Bears at the Kaigler Book Festival

Normally, I don’t think about wild animals when I anticipate the annual Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival. Two bears showed up at the one held this past April. In fact, bears almost looked like a theme for the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer and New Illustrator Honor Awards.

In Julia Sarcone-Roach’s The Bear Ate Your Sandwich, one hungry bear follows a scent from his forest, across a long bridge, and into the city to find your sandwich, which he ate. Of course, he needed to travel back to home and safety and he did. Think that’s the end of the story? Guess again. I won’t spoil the ending which will give a major set of giggles to you and the preschooler listening on your lap.

The second bear in Mother Goose Bruce by Ryan H. Higgins, is grumpy and also hungry. He finds a gourmet recipe for eggs on the internet, collects all the ingredients, and prepares to cook them. Instead, they hatch and imprint on Bruce as their mother. He hilariously spends the rest of the book trying to rid himself of his “children.” This ending will also bring on the giggles.

Of course this led to a dilemma since I have two preschool grandchildren. Which bear do I buy? You probably have already guessed the answer. Both. Birthdays are coming up in August and November. Books are signed and ready.

I thought I was finished, but today I noticed that Ryan’s bear shows up again in Hotel Bruce, coming out in October.

Shameless Self-promotion

Little did I know fifteen years ago where my discovery would lead when I walked into the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection display room and found an exhibition of the life and works of Ezra Jack Keats. For those who are not from here (and some who are but are unaware), Dr. Lena Y. de Grummond began a letter writing campaign in 1966 to writers and illustrators for memorabilia that showed the process of producing children’s books to share with her graduate students in the library school at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her small collection has grown to papers from more than 1,300 authors and illustrators and a book collection of more than 180,000 volumes. Some of those authors, including Keats, chose the collection to house their extensive archives.

Beginning with inspiration I found that day for an article “Celebrate Variety” that was published in Highlights for Children, one door has opened to another. When time came for the fiftieth anniversary edition of The Snowy Day, I was invited to be the researcher through 180 or so boxes of correspondence, memorabilia, and original writings and paintings. My meticulous notes have allowed me to share with other researchers as they have visited the collection. Keats own words and those of his friends and colleagues have opened a door for my presentation called “From Katz to Keats” that I have given for groups from kindergarten to grandparents.

My latest open door has given me a way to share the story with my blog readers. Invited into the collection again early this year, I was asked to write his story and find items to illustrate a video for the 100^th anniversary celebration of Keats’s birth at the Ezra Jack Keats New Writers and New Illustrators Awards luncheon. The following link will take you to the video produced by the library school at the university, posted on the de Grummond website, for your viewing pleasure when you have about fifteen minutes. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFvs7Bp-KSU

Moving the Magnet

What can I say that hasn’t been said? What can I do that hasn’t been done? These are two questions that have run through my mind as I’ve realized a lighthearted blog just wasn’t going to cut it after the bombardment of news from this past week.

As I begin to write, another question arises. How can I write without creating misunderstanding that only adds to the problem? Wrestling with this one, I know that silence is the coward’s way out, and I can’t trip merrily along with so much pain in the atmosphere.  

Maybe the biggest question is, since I’m just one, what possible difference can I make?

I’ve started by moving a magnet on my refrigerator, given to me several years ago by a friend who values all people. The people on the magnet have hairstyles, skin colors, and dress that are different from mine. Their culture and traditions are, too.

Since the refrigerator is one of my most frequent ports of call, if I put it at eyelevel with a space around it, I’m likely to notice. Maybe seeing it frequently will remind me to pay attention to the unique human beings that make our world interesting, people I often see without seeing.

Just maybe, the magnet will raise my consciousness that every person I meet feels joy and pain, jubilance and sorrow, companionship and loneliness, success and discouragement, that every person is a fellow traveler through life and may need a hand over a speed bump.

