The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas seemed a bit in awe as she told her own publication story to the attendees of the Louisiana/Mississippi SCBWI JambalayaKidLit Conference. Being proactive with coincidence took her to a “right place – right time” cliché. She asked a question on an agent’s twitter query site about a book she had begun as a college writing project. “Would there be an interest in a book about a girl caught in a community where she had personal relationships with both the police and the Black Lives Matter neighborhood?" The agent invited her to send the manuscript which he then sold at auction. Two years later, The Hate U Give has spent weeks on the New York Times young adult best seller list.

Our Louisiana/Mississippi group had already booked Angie for our conference in March before she became quite so famous. Our regional advisor interviewed her for the afternoon general session. She began, “I’m not sure what to do here. I’ve never interviewed a New York Times best seller before.”

Angie had a quick comeback. “That’s okay. I’ve never been a New York Times best seller before.”

Having set the tone for the interview, the writers and wannabe writers were drawn into the conversation that told of Angie’s own struggles, much like her protagonist, living in the community with her black neighbors and attending school in an elite, predominantly white, college. She emphasized that her novel did not make either the police or the Black Lives Matter proponents into the bad guys or good guys. As you might imagine, she signed a number of books bought after her presentation – including mine.

Angie obviously doesn’t need my help in promoting this debut novel. I found it to be all she had said with a protagonist torn between people in her two worlds that she genuinely cares about. The book is a hard read both from the language and the situations, but they are necessary to the story rather than gratuitous. I found myself using context for some of the authentic street language much like I used to do as a child when the books I chose contained vocabulary over my head.

The book will appeal to young adult readers – just ask the New York Times. It will also give insight to those who are looking for a just solution to the problems between the police and the Black community.     

Treasure Hunting on Earth Day

If the old saying, “You never have to go to work if you love your job,” is true, USM Associate Professor of Biology Mac Alford hasn’t worked in a while. In addition to the job for which he is paid, he took a group of retired members of an OLLI class on a field trip to look for wildflowers this week. Every few steps through the woodland trail, he would exclaim, “Oh, and look at this!” Becoming the girl who walked the trails at Papaw’s farm, I joined his enthusiasm.

We saw things I recognized like honeysuckle, wild phlox, and violets. Milkweed blossomed, waiting for visits from the Monarch butterflies. A young native longleaf pine stuck its bristles up, looking for all the world like a green feather duster, the beginnings of a trunk forming its handle. Then there was the carnivorous sundew. It’s pretty flower with a nice aroma attracts insects who come too close to the sticky leaves and give up their lives for the cause. In the wonder of second childhoods, the group of seniors followed the professor from discovery to discovery.

He answered questions as we went along including why that ubiquitous vine that I hate in my yard grows everywhere. I have puzzled over how it proliferates hither and yon beyond the huge tuber that must be dug to get rid of it. He said it has clusters of berries that birds love to eat which means they spread the seeds far and wide. He was only stumped by why my pyracantha bush will bloom but not produce berries. (No, it doesn’t have male and female bushes. Try another answer.)

This trip seemed just right to prepare for Earth Day tomorrow. I’m going to follow up in my yard by finding small wonders to celebrate. I invite you to join me in a virtual search and tell me what you discover.

Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel

Husband Al knew he wouldn’t have to ask twice. He saw Lemuria Books in Jackson on Kimberly Willis Holt’s travel schedule and asked, “Do you want to go?” With a collection of her books that goes back to when I met her almost twenty years ago in her early writing years, he knew I would want the latest. Her new book, Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel, displaced books-to-be-read at the top of my stack even before I found both a normal and an unusual connection to its protagonist.

The reader gets a hint of estrangement from the beginning, “My name, Stevie Grace, was tattooed inside a giant sun on my dad’s back.” With the tattoo and the back-to-nature lifestyle lived in an abandoned church outside Taos, New Mexico, Stevie’s parents don’t fit expectations for a daughter of a conservative Texas family. Stevie remains unaware of the problem, since her parents have cut ties with home, until she is suddenly left an orphan.

