The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

Thanks to Net Galley, I have had the ARC of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir on my Kindle for some time. Jennifer Ryan’s novel sounded right down my alley when I requested it – historical fiction set in an English village in World War II. I had been anticipating its move to the top of my reading list.

The premise begins when the Vicar disbands the church choir because all the men have gone to war. The church ladies can’t be kept down long. They rally and reframe the choir for women only and so the thread of song winds through the novel. Diaries, letters, and journals tell the story of the village with intrigue, romance (not just for the young), and wartime life and death issues. There’s a conspiracy with the birth of two babies swapped by a midwife, the question of the real identity of the new guy in Chilbury where all the residents know each other, and the billeting of military. The members of the ladies’ choir have their hands full.  

I’ve tried to decide who to name as the protagonist and have come up with the community. The gossip and intrigue over large things and small will be familiar to anyone who has loved living in a village. While five ladies from the choir get the most attention, the men in the story are not to be ignored. In her first novel, Jennifer Ryan keeps her villains sympathetic and her heroes flawed.

The book is purely recreational reading and fulfills its purpose. The book release is tomorrow (February 14), and I’m hoping Jennifer Ryan has a second novel on the way.

Inventory - 2016

I am aware that this activity that I do at the end of each year may be of interest only to me, but just in case, I share it with you. Without a clock to punch or a sign-in sheet, I had to figure out a way to evaluate my own attention to task when I retired from teaching to write. I do that with a weekly calendar where I record both my writing and reading activities. (How good is it to be able to count reading as part of your work?)

At an end-of-year inventory, I like to see how much and what I have read during the year. Let me say up front, one underreported part is the number of books for younger children. I’ve not written down the story before bedtime or nap or the stack of Winnie-the-Pooh books brought in by a four-year-old with a request to read.

With that explanation behind us, I have read 77 books this year. Twenty-seven were for adults, thirty-one were for middle grade or young adult, and nineteen were for young children. The books were 68% fiction and 32% nonfiction. A protagonist that fit in the category of diversity either by culture or some kind of physical challenge made up 22% of the books. Probably for the same number, the protagonist could have been from any culture since the book was generic or some kind of fantasy. Poetry formed an unusual part of this year’s list with seven younger children’s non-fiction books and one middle grade novel written as beautiful poems. 

You would think that all this reading would have lowered my to-be-read stack and cleared my Kindle. Not so. As the wise man in Ecclesiastes 12:12 said, “Of the making of many books there is no end,” and he wrote before the day of the printing press. So if you will excuse me, I’ve started my 2017 list and need to get back to some diaries and letters in a World War II novel. The blog for that one is coming soon. 

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

I liked Hawthorn from the beginning page when she compared her mother’s oatmeal to silly putty. My mother made oatmeal like that. This lighthearted opening for The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett by Chelsea Sedoti doesn’t stay lighthearted long.

Questions begin for Hawthorn as soon as word gets out that Lizzie Lovett has disappeared. Is she dead? Did her boyfriend kill her? Has she become a werewolf? And the big one, can Hawthorn find out what happened to her?

Relationships with her longtime best friend, her brother and his best friend Connor, the people at the diner where she works to keep her dilapidated car running, and Lizzie’s boyfriend round out the story of Hawthorn’s search. Then her mother’s long ago hippie friends show up to camp out in the back yard.

In an unapologetic spoiler, the book deals with bullying, social outcasts, and suicide. Hawthorn says it well, “The thing about high school is that you have to pretend you don’t care what people think, even though that’s all you care about.”

Hawthorn’s poor decisions sometimes had me wanting to yank a knot in her neck and questioning whether I would even use the book for a blog, but her frailties seemed so real and relevant that I began to come around. The final decision came when Hawthorn remembered and understood the significance of Connor’s words “about life looking different depending on where you were standing.”

This book is not an easy read but has relevance and would appeal to its intended audience of high schoolers.

Punxsutawney Phil Phails

He goes by the name of Punxsutawney Phil in Punxsutawney, PA; Chuck in Marion, OH, Staten Island, NY, and Los Angeles, CA; Pierre C. Shadeaux in New Iberia, LA; and Wiarton Willie in Ontario, Canada. Sometimes he’s called a whistle pig or a woodchuck, but on February 2, midway between the winter and spring solstice, he’s known as a groundhog. He finds his place on the news even in years with vast political shenanigans to answer an important question.