Back to the big question. I’m just one, what possible difference can I make? Maybe not a whole lot. But I can pay attention to the marvelous variety of people I meet, knowing that each of them has value. I can look them in the eye. I can smile, maybe even ask, “How are you?” and really listen to their answer. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

How the Post Office Created America

Connections with the Post Office prompted me to wish for an advance reading copy of How the Post Office Created America by Winifred Gallagher from Penguin Press on my Net Galley account. Early memories of the train dropping off mail to be sorted and posted by our local village grocer in a corner of his store, the later importance of letters to our military family far from home through the APO, and Al’s second career as a rural mail carrier after his Army retirement, formed just a few of the reasons I wanted to read the book. Penguin kindly granted my wish.

The well-researched book recounts the ups and downs of the history of the post office with a couple of themes running throughout – cost and politics. While one might correctly think a historian would enjoy the book, it had other appeals as well. An excerpt from an 1857 love letter reads, “My dearest Ella . . . Every day have I been to the office, expect to find a letter from you, but every day I was doomed to be disappointed. . . I am very fond of sleigh riding, but I can not find any one to accompany me whose company is half so pleasant as yours. . .” This would have come after postage became affordable for the average citizen – and after the sender became the one to pay the postage rather than the recipient.

The country stores that I remembered got their turn along with the military mail and rural delivery. So did women who were hired as postmasters as early as the nineteenth century, particularly in rural areas. It would be a while before women were on equal footing with the men and before “he” and “postmaster” were seen as inaccurate terms for the one running the post office.

In the book that goes on sale July 12, the author finds a way to make the history both informative and entertaining. She closes with her assessment of where the post office should go in the future with a telling quote, as efforts to scale back have received an outcry from the public. “Legislators are well aware of the venerable maxim that one of the few things your congressman can do for you is to save your post office.”    

The Fourth and a 70s Ranch House

For us, the Fourth of July brings a double celebration. Fifteen years ago in the late afternoon on July 3, we reached the city limits on our drive into Hattiesburg and saw a phenomenon that I’ve seen only once in my lifetime. With the sun behind us as we headed into a rain shower, a triple rainbow appeared against the blackness of a thundercloud.

For the first time, we were moving to a place that we had chosen. After parent home choices ruled the first part of our lives, the Army had determined our location. We’d bought into the cliché, “Home is where the Army sends you.” Except for the two years that Allen was on assignment in Korea and Viet Nam with me left to keep the home fires burning, the Army had made excellent choices. Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, one of the nation’s most historic and beautiful cities was home for our children’s younger years. We followed with a wonderful three-year tour in Germany when they were in the middle grades and high school, and ended in Fort Polk/Leesville, LA – in reach for the oldest to return for visits from Baylor and a small town community for the junior high/high school years of the younger two. Each seemed right for the age our children were at the time.

An ultimate return to our home state of Mississippi had been in Al’s mind since he was drafted. The Army had placed a square peg in a square hole, and he’d had a good career, but coming back had never left his mind. He chose the state. I chose the city. With two universities providing ongoing activities, the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, the Faye B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival, and the Frances Karnes Center for Gifted Education – I thought I could live in Hattiesburg!

We found a 70s ranch house with a woods out back that reminded me of the homes I knew growing up. For several weeks, we camped out to remodel and paint. Now after a day of watching the movers pack and load our stuff, doing a last sweep out of the old house, and traveling almost 300 miles, we were nearing our chosen home.

I looked at the sight ahead of me and wondered if this was an omen. Did the black cloud forebode a bad selection or was the wonder of three rainbows a sign that we had nailed the finest choice? With my cup perpetually half-full, I quickly – and correctly – chose the latter.

On our first full day in our new home, we celebrated the fourth with friendly next door neighbors who invited us to join them. Al has found an appreciative audience here for his woodworking and baking, and I have spent a lot of time hanging out with book people. And every Fourth of July, we celebrate a three rainbow home selection as well as our country’s independence.

Technology - Trauma or Thanksgiving?

In my recent cleaning jag, I ran across a complaint I had made to the two Marks (son and son-in-law) that I was having to replace my first computer only three years later – after they had assured me that it would do all I ever needed when I bought it. That was a bunch of years and a number of computers ago.

As if it is not enough that they become obsolete before you can get them out of the store, my current new one has a mind of its own. When it gets tired, it shuts down. Sometimes it reboots, sometimes not. It hasn’t lost anything yet, but I have had to go through the tedious mess of deciding which copy of whatever I had open that I want to save. It is particularly annoying when it decides it’s tired while I am on a roll putting words into the machine.

