Last in a Long Line of Rebels

Bits of a Civil War diary by Louise Duncan Mayhew in the 1860s, introduce each chapter of Lisa Lewis Tyre’s middle grade novel, Last in a Long Line of Rebels. That story informs the primary one of present day urgency for the writer’s namesake Lou Mayhew as she tries to save her home from being demolished in a case of eminent domain.

In her debut novel, Lisa Tyre sets her story in rural Tennessee where the characters ring true and the family doorbell plays “Rocky Top,” the University of Tennessee theme song.

Lou has several issues beside saving her house that are skillfully woven into the mix. There’s the richer classmate gloating over her upcoming trip while insinuating that Lou will have nothing interesting to tell at the end of the summer, the embarrassment of discovering that her ancestors were slave owners, the black high school friend shafted by a racially biased coach who recommends a less skilled white player for an athletic scholarship at UT, and the impending birth of a new sibling. She gets her adventure underway with a rash promise to attend church in a last resort prayer and a hope that she and her cronies can find some rumored gold hidden during the Civil War. Her hip grandmother Bertie, who is bound to be up to something, adds additional color.

Near the halfway mark in the novel, Lou discovers the diary. The note at its beginning gives her a connection with its author:

            If you find this, my dear friend

            The heartfelt musings I have penned

            Know they belong to me alone

            Until I lie beneath cold stone.

                                    Louise Duncan 

Humor abounds in comments like, “Just my luck. The one time I wanted to hear the preacher ramble on, he couldn’t” or “Pastor Brown said . . . that money doesn’t buy happiness. I could tell him that being poor ain’t no big whoop either.” Other lines touch the heart, “It struck me that mothers spend a lot of time saying bye.”

If you have a middle schooler who loves a good book, buy a copy for a gift. Treat yourself and pre-read it before you give it away. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

Oddly Superstitious Day

Full disclosure – I didn’t notice this myself. Charles Osgood pointed it out on last week’s CBS Sunday Morning. Writing today’s date numerically gets you a sequential odd set of numbers – 11/13/15. To top it off, it’s Friday the thirteenth! I’ve been thinking all week about how to celebrate this odd day by doing something different, even if it doesn’t qualify as weird. They say (and you know what authorities “they” are) that changing from routine to novelty exercises the brain, and mine definitely could use a workout. I scrutinized several choices and discarded them.

We could do our morning walk at the mall clockwise instead of counterclockwise. Not a choice. Al is a creature of habit and not into novelty. He also believes that counterclockwise is The Right Way to walk.

I could try writing with my left hand – one of the chosen exercises “they” recommend. Not a choice. I sometimes have trouble deciphering my writing with my dominant hand once it’s gotten cold. I’m sure I couldn’t read anything I wrote with my left.

So for now, I’ll keep it minor. We always have hamburgers on Saturday night. We’ll be away for supper tomorrow night so I think we’ll have them tonight instead, and I’ll try to remember not to go to church tomorrow though it will feel like Sunday.

I could leave the bed unmade. Also not a choice. I can live with dust and clutter and would win no prizes for housekeeping, but there is something about an unmade bed that seriously disturbs my psyche.

As for the superstitions, if I run into a black cat and break a mirror while crossing under a ladder with my umbrella up inside on this Friday the thirteenth, I’ll just snap the wishbone on last night’s chicken, pick up any penny I find, cross my fingers, knock on wood, and hope for some beginner’s luck. 

In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse

One of the real difficulties with diverse literature comes from assessing the credibility of the writer. Joseph Marshall III, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota (Rosebud Sioux) tribe, raised in a traditional Lakota household, brings a sense of authenticity to In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse. I read an advance reading copy furnished by Net Galley of this middle grade novel to be released on November 10. The element of his book with the grandfather telling young Jimmy McClean stories of Tasunke Witko (Crazy Horse) reflects the author’s own rearing by maternal grandparents skilled in oral storytelling, but is easily relatable to a child of any culture where a grandfather and grandson share a strong bond and a love of story.

The basis of the narrative begins when Jimmy McClean is teased and bullied by one white and one Lakota classmate who can only agree with each other when they torture him about his blue eyes and light brown hair. Jimmy’s mother sums up his situation, “The problem is your three Lakota parts are all hidden inside. Your one white part is on the outside.”