Stevie Grace must go live with a grandfather she has never met in a rundown motel in Little Esther, Texas. The unusual inhabitants of the motel take a shine to her sooner than her grandfather. He holds on to some mysterious grudge that her parents had also kept secret.

Like many of her books, this one draws on Kimberly’s heritage of her grandfather’s nurseries in Forest Hill, Louisiana and her longtime residence in Texas. An important story line follows Stevie’s efforts to beautify the motel with plants out front. Her progress in dealing with her grief and finding her place in this new world are foreshadowed by the divisions of the book – Seedling, Cultivate, Sow, Transplant, and Blooming. This good read now joins its companions on my special KWH shelf.

Not to forget my links to Stevie, the usual one is a love for growing things with normal successes and failures. The unusual connection is that we both had a grandmother we never met named “Dovie.” Both her grandmother and mine (in the picture) left legacies that have influenced our lives even without their physical presence.

Daniel Finds a Poem

Just in time for poetry month, Micha Archer won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award at the Kaigler Children’s Book Festival for her book Daniel Finds a Poem. The story follows a little boy as he tries to find a definition of poetry.

Daniel’s interest is peaked by a sign on the park gate advertising “Poetry in the Park – Sunday at 6 o’clock.” He wants to know what poetry is so he can be ready for next week’s event. As he goes through each day of the week, he asks a different animal and gets a different perspective from each one. It’s not a spoiler to tell you ahead of time that he comes up with his own perfect poem to share and a way to observe poems everywhere he goes. The text encourages the preschool listener and the adult who reads aloud to be on the lookout for poetry in the world around them.

I was as intrigued with the illustrations as with the text since Micha is both author and illustrator. Early on, I felt something familiar – a little boy in a neighborhood exploring nature, beautiful collage artwork, the wonder of childhood. Then I turned the page and saw Daniel in bed looking forward to a new day. I knew the connection I was trying to make.

Micha confirmed my discovery when I talked to her at the festival. Like several illustrators at the festival, she acknowledged the artist who had gone before her and served as her inspiration. Her collage and view of childhood is reminiscent of Ezra Jack Keats.

The picture of Daniel greeting the morning is a tribute to Keats with a flipped arrangement of Peter in The Snowy Day, yet it is distinctly her own. Possibilities for sharing this book with children abound – the story, the day of the week sequence, and following Daniel’s example by looking for poetry in the natural world. But I think my favorite will be sitting with a couple of preschoolers with the two books spread together looking for likenesses and differences in the works of Keats and Archer! 

Rooting for Rafael Rosales

What could a young Dominican baseball fan have in common with an American daughter of an executive of a large corporation?

Rafael’s story is told over time beginning with the first chapter “Rafael, Many Years Ago” and following his goal of making a major-league baseball team in the United States. He and many of his peers see this as a way out of poverty. In the early days, he rescues a girl’s chicken, a girl who lives in destitution greater than his own.

Maya’s story begins in the present day during Rafael’s first year in the minor leagues. Her activism to save the bees in the environment runs afoul of the pesticide manufactured by her father’s company. Her fondness for plants loved by bees like thistles and dandelions that her sister calls “weeds” triggers her explanation, “A weed is a plant you don’t want. I want these, so they aren’t weeds.” Her love of baseball and a post on her sister’s blog lead to a friendship with the girl named Bijou who owned the rescued chicken and a link to Rafael.

The difficulty of life in the Dominican Republic and cautionary practices as Rafael pursues his baseball dream contrast with the affluence and moral dilemma for Maya as she decides how far to take her passion when her father’s job is at stake. I found the move back and forth between the two characters easy enough, but was a bit disconcerted for a while by the time with Rafael’s taking place over years while Maya’s stayed in the present.

Ultimately, there is a secret both Rafael and Maya share that could wreak havoc in the lives of people they care about. Right and wrong are not as clear as they should be. This is a good middle grade read with a nice window into the world of aspiring baseball players common to the Dominican Republic.