Then we get to the cell phone which does a lot of things, if I only knew where they were and how to do them, and goes over the data allotment which costs me more money for stuff I’m only vaguely aware of doing.

The urge has arisen to go back to the days of my grandfather when he only had to contend with taking a turn on the party line via his phone on the wall. But then we get to a week like this when a grandson has a tonsillectomy several states away.

I’ve gotten a blow by blow account from my daughter-in-law as it happened, complete with pictures, on that cell phone and now downloaded to the computer. They’ve included his practicing the gas mask with his bear, the new friend he met in the children’s waiting area, and the popsicles and ice cream he had when it was all over.

If I went back to my grandfather’s day, I would have had to wait until somebody dropped a letter in the mail, and there would have been no cute pictures.

So technology and I remain frienemies, with the friend part taking precedence for this week at least.

A Man Called Ove

One might say, “Like mother, like daughter” when it comes to what makes a good package. The card read, “Kathe selected this for our January Book Club. Mom, you can check off the ‘family member recommended’ box on the 2016 Reading Challenge and Dad, you’ll recognize yourself on page 140 especially (and other pages as well). You’ll both enjoy this.” In the package was A Man Called Ove.

I’ll briefly fill you in on finding Al on page 140. “When he was driving somewhere, he drew up schedules and plans and decided where they’d fill up and when they’d stop for coffee, all in the interest of making the trip as time efficient as possible. He studied maps and estimated exactly how long each leg of the journey would take . . .” You get the drift, and anybody who knows Al sees a kindred spirit in Ove. There were other similarities.

Gruffly, Ove avoids his neighbors only to help them out just this once with driving lessons, chauffeuring, or repair and building work. Then the curmudgeon lets his aggravation go, “He’d never understood the need to go around stewing on why things turned out the way they did. You are what you are and you do what you do, and that was good enough for Ove” – a philosophy Al shares.

When his neighbor’s wife opens the door, Ove sees and knows enough not to comment as she, “. . .wipes her eyes and blinks away the pain. As women of that generation do. As if they stood in the doorway every morning, determinedly driving sorrow out of the house with a broom.” Instead, he gives her something to do that gives momentary reprieve from her sorrow.

I’ll leave without comment my last similarity quote. “It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time. Sonja used to say that Ove had only admitted he was wrong on one occasion . . .”

Al gave up on the book and said, “I couldn’t get into it.” Whether he recognized himself in Ove, I don’t know. More likely, the problem was that the book does not begin at the beginning and travel straight to the end. While I loved the narrative that switched back and forth between past and present, I think Al and Ove would have admonished Fredrik Backman to start at the beginning and tell the story straight.

I loved every word. It’s hard to explain how a book with the main character making multiple attempts to commit suicide after his wife’s death (about the only way he is different from Al) could be so amusing – attempts always interrupted by a nuisance call from someone who needs him. I’ve passed the book along. At last count, five friends share my enthusiasm even if the mirror image of Al is not quite as clear as it was to Anna and me.

Why We Should (Not) . . .

“Well,” my daughter said, “I wrote a number of essays.” She and her husband were going through the process to be approved as adoptive parents, and the question was what kind of discipline they had experienced in their home of origin. I admit her answer was true. The general requirement usually included 200 words of explanation (no number of pages, I’m onto writing big) of what was wrong with the action and some attempt at repentance.

I’ve been on a cleaning jag and found one of those saved missives written when we lived in Germany which I publish here, without the permission of my oldest son. I consider it a “work-for-hire” which means it belongs to me. His photograph reflects the age and attitude of the culprit at the time. You will note on the picture of the essay that a careful tally of words runs on the left side. He didn’t want to run over, yet he did feel compelled to finish his last sentence.

Why We Should Not Play Ball in Mom’s Room

The reasons we should not play ball in Mom’s room are many and diversified. Not only is it dangerous, but noisy as well.