Grandfather Nyles, in a unique way, helps Jimmy come to terms with his own feelings about his three quarters Lakota and one quarter white heritage. A camping trip over the surrounding territory serves as a vehicle for Grandpa Nyles to tell the story of Crazy Horse from the Lakota viewpoint. The nonfiction part of the novel shows Jimmy his heritage in a new light.

While I found Grandpa Nyles’s account of Crazy Horse slightly didactic, the book gives a perspective of that era of history through the eyes of the Lakota, a view not often seen in history books. It’s a good read and would be an excellent addition to a classroom studying this era of American history.

Can You Go Home Again?

The question has been argued for many years, but it became mine when I got the invitation issued to former pastors and their families to return for the 175th anniversary of the Hardy Baptist Church. Except for a brief drive through the village with my youngest son when he was a teenager, I had not been back since I was seven and a half. (Halves were important back then.)

A lifetime between with children and now grandchildren had me speculating on the drive up about whether there would be people who actually remembered my family. Al, who’d probably heard enough about this trip already, commented, “Maybe if you find the old people.” I reminded him that we had become the “old people.”

Given the passage of time, I didn’t expect to recognize anyone, but much to my surprise, I knew the first person I saw at the registration table. Elizabeth, the best friend of my foster sister, had been a pretty teenager the last time I’d seen her. Now she was a beautiful woman with lifelines that had fallen in pleasant places.

The packed house included people who’d returned from California to South Carolina. The main part of the program was a historical Power Point presentation that began in 1840 with a Choctaw woman. The theme of “The Light on the Hill” took its inspiration from the location of the church atop a steep hill straight up from the village and the railroad track. The inspirational account of successes and struggles down through the years had the audience enthralled when an unexpected question popped up on the screen right in the middle of the presentation. “By the way . . . do any of you remember what used to happen on Sunday mornings at Hardy Baptist Church at 11:35 a.m.?” A chorus of “The train” broke the spellbound silence. We all remembered stopping in the middle of the prayer, song, or sermon until the train had passed. The presentation included a blowing train whistle, right on time, with a return to finish the history. It seemed perfectly normal. 

On this drizzly day, dinner on the grounds was served in the fellowship hall with all the Southern dishes that traditionally go with such an occasion and a few new ones to boot. As always, enough was left over to have fed another crowd of the same size.

Time after dinner allowed me to find old acquaintances and peruse the hall filled with pictures of days gone by. Elizabeth was the only person I knew without checking a name tag, but that was okay. Everybody from my generation mingled the crowd looking at shoulders for hints they couldn’t find in faces.

I enjoyed the status of a special guest with a corsage and nametag that said, “Virginia Butler; Bro. McGee’s Daughter,” but even more I enjoyed the trip back to this little village that played a strong part in my father’s beginnings as a minister and in some happy days of my childhood.

My conclusion was that you can go home again with some stipulations. Your childhood friends will have gray hair, if they have any at all, and they may be packing pictures of grandchildren.

How Rude!

I seldom use the words “science” and “scamp” in the same sentence, nor do I normally look for science books for scamps*. However, I paused at the bookstore at a recent SCBWI conference and there it was – How Rude: 10 Real Bugs Who Won’t Mind Their Manners by Heather Montgomery.

Heather’s teaser on the first page says, “Some bugs litter. Some pass gas. Others throw poop.” The next page pictures her ten bugs posing on their platforms in “The Battle for the Grossest.” A double spread for each follows, touting their claims for the position. Every spread begins with a disgusting tidbit to intrigue young scamps and finishes with a scientific explanation of their rudeness in the same kid-friendly manner.

NPR reported a comparison of children’s and adults’ preferences in fact versus fiction in a paper published earlier this year by psychologists Jennifer Barnes, Emily Bernstein, and Paul Bloom showing that children had a preference for fact. Certainly that will be true for a book like this.

In the end, Heather doesn’t tell who wins the contest by being crowned the grossest. Instead, she gives the young scamps who read the book – or have it read to them – a place where they can vote on her website. 

I couldn’t pass this up. I bought the book and got Heather to sign it. You see I have a great nephew who qualifies as a scamp coming for Thanksgiving dinner.