Whoa, Muley!

Cleaning through old folders is not an efficient task. An unexpected stack of school pictures took me back to the hair business that symbolized my ambivalent relationship with Mama. I was relieved when she stopped struggling with my hair. The stuff grew prolifically on my head, fine and board straight. If I had only been a 70s child, I would never have had to use an ironing board.

Mama had completely given up on my hair by the time I started to school. She let it grow and put it into pigtails. School pictures show braids meeting on top of my head from each side with back hair hanging down in my first grade picture. Each year, the school pictures showed longer braids. As my hair grew, she turned the pigtails into an asset with ribbons to match my dresses and several ways to put them up that were pretty and different. I willingly sat for her to put my hair in French braids for special occasions. After the braids grew really long, she sometimes looped them up and put the ribbon at the top. Once a girl handed down to me a rather nondescript white eyelet dress with buttons down the front. Mama added bone crochet loops on either side of the buttons and tied each pair together with three colors of narrow ribbon. Then she put the same colors of ribbons on my braids. It was ever so much sharper than the original. By the time I was ten, I plaited the everyday pigtails myself.

A point of pride was that only one other girl about a year older than I was who sometimes visited our community had braids as long. I didn’t even care when the boys took hold of the pigtails and gave a gentle pull, calling, “Whoa, Muley!” It was all in fun. I could have done without the nickname Muley, however, which stuck for a while.

Our bone of contention was not the braids but the bangs. Mama insisted on cutting them straight across just above my eyebrows. When my hair was neatly combed, they provided a nice balance to the long braids hanging behind and covered a rather high forehead. The problem was the bangs seldom hung down. Mississippi heat seemed almost year-round. You may have heard that Southern girls glow or perspire in the heat. Not me. I sweated profusely. I pushed hair that dripped sweat into my eyes straight up. After third grade, all but one of my school pictures shows bangs pushed up, up, and away.

On the whole, my pigtails made me feel special and kept Mama from trying to put one of those foul-smelling permanents in my hair. Mama must have liked them, too, since the next folder I open has the braids, preserved when they were cut in seventh grade with rubber bands on each end.

Mercies in Disguise

The question threading its way through the narrative nonfiction book, Mercies in Disguise, by Gina Kolata is one I’ve pondered before. If a hereditary degenerative disease showed up often in your family and you could be tested to see if you carried the gene, would you have the test?  

This story of the Baxter family exemplifies the odds of a fifty/fifty chance of having a gene for a disease that steals both body and mind slowly and ends in death. The frame is Amanda’s choice. It begins as she waits to hear the results of her test before going on to the backstory, and ends with the phone call and her response to it.

Irony lies in the fact that the Baxter family is filled with doctors. By chance, they begin to notice a similarity in family deaths that are attributed to Parkinson’s and other degenerative diseases. Once they realize the commonality of the rare disease, they are able to establish that it has been passed from one generation to the next, often receiving various labels since doctors themselves are not aware of the disease. In their bafflement, they label the sickness with the closest equivalent in their knowledge base.

Rogue scientists fill in a parallel story along with that of the family. They have the correct label, discover the gene marker, and find a test for it. As expected, family members differ in whether to test or not to test, sometimes finding a conflict between the possibilities of science and reliance on their faith.

This true story reads like a mystery novel with page-turning urgency. I found myself sympathizing with those who wanted to know and take every opportunity afforded by science and with those who wanted to live life with a faith that assumed they were in the fifty percent clear of the gene. Following Amanda feels like following the protagonist of an intriguing novel with the added urgency of knowing her story is true.

As for the question of whether I would want to know, I’m still pondering.

Lazarus, Come Forth!

Rewriting Daddy’s old pun of “When the Lord told Noah to gopher wood, what kind of wood did he tell him to gopher?” takes me to “When OLLI members take a trip to gopher a lesson on endangered frogs, what kind of frogs do they gopher?”