Dangerous is a very ambiguous word, so let me ponder a moment to discuss this in full detail. Playing ball in mom’s room is, yes, very dangerous. In fact, it’s quite lethal. One, while playing ball, may find himself falling over desks, chairs, rolls of tape and/or even little clouds of dirt, which could result in the connection of one’s head to the floor below, further resulting in irreversible brain damage. Falling over the aforementioned objects brings into the picture the subject of noise. Have you ever, just for the fun of it, pushed a chair off the top of a desk? If you have, then you know about the tremendous impact this can have on the noise pollution scale, not to mention the headaches it can bring about.

Another point is about the walls. Germans may make their walls quite sound, but this does not, in any way, condone the bouncing of balls on them. Bouncing balls on walls (say, that rhymes) can leave ugly, nasty-looking marks that may cause negative reactions from (200^th word) children and thus stunt their learning process.

A few years later, his  little younger brother had to write one on why one did not sass his mother while she was teaching him to drive. His concluding reasons admitted that she might be right and she did own the car keys.

Truth to tell, I was never sure my discipline with any of the three was taken as seriously as I intended. Nor am I sure that it had anything at all to do with their becoming productive adults – just grateful that it happened.  

Vinegar Girl

One might ask why there is a need for yet another version of The Taming of the Shrew since Shakespeare did a fine job with the first one and multiple productions have followed in various forms with plays, opera, musicals, ballet, film, TV, and radio. My personal favorite was seeing Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate on Broadway with a younger generation group who wondered how I knew all the songs.  Yet, all the convincing I needed for an updated version was to see that Anne Tyler had written this one. I read an advance reading copy of the book that goes on sale June 21 furnished by Net Galley .

Vinegar Girl, set in today’s world, begins with Kate Battista answering the phone. Her father, Dr. Battista, wants her to bring his lunch. So begins the strangeness since he distrusts telephones and forgets his lunch about twice a week without noticing it. Irritated at being interrupted, she follows his request. The left lunch and phone call finagle Kate into meeting the doctor’s assistant Pyotr Shcherbakov.  

As if Kate didn’t have enough trouble keeping up with some version of tact with the kindergarteners and their parents at work and running the house for her peculiar scientist father and spoiled, prettier, younger sister Bunny, now her father wants her to salvage his impending scientific breakthrough. Pyotr’s time in the country is almost up, and Dr. Battista needs his help to bring the project to completion. If only Pyotr and Kate can fall in love and get married – or just get married – all will be saved. Needless to say, Kate is furious at being manipulated by the two men.

If you are familiar with Shakespeare’s story in one of its many iterations or have read the synopsis, you can guess where this is going and enjoy making comparisons. If you have read Anne Tyler before, you will know she makes her characters unique and interesting. If you haven’t experienced either, it doesn’t matter. The novel will stand alone. Anne Tyler knows how to give the old tale a new humorous twist and create a nice diversion for her readers.

They're Back!

If you plant it, they will come. Truthfully, when I ordered three maypop or passion flower vines, I anticipated the purple filigree flowers and fall maypops. I didn’t know they would come.

For two years, the vines performed as expected covering the lattice, cooling the carport on the west side of the house as the sun went down, blooming profusely, and making poppers in case any grandchildren showed up.

A surprise occurred about this time last summer when I found an obese caterpillar munching around a maypop leaf. As quick as my mother used to head for the encyclopedia, I headed for a search engine and typed in, “identify caterpillars.”

There was my caterpillar – bright orange with black stripes and black spikes sticking up all over! It seems the Gulf Fritillary caterpillar is a picky eater and only feeds on passion flower vines. So began my summer distraction as I watched the entire cycle from egg to butterfly repeatedly until I was left with stripped vines and a yard full of butterflies.

I’ve spent the winter and spring wondering about two things. I’ve wondered why Monarchs seem to get all the press. The Gulf Fritillary also has a migration cycle, spending winters in Florida, and is beautiful both topside and underneath. The upper layer is soft orange with a delicate pattern around the wings while the underside is even more spectacular. Showing off as it sips nectar from my nearby lantana (adult butterflies aren’t so picky about their food), the wings fold up showing off a pattern that looks like stained glass.

My second puzzle has been how long I had to wait for their return. Lush vines and abundant passion flowers have been enticing. Last week I saw a Gulf Fritillary butterfly and spotted an egg. This morning there are a couple of baby caterpillars, just small spiky black things munching their way around a maypop leaf.