Will there be six more weeks of winter or will spring come early? The questionable answer comes in whether he most famously sees his shadow in the official town of Punxsutawney, PA. Crowds arrive rivaling those of big football games to observe what could be as accurately predicted in the toss of a coin since Phil has been right about fifty percent of the time.

Yesterday amidst a crowd singing and dancing, the men from the Groundhog Handlers’ Club coaxed Phil from the ground on Gobbler’s Knob, a couple of miles out of town. He immediately saw his shadow and supposedly returned to his burrow to finish his nap during another six weeks of winter.

Of course, in South Mississippi this year, the whole question is moot. Winter has yet to show its face with December and January temperatures most often reaching a daily high in the seventies. We still have February when it might turn up, but you can see that my azaleas and daffodils are already in bloom with the snowdrops just ready to burst open.

There are those who would call him Phil the Phailure, but I say give him some slack and let him sleep. He’s only a rodent doing the best he can.

The War That Saved My Life

Two things converged to move The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley to the top of my reading list. One was the insistence of a friend, who has never steered me wrong on a good book, and the second was the intriguing title. Make that three – it won a Newbery Honor and half a dozen other awards in 2016.

The book opens with a scene of nine-year-old Ada being reprimanded by her mother for saying hello to another child out the window. Her mother is too embarrassed by Ada’s deformed foot to let her outside. It would be a war in the summer of 1939 that would take Ada from London – make that – allow her to slip out of the city. Children were being sent away from the bombings to the country for safety where they were housed by volunteer families. Ada sneaks away when her brother Jamie is being sent to safety.

Jamie and Ada are last of their group of children to be placed. Their reluctant foster parent, Susan Smith, lets them know right away, “I don’t know a thing about taking care of children.” Ada claims that their last name is also Smith. Susan lets the lie slide. When Jamie explains that nice people hate Ada’s ugly foot, Susan responds, “You’re in luck then because I’m not a nice person at all.”

This not-nice person immediately bandages Ada’s foot, puts them in clean clothes, combs their hair, and scrambles a big pan of eggs. The adventure now begun will have wartime difficulties, including a time when most of the other children return home to London. A bigger difficulty arises when their mother figures out where they are, but I won’t spoil the story.

Now that I’ve finished reading the book, I must add a fourth attraction. This piece of historical fiction set in World War II falls into my favorite category, especially when the time and place is woven so skillfully into the story. If you have as long a reading list as mine, I recommend moving this up in the stack to be read soon!

Follow the Crowd

Adjustment comes in many forms. Our oldest son Murray had not found it easy to move from being a big-sophomore-fish-in-a-little-pond at Cole High School at Fort Sam Houston to overlooked-minnow-in-the-ocean status in Kaiserslautern American High School in Germany. But you can’t keep a prankster down long. 

Lacking an auditorium, the high school’s band and chorus were having their Christmas program at the post theater. He and his friend Buddy were the first to the building. They stationed themselves at the two doors in an important stance. A couple of seniors drifted up. Buddy and Murray told them, “I’m sorry, we can’t let you in yet.” A few more drifted up, and they repeated their apology.

Soon nobody had to be told as the first few passed the word to the next arrivals. Soon others just saw people waiting and joined the group, assuming they were waiting for a reason. When about three quarters of the crowd had assembled, one of them said to the other, “Do you think they’ve waited long enough?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Then to the crowd, “Okay, you can go in now.”

His peers’ chagrin and grudging admiration at having been hoodwinked didn’t turn the minnow into a whale, but it did show him there was fun to be had in the sea.

If I were Aesop, I would add a moral or two here, but I think you can figure out one of your own.

The Seventh Wish

I was introduced to Kate Messner’s book The Seventh Wish by its choice for our de Grummond Book Group for the January read. Almost simultaneously, a discussion arose among writer friends on Facebook about Kate being uninvited to a school as a guest author because of the book’s content. Of course, this added to my eagerness to read.

A light-hearted look at a magic fish as Charlie accompanies her friend Drew and his grandmother Mrs. McNeil on their ice-fishing excursions mingles with the serious problem of what is happening to her sister Abby. A freshman in college, Abby’s grades and health have taken a mysterious nose dive.

