The Door That Led to Where

The Door That Led to Where by Sally Gardner is not your average time travel novel.

Beginning in the present day, AJ fails a major exam boding a poor future for him. Set in England with unfamiliar terms for the exams, I immediately wondered if the book would be a difficult read for an American student. Test names may be different but anxiety surrounding them and results of failure carry a familiar feeling. Other English terms are easily understood from context and add a layer of atmosphere to the novel.

AJ and his friends Slim and Leon share something in common – their broken families. His mother describes AJ as a “waste of space” and gives him an envelope with a request that he come in for a job interview. She and his stepfather will not have him lollygagging around. Things take a turn when AJ gets the job, seemingly helped by a strange conversation revealing his exceptional knowledge of the works of Charles Dickens.

On the job, he finds a key mysteriously labelled with his date of birth. Ultimately, this leads to the door that will take him back in time to 1830. He moves back and forth between the two time periods looking to solve mysteries in both. Slim and Leon join him in the era of Dickens where all three must make some decisions. Which is the time period where they belong? Will they choose differently or will they remain together?

The mysteries, time travel that moves back and forth between the two eras, and personal relationships make for an interesting read especially for Anglophiles and Dickens fans. I qualify as both, but the novel will also satisfy those looking for a good read.

Season's Greetings?

I avoid arguments in this blog much like I avoid that “Rithmetic’” in its title – not an easy thing during this election season. However, I have an issue that I feel I must address. I ask that you follow me to the end before you decide to abandon the blog and cancel the friendship.

Yet another disparaging post about the “political correctness” of the greeting “Happy Holidays” brought this on. Let me make it clear that I love Christmas. My tree goes up the Saturday after Thanksgiving and comes down while I watch New Year’s bowl games. I carol and sing in the Christmas choir presentation, watch all the old Christmas movies, and take in celebrations with any family members I can round up. You’ll see my annual blog on a favorite Christmas on December 23. I post it every year on my blogging date closest to Christmas.

However, I am rich in friends who celebrate different holidays. I look forward to following these friends’ family celebration pictures on Facebook each year. I googled other winter holidays and found six in the National Geographic Kids site and another seven in a different site. It seems we love holidays for the winter solstice and try to brighten up this dreary time of year with light as a recurring theme.

My Baptist roots run deep, beginning in infancy and continuing to this day as you can see by how often my Facebook tags come from the University Baptist Church site. But I am a Roger Williams kind of Baptist. In case you missed that day in history class (there was probably only one), he established the colony of Rhode Island with the new and dangerous idea that church and state should be separate and that all people should be allowed to worship as they feel led or not at all.

All this to say my wishing of “Happy Holidays” has nothing to do with being politically correct. It has more to do with a command from the one that Charles Dickens called the Founder of the Feast. One of the most lasting and memorable statements Jesus made in the Sermon on the Mount was, “Just as you want people to treat you, treat them the same way.” The same idea, in slightly different words, can be found in many religions.

An example of this behavior on my Christmas tree came from a Muslim friend. She went home to Palestine to visit her family and brought me a gift – a set of Christmas ornaments, beautifully carved from olive wood. Friendship, not political correctness, motivated her to bring something that would enhance my Christmas that she did not celebrate.

I’ll return your “Merry Christmas!” if that is your greeting to me since I hope we both have one. But I may start with “Happy Holidays.” I like its efficiency since it reaches all varieties of winter celebrations and all the time through New Year’s – and on through Mardi Gras in South Mississippi and Louisiana.  

Now if you decide to abandon the blog and cancel the friendship, you may, but I hope whatever you are celebrating is joyful all the same. 

Before Morning

Not only am I making sure November does not end without my taking note of picture book month, I am invoking my oldest child personality and telling you how to read my newest treasure in this genre.

Having fallen in love with the author/illustrator team of Joyce Sidman and Beth Krommes in Swirl by Swirl, I didn’t even need to see the great reviews to know I had to have their newest book, Before Morning. I bought it for myself, but as you can see, I’m willing to share.

The illustrations by themselves tell a story. The poem, that Joyce calls an invocation in her author’s note, also has meaning when taken alone. I can only think to describe what happens to the combination in terms of a Reese’s peanut butter cup. The peanut butter layer is tasty, the chocolate layer is luscious, but the combination is exquisite.  That’s where my advice comes in.