*Scamp – a loveable kid with just enough mischief to be fun

PB & J

The November 2015 issue of Good Housekeeping has a running notation of significant dates at the bottom of its pages, a little bonus of fun history. Page 22 listed the 1900 purchase of the magazine by the Phelps Publishing Company and the establishment of the GH Experiment Station, the 1901 invention of the Gillette “safety razor,” and the 1901 suggestion by food writer Julia Davis Chandler to pair peanut butter and jelly to make a sandwich.

The first two GH occasions are fine, but it’s that peanut butter and jelly sandwich that ranks way up there in importance. Its virtues include convenience – doesn’t everybody keep a container of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and some kind of bread? It’s not shabby as nutrition goes – protein in the peanut butter; fiber, vitamins, and minerals in the bread; and fruit in the jelly. Okay, maybe not the best source of fruit, but it’s in there. Best of all, it’s tasty.

Back in the 1920s Gustav Papendick invented a way to slice and wrap bread. By the time Julia came up with the sandwich, children were able to make their own sandwiches without danger of slicing themselves along with their bread. The next decade brought the Depression where the low cost product provided needed nutrition which was followed by WWII where it became a staple for US soldiers. Jon Krampner’s book, Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food (reviewed in the early days of this blog) gives more interesting history on this topic.

A survey in 2002 said the average American would have eaten 1500 PB&J sandwiches before graduating from high school. Putting my daughter into this picture, somebody didn’t get their share. School days of 180 per year times thirteen years (including kindergarten) would come to 2,540 and that doesn’t include preschool years and holidays. I’m not saying she never ate anything but PB & J, but she was never one for variety in lunch, including sticking to one brand of smooth peanut butter and grape jelly. During her college years, churches provided a sandwich meal for a traveling student musical group that she accompanied on the keyboard or piano. She often lamented that the meals seldom included PB &J.

I know there are a few people allergic to peanuts and a few more who don’t care for peanut butter. I sympathize with the first and am astounded at the second. I’m betting most my readers  have their own favorite variety of the old standby.

As with many other important things, peanut butter and jelly, has an official day on April 2. You may wait to celebrate if you like, but writing this has made me hungry. I’m off to make my sandwich on home baked wheat bread with extra crunchy peanut butter and blackberry jam.

These Shallow Graves

I became a Jennifer Donnelly fan when I read her historical novel A Northern Light. Her latest young adult novel, These Shallow Graves, will be released on October 27. My advance reading copy, furnished by Net Galley, lived up to my expectations with an added layer of mystery that ranged from unsettling to terrifying. The stage is set in September 1890.

Born to a life of privilege, Jo Montfort could opt for a year of mourning after her father’s death, follow that year with a good marriage, and live a life of ease. Unwilling to accept the cover story of her father’s accidental death while cleaning his revolver or the subsequent suicide theory, she breaks tradition and mingles with a crowd she’s not supposed to even hear about in her upper class existence in order to find the truth.

As Jo becomes friends and receives help and friendship from these people considered to be riffraff by her peers, questions arise beginning with what constitutes true freedom. Is she actually any more free, penned in by society’s expectations, than the orphans who work for a New York version of Dicken’s Fagan?

Yet another question comes in how far she can trust her reporter companion and unacceptable love interest Eddie Gallagher.

An additional puzzle comes in the meaning of the uneasy warning, “If you’re going to bury the past, bury it deep, girl. Shallow graves always give up their dead.”

A good story, a fine romance, and a chilling mystery – what better place to find a few hours’ escape than in some shallow graves?

Oh, the Irony!

Rejection can find a writer in any place at any time in this modern world. Four hours away from home at the Hampton Inn in Hoover, Alabama, I checked my email about 10:30 PM when I returned to my room. A nice polite letter, sent three hours earlier, let me know that my manuscript had not been accepted. I put the letter at number eight in my rankings system. Ten is an acceptance.

The letter included a helpful hint just in case, “If you are seeking to hone your craft of writing for young children, we recommend the resources at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators –  http://www.scbwi.org.”

Therein lay the irony. My late time of checking email was a direct result of my being downstairs at the dessert party for the WIK 15 conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators! The Southern Breeze area of the national organization holds this “Writing and Illustrating for Kids” conference annually. I had chatted with a couple of editors, gotten advice from a couple of science writers, and compared notes with old and new writer friends. I’m quite sure this is the first time, and probably will be the last, that I have laughed at a rejection letter.