The first time Charlie pulls the tiny emerald-eyed fish from the hole in the ice, it promises to grant a wish in exchange for freedom. Starting easy, she asks for Roberto Sullivan to fall in love with her. Later she asks for Drew to be selected for the basketball team to live up to his father’s expectations. The fish lacks perfection since it is Bobby O’Sullivan who begins to pass her notes and Drew’s basketball playing segues into a mascot assignment. Her wishes come out close enough to keep her trying.

Other elements of her life are friendships with Catherine whose forgetfulness of her five-pound flour “baby” may ruin her grade and Dasha who needs to score high enough in her English language class to move into regular classes. The upcoming dance competitions and her science project complete a normal life until her parents get the phone call about Abby.

Abby has been caught. Her health and grade problems come from an addiction to opiate drugs. Charlie’s interests become secondary from this point with her parents’ focus and schedules shifted to Abby’s needs as she goes to a rehabilitation center. A realistic picture emerges in the effect the addiction has on the drug user and her family, the difficulties of becoming and staying clean, and the inability of those who love Abby, including Charlie, to fix her problem.    

In the end, Charlie realizes that she needs more than magic. She accepts the wisdom of her friend’s grandmother “We can wish on clovers and shooting stars and ice flowers all we want. But in the end, the only real magic is what’s inside us and the people we love.”

As for the discussion on the appropriateness of the book and author in schools, I see the empathy young readers will develop and the understanding that one can never become completely “cured” of an addiction as an effective cautionary tale. Not only would I recommend it for preteens and up, but I would recommend that parents and teachers read and discuss it with them.

Anticipating Book Festival

Winding down the last day of the Fay B. Kaigler Book Festival each year leaves a mixture of fatigue (three back-to-back days at least twelve hours long) and wistfulness (another whole year before it can be repeated). It’s the replacement of my childhood anticipation of Christmas and birthday celebrations.

I’ve learned a lesson from those childhood events. I know not to start thinking about the next one immediately because the wait gets too long. The trick is knowing when to begin anticipation again since a certain amount of expectancy carries its own enjoyment.

I got this year’s “Save the Date” brochure for April 5-7, 2017 before Christmas. Despereaux runs across the front with his needle and red thread. From a favorite book, The Tale of Despereaux, the little mouse presages the awarding of the Southern Miss medallion to a favorite author, Kate DiCamillo, at this year’s festival. Still, December to April forms a wearying distance to begin anticipation. I put the card on the bulletin board and the event out of my mind – well, mostly.

This week, I woke up from a dream where I scurried around at the book festival, looking for the people I needed to get to the next luncheon, stopping to meet old friends, and answering questions from new attendees along the way. I decided it was time to anticipate.

I invite you to look with me. Authors and illustrators share their publication paths, which are never the same; their strengths and frailties as human beings; and their passions, with similarities that may end with their dedication to book-lovers. Workshops galore combine information on trends and issues for librarians and readers, fun experiences to carry home and share with children by vivacious presenters, and previews of new books with hints on using them to engage children. Awards abound. The Kaigler-Lamont award for an outstanding school librarian, and the Magnolia Children’s Choice Awards, children’s selections of their favorite books, are bookended by the prestigious Southern Miss Medallion for an experienced writer’s body of work and the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer and New Illustrator Awards for those beginning their careers.

For longtime attendees, the best part of the festival may be renewal of friendships formed with people first met while standing in line for a favorite author’s signature, lunch companions from years past who circled the round tables for lively book talk, or former USM students who helped with the festival as part of their coursework returning now as librarians and professors.

If any of this appeals to you, go to www.usm.edu/childrens-book-festival for more information. Helpful hint: If you can only come one day, make it Thursday.

The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch

On rare occasions in the publishing world, an author and illustrator connect as friends and collaborators. Such is the case of Chris Barton and Don Tate, the author and illustrator of The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch, who live in Austin, Texas. The book begins, “John Roy Lynch had an Irish father and an enslaved mother. By the law of the South before the Civil War, that made John Roy and his brother half Irish and all slave.”