They’re back! And with them a new puzzle. How do I keep myself on task with such an intriguing distraction just out the side door?

Seventeenth Summer

Selections for the de Grummond Book Group are only limited by target age. Any book for babies through young adults may come up for reading and discussion. This month we went back in time and selected the book Seventeenth Summer, published in 1942. It was written for adults but became popular with teens and is considered by many experts to be the first young adult novel. Adding to the intrigue, Maureen Daly wrote the book when she was still in college herself.

As I mentioned in Friday’s blog on my own summer between high school and college, it covers that same three-month transition of June, July, and August. Customs of the time are apparent quickly as Angie Morrow has her first dating experience this late in life. Naïve in many ways by today’s standards with more control by her parents, there is an innocence to the love story itself, yet, chain-smoking and underage drinking are handled casually.

Angie’s family story is secondary but entwined with the romance. Her father spends most of  his time away working while her mother takes care of proper appearances and tries to keep Angie at home. The stability of older sister Margaret, engaged to Art, contrasts to second sister Lorraine who delivers the greatest amount of stress in the story as an older guy trifles with her affections. Ten-year-old tomboy Kitty provides a bit of humor.

It seems almost too simple for today’s teens so I checked out reviews. Early used editions were listed from $98 to $79.99, and it has been in print since its first publication. Descriptions of the book use the words “quintessential,” “enchanting,” and “perennially.” They all fit, and my guess is that today’s teens love the romance partly for its trip back to a different time.

If you’re in the neighborhood, you can join us to discuss the book at 11:30 AM on June 15 in the de Grummond display room in Cook Library at USM. Having read the book is not a requirement, but you might bring memories of your own transition summer between high school and college.

Sixteenth Summer

The current issue of The Writer magazine suggested the writing prompt of a fictional teen’s summer between high school and college or the alternative of a nonfiction telling of your own final summer. I normally don’t take writing prompt bait, but this one stirred some thoughts of the pivotal changes that came over the three months of my sixteenth summer affecting the rest of my life. In reflection, I don’t recall any other three months that made such a difference.

I initially titled this blog “The Summer Between” until I thought about our book selection for the de Grummond Book Group this month. Ironically, our new selection is a novel covering those three months called Seventeenth Summer. (I graduated a year early, hence my “Sixteenth Summer.”) I plan to review it in Monday’s blog.

In my own final summer, we moved into a new rural community right after my high school graduation for Daddy to serve as pastor of the local church. My plan in early June included going to Mississippi College, a four-year institution that offered the prerequisites for a nursing degree. How this would be paid for was unclear to anybody. Daddy was a country preacher, and I had a $100-dollar scholarship from the First State Bank of Holly Springs, Mississippi. The issue of money was largely an unaddressed concern.

That year was the beginning of an extensive junior college network (today’s community colleges) for Mississippi. It continues to be an area in which our state excels and in which we can and do take pride.  Officials stopped by our house to extol the advantages of the new system.  A free school bus ran daily right by my front yard, and tuition was negligible in comparison to the four-year institutions. Credits transferred easily after completion of two years into any of the Mississippi colleges. What was there to lose?

June, July, and August also included the operator of the country store just a piece down the road, who had taken over the store after his father’s death during his last year of high school, and his afternoon break. His break time coincided with the afternoon arrival of the Itawamba Junior College bus, and I would spot his red-and-white Buick parked in our front yard.

Ultimately, that three months of the summer between turned a nursing candidate into a teacher, found her a companion for life’s journey, and moved her to Plan B for which she was better suited than Plan A. And the scholarship? It paid all her tuition and bought all her books (mostly secondhand) for the first year with $11 left to start the second.

Grayling's Song

When I jumped at the chance to read Karen Cushman’s new middle grade novel, Grayling’s Song, in an advance reading copy, I expected another of her fine historical novels that took me to life in the past. Settling in for expected pleasure, the first lines seemed to confirm that anticipation. “The mist hung low in the valley between the forest and the town. It dangled from tree branches like stockings on a washing line . . . “

Grayling gathers herbs for her mother’s remedies while her mother threatens to turn her into a toad if she doesn’t hurry. “Ah,” I thought, “medieval story.” Then the fire comes that burns the house down, and something in the smoke turns her mother’s feet into roots that clutch the ground and begin a transformation of her mother into a tree, and I know I’m neither in the middle ages nor in historical fiction!