I recommend a first read of the illustrations with close attention to the longing of the child for the mom to stay home. (The child could be boy or girl by the way the paintings are done. I took it to be a girl because I relate to that, but I think a boy reader might do the opposite.) The painting of the girl hiding the pilot’s hat and the opened Amelia Earhart biography gives a clue about her mother’s job and why she might be leaving as night falls. Follow the visual clues for emotions of the characters from the beginning to the end. The second time through add the story invocation. Exquisite!

Feel free to do as my sisters often did and ignore my suggestion, but you can see that I tried it out with stellar results.

It’s no wonder that Before Morning made the Kirkus List of Best Picture Books of 2016. It made mine, too. The cover lists Joyce Sidman as a former Newbery Honor winner and Beth Krommes as a former Caldecott medalist. I’m predicting that Before Morning will join their other books on awards shelves as the 2016 honors begin to come in.

About That Dressing

If you’re from the South, we can agree right off the bat that stuffing is out, dressing is in – not the location, the rightness component. I realize that technically, the reverse is true – dressing is cooked outside the bird and stuffing is cooked inside. We can also agree that cornbread forms the base of the concoction. After that, it’s pretty much every cook to his/her own devices.

How moist it should be and what gets added to the mix can vary from cook to cook. My mother believed in cornbread replete with the Holy Trinity (onion, green peppers, and celery), though she used that term only in another context, not in cooking. When I married, I discovered sage since my mother-in-law used a tad of onion and a generous supply of sage. Somehow with the same cornbread base, it also had a finer texture than my mother’s. I happily stuffed myself on either or both for a number of Thanksgivings.

When it came my turn to cook the dressing, I combined the best of each and added some poultry seasoning. Since we are fond of dressing, I have not limited my production to the holidays. Many a winter meal has been comfort food with chicken and dressing which may be even tastier than the turkey. Since winter is a very short season in South Mississippi, that still leaves a good-sized break between the times for making dressing. With no exact recipe, every Thanksgiving as I make the first round for the season, I fret over the proportions and whether I will remember just how much of the sage and poultry seasoning becomes too much of a good thing.

I knew all was well this year when a daughter-in-law held up a fork loaded equally with cranberry sauce and dressing and pronounced it the epitome of what Thanksgiving dinner was all about.

I hope this Thanksgiving found you with a long list for thankfulness and enough dressing (or stuffing if you prefer) to relish yourself into a nap-inducing coma on Thanksgiving Day with plenty of leftovers for later.  

The Wolf Keepers

“A few feet away, the wolf stared at Lizzie with pale silver eyes, ears pricking forward in sharp triangles.” So begins Elsie Broach’s middle grade novel The Wolf Keepers.

Quickly, the ethical issue of keeping animals in cages as opposed to releasing them to the wild arises with valid arguments for each woven into the warp of the novel. The weft weave carries interesting information about the animals, like the long necks of the giraffe making it hard for them to throw up. Against this background, the zookeeper’s daughter Lizzie soon meets Tyler who has run away from his foster parents and has been hiding with the elephants.

Together they keep Tyler hidden and search for answers to several mysteries. Why are the wolves getting sick and dying? Where is John Muir’s cabin in the woods in Tenaya Canyon? Lizzie ponders an additional mystery. What is the story of Tyler’s original family and why has he run away from his foster parents? After what seems to be a rash action that leaves them lost in Yosemite, they must also answer the mystery of how to survive and get back to the zoo.

The mysteries keep the reader in suspense while liberally seasoning the story with both the history and rationale behind John Muir’s love of nature. His quotes are written in pertinent places as Lizzie keeps her summer journal assignment. She reads to Tyler, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.” Tyler, having experienced hunger, is quite sure that people need bread more than beauty.

In the end, Lizzie and Tyler along with the reader, must decide if it is right to do a terrible thing for a good reason. The author does not tie up solutions to all the issues but leaves room for great discussions considering all sides of the problems of rescuing wild animals, displaying them in an educational manner that raises awareness in the public, and recognizing the need for animals to be free in their own environment.

Elsie Broach closes with an informative author’s note giving background on the real history she has included and noting which parts are fictional. I highly recommend the book for middle schoolers and for people concerned for wildlife.