I not only found the sender’s comment funny, but exactly right. The rest of my SCBWI weekend was filled with information about what’s happening in the world of children’s books, ways to improve writing and enhance chances of acceptance, a personal critique pf a work-in-progress that will facilitate a rewrite, and a whole bunch of hanging out and comparing notes with my fellow scribblers.

So if you have a hankering to write for children, check out the website and look into becoming a member.

Playing with Fire

Given the opportunity from Net Galley for an advance reading copy of a novel by the creator of Rizzoli and Iles that will be released on October 27, I couldn’t resist. I was due a light fun mystery with quirky characters. Guess again!

In Playing with Fire, a stand-alone thriller that is not part of the Rizzoli and Iles series, Tess Gerritsen creates a darker world that begins with Julia’s last afternoon in Rome in the present day as she looks in an antique store for a souvenir of her visit. “From the doorway I can already smell the scent of old books, a perfume of crumbling pages and time-worn leather.”

Julia has already bought gifts for her husband and daughter. An Italian book with crumbing paper, the word Gypsy on its cover, and the image of a shaggy haired man makes the perfect keepsake for this violinist to carry home. But it will be the sheet of manuscript paper that drops from the book with a handwritten musical composition that will lead her into conflict at home and a threat on her life. The title of the piece, Incendio, sets the stage for Julia to tell her story.

A different narrative told by Lorenzo, a Jewish violinist, goes back in time and place to Venice leading up to and during the time of World War II. Both stories are compelling and left me resistant to her switch from one to the other character at crucial times and very curious about how the author was going to bring them together to a satisfying close. (She did.)

My preconceived notion missed the mark. There was nothing light or fun and no quirky people. Instead, there was an intriguing mystery shaped around an unusual piece of music with well-drawn characters that I cared about. The author’s note gives the source for the very real places and events that triggered her idea for the novel. Its authenticity includes the often overlooked discrimination given to Gypsy people in that era.

Rizzoli and Iles are fun people to be around, but I can let them go when their story is over. I’ve felt myself turning back to Julia and Lorenzo long after I switched my Kindle to the next book. Not what I expected. Not disappointed.

Perfectly Matched Gifts

My friend Nancy had arranged to come over to bring me a birthday present. I sensed some trepidation as she handed me the package. “You may have one of these, but I don’t think you do.” She hesitated. “If you do, now you'll have two.”

Her unease intrigued me so I quickly pulled off the ribbon and paper. There was Peter himself from The Snowy Day.  

Nancy had attended my seminar earlier in the month for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Mississippi. As part of my, “From Katz to Keats” presentation, I included in my display a copy of every book that Ezra Jack Keats had both written and illustrated. (My local independent book store had helped me find and complete my collection at less than collector’s prices several years ago.)

I am a bit in awe of people like Nancy who know the present that perfectly matches the recipient. I’ve always wondered if that knack was a gift or something that comes from paying attention. Maybe it’s both.

Nancy paid attention, not only to my talk, but to what was missing in my exhibit. She saw my passion for Keats, heard my story of how I became the researcher for the fiftieth anniversary edition of The Snowy Day, and reasoned that if I had a stuffed Peter doll, I would have displayed it.

Peter now perches atop the basket of Keats books on my hearth, keeping an eye on me as I work. The next time I’m asked to do a “Katz to Keats” presentation, you can bet he will come along. In the meantime, I’m going to see if I can also learn to pay attention.

Thirteen Ways of Looking

Colum McCann, in Thirteen Ways of Looking, writes four stories that seem to have little to do with each other at first glance.

In “Thirteen Ways of Looking,” the title novella, an old man deals with the degradation of aging. Once a highly respected judge, his memories meander back through his life – the romance and good times with family, the rebellious teenage daughter, and the disappointment his financially successful son has turned out to be – and that’s all before his murder has to be resolved.

“What Time Is It Now, Where Are You” follows a writer concocting a short story for a New Year’s edition of a newspaper magazine. The writer’s characters take life with their own agendas and distract him from his all-important deadline.