The grimoire, the book of chants, spells, and rituals that can reveal the way to undo the magical rooting, has disappeared in the smoke. Forced to leave her complaining and timidity behind, Grayling accumulates interesting companions on her quest that sometimes help and sometimes get in her way – a bewitching enchantress, an aging weather witch, a prophet who uses cheese for his divination, and the lovable Pook – a shape-shifting mouse.

She relies on her mother’s songs for gathering, for healing, for heartening, and for discovery along her treacherous journey seeking the grimoire and discovers there’s a song that only she and the grimoire can hear that directs her path. Eventually, she comes to a crisis that requires a song of her own.

Both those who look for Cushman’s trademark lyrical prose and those who love to find themselves in a magical world of fantasy will enjoy the book, even if they don’t fit its intended audience of middle graders.  

The End of a Beginning

This packrat, taking a sudden notion to pitch and toss, stumbled onto a bit of serendipity. In this season when Sam Butler graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in Maryland, I ran across a poem written by his father the year he graduated from Leesville High School in Louisiana. I found it just in time to share it with Sam and get Mark’s reluctant permission to use it for my blog.

The End of a Beginning

A time of reflection on a lifetime;
A time of anticipation of a new life.
Dreams of what could have been
Mixed with dreams of what could be.
A ceremony to symbolize
The fact that you have become your own man.
Twelve years of hard work, scholastic and social,
Only to start over.
The end of relationships that were going to last forever;
The beginning of those that will.
Leaving what you’ve always known;
To begin what you never knew.
A time of reflection on a lifetime;
A time to forget the worries ahead.
     Mark Butler
     March 2, 1988

Ironically, even as Sam attends orientation at Tulane University anticipating his own new life, Mark anticipates beginnings of his own as he changes his job to “work from home” status and moves with his family from Maryland to Hattiesburg. Perhaps graduation marks the first major life’s ending foreshadowing more beginnings to come. My hope is that they be will filled with few of the worries and many of the dreams come true.

If Bees Are Few

If Bees Are Few, edited by James P. Lenfestry, unapologetically lauds bees. If you have paid any attention to bee issues, you are probably aware of warnings that their numbers are seriously dropping, but approaching this book with a mindset of embarking on a sermon or didactic environmental treatise would be a mistake. The motivation would be correct, since putting their money where their mouth is, some proceeds from sales of the book will be aid the Bee Lab in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota in their search for ways to protect bees worldwide. Visit the website at www.beelab.umn.edu for more about the Bee Lab’s work and resources. The foreword by Bill McKibben points out that bees play the role of sentinel in an increasingly toxic world, acting as a warning system that our world is out of kilter.

The front matter, brief and well worth reading, prefaces the fun to come. Poets range from current award winners like Sherman Alexie to those like Burns and Kipling studied in long ago English classes. I started to pick a few lines I really liked and wound up shortening a blog that became much too long. I had to include the first sample since it brought back memories of my grandfather harvesting honey from his own bees.

24th May: Collecting the Bees (Sean Borodale) 
“He just wears a veil, this farmer, no gloves
and lifts open a dribbly wax-clogged
blackwood box.”

Boy with Honeybee Hair (Barry Blumenfeld)
. . . I came to say, He
said, it’s nothing to
Be afraid of, death. It’s a place you go to rest.

Summer at the Orphanage (Laure-Anne Bosselar)
I’d like to tell you that something happened then
– that there was an epiphany, that the bee
taught me something.
But it didn’t.

Of A’ the Airts the Wind Can Blaw (Robert Burns)
Blaw, blaw ye wastin winds, blaw soft
Among the leafy trees,
With gentle gale from hill and dale Bring hame
the laden bees.

The Language of Bees (Barbara Hamby)
This piece of amusing information rather than a poem begins by stating there are 76 distinct words of stinging, 39 words for queen, 22 for sunshine, and addressing the qualities of bee language before concluding “for it is eloquent and vulgar in the same mouth, and though its wound is sweet it can be distressing, as if words could not hurt or be meant to sting.”