Gemstone in the Debris?

Do you think you would you come nearer finding a jewel in a pile of debris or discovering something encouraging in the recent election process?

I might have joined you in choosing the first except for a first-person account from a friend who had just returned from standing in line to vote on November 8. She said the young African American woman ahead of her handed her voter registration card to the election clerk. The clerk examined the big book of voters, but couldn’t find her name.

The clerk looked up as she finished her search to see tears rolling down the young woman’s cheeks. “Oh, honey, don’t you worry. You’re going to get to vote.” (In Mississippi, “Honey” doesn’t necessarily mean that you are acquainted with the person to whom you are speaking, just that you hear her concern and feel her pain.)

Evidently, the voter’s registration had been too late to get her name in the big book. The clerk took her back into another room to verify her registration.

I listened to the story and was filled with wonder at how things have changed. Before the nineteenth amendment (the Susan B. Anthony Amendment) was passed in August 1920, the voter would not have been allowed to cast a ballot because she was a woman.

While the right for African American males to vote was ratified in February 1870, the reality of that privilege, especially in the South, would take much longer – even far beyond the nineteenth amendment. On Election Day 2016, poll taxes and requirements for interpreting complicated passages in the constitution to the satisfaction of a circuit clerk existed only in the history of this voter’s ancestors. Instead, the Mississippi election worker’s immediate reaction to her tears was, “Now, honey, don’t you worry. You’re going to get to vote.”

One small light in the long dark tunnel of a contentious election – better than finding a gem in the rubble. 

The Bone Sparrow

Subhi, born in the Australian detention center, doesn’t know any other life. I read The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon in an ARC furnished by Net Galley before its release on November 1. Engrossed in this tale set in the detention center, I tried to think how to convey the way the author personalized this lost cause. She helped me out as I read an interview with her after I finished reading. Mother of three children under ten, she said she looked at how her children see an issue, "Kids don't see numbers and statistics, they see the human side of the story."

People who were not born in the system, whom he calls “oldies,” ask Subhi to draw things he has not seen. He begs them to tell the stories so he can see what they remember. “I need these stories. Everyone else in here has memories to hold on to. . . I need their stories. I need them to make my memories.” Other stories come from Jimmie who makes her way secretly from the outside into the camp with her mother’s notebooks that she can’t read. They bond and become friends as he reads her mother’s stories to her.

Subhi waits for the arrival of his Ba, whom he has never seen, while his Maa lies mostly unresponsive on the bed. His older bossy sister Queeny, surreptitiously takes pictures for some reason unknown to Subhi, although the reader will know she has found a way to get them to the outside with hope that someone will intervene for them. As bad as life is in the center, a greater fear is being sent to another country where they are not wanted, where even its own people die of starvation and disease.

The mood of the story and Subhi’s method of coping is captured in one of the many crises that pop up, “I pretend that someday everything will be different. Just not today, is all.”

While no reason is given for Subhi and his family to be in the detention center, the story puts a human face on those who exist in such conditions whether because of a natural disaster or some type of ethnic purging. It’s a book well worth reading and discussing with a middle schooler if you have one.

A Hero Is . . .

Since I am married to a 24-year Army veteran, it seems right to acknowledge this day set aside to honor those who have chosen to defend our country.

The issue of what constitutes a military hero in recent days has made me do some thinking about its definition. A peculiar word has kept popping into my mind as I have considered the question – waiting.

 In a letter written while he was in basic training, my husband said the motto of the Army was “Hurry up and wait.” Ironically, waiting may have been his most significant contribution during his career.

During the withdrawal of American troops from South Viet Nam, soldiers were held there until their assignments were finished. Since he dealt with classified materials which would be among the last things to go, we knew he would be able to leave only after the documents were shipped. Finally, he called to tell me his papers were gone, and he would begin waiting his turn in the plane rotation the next day.

But the next day’s evening news reported that all troop withdrawals from South Viet Nam were halted until the last group of POWs had been airlifted from North Viet Nam. Fear that the agreement for their release would not be honored led to a decision to keep a last group of soldiers in South Viet Nam – 17 days doing nothing but waiting – but serving as a guarantee that all the POWs would come home.