We gathered at the Nature Conversancy building on the edge of Camp Shelby where the agents work closely with the Army in a way that augments the military mission while conserving species that have been endangered by loss of longleaf pine habitat. One of these is the dusky gopher frog.

Lest you think I’m through with nonsense vaguely related to the Bible, the dusky gopher frog we observed was named Lazarus. Already interested in this species, I hovered over his home before the presentation started. I saw his name on the glass and finally found him crouched under the white moss. I tried calling, “Lazarus, come forth!” with no results.

I didn’t have long to wait. The agent pulled Lazarus out of his home, gave instructions on how to hold him, and passed him around to those of us who wanted a closer relationship. He explained that one of their missions is growing the frogs which were down to one population area. The grown frogs are released back into natural habitats.

The agent told us the frog’s story and the reason for his name. He had appeared to be dead and came back to life. Lazarus, indeed. While they normally liberate to the environment the frogs they grow from eggs through tadpoles to adults, this one will remain with them. Their excuse is using him for public education. He certainly fits that bill, but I think they’re keeping him because they just like him.

By coincidence, I came home and started work on the Sunday school lesson I will teach this Sunday. It’s the story of Lazarus. I’m not sure how I’m going to work a dusky gopher frog into the story, but I’ll bet I find a way.

The Book that Made Me

Thirty-one authors with essays on the books that made them who they are sounded too enticing to pass up. The Book that Made Me with these essays collected by children’s literature expert Judith Ridge was published first in September in Australia and this month by Candlewick in America. While the writer names from New Zealand and Australia were largely unfamiliar to me, their ideas and passions rang a recognizable tune. 

The concept was for the authors to name the one book that was the greatest inspiration in their life or their work. James Roy summarizes the theme in his essay, “Everyone knows that often the best books are the ones that speak to us, the ones we truly relate to. The ones that make us go, ‘I know that feeling.’ ”

As you might guess with thirty-one writers, variety ensued. Some seemed not to understand the concept of one book and gave a list. Some leaned more to what formed them as writers and some to how the book(s) had changed them as people. One cited oral lore from the Palyku people of western Australia rather than a book. One leads into a long paragraph of general parenting advice.

Writers got these cherished childhood books from a variety of places – their library, their family bookshelves, or as gifts. One was pretty sure she stole hers. Expected titles of Chronicles of Narnia, a variety of Dr. Seuss titles, Nancy Drew, and The Book Thief were interspersed with Australian and New Zealand titles unknown to me.

Shaun Tan’s cartoons threading their way through the book along with photographs of the authors in their youth added fun and charm. I enjoyed comparing their choices and the ways they were influenced with my own relationships with books. (In case you are wondering, I would have chosen Little Women.)

I would agree with a line from Ambelin Kwaymullina’s essay, and I think those writers would, too. “Every story matters, and we all have the power to influence the future.”  

Berry Good

I thought I’d heard all the stories. My 88-year-old Aunt Ruth pulled me aside to look at the picture of the family home where she grew up and where all the family gatherings were held. “You remember Grandma Berry?”

Of course, I did. Until she died when I was fifteen, one stop of any part of a trip to my grandfather’s house was to pay homage to her. We would find this long-widowed grandmother in the home of one of her children or grandchildren as they passed her around. Dressed in modest high-necked dresses with sleeves at least three-quarter length, she lived an uncomfortable life in the Mississippi heat where some of her granddaughters ran around in short shorts. A small person, now stooped even further with osteoporosis, I remembered her mostly as old. Mama never failed to tell me I should have known her when she was younger.

Aunt Ruth pointed to the porch in the picture. “When I was engaged and brought your Uncle Leo Berry home to meet the family, Grandma Berry took me around to the back of the house.” Her finger traced their path heading for their private meeting.

I tried to figure what this unusual confidential meeting could have meant. Grandma Berry had graduated from eighth grade, as far as she could go at the time in their small community, and married Grandpa Berry at sixteen. Aunt Ruth had one year of college behind her and was marrying soon after her nineteenth birthday. Would Grandma Berry question her age? As young as it seems now, neither was unusual for their time.