“Sh’Khol” kicks in seven years after Rebecca and her husband adopt a son in Vladivostok. The child has bodily scars from who knows what, is deaf, and was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. He’s a child who would be a challenge even if his parents had not divorced. Now, he has disappeared? In the lake? Kidnapped? As the community searches, Rebecca keeps repeating to those who call his name, “He can’t hear you.”

“Treaty” finds Beverly, a seventy-six year old nun, on retreat for a month or two needing rest and repose from her exhaustion working at a girls’ clinic in Houston. One night she catches a glimpse of a diplomat at a peace conference and knows him to be the man who raped and brutalized her thirty-seven years ago.

Nearing the end of the four stories that took me into the psyches of the protagonists, I found a connection of my own. Each aroused deep sympathy for troubling circumstances while harboring the hope that nothing like this ever happens to anyone I care about. They also returned me to an almost forgotten joy of reading short stories.

Cute or Cruel?

When it comes to kids, I can mount my high horse pretty quickly. I watched a reporter who shall not be named, filling her quota of “cute kid” pieces about the beginning of school with a five-year-old entering kindergartener. She knew how to pick them. The little boy with a ready grin and chubby cheeks fit the definition of cute even without being my grandchild.

The first part of the interview was fine. Yes, this was a special day. Yes, he was going to have fun at kindergarten. At this point, I was loving the interview as I pictured his parents spending the previous days helping him anticipate the wonderful new world he would find in school and his teacher preparing an exciting place to learn.

Evidently, a happy child did not create enough drama. The reporter lowered her voice into a pseudo-sympathetic tone and asked, “Will you miss your mommy?” On her cue, he cried. Satisfied with her ploy, she wrapped up the piece. I’m sorry to say that the anchors of the show also laughed and thought it was cute that she had made him cry.

With many years of receiving the happy, the scared, the unsure, the excited, the mixture of emotions with entering kindergarteners, I’m sure that his teacher spent a good bit of the morning undoing the reporter’s damage along with calming other children who began with separation anxiety and other who joined his chorus. I’m guessing the reporter didn’t know how contagious five-year-old tears can be so I’ll refrain from adding “aiding and abetting” to her crime.  

It would have served her right to have been sentenced to spend the rest of the morning calming the children, engaging them in happy learning activities, and setting the stage for them to anticipate their return the next day. However, it would not have been fair to the kindergarteners to be have been stuck with her.

If I were in charge of the world, the reporter along with the anchors whose laughter encouraged her would have sat in time-out, one minute per year of age, or gone back to the old-fashioned punishment of having to write 100 times publicly on a chalkboard, “It is never cute to make a happy child cry.”

Boxers and Saints

A graphic novel is not a comic book. If you are not sure about this statement, you can start with the works of Gene Luen Yang. I can tell now the story of two of the books purchased last spring when Gene appeared at the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival. The grandson for whom I purchased them has received them for his birthday so the secret can be told. I’m hoping he will enjoy them but they have much more to offer than just pleasure.

Boxers and Saints are two volumes set in China in 1898. A bit of online research on the basics of the Boxer Rebellion before reading would be helpful. Boxers, the first, tells the story of young Bao who joins a group of Chinese kung fu practitioners to free China from the “foreign devils” – Christian missionaries – and the “secondary devils” – Chinese who have converted to Christianity.

Saints, the second volume, follows Four-Girl, of such little significance in her own family that she has no real name. She finds identity and purpose in the most unlikely place as she joins the Christian community and receives the name Vibiana at her baptism. Her vision of Joan of Arc inspires her to become a maiden warrior. She makes difficult choices as she must choose between her newfound friends and faith and her loyalties to family and country.

Good guys and bad guys are not clear cut in the books with Boxers not always bullies and the Saints not always saintly. Since they are graphic novels, they don’t lend themselves to reading aloud to young people. Instead, they would make for great discussions in book clubs, between parents and children, or in classes with teacher and students as all participants read the book.

While I have no more against comic books than I do against taking a bit of time out from real work to play a game of solitaire, Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novels go beyond that genre, carrying a lot of history and triggering reasoning about true justice. Fun, history, and reasoning – served up in one neat package – happy birthday, Jack.