Waiting envelops military families.  Waiting for the next assignment. Waiting for quarters. Waiting for a parent to come home from an overseas assignment. Waiting to hear that a spouse under fire is safe. And sometimes the ultimate – waiting for a body to come home for burial.

I’ve known countless service members and their families. I’ve taught their children, who were often the waiters. I’ve never known one who wanted the title of hero. They were just doing their jobs. Many family members are like me and would tell you the military lifestyle gave far more than it took away.

Still, if we want to name a hero, it will certainly include those who gave their lives and those who endured POW camps. I would add those who lived with the knowledge that death was always a possibility. And to paraphrase a quote from John Milton, I would contend, “Heroes are also those who stand and wait.”

On this day and every day, may God bless our veterans and their families who wait for them and support them.

Sharing the Bread

Mama never worried a lot about whether she was reading beyond our comprehension level. I’m sure I had not started to school when I first heard, “The best laid scheme o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”

She didn’t mess up the joy of poetry with a lot of explanation, but I saw Robert Burns picture of the wee mouse’s house that he turned up with his plow. Over the years, I have noted the lesson of life plans often gone astray – including last Thanksgiving.

The plan was to have my sisters, a brother-in-law, a niece, and a great-nephew for Thanksgiving dinner. Using Charlie, the great-nephew who was in kindergarten as my excuse, I borrowed Pat Zietlow Miller’s picture book Sharing the Bread from our church library. (I am guilty, as you may have guessed, of being the one who suggested that they purchase it.) Plan A was to read the book before the Thanksgiving grace.

But the plan “gang aft agley.” Charlie’s grandfather’s illness prevented that branch of the family from coming. I’d always envisioned Burn’s mousie setting out to find a new “wee bit housie.” I assumed that, like me, the mouse had a Plan B.

None of my remaining Thanksgiving guests had been called children for a number of years, but you never get too old for a picture book, so I didn’t completely abandon the idea. I read the wonderful story of the multigenerational family preparing their Thanksgiving meal and then gave thanks for those who gathered to share our bread. I liked Plan B so much (and assume it was okay with my guests since nobody complained) that I plan to make it my new Thanksgiving tradition with or without small children.

I’m posting this early enough in November to give you time to borrow or buy a copy for your own celebration. It goes nicely before the Thanksgiving grace, and kids of all ages will enjoy it.

The Hired Girl

I was first drawn to read Laura Amy Schlitz's The Hired Girl by controversy over one line in a diary entry dated July the fifth, 1911. “ ‘No, ma'am,’ I said. I was as taken aback as if she'd asked me if I was an Indian. It seemed to me – I mean, it doesn't now, but it did then – as though Jewish people were like Indians: people from long ago; people in books. I know there are Indians out West, but they're civilized now, and wear ordinary clothes. In the same way, I guess I knew there were still Jews, but I never expected to meet any.”

Then we selected it for our de Grummond Book Group which meets at Cook Library on the USM campus at 11:30 on the third Thursday of every month – and to which you are invited if you are in the neighborhood, whether or not you have read the selection. I’ll return later to the controversy which focused on the protagonist’s comment about Indians.

The story begins in the summer of 1911 with Joan Skraggs, orphaned by her mother and ill-treated by her father, making an escape to a better world. In that world, she works as a hired girl for a wealthy Jewish family for the momentous salary of $6 a week. Joan passes herself off as Janet to avoid discovery by her family. Her diary tells a story reminiscent of her own heroine, Jane Eyre.  

The details of time and place wrap a quest for Janet to discover who she is as she searches in her own spiritual ties to her mother’s Catholicism and in the books that Mr. Rosenbach encourages her to read. Relationships with each of the Rosenbach’s and their lifelong maid enrich the story and help Janet along her journey out of the naivety and prejudice that began her journey.

As for the controversy, it could have been sanitized out, but the book would have lost the authenticity of what a young girl from a rural area would have felt at the time. Even more importantly, it would have lost the way she began to change as she learned to know and appreciate people different from herself. By July sixteenth, 1911, she writes, “But even Thomashefsky the cat likes to be told how handsome he is – you can tell by the way he purrs and flexes his paws – and I sometimes wonder if every living thing doesn’t need kind words as much as sunshine and water.”

The satisfying ending to this novel with many twists and turns includes the establishment of a school still in existence. Should your curiosity make you want to go there as it did me, you can find it at www.parkschool.net .