Aunt Ruth continued the story she wanted me to know. “When we got to the back of the house by ourselves, Grandma Berry told me she hoped my Berry would be as good as her Berry.” She ended her story with a rather smug smile. I hadn’t known Grandpa Berry who died before I was born, but I have known Uncle Leo for the almost seventy years they have been married. Aunt Ruth, now the age that I remembered Grandma Berry, knew I would see that her Berry had met the standard.

Mysterious Patterns

To be honest, I had observed the phenomenon but didn’t know the word “fractal” until I read Sarah Campbell’s picture book, Mysterious Patterns: Finding Fractals in Nature (2014). Sarah explains that the term did not exist until 1975. In the author’s note at the end, she adds an intriguing story of Benoit Mandelbrot, the overlooked scientist who studied and named them.

A fractal shape has smaller parts that look like the whole. Trees form a good example in their shapes against the sky. Smaller versions of limbs with twigs join together to make the larger tree that repeats the same basic shape. Broccoli makes a hands-on version familiar to children that is easy for them to take apart one floret at a time to see how it repeats the pattern of the stalk.

Sarah and her photographer husband and writing partner Richard add several other natural fractals like Queen Anne’s lace, rivers, and even the airways in human lungs. My favorite fractals to observe, at least for the moment, are the trees bare against the blue sky all winter, transforming but holding the pattern as they push out green leaves at the tops of their shapes.

I love the way Sarah and Richard combine science, photographic art, and child friendly activities. Previous books Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator (2008) and Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Patterns in Nature (2010) follow their own similar pattern and have won many awards in the children’s book world.  Adults who reads the Campbells’ books aloud to children get a bonus in their own enjoyment of the photographs and maybe learn a thing or two themselves. Rumor has it that another book is in the works. I’ll be waiting. 

In Memory

Except for my annual Christmas post, I don’t do many reruns on my blog, but I’ve lost a faithful blog follower and feel a need to remember. We’ll celebrate the 94 years of Moran Pope’s life at University Baptist Church tomorrow where preparations are already in place for the expected overflow crowd. Here’s the blog I wrote for Valentine’s Day in 2014.

WWII Love Story

Valentine’s Day would be a waste without a good love story, and one of my favorites comes from World War II. Six decades after it happened, Yvonne Pope’s eyes shone every time I heard her tell it. Her husband Moran could entertain with his own version – and with a matching twinkle in his eye.

Small town Newton, Mississippi girls’ wedding expectations included a white dress extending into a long train before a bank of flowers and candelabra with lifelong friends standing up for the couple as bridesmaids and ushers. World War II brought on adjustments. Moran learned he would be shipped out to the South Pacific upon completion of his officer training at Colombia University in New York City. Yvonne left her original wedding plans behind and boarded a train. They were married in Manhattan’s Riverside Church – #38 of 54 Navy couples on the same afternoon. They would be separated for most of the next two years.

After the war, she and Moran settled in Hattiesburg, MS where they raised their son and daughter. He served as mayor and practiced law. She served as gracious hostess. Both were active in community and church activities.

Yvonne’s story was fed by the abundant love songs of the era, and she passed along her love for the music to her daughter. Yvonne played the piano while Melinda sang along. The passion was contagious.

In recent years, as Yvonne’s health failed, Melinda DeRocker made what she describes as a homemade recording for her mother, picking their favorites to share. After Yvonne’s death, with encouragement and support from her husband Rob, the other member of her own love story, Melinda produced a professional album of those songs dedicated to her parents. I listen as I write, “Gibraltar may crumble – Our love is here to stay,” and picture Yvonne and Moran, both storytellers, recounting their versions of the story. While their young love makes for an exciting story, the better part is that the end of it was nowhere in sight with Yvonne’s death sixty-eight years later.