Fourth Anniversary

Choices for fourth anniversary gifts include (traditional) fruit and flowers, (modern) linen, silk, or nylon, or (alternate) appliances. On this occasion of the fourth anniversary of “Readin’, Ritin’, But Not Much ‘Rithmetic,” you can probably guess my choice if you have been reading long. Working backwards, appliances are necessary and help my life run more smoothly – at least when they are running smoothly – but they lack oomph for a blog topic. Fabrics interest me a little more since I love to sew, but in my currently chosen lifestyle, most of my life is spent in summer t-shirts or winter sweats.

So I’ll go with tradition and eat a little fruit while I concentrate on flowers. You’ve seen them fairly often if you are a regular reader. I claim Eudora Welty as my role model for alternating gardening and writing. If it was good enough for her, it’s good enough for me. A few flowers will illustrate the celebration.

The passion flower symbolizes, oddly enough, passion. My passion for writing brought me to begin blogging four years ago and continues to keep me going. Unlike much of my writing, there’s no rejection letter possibility. It’s my blog, and I can write whatever I want. If my readers roll their eyes, I’m not there to see. Some days it’s a book review I want to share, some days an issue I care about, and some days just a story that has come to mind.

Several flowers have turned up in the blog from time to time. Queen Anne’s lace stands for delicate femininity, definitely not a match for me since I’ve never known anyone to describe me as delicate. We’ll skip that one. Day lilies are for enthusiasm which fits and magnolias for dignity – not so much. The best fits are the yellow chrysanthemums for friendship and the asters for contentment. The friendly responses and the new friends who’ve added their names to my readers have brought me a great deal of contentment.

Thanks for reading whether you are a regular or a now-and-again. Year five, here I come!

Too Much Pepper?

More often not, my father and my youngest sister reached for the black pepper shaker at the family table right after grace was said. Breakfast found the rest of us a bit astounded, looking at their yellow mass of eggs covered with tiny black dots. My mother, concerned about what the quantity of pepper was doing to Daddy’s health, mentioned it to their doctor. He said, “Virginia, the salt you add to your food is doing infinitely more harm than Berton’s pepper.” So Mama got out of his business and let him and Ruth pepper their food to their hearts’ content.

You may have noticed that I sometimes make weird connections. Banned Book Week often makes me think of their black pepper. Stay with me, and I think you will see it.

My favorite read aloud book with eighth graders was Lois Lowry’s often banned The Giver. Its principal crime, as far as I can tell, is enticing readers to think. Great discussions ensued as we read the book. I read it to every eighth grade class with no adverse feedback from parents. They either trusted me, were unaware of the “danger” in the book, or wanted their students to learn to reason. I’m fairly sure it was the last. I was gratified this year to learn that one of those students, now a teacher, was planning to use The Giver with her students.

I have trouble with forbidding books. My very conservative mother, as far as I can remember, never told me not to read any book. She did suggest, as Eudora Welty’s mother did, that Elsie Dinsmore was not a very good choice. She thought Elsie was far too sanctimonious to be real. Eudora’s mother thought she was too impressionable to read it and might follow Elsie’s example by falling off the piano stool.

I have no problem with making recommendations to the children or students in your charge, depending on their maturity and ability to handle violence, strong language, or explicit scenes. An eighth grade student introduced me to Angela’s Ashes after she read it on her mother’s recommendation.  In a conversation that included my grown librarian daughter, I once said I couldn’t have imagined recommending that book to her in eighth grade because I didn’t think she would have been ready for it. Tongue in cheek, she responded, “Mom, I read it as an adult, and I wasn’t ready for it.” (I did think the student was ready and appreciated her mother for seeing it.)

Which brings me back to the pepper. When I serve a meal to guests, I may alert them if the food is a bit spicy so they can make a reasoned choice. I think it is equally considerate for reviewers to warn readers if a book may be disturbing to them. After that, I’m for following Mama’s example and backing off as they choose whether or not they want to drown their eggs in black pepper.  

In the Time of Butterflies

Strangeness pops up in this blog, first because it is in honor of National Hispanic Month which runs oddly from September 15 to October 15. To be honest, the book was read and the review written a couple of weeks before I knew the month was coming and was in my stash for when I needed a blog but time was short. My other confession is that I don’t need a special month since I have a number of writers from that heritage that I read regularly – Meg Medina, Margarita Engle, Pam Munoz Ryan, and Pat Mora – just to name a few.