Celebrating Halloween

Putting out a few traditional decorations and keeping the bowl of candy corn filled for a couple of preschoolers constitutes my biggest Halloween challenge these days. The Halloween clown who has reigned over the fireplace display for many years now was a handcrafted gift from a second grader’s creative mother.

It wasn’t always this easy. There were the years when three kids came up with “who I will be” ideas and gave me lots of instructions and minimal help in creation of their costumes.

That challenge paled when compared to getting myself and my kindergarten classroom ready to celebrate. The bulletin board always sported a black poster board witch, pot, and moveable spoon. Halloween words spewed upward in the steam from the pot – “witch,” “ghost,” “scarecrow,” “pumpkin,” “boo,” “trick or treat,” “skeleton.” We carved a pumpkin, made a pie, and toasted the seeds. Of course, we read “Little Orphan Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley and “Someone” by Walter de la Mare.

One year, time to culminate our celebration arrived on Halloween Day. I sent the Butler kids off on their bus, loaded the car with Halloween party supplies, and headed out to my kindergarten class. The car stopped and refused to restart before I got off the Army base. A man passing by saw me looking helpless and stopped to offer assistance. He listened to my explanation of what happened, looked under the hood, and said, “I think it’s just flooded.”

A couple minutes’ wait proved him right, and I drove on to school. The office staff listened to my tale that left me on time instead of early, as was my habit. Then one of them asked, “What did the man say about your outfit?” It was the first time I’d thought about it.

I looked down at my bright orange pants suit liberally sprinkled with ghosts, witches, black cats, and spiders that I had sewn on it. The man had not commented. He hadn’t even blinked an eye. Abnormal becomes normal on Halloween.

Honestly, I’m just as glad that my Halloween celebration has less stress these days. I do plan to recall some special Halloween memories, read those poems again, add “The Raven,” and perhaps indulge a bit in the candy corn.

Happy Halloween!

Election Choices

The knock on the front door itself was an omen. That door’s two purposes are to hold a wreath and to provide another way out of the house in case the side and back doors are engulfed in flames. Delivery people with any power of observation and friends come to the side door. The note my husband stuck up on the front door that says, “No – Parcels/Entry; USE CARPORT DOOR,” should have been another clue to our visitor. But that is a digression.

The man introduced himself, explained that he was running for election to the school board, and asked if I had a few minutes. I didn’t really, but I harkened back to a lesson learned as an adolescent (to be explained later) and let him talk. His spiel consisted mainly of how he was going to take the school district in hand and micromanage the school administrators and get those school teachers working. I took his card and promised to consider what he said.

My long-ago overheard lesson from my mother kicked in quickly. To be honest, I often learned lessons from her while I eavesdropped at the same time I was rejecting the ones she was trying to teach me. Isn’t that what adolescents do?

On that day, Mama explained to her companion that she would not be voting for the incumbent John Doe for sheriff. This was momentous, in itself, since she seldom shared in public who she was voting for. I perked up to see where the conversation would go. Her companion quickly responded, “Oh, you need to quit listening to what people say about him. He is a good guy.”

Mama said, “I’m not listening to what others say. I’m listening to what he said himself.” She had heard him tell a story about someone who upset him and how he would never go back to that house again if he was called. Mama thought the sheriff was the sheriff of all people.

As I promised, I considered what the school board candidate told me. He wants to represent one of the best school districts in the state of Mississippi by any measure of statistics and by the number of people with school age children who deliberately find a home here. I know many of the teachers, and the only way they could work any harder would be to add some hours to the day. They creatively engage their students and make learning fun.

I checked the back of his card. His credentials did not list one item that had anything to do with education, but several that qualified him to micromanage. After the careful consideration that I had promised, I wrote “NO” in capital letters with a marker and put it on the bulletin board.

It seems there are other elections this year. I’m listening primarily to what the candidates say themselves.

The Bayou Bogeyman Presents Hoodoo and Voodoo

The Bayou Bogeyman Presents Hoodoo and Voodoo, timely for Halloween, began in a challenge to members of the Louisiana/Mississippi Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators to write a scary story. I passed since I don’t write scary, but nine of my writer friends loved the challenge and went to work. Seven of them are pictured here as they looked before they delved into the story writing. Pelican published this group of short stories with an overarching story line of campers out to top each other with scary stories to be judged by their leader, Mr. Braud, or is he the Bayou Bogeyman? 