Still forever young at 94, Moran read my blogs on Facebook and often offered a comment. I was in an OLLI class with him a couple of weeks before his death where he still relished learning something new. He savored life until, like the grandfather’s clock in the song, his heart stopped short on March 2 never to go again. My own heart is grateful for the smiles he brought with his stories and for the example he set of how to live and how to die.

Piper Perish - Challenge # 1

The new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Gene Luen Yang, has issued three challenges for readers. He calls the gauntlet he has thrown down "Reading Without Walls." I had just begun the debut novel Piper Perish by Kayla Cagan and was considering leaving it and moving on to another book when I read about his list in The Horn Book Magazine.

His first challenge was to read a book about a character unlike yourself. I realized this first challenge was the reason I was thinking about putting the book down. I had little in common with Piper. (1) In this coming-of-age story, Piper looks to finish high school and pursue an art education. You could put all my art ability in a thimble and still have room for my finger. (2) She lives in the city of Houston, with the ambition of moving on to New York City to pursue her art. I’m stretching my urban comfort zone to live just outside the city limits of Hattiesburg, MS (population – less than 50,000). (3) Her teen years are filled with risky behaviors and coarse language. My teenage environment as the daughter of a rural pastor was sheltered.

Piper’s intensity as she and her two friends work toward making it to New York together hits pitfalls as each of them encounters obstacles. Piper’s close-knit family deals with her sister’s pregnancy that intensifies the rivalry between them and with the reality that the art school she wants to attend is beyond their budget.

I soon found myself pulling for Piper, turning pages to see how she and her friends would handle their difficulties, and enjoying the quotes that kept her inspired. (“As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it.” – Andy Warhol)

I’m glad I accepted this first challenge from Gene. I’ll be doing the others as well, and reporting here before his year is up. If you’d like to join the fun, you can find his challenge at:  http://geneyang.com/the-reading-without-walls-challenge. Piper Perish makes a good place to start.

Perspective

When your husband comes in from outside early in the morning and says, “It’s bitter cold out there,” you might want to consider where he grew up and where he lives. The temperature was 37 degrees. He grew up in North Mississippi where slightly below freezing temperatures are normal for winter and now lives in South Mississippi where they sometimes put in a brief appearance. The same day, news reports had one wave of snow and far below freezing weather following another in northern states. I thought I had the beginning of the blog on perspective, but I recently got a much better one.

When we got the two youngest grandsons for babysitting one afternoon while their parents had dinner out, they headed straight for this much beloved sandbox. Somehow, I tripped and fell as I approached and took the far end on my face right across my nose. Before you worry, I am fine. However, much trauma and nose-bleeding occurred with a couple of little boys standing in quiet awe.

Once we got the bleeding stopped and an ice pack applied, the boys relaxed and four-year-old Benjamin said, “Grandma, you were very brave.”

Feeling a bit proud of myself and of him for his encouragement, I told his mother the next day what he had said. She laughed and said, “That’s not how Owen told it. He gave a full account of the excitement and finished by saying that Grandma was very clumsy.”

I could say Owen is only three and what does he know, but I think it has more to do with perspective. Both boys could be right, and the cold was bitter to Al if not to a native of Vermont. I’m thinking it might serve us try looking at things more often from the other person’s perspective.

The Golden Key

The Golden Key by George MacDonald sets straight that no pot of gold, but a golden key, lies at the foot of the rainbow. First published in 1867, Eerdman’s Books for Young Readers has just released a new edition, exquisitely illustrated by Ruth Sanderson in black and white scratchboard.

On my first trip through the book, I found the Victorian fairy tale portrayed on the cover taking me back to my early bookworm days following a hero or heroine on a journey that always seemed to have one more enticement just beyond reach. Male and female protagonists, eventually called Mossy and Tangle, make their way through magical forests and rivers to find the key and then to discover what it unlocks.

