, can't pick a favorite book). Or you could try Peter Dickinson's The Ropemaker. [Or, I will read Tolkein's The Hobbit. Over and over. But you already knew about that book.]

And I will also go back, again and again, to Jean Craighead George and My Side of the Mountain.

IF you are driving, and like to listen with your kids to books on tape, then I've found the reader makes all the difference, and we all love the Sammy Keyes mystery series (Wendelen Van Draanen). The woman who reads them is amazing! So, too, is the reader for Christopher Paul Curtis's Bud, Not Buddy--and that is set in Michigan.

While I'm on the topic of books--I've been thinking lately about a book that I read many times as a kid, about a poor girl who grows up to be a ballet dancer in the Czar's Russia and ultimately, during the revolution, runs away with the royal family--but I can't find it, and if any of you bookworms out there can, let me know the title!

Dandelion Wine and Other 7-12 Tales

My friend was telling me about the Ann Arbor Young Actors Guild performance of Dandelion Wine. This reminded me of how, when I was in middle school, I had to read Dandelion Wine, and I ranked it as one of the worst stories I had ever read. (Of course I finished it--I was a "jeune fille rangee," a dutiful child.) Digression: a few years ago, reading a book on the herbal properties of dandelions, I saw a suggestion to make dandelion wine, and was completely turned off by that idea--only because I couldn't stand the book of the same name.

In any case (because this is the way my mind works), thinking about Dandelion Wine reminded me of a high school encounter with literature. I was in 12th grade and decided to opt into the Humanities (2-semester) course in the second semester. The teacher had a reputation of being slightly ditzy, but also nice, and the class read interesting pieces--for instance, Antigone. As a condition of coming in during the second semester (into what was essentially a year-long course), the teacher asked me to read a few of the pieces they had read in the first semester. A little extra work for me, but I didn't think it would be a problem.

A couple of weeks into the term, the teacher (I'm sorry I don't remember her name although I do remember what she looked like) runs into me in the hall and asks me how my reading is coming along. "Fine," I report, "except for Waiting for Godot."
"Why?" she asks.
"I can't stand it, it seems endless, and I'm only reading it for the class," I say.
"Oh no!" she says to me. "You don't have to read it if you can't stand it. I really don't want that. I want you to enjoy what you read."

Many years later, I still appreciate that teacher's attitude.