Questions the stories raise will give you an idea of why the timing is perfect for reading on Halloween.

• Can Alphatheda outwit Vistoire, the Voodoo Queen, in Lafayette Cemetery No. 1?
• What possible harm can come from a game loaded into an Xbox, unless of course, the game is Traveling Pierre’s Backwater Carnival?
• Do spirits from the Girod Street Cemetery really haunt the Superdome after the lights go out or is the BONG BONG BONG of the crazy bell lady imaginary?
• Should the smell of sauerkraut and stale cigar smoke hovering over a magic index card arouse suspicion?
• Can a zombie girl find a place with the “in” crowd in junior high?
• Exactly how much trouble can caged animals freed from midnight to one on All Hallows Eve cause for daredevil kids?
• Really? Can there be a miracle cure for the loup-garou and the ‘amster-garou?
• As Flint, Mikey, and D’Wayne set out through the marsh to pull their own prank, is something following them?
• Can Bryce rid himself of the face that keeps calling “back” in the window of his painting before he enters it in the art contest?
• What sorcery is needed to outwit a doll in the wall who trades places with Grace’s little brother?
• What terror lies in the blind spot of a trucker?
• Will the song “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” last long enough to prevent spell-inducing sleep from the evil ones?
• Is there hope for those conned into following the devil, who prefers to be called Satan, into his lair?

Of course, there’s also the question of who will win the contest, but that turns out to be a different issue entirely. Just to be sure you know what you are getting into, the writers’ promotional card warns, “Sleep with one eye open.” Looking at a couple of them after their writing, it seems like good advice.

Definition of a Successful Week

I’ve been seriously submitting manuscripts to magazine and book publishers for close to twenty years. I think I’ve hit upon what I should count as a successful week as a writer, and it’s not the number of acceptance letters. Many reasons pop up to explain why these haven’t been in the mailbox so that’s a poor criteria.

Rejection often falls into routine editorial reasons:

• We received almost 500 submissions.
• The issue is full.
• One editor receives 3000 stories per year, accepting 12 which means 1 in 250 odds even with a good piece of writing. (So do I really think I can win this lottery?)

Other things are beyond the writer’s control:

• Timing – The editor of Family Circle wrote an encouraging rejection letter saying how much she enjoyed my submission about my mother’s Alzheimer’s Disease, but she had just bought a similar one. (The encouragement led me to send it out again, and it was published later in Cup of Comfort for Families Touched by Alzheimer’s.)
• Tastes of editors – not that different from food. Think of all the fruitcake jokes. One rejection said, “We just didn’t love it enough.” Finding the right editor is a little like finding that person (like me) who can’t wait for fruitcake.
• Trends – They come. They go. Think of the norm of taking two years from the time a book is bought until it hits the shelves. By the time you spot a fad and write to it, the fad fades before your book can get to market.

One rejection that I got before I began to be really earnest about sending out my work, added a note that they would be glad to see something else I wrote. All I saw was the rejection. With a little more experience behind me, I’m kicking myself for not heeding that invitation. Invitations like that aren’t given out lightly. 

I’m encouraged not to feel like a failure by hearing stories of multiple rejections before acceptance and the ones they continue to receive for so many authors who are now well-known! My current model is Kate DiCamillo, who has multiple award-winning books and will be the recipient of USM’s medallion for her body of work at next year’s book festival. She claims more than four hundred!

So, what do I use to measure a successful week? I do like those acceptances, but I have limited control over them. Instead, I look at my wastebasket. I can control how hard I work. A successful week is one that ends with a wastebasket filled with rewrites and do-overs.  

Small Great Things

If you’re looking for a light fluffy read that will not engage your mind, skip Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult – or anything else she has written for that matter. I’ve read Picoult books often and knew that both my mind and emotions would be engaged when I received this book in an ARC. I just didn’t know what the issue would be. 

I quickly found myself in the heads of her three principal narrators – Turk, the skinhead father who has a demand placed in his new baby’s folder that no African American attend him; Ruth, the experienced African American nurse who disregards the order when she is the only one present when the child goes into distress; and Kennedy, the public defender who takes Ruth’s case when the baby dies and she is charged with murder.