I enjoyed the nostalgia all the way to the end, but then looked up to ask, “What have I just read?” Jane Yolen’s afterword and the illustrator’s note assured me that I was not alone in my reaction. The story can be taken as the fantasy it seems on the surface, a fairy tale laced with morality and religious overtones, or an extended metaphor about life and death. MacDonald scholar Dr. John Patrick Pazdziora wrote to Jane, “No one really knows what The Golden Key is about.” The multiple layers make it a book for all ages from those who enjoy a fantastical fairy tale to those who love to peel layers apart and analyze whether the three old men could stand for the Trinity.

MacDonald became a model for names we know better than his – Mark Twain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. In fact, C. S. Lewis said, “I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed, I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.”

I have no choice but to return to the beginning and see if I can find what the allegory is about.

March - National Poetry Month

I can’t remember when I didn’t love poetry. Somebody forgot to tell Mama about the hazards of reading above the heads of her four girls so I loved things like “and may there be no moaning at the bar when I put out to sea” and “nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul” without having a clue what they were talking about. I loved the music of the words long before I appreciated the meaning in “Crossing the Bar,” “Annabel Lee,” and their many cousins.

I took a page from Mama’s book and read poetry, often just for pleasure rather than for teaching, with my children and students. Between them, my poem books are a bit the worse for wear.

In a bit of serendipity, since teachers in military communities seldom have the privilege of knowing what happened to their students, I recently ran into one of my long ago second graders here in the Pine Belt. She, now a creative award-winning teacher in the neighboring town of Petal, said what she remembered about my class was that we started with a poem every day. I’ll take that!

In recent years, I’ve become enamored with writers who create whole novels in verse. I’m not alone since the Newbery Committee has often chosen to award these books like Tranhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust, and Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover. My personal favorite authors for writing verse novels are Margarita Engle and Helen Frost. The words seem to flow in poetic form from their pens into exquisite stories. (Reality check: Any writing that appears to be that easy represents what Churchill would call “blood, tears, toil, and sweat.”)

So in this March poetry month, do yourself a favor. Reach back and reread one of those old loved poems that you understand better now that you are older, or grab a current novel in verse to give yourself a special treat. Margarita Engle and Helen Frost are a great place to start.

Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers by Andrea Spalding, first published in 1995, has come out in a new and updated edition. When I saw the blurb mentioning that the setting included the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, I knew I wanted to read the book. This World Heritage Site was a highlight of a trip my husband, my sister Ruth, and I took to Canada in 2011. The site guide said this area was operational long before the Great Wall of China or Machu Picchu.

As I began reading the book, I struggled at first with the two issues, dyslexia and honor for First Nations beliefs and traditions, trying to decide which was the important premise for the story. Gradually, they become interwoven like yin and yang. Danny Budzynski, challenged with dyslexia, is very bright but not good at school skills.  He finds an Indian lance head and new friends in Joshua Brokenhorn and his grandfather who are members of the Piikani Nation. Danny alternately grapples with his own learning disability and his conscience in deciding what to do with the ancient lance head, treasured by him in one way and his friends in another.

In the back matter, Andrea Spalding lists a number of resources for both the First Nations and the dyslexia strands of her story, including the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Center that we visited and hints at personal knowledge of dyslexia in her author’s notes as she thanks Dave for “untiring correction of my garbled spelling that baffles spellcheckers.”

Her glossary and author notes add authenticity to her understanding of the struggles of dyslexia and the importance of honoring the beliefs and traditions of the people of First Nations. Besides commending the book, I also recommend a trip to the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Center if you should find yourself in Alberta, Canada.  

Denzel Washington, Philosopher

On the January 18 CBS Morning Show, the great philosopher Denzel Washington explained his viewpoint to Gail King. His words to his children were, “Do what you have to do so you can do what you want to do.” Having just seen him in Fences, I watched the interview with interest but never expected to hear any words of real wisdom.

His statement lingered with me after the program was over. I thought of how it applied to a couple of preschool grandsons. They are frequently told they must put toys away before they can go to the library or playground or before they can have a treat.