Though the poems varied widely in style and substance, I failed to find a weak one. I will give a bit of advice on how to read the book. Choose one or two a day as you would select a couple of fine chocolates from a box and savor them. Truthfully, I could not do this any better than I do with chocolate. I kept reading “just one more.” At least, they didn’t make me gain weight.

Hattiesburger - Really?

Evidently after one hundred and thirty years of existence, community leaders of Hattiesburg decided that residents should have an official name and asked for suggestions from its populace. Behind closed doors, they examined those submissions. I was not privy to the discussion nor in the know on how their debate went. I only know that the decision was presented to the Annual Tourism Partners meeting at the Train Depot, and residents of the Hub City are now “Hattiesburgers.”  
       You see my first reaction in my title. (My computer had a similar reaction, drawing its red line underneath every time I typed it. I’ve added the word to its vocabulary so it won’t keep distracting me from this discussion.) 
        Returning to the wisdom of the name, I pictured the Hattiesburg I know. Any day one waits at the traffic light at Hardy Street and Hwy 49, the screen on the corner of the USM campus flashes student and faculty recitals, Science Café offerings, and experts in various fields for campus events. Its OLLI lifelong learning program offers courses alphabetically from art to technology designed for the over fifty crowd. Recently two days of C-Span were devoted to history and collections from the university and larger community. Three weeks of events from May 30 through June 18 feature arts of all kinds in FestivalSouth (www.festivalsouth.org). Somehow all this didn’t quite fit with the city’s people becoming “burgers.”
       I was not alone. Within days, the area weekly paper had its own take with the news item including the comment, “You can dress it however you like. Hold the mustard or add pickles, onions, and a bit of ketchup.” The cartoon in the same paper reflected the sibling rivalry with neighboring Lamar County that does not always appreciate annexation attempts on the part of Hattiesburg. This brought on my second reaction as I thought about a part of Hattiesburg not so readily noticeable – its ability to laugh, sometimes at itself. Hattiesburg seasons its classy event offerings with a sense of humor – not a bad combination at all.
       As for me, technically I’m not a “burger.” I live outside the city, but I can see it from my front yard so go ahead and pass the mustard.

The World Beneath

When I plan to review a book, I read little about it before I begin my own reading because I don’t want to bias my evaluation. In the case of The World Beneath by Janice Warman, this restriction was a disadvantage.

        In the author’s note at the end she writes, “I grew up as a privileged white child surrounded by poverty and deprivation in a world we did not see.” That world was South Africa in 1976 which becomes the setting for her book. She draws on her own experience to give us the story of Joshua who lives with his mother in the maid’s room in the back yard of her wealthy white employers. He understands little of what is happening around him but knows the need to be unobserved. Slowly the world around him begins to change and he must make some dangerous choices. Those versed in the history of South African apartheid will recognize situations and names before he does and know how perilous his decisions may be.

        The novel contains tension from the family situation and the world around it and keeps the reader engaged. The problem I found was the lack of character development even with Joshua. There was a reason for that! After I finished the book and did a bit of reading about it, I discovered the author was a veteran journalist. I wished I had known that as I was reading. I would have understood that the book read like a documentary that is hyped for days before it is shown on TV.

        I recommend the book as a read together book for parent and child or in a classroom, beginning with the note in the endpapers on Amnesty International and the information about resources to use fiction to teach about human rights. The connection from this story to other examples of injustice seems to be natural with this quote from the afterword, “We are all born with human rights, no matter who we are or where we live, but we are not always allowed access to them. Human rights are about justice, truth, and freedom. They are part of what makes us human.”

Back to Kindergarten

I can’t really use the idea behind the title of Robert Fulghum’s book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten since I never attended kindergarten as a student. However, there were six years when I was the kindergarten teacher. Let me tell you, each day brought a lesson with a five-year-old perspective that most adults have left behind.