In the picture book biography, John Roy’s story begins at his birth to the free Irish overseer who intended to buy freedom for his slave wife and children but died before he could accomplish his goal. Instead of becoming free when he was two, John Roy’s life moves from one slave situation to another, through his difficult early life as a free man, and on to his ultimate role as a United States Representative.

Representative Lynch's quote in the book, “When every man, woman, and child can feel and know that his, her, and their rights are fully protected by the strong arm of a generous and grateful Republic, then we can all truthfully say that this beautiful land of ours, over which the Star Spangled Banner so triumphantly waves is, in truth and in fact, the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave,’ ” makes this an appropriate read for Martin Luther King Day.

Both the author and illustrator notes express regret that so little is known about the days of Reconstruction. Their back matter includes a historical note, a timeline, both author’s and illustrator’s notes, possibilities for further reading, and graphic maps. This book with its lively text and illustrations recounts the true story of one man who experienced going from a teenaged field slave to U. S. Congressman in ten years’ time. It helps shine a light on a little known period of American history and on the promise and potential in the American people.

Mixed Messages

I can almost watch the long “To-Do” list growing as it waits. My mother instilled a work ethic long ago that said pleasure comes only after all the chores are done. Most of the time, that’s not a bad idea.

But sometimes, another admonition that I did not get from her, “Take time to smell the roses,” calls out to me. On a recent cold winter afternoon, I sat in front of my fire surrounded by writing paraphernalia, but drawn to the hazy view of the bird feeders out the window. Dreary gray skies had the forecasters hinting of possible snow. (Ha! This is South Mississippi. All we got were a few spectacular icicles.)

The birds seemed to be aware and began stocking their equivalent of bread and milk. Had they heard the forecast? I’d refilled the nyger seed for the finches who waited no more patiently than three-year-olds for a turn at their feeder. A swarm of cardinals behaved better and made room for a couple of mourning doves at their two feeders while the overflow crowd pecked around at the nyger seed the little birds had scattered on the patio. One mama cardinal found a post on the patio chair between feedings to fluff out her feathers and get warm.

There lay my temptation – the entertainment of stopping to watch the birds jockey for space to feed or taking care of the long “To-Do” list? I’m a bit different from my mother in thinking that smelling the roses ranks closely with and sometimes takes precedence over getting the list finished. Maybe I could satisfy both. If I could get a blog out of it . . .

Pax

Sara Pennypacker prefaces her middle grade novel Pax with a quote that foreshadows the vagueness of her setting, “Just because it isn’t happening here doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.” The setting is war and could be anytime, anyplace. Into this setting, comes the mutual love of the boy Peter and his pet fox Pax.

Trouble comes when Peter’s father, his only living parent, enlists in the military. He lets Peter know there will be no place for the fox out in the country where he takes him to live with his grandfather. He drops the fox off by the side of the road. There’s a sense of the father getting rid of both to go to war.

Peter strikes out the next morning from his grandfather’s house planning to retrace the three hundred miles to find his fox. As if this did not seem impossible enough, he breaks his foot shortly into the journey. The hermit Vola, suffering herself from post-traumatic stress syndrome, helps him cope, shares some helpful philosophy, and teaches him to navigate with crutches before she makes a connection with a bus driver who will help him cover much of the mileage back.

In the meantime, Pax, who has never had to forage for himself in the wild, is taken in and instructed by a family of wild foxes. The story switches back and forth between Peter and Pax with the war an ever-present obstacle for both of them. She calls the humans, who turn on each other, the “war-sick.” Tension builds for both the boy and the fox as she leaves Peter and Pax alternately at the end of a chapter to switch to the other with the reader apprehensive that no satisfying ending is possible.

Pax will keep one from drifting off to sleep and will linger in one’s mind after the final page is finished. It is an excellent book for reading and discussing between middle graders and their parents or grandparents or in a classroom, particularly for the effects of war on children, animals, and nature. Perhaps one of the discussion questions could be whether that satisfying ending ever comes.

Revision as Solace

I love finding a quote which makes me wish I had said that. From Poets and Writers, Nov./Dec. 2016 issue, Paul Hertneky, author of Rust Belt Boy, said, “Revision became my solace, my drug of choice, the only activity that could make me feel better.”

I can’t remember when I first discovered that the struggle was getting the first draft down, and the fun began with rewriting. I had never thought to equate revision with solace or a drug of choice, but I know well the satisfaction of becoming wrapped up in whittling a writing until less becomes more.