I thought of their grown brother and cousin who are pursuing a career in the arts – one as an artist and the other as a photographer. Doing what they have to do to make that dream come true, they wait on diners and bus tables to pay their rent and buy groceries.

Then I began to think how that pattern extends into life. The gardener pulls a lot of weeds and turns a lot of sod before flowers can be trained up a lattice. A writer collects a bunch of rejection letters before she gets a starred review or writes a best seller. A cellist takes a lot of music lessons and puts in hours of practice before he plays at Carnegie Hall. Almost every want-to-do has some have-to-do that comes before it.

I’m guessing the process can be made more pleasant if joy can be found in what you “have to do.” Otherwise, keeping the goal of what you “want to do” in mind should ease the task of picking up toys, waiting tables, or pulling weeds.

And if the Oscar goes to Denzel for Fences on Sunday night, it’s fine with me. He’s put in his have-to-do.

Isaac the Alchemist

Remember that you heard it here first when they start giving out book honors and awards for nonfiction. Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton Revealed by Mary Losure begs for star reviews and stickers for its cover.  

Beautiful writing got my attention early. “It was like magic. It was also very much like alchemy. As he slept that night in the apothecary’s house, Isaac was not yet an alchemist and would not be for many years. But already the seeds of magic had been planted in his mind.”

Mary Losure paints a picture of a disturbed lonely child who becomes a prickly adult more at home with puzzles about the workings of the universe and numbers than with people.  The book intrigues the reader who may know little more about the person Isaac Newton than the old legend of his discovering gravity when an apple falls on his head. (She clarifies that, too.)

The author explains how much he contributed to math and science as a forerunner to Einstein who built on his work and how much his discoveries are used today even though his original goal had more to do with alchemy. She quotes famous economist John Maynard Keynes saying Newton, “was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.”

Her back matter is only slightly less interesting than the book itself including some extra tidbits not found in the text, source materials, and a bibliography.

I read my copy on my Kindle, with gratitude to Net Galley and Candlewick Publishers for the ARC, and can’t wait for a preschool math-loving grandson to get old enough to read it. I do recommend buying it in hard copy, as I will before I put it aside for him to age a bit. The pictures deserve to be examined and seen on paper one can touch.

The Chester Drawers

I’ve been writing this blog for more than five years and for the first time have a topic request. Oddly, my youngest son Mark asked me to write about this chester drawers. I am aware that most people outside the South call it a chest of drawers. I did learn to spell it, if not say it, correctly at some point in my childhood. As I recall, the person who enlightened me also made a slightly ribald comment about Chester and his “drawers,” but I need to get to the point.

The history of this chest of drawers begins before my time. It came into our family about the time of my earliest memories. A church member, who was upgrading their family furniture, thought the struggling young pastor’s family could use it and passed it along. Periodically, there was a new layer of brown paint applied, but otherwise it got no care except for the dusting assigned to the four daughters. The hourglass turned through a number of years until four girls grew up and made lives of their own, until the pastor and his wife retired and settled in her family’s old home place, until his death and her eventual need to give up housekeeping.

At that point, the four sisters sorted out and took home things that had only sentimental value. The chest of drawers went to Birmingham with Beth, the most talented DIY sister. Sensing something better under the layers of paint, she stripped it to the bottom wood, refinished it, and replaced the cheap hardware. Her DIY husband shored up the underpinnings, and it made a pretty addition to a guest room in their house. That hourglass turned through another number of years before they decided to downsize and move closer to their two daughters.

After the daughters took what they needed from the downsizing, Beth sent out an email to her nieces and nephews with a list and pictures of leftover furniture items. She said they were up for grabs with the caveat of first come, first served. Timing was perfect for Mark who was moving his family back to Mississippi and finding a house. She got a quick return email with a list of selections from him, especially for the chest of drawers that he could place in his memory in the houses where he had visited his McGee grandparents.

Despite Beth’s and Don’s best efforts, the chester drawers still has only sentimental value – a value