She sets up her premise in the first sentence, “The miracle happened on West Seventy-Fourth Street, in the home where Mama worked.” She continues that theme and foreshadows the story line at the end of the first chapter, “. . . where all the differences in schooling and money and skin color evaporated like mirages in the desert. Where everyone was equal, and it was one woman, helping another. That miracle, I’ve spent thirty-nine years waiting to see again.” 

I’d finished about three-fourths of the book when Jodi Picoult appeared on CBS This Morning. She said the idea had come from a real situation, and she had expanded it into a novel. The title came from a phrase attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.” She answered my speculation about how she had so much empathy and understanding for each of her characters in an explanation of how much research time she’d spent with people who were her narrator’s equivalents.

She said each of these narrators has to examine their beliefs about power, privilege, and race. Readers may find themselves doing the same thing in this novel that keeps them on edge and turning pages. This newest of Picoult’s books, released on October 11, lives up to the expectations and best-selling status of her previous novels. I highly recommend it unless you’re looking for something fluffy. 

Titled Children

Unless you’ve been hiding out in a cave or been in solitary confinement somewhere, you’ve seen the cute pictures of Prince George in his short pants and knee socks. Even his sister Princess Charlotte has not upstaged him, and he remains my favorite.

I’ll confess that I’ve been as bad as the next one about following British royalty beginning when The Little Princesses was serialized in The Ladies’ Home Journal. That account, by their nanny Crawfie, was cut short when one of the princesses changed her title to “Queen Elizabeth.” Her story, now available in book form, caused a never to be healed rift with the royal family though it was far from scandalous.

These two views of gentle exemplary standards for royalty sandwich a lot of years of shame, unhappy marriages, and intrigue. There’s been more soap opera than role model in the intervening generation. I’ve read those stories, too, still fascinated by people with a title, but I have not enjoyed them as much as reading about two sisters growing up in a castle where one would someday be the queen.

I’m back to liking the stories of an apparently happy family and the photographs of beautiful titled children. So why am I especially fond of the pictures of Prince George? He brings memories of another cute little boy who spent his early years in France and Belgium wearing short pants and knee socks. His only title was “Army Brat,” but he wore it proudly and well.

A Child of Books

After a recent birthday, with a head of white hair and a longstanding membership in AARP, there are those who might assume that I am aging. I have proof to the contrary. Among the gifts for my recent birthday, I got a small pumpkin, a balloon, and a picture book. I’m contending that the pumpkin and balloon, selected and given by two preschool grandsons, indicate they think I’m one of them.

The picture book was presaged with a hint from my daughter that my present would “have my name all over it.” I could tell she was right when I opened the package to find a picture book with the title A Child of Books.

The card that came with it said:

For: A child of books to enjoy and then share with little ones who are also becoming child(ren) of books

From: A child of books.

Further proof that the book was meant for me came when I read the first lines, “I am a child of books. I come from a world of stories.” The storyline by Oliver Jeffers took me back to the time when my now-librarian daughter learned to love books that took her to other worlds when she was a preschooler. Clever illustrations by Sam Winston have a background of forty different children’s stories and lullabies. Even the endpapers are multitudes of titles and authors of classics in literature.

The book did indeed have my name on it. I was a child of books thanks to a mother who read to me. I raised that daughter as a child of books and am glad to have the opportunity to encourage those two grandsons (the “little ones” on her card who are her nephews) to become children of books. A Child of Books is a wonderful book for any adult child of books to share with kids in their lives with the hope that they will also become children of books.

As for my age, you can believe the gray hair and the AARP membership or you can believe the birthday gifts. I’m going with the pumpkin and the picture book.

The Makings of a Good Day

Now, I am well aware that what makes for a good day for me might not match what makes for a good day for someone else. Mine began with an editor a week or so ago who sent back a manuscript that did not say, “Thank you for letting us see your writing. Now, please send it somewhere else. Oh, yes, and good luck!” I’ve had those – or pretty close.

Several things made me happy with this return. This editor had actually read the whole manuscript. We writer types usually consider ourselves lucky if they read ten pages before “Thanks, but no, thanks” kicks in. I could tell she read it all because her critique covered every story line in the book. Did I mention she also had some really nice things to say about my writing – and research? After she made her points about the areas that brought her up short, she said she would be glad to read and respond to it again. (She clarified that she did not promise to publish, just to read and respond again.) Still. That was one good day!