My first major work with an editor came with a letter that was neither an acceptance nor a rejection. The letter from Highlights for Children recounted an editorial meeting that produced a list of nine questions or issues for the article I had submitted. At the end, the editor apologized for the two long pages of notes but invited me to work on it and submit it again if I liked. I answered the questions, which were easy, and put on my revision hat. After a bit more back and forth with the editor as we improved the piece, it was accepted and published.

My most recent response from a submission came from an editor who had read my whole manuscript and listed about four elements in the middle grade novel that needed attention with suggestions about why they didn’t work for her. Her critique made sense. Back I went to a place and people I had come to love when I first wrote the book. I found not only solace, but excitement as I tweaked and supplemented the areas she found lacking. With no promises from the editor for anything other than another read, I found the joy of revision satisfying as I added depth to the characters and elements that filled holes in the story line.

So, when does revision come to an end? Like sopping up the dab of gravy in the corner of a plate with last bit of biscuit, the end comes for me when all I can think to do is switch “the” to “a” and back again.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that my submission will go to a wise editor with fresh eyes who sees something I’ve missed. In that case, bring on the drug of revision.  

A Poem for Peter

Whether you are expecting snow or not, whether you are a child or not, a good book for beginning the new year is Andrea Pinkney’s A Poem for Peter. The poem honors the little brown boy who symbolizes every child who plays in the snow in The Snowy Day and pays homage to its author.

The first lines set the tone:

Brown-sugar boy in a blanket of white.

Bright as the day you came onto the page.

From the hand of the man who saw you for you.

In poetic form, the story is told of Peter who waited in a series of four photographs for twenty years in Keats’s studio before becoming the protagonist of The Snowy Day. Woven into the story is Keats’s own struggle with anti-Semitism:

To help himself get a job,

Jacob (Jack) Ezra Katz

rearranged his name.

Shortened that name,

Twisted its rhythm.

Helped it roll off the tongue.

Then Andrea Pinkney adds a touching point that subtly connects Peter and his creator as people who have felt bigotry and intolerance.

Yes, yes – Ezra Jack Keats.

Had a nice ring to it – for some.

The mood of the poetic book, if not its form, takes me back to English poets who wrote odes to people and things they wanted to venerate. Two threads wind through the story honoring the boy Peter and the author Keats, creating a picture of the “story behind the story” of The Snowy Day. In addition, illustrators Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher weave the illustrations of The Snowy Day into this story seamlessly in a way that will satisfy the most avid Keats fan.

My recommendation is to read The Snowy Day followed by A Poem for Peter, but feel free to change the order. Just don’t miss either one.

Calendars Old and New

On the cusp of a new year, anticipation arises in the opening of new calendars with blank spaces to be filled. I keep two kinds. One is the appointment calendar on the bulletin board where I put any additional activities beyond routines. I already know, for instance, that I will go to choir practice and to church on Sunday so there’s no need to clutter the small space with those. The second calendar sits on the desk beside my computer. I record my reading and writing activities after the fact. It keeps me reminded that I need to be consistent with both. Blank spaces prick my conscience and put me back to work.

If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you know I consider resolutions too fragile to make. However, like the mythical god Janus, I enjoy looking backward and forward on both sets of calendars as the year turns. Looking back at the appointment calendar includes the boredom of dental and other appointments with thankfulness that they were all routine, book events with other book lovers, writing conferences, a few trips, teaching and learning in classes at USM’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, routine and special activities at University Baptist Church, and family time. If I ignore the contentious election, which does not appear on the calendar, 2016 looks good in the rearview. The forward look may be even better as I anticipate “boy sitting” dates on the new calendar to add to more of same activities I enjoyed last year since two preschool grandsons now live in Hattiesburg.

The second 2016 calendar is full, showing I’ve stayed on task with my reading and writing. Some of the writing will be in print and some is awaiting word. Whether or not the acceptances come, the calendar filled with writing activities and the seventy-five books I’ve read bring satisfaction in knowing I’ve done what I could.

I am aware of the possibility for both joys and sorrows in the coming year. I’ve had both in every year that I can remember, but I still favor watching the half-full section of the glass. I hope each of you has a good view as you look back at the old and forward to the new and that your glasses will be at least half full.