Recently, I was invited to return to Kindergarten as a guest to talk about writing. I took my “Story of a Story” presentation and led them on a journey from the idea in my head all the way to publication of an article about Ezra Jack Keats in Highlights for Children. Well-prepared for my visit by their teacher, they could tell me the difference between fiction and nonfiction and vote intelligently for their preference. They nodded knowingly as we discussed research and rewriting. The Q and A at the end brought up the number of “No, thanks” replies that writers get from editors and the need to get over discouragement and send their manuscripts out again.

I hope they learned from the presentation as I did from them. The thank-you notes with more five-year-old lessons that came the next week showed individual personalities, not copies of an example the teacher put on the board. Since they all spelled “Virginia” correctly, I’m guessing she did write that for them. Some of their lessons:
• One said, “Go, books!!” and ended with, “And one more thing I love fiction!” She may have missed a comma, but she knows her exclamation marks.  
• Another did a bit of P.R., “No I Pad Do Books.”
• I think there was a lesson in open-heartedness as many expressed love on such short acquaintance, especially the one who had three-quarters of a page filled with x-kisses.

Maybe my favorite lesson came from the young student advisor who had listened intently to my stories of writers who had succeeded in spite of “No, thanks” answers from publishers. As we wound up the visit, he raised his hand and said, “I just want to say, don’t give up on your dream.” I think I’ll take his advice.

Burn, Baby, Burn

I’ve been following Meg Medina’s work since she won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award in 2012 for Tia Isa Wants a Car. Following my read of this delightful picture book drawn from her own childhood experience with an aunt, I enjoyed her narrative in The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind based in Latin American culture as she dips into a bit of magical realism with children looking to the future as parents try to hold onto old ways. In a harder novel, that I reviewed in this blog, in “Twice Sorry, Once Pleased,” she won the Pura Belpré Author award for Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass featuring a Latina teen who faces a bully at her new school.

Having learned Meg’s ability to connect with her intended audience from young children through teenagers, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read her latest Burn, Baby, Burn. The novel is set in New York city in the summer of 1977 in a community with nerves on edge as the Son of Sam killer seems to be striking at will. Family responsibility falls on seventeen-year-old Nora Lopez who copes with a brother now on drugs after being spoiled, excused, and indulged by her mother; a father who leaves her, her mother, and her brother waiting for a support check while he indulges his new family in an upscale lifestyle; and a landlord hounding them for rent money. That’s all before her mother loses her job.  Page-turning tension holds until the very last pages.

For those who remember the Son of Sam summer, the compelling narrative rings true to history. It also rings true for teenagers like Nora who lack a picture perfect life and must become the adults in their families before it is time. 

I’m caught up with wonder at Meg’s ability to write well in such a variety of genres – lighthearted picture books, intriguing magic realism, and heart-wrenching YA historical fiction. The consistent thread I’ve found in her work is the view she gives into her Latina culture. I’m anticipating my next view through that window.

Shrimp, Limericks, and Bad Luck

One bit of technology that I love is the ability to record TV shows and watch them later, fast-forwarding through commercials and things that have no interest. CBS Sunday Morning is a regular on my list. I may zip through celebrity profiles of no appeal, but I always slow down for two items that come at the end. I love their nature segment, and I always like to see what is significant for each day of the coming week, although I pick and choose which of those I find worth marking.

This past Sunday brought three that I thought worthy of my attention. It seems that Tuesday was Shrimp Day. I marked my calendar with a reason for treating myself to strawberry salad with shrimp for lunch. Thanks CBS for the alert!

Thursday was national limerick day in honor of the 204th anniversary of Edward Lear. It brought back memories of being in trouble with Mama for repeating one I’d read in Children’s Digest and embarrassing her in public. Since I hate people who allude to things without telling the whole story, here it is:

There once was a man from Black Heath,
Who sat on his set of false teeth.
He cried with a start,
“Oh, Lord, bless my heart.
I have bitten myself underneath.”

I think the disturbance it caused implanted it permanently in my memory.

I thought I’d add a limerick of my own in honor of the occasion. I'm hoping Mama would not object to this one.

There once was a scribbler I’m told
Submitting her writing so bold.
Enduring rejection,
She saved her affection
For replies that came back with “Sold!”

 

Which brings me to today - Friday, the thirteenth. I basically skip over the superstition. I recommend  discounting the omen of the thirteenth in favor of having some shrimp while you write a limerick.