Now this is not a new manuscript. The picture shows the box of drafts from rewrites over a number of years. When the box got full, I just began stacking drafts on top. I knew the letter called for yet another run. Thank goodness, I actually like the people I’ve put into this book and am glad to spend some time with them again.

The next good day came today after her words have rattled around in my head for this week. I sat down and highlighted references to one of the characters she thought I should address. As I drew my blue highlighter across the name every time it occurred, my mind began adding the details and seeing possibilities of where this could go. By extension, I can see how the other characters, done in their own colors, can get their due when I have finished with this one – all except one. But by the time I finish what I know, I’m sure that one will come around, too.

So what makes a good day? Examining my examples, it seems to be work. The return from the editor had suggestions that will require a strong look and much rewriting. The ideas that have come today as I highlighted? More of the same. Like I said, what makes a good day for me might not match what makes for a good day for someone else.

I’ve heard that some people like a day at the beach. Please don’t make me do something that boring, unless of course, you throw in a couple of little boys who want to make sand castles and frog houses.

The Nightingale

A book loving friend told me I had to read The Nightingale.

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.” These first lines in the novel by Kristen Hannah establish a theme for a gripping novel set in France during World War II as one of two sisters with her son looks back in time.  Episodically, she makes an appearance reminiscing from 1995 in Oregon, leaving the reader unsure which sister is speaking until near the end of the book.

Starting with the death of their mother, leaving them in the hands of their father scared by World War I to the point that he can’t or won’t cope with two daughters who need him, the two girls grow up shunted from one place to the other. The oldest, Vianne copes by making what peace she can with the system until she falls in love, gets pregnant, and marries Antoine. Isabelle copes by testing the system and escaping from authority over and over during her adolescence.

World War II circumstances will change all three of them and bring each of them to danger and hard decisions. Switching between the two sisters as protagonists, the author leaves the reader wanting her to rescue the one before transferring to the other. Vianne, with choices that are too hard to make and unsure of what is right, reaches a faith crisis. The Mother Superior assures her, “You’re not alone, and you’re not the one in charge.”

Vianne, Isabelle, and their father find a way to make their own difference in the injustices of the war and in the process find their way back to each other. The book kept me engaged from beginning to end and had me going back to read the last chapter one more time to see how the wrap-up fulfills the promise of the opening theme.

My friend was right. This was a book I had to read, and now as your friend, I’m telling you, “You have to read The Nightingale.”

Fifth Anniversary

For five years, I’ve been writing this blog twice a week with one exception for a trip to England with my sister, talking a lot about reading and suggesting some good books, and doing very little arithmetic – just as I promised. I looked it up to see what was proper for celebrating a fifth anniversary. The list said wood is traditional and silverware is modern. Now, I’m not sure which planet these list makers are coming from. It seems to me that modern young people are much less concerned with silverware than those of earlier generations often preferring paper plates and plastic forks, but who am I to argue?

We’ll just move on to how I’d like to celebrate. I don’t need any new stuff to add to the clutter already in my house so I will just address the usefulness of the silver or wood I already own to the process that has produced my writing.

I did get some silverware when I married and used it on occasion in the early days. Do you know that stuff needs a lot of polishing? As years rolled along, both the polishing and the use faded in popularity in the Butler household, resulting in the mess you see here. Every time I get energetic and polish it, I make a soon-broken resolution not to let it get in this condition again. The only effect it ever has on my writing is taking time away. I think it will not be part of this celebration.  

Wood, on the other hand, gives daily service with an added layer of sentiment. The double desk, built by Al, graced the room shared by two sons as they were growing up. The lap desk was a gift from my oldest son who has a degree in journalism and gives me encouragement to continue putting words on paper. The table sat in the kitchen in front of the wood stove of the family home where my mother and her five siblings grew up. My sister and I spent a hot summer day sweating while we took off layers of paint and gook to find the beautiful wood underneath.

So on this fifth anniversary, I think I’ll celebrate by taking turns working at the three wood writing places with thankfulness for the family connections they bring and for the readers who have encouraged me to continue writing.