The Whole Town's Talking

If I am the Reading Fair judge, one of the ways to undermine your chance of winning is to answer the question of the author’s purpose with “to entertain.” I’ve seen it often enough that it gets no points for originality. However, there are times when that is the total purpose of a book and the total desire of the reader. That purpose and desire merged this holiday season as I read Fannie Flagg’s latest The Whole Town’s Talking. Elmwood Springs, MO serves as the star of the book with the Still Meadow Cemetery as the co-star.

Mysteries in the story are gentle ones. For instance, the first is one that mail-order bride Katrina keeps from her prospective husband Lordor. It turns out to be nothing more than the glasses she needs to wear in order to see, a defect that in no way lessens his admiration of her great beauty. Beginning with this couple in the early settling days of Elmwood Springs in 1889, the timeline stretches through its history and the generations that populate the small community for the next century.

Other mysteries include what happens once people begin turning up in the cemetery and an even stranger one when they begin to disappear from there, and a cemetery resident who keeps anticipating that the next arrival will bring news that his murderer has been found and convicted. However, I wouldn’t want to spoil the story so I will leave these solutions for you to discover on your own.

Typical of Flagg’s writing is the scene when Ida points her celery stick at her banker husband, insisting that he give the local hairdresser a loan for a shop so she can move her business from her back porch. “Herbert knew he would have to give Tot the loan, or he would never hear the end of it. Whenever Ida pointed celery at him, she meant business.”

The book will not increase your intellect, intensify your understanding of the world’s problems, nor inspire you to tackle injustice. It will give you a relaxing holiday afternoon in front of the fire with your cup of hot chocolate, unless you are in South Mississippi. In that case, you will want to be in your shorts in the porch swing. Sometimes being entertained fills a need.

The Flawed Manger Scene

Joseph has lost his staff. The moss on the manger roof is splotchy. The donkey has no ears and the cow only one of her horns. Since the nativity scene came from Sears and was inexpensive in the first place, why don’t we just replace it?

            The answer is, “Too many memories.” Our children were small when we got it. They stood and gazed at the Baby Jesus, often rearranging the animals or the Magi. As they grew older, they found a prominent place to display it each Christmas. They loved setting it up and remembering in Texas, Germany, Louisiana – wherever the Army designated as home.

            One memorable Christmas we lived in Germany atop a hill overlooking a snow-covered village centered by the church steeple. Right after Thanksgiving, we decorated our Christmas tree. The children chose the wide ledge in front of the picture window for the nativity. Since our German neighbors waited to trim their trees until Christmas Eve, we invited the community kindergarten children to come up to see our tree and have cookies and punch.

            Their faces lit as they “Oohed” and “Aahed,” in wonder at the Christmas tree. They examined each ornament, but soon they moved to the window and our Sears manger scene – a poor match in my mind for the beautifully hand-carved nativity scenes found in their Christkindlmarkts. They drew us into their awe as they sat quietly on the floor around the crèche watching as though they waited for the baby to cry.

            We have new nativities, nicer and in better shape including one from Bethlehem. Still, this defective one always takes the place of honor. Maybe it is appropriate after all. For didn’t the Christ Child come into humble surroundings for that which was imperfect – to heal the brokenhearted, to bind the wounds of the injured, to bring sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are captive?          

Pigloo

Never underestimate what you can learn from a children’s book such as Pigloo by Anne Marie Pace, even if the learning is tongue-in-cheek. Pigloo, the Explorer, teaches how an explorer behaves and a couple of life lessons as well in a preschooler’s snow story.

The explorer must get together transportation (sled), proper clothing (hat, gloves, mittens), and stores (what explorers call their snacks in the backpack). He must read the map and learn the signs of the North Pole so he will know when he has arrived (a red-and-white striped pole and maybe a polar bear). He must consider the best route (so he will be back for lunch).

Life lessons include being patient (waiting for the snow), being brave (the trip to the North Pole is long and fraught with danger), minding his manners (taking his hat off at the table), and dealing with disappointment (no penguins at the North Pole, only at the South). He must also deal with a know-it-all older sister.

The book appeals to children who love the snow (even if they are not likely to get any like these two Mississippi boys) and whose imaginations are still intact (as theirs are). They will recognize the warm advice from the parents and even the bossy sister who comes through for Pigloo in the end.  