It’s also a bit strange to start a book review at the end, but a note in the postscript to Julia Alvarez’s novel In the Time of Butterflies captures the story. “A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.” In yet another strangeness, I recommend starting with the postscript and the author’s note in the back matter before you begin reading the book. Its story starts at the end, much like To Kill a Mockingbird begins with Jem’s arm in a sling.

The absorbing story traces the lives of Las Mariposas – the butterflies – as they make their way through love, hairbrushes, gun running, and rebellion against the dictator Trujillo. Perhaps I became more engrossed because the four sisters who take turns telling the story were spaced much like my own with the three older ones close together in age and a skip before the “little sister.” Perhaps that was also part of the appeal of telling their story to the author who also came from a family of four sisters.

Julia Alvarez takes the real Mirabel sisters and their murder on a lonely mountain road and spins a novel taking turns in each of their voices. The suspense holds the reader who continues to brace against the inevitable ending.

Early on, I retraced my reading to be sure I was not reading about Cuba. The history is similar. At the end, I pondered how life (sickness, laughter, love) goes on in the middle of a revolution. I also felt a need to go back and learn more about the Dominican Republic.

The story’s travel through the human heart begins with a quote from Patria when she sees a young boy shot, “Then I tried looking up at our Father, but I couldn’t see His Face for the dark smoke hiding the tops of the mountains.” It lasts after three of the sisters are gone and only Dede is left to complete their story, “We had lost hope, and we needed a story to understand what had happened to us.”

Don’t we all?

One Morning in Maine

If this title reminds you of a children’s book by Robert McCloskey, give yourself a pat on the back for your perception. Summer vacation with a couple of preschoolers sent me scurrying for books to add to their memory of the trip. Having been around the track a few times, I knew a local independent book store would be the place to shop.

For their memory of this trip I needed three books for sure. Naturally, I could not skip One Morning in Maine since sunrise, my favorite time of day, was spectacular from the house we’d rented where the Penobscot River heads toward the ocean. The boys would have to have Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney since we saw the lupines of the story every time we took a walk.  And they couldn’t miss their father’s childhood favorite, Blueberries for Sal, also by Robert McCloskey.

So I got out my computer and Googled the location of the nearest small town independent book store.  As often happens with independents, I got more than I bargained for since there was a review of Kent Haruf’s last book written shortly before his death on the site. I had enjoyed his Plainsong and Eventide and knew I wanted to read Our Souls at Night.

The bookstore, right on Bucksport’s main street, was appropriately named “Bookstacks.” (Names of independent bookstores are intriguing in themselves, but that would be a digression.) After enjoying a browsing session in both the adult and children’s sections, I stood off temptation and kept to my plan of buying the three books for two grandsons and one for the grandma. As I checked out at the counter, the owner looked up from his nearby computer to give me a warning, “Have a box of Kleenex ready.”

I thought, “Only in an independent bookstore!” A report on yesterday’s Today Show said sales in independent book stores were up by 20%. There are reasons for that, like the owner who had actually read the book he was selling. Recent coverage on Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi suggests that you get a staff recommendation for your next read because they know books. Each job applicant for their bookstore has to take a literature test! If you have a local independent book store, become friends with the staff, and they are likely to watch for books that fit your tastes. Hand-selling is a big part of their trade.

And before you go on vacation, Google and find one of those bookstores. You will enjoy the browsing, find some books with local color to take home to remember your trip, and perhaps get a warning from the staff if the book you select is going to make you cry.

What Goes Around . . .

A recent post by a friend who’s a former classroom teacher and now hand-sells books at a fine independent book store recalled a memory and started me thinking about what constitutes help.

Because of his teaching expertise, he frequently gets questions and complaints about teachers and education. On this occasion, it was from a parent who didn’t understand why her student got 100% on all her homework and failed her tests. A little digging revealed that the parents were doing the homework each night to ensure a good grade. My wise friend tactfully pointed out that they were sabotaging the purpose for the student to practice and for the teacher to know where she was struggling in order to give further instruction in problem areas.

His story returned me to a memory from the days when I figuratively endorsed my paycheck to Baylor University for my youngest son to pursue a major in information systems. Thinking he would be appreciative of this support, I asked for his help with my computer when he was home for a holiday. He stood behind me facing the computer and said, “Now, Mom, what do you think you would do next?”