I Won!

To celebrate the 75^th birthday of Curious George, University Libraries at Southern Miss and the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection issued a challenge called Go, George, Go. Since the H. A. and Margaret Rey literary estate is housed in the collection, it seemed appropriate for them to host the event. Participants were challenged to walk or run 75 miles in an eight-week period. Prizes were offered.

Never a runner, but a consistent walker all my life, I began as a child with my father. His visual handicap prevented his driving, so he spared Mama trips as his driver and walked anywhere he was going within a reasonable (or to some an unreasonable) distance. He set a pretty good clip, and I felt honored that he would let me, but not my sisters, go with him. I could keep up with him. To be honest, that ability might have been because I was the oldest, and I never saw any burning desire on their parts to join him anyway. Continuing the habit as an adult, I will walk a considerable distance rather than drive around looking for a parking place.  Loving Curious George and his companion with the yellow hat, I joined up. Seventy-five miles in eight weeks? Piece of cake!

On November 12, my daughter-in-law and two youngest grandsons joined me at the culminating big party for George at the Hattiesburg Zoo where the prizes were handed out. The group of participants logged in 19,000 miles. An award went to the one with the most miles (489.91) – not me. A second prize went to the one who participated from the farthest distance (Reno, NV – 188 miles) – again not me. The third prize went to the one with the most experience (a euphemism for the oldest participant). My two grandsons were thrilled that Grandma won a prize! I clocked in at a respectable 112 miles.

The only downside was when the three-year-old discovered that the banana on my prize wasn’t real. 

Victoria the Queen

A trip to England with my sister and her church choir in 2013 that majored on things relating to Queen Victoria and her Albert left me wanting “the rest of the story.” Real life, even for royalty, contains more complications than the tour guides presented. Consequently, I jumped at the offer by Net Galley of an advanced reading copy of Victoria the Queen by Julia Baird.

The book has the ring of authenticity from the beginning as it examines research beyond Victoria’s extensive diaries that had been laundered by her daughter to keep the family in the light she wanted the world to see. The author’s extensive bibliography documents her efforts to fill in the missing pieces.

Victoria was an unlikely candidate for queen, not only because she lived in an era with an emphasis on male rulers, but because she was fifth in line to the throne when she was born. Yet she became queen in her teens, fell in love and married Albert, and bore nine children.

Her life was often a contradiction with her love of power and strong opinions with the ministers of England juxtaposed against her leaving the word “obey” in her marriage ceremony and her deferment to Albert’s leadership. Equally complicated was her love of her children, her dominance of them, and her obvious partiality among them. Those children would cause her pain and embarrassment, and she would ultimately return the favor. The tour guides accurately portrayed the length and depth of her mourning for Albert after his death but without the interesting details of the book about public reactions and how she was eventually able to go on.

The biography pictures Victoria as a flawed, complicated person with a flawed, complicated relationship with Albert and with the people of England. At 752 pages, it is not a quick read, but it is a good one and well worth the time.

More Than Enough

If the stockings were all –

Ma and Pa

            The parents, then grandparents, and now great-grandparents 

            Of great-grandchildren they never knew       

            Names my husband, the first son-in-law, called my parents

            After four daughters, Daddy’s wait for a son over

Al and VA

            The parents and now grandparents

            Only a few days ago, it seems,

            A young couple starting out

Murray and Steph with Lauren, Brittany, and Jack

            The oldest son and his family

            Desert dwellers in Arizona

            Two flown from the nest

            And one with a driver’s license 

Anna and Mark II with Marissa and Jeremy

            The daughter and her family

            A forever family by adoption

            On the cusp of an empty nest

            Texans with an eye on Oregon 

Mark I and Kelly with Hayden, Hannah, Sam, Ben, and Owen

            The youngest son and his family

            Home now in Hattiesburg where

            College kids return

            And little boys play 

If this were all

            My tree and my heart would be full.

Yet I add memories in ornaments   

            Places we’ve lived, especially Germany

            Trips we’ve taken, including the fifty states

            School children I taught

            One career set in school and writing

            Another in the military and post office

            Extended family and friends

More than enough in Christmas treasures –

My tree, like my heart, overflows.