“I don’t know,” was my slightly testy answer. “That’s why I called you. Just tell me what to do, and we can be finished.”

He countered with a question in a tone that was vaguely familiar. “Do you remember how you used to ‘help’ with my homework? You kept asking me this same kind of question until I had solved the problem. You said if I figured it out, the next time I would be able to figure it out again. If you figure out this computer problem, you will be able to figure it out when I’m not here.”

My first thought was, “What goes around, comes around.” I wasn’t particularly happy with his method of helping at the moment and knew he had not always been happy with mine. I also knew I had been right, and he was right. The best help comes, whether its homework or something entirely different, not when we remove obstacles but when we coach the struggler to surmount the problem. Success for the coach (teacher, parent, etc.) is in becoming unnecessary – but, hopefully, still loved and appreciated.

The Thing About Jellyfish

A question persisted in the back of my head the whole time I read Ali Benjamin’s debut solo novel The Thing About Jellyfish. (She has co-written several other books.) It almost mirrored the absorption in her protagonist’s head. My question was, “Am I really going to blog about this book?” Twelve-year-old Suzy Swanson intently pursues the idea that the drowning death of her best friend came at the hands of jellyfish.

There was never any question about the quality of the writing. She describes the jellyfish expert, “His face is kind of meaty, and his lower jaw is tucked under the rest of his face like a drawer that’s been pushed in a teeny bit too far.”  Nor was there ever any idea that I might close it without finishing. In fact, I had trouble closing it temporarily even when I read past my bedtime.

The problem came from Suzy’s struggle without letup as she becomes incommunicado in her struggle to move on after her friend drowns. Not willing to accept her mother’s platitude, “Sometimes things just happen,” she fixates on jellyfish as the cause. Lack of social skills, rejection of those who try to help her, marking time with her father in their weekly visits rather than opening up to him, and an impossible scheme to get to the jellyfish expert in Australia had me wanting to yell, “Stop!”

Without preaching, the book deals with guilt grief, the ineffectual use of platitudes, and the indefinite time periods and methods of coming through grief to a new normal.

My own question came because it’s hard for a cup-half-full person like me to read a book that begins with the cup half empty – and then springs a leak. By now you have figured out how I answered my question. I will add that I recommend the book for any middle schooler or young adult dealing with grief or an adult who walks beside them.

Who's Been Eating My . . .

I’ve developed a great deal of empathy for Papa Bear and his question, “Who’s been eating my soup?” Except it wasn’t soup, it was my passiflora incarnate – aka maypop – aka passion flower. I concur with Baby Bear that “She ate it all up!”

Two years ago, I bought and trained three small maypop plants on the lattice to bring summer shade on the carport, to relish the beautiful flowers, and to bring memories of stomping the ripened fruit we found growing wild when I was a kid (hence “maypop”). Last summer, it accomplished its assigned task nicely, and a thirteen-month-old grandson helped with the popping in December. This summer, it’s outdone itself with lush green vines and multitudes of blossoms.

Imagine my chagrin when we returned from our morning walk (much like those bears) a week or so ago and discovered stems stripped bare of their leaves! The culprit was not nearly as hard to find as Goldilocks. He (She? It?) stretched out on the twig in all its orange glory, its black spines daring me to touch. I could swear I heard him-her-it burp!

Not only has it joined its many relatives to devour my maypop leaves, they have stolen my time. I keep watching their progress from yellow eggs the size of a period made by a ball point pen to  tiny black spiky strings to fat orange worms looking for a spot to literally hang out. Sticking its tail to a vine or a slat of the trellis, it forms a J before pupating. Then I wait. I watch butterflies emerge, hang on long enough to dry their wings, and sometimes engage in a little hanky-panky.  

All is forgiven as I watch a crowd of agraulis vanilla – aka gulf fritillaries – aka passion butterflies scamper around the yard feeding on lantana and Mexican petunias. Like Baby Bear when he discovered Goldilocks, I cry, “There they are!”

My new question is, “Who’s been eating my butterfly?” Caught in the act with my surveillance camera before he fled into the vines, the anole has been hard to locate and bring to justice with coloring that matches the maypop leaves. I’m guessing he will live his life on the lam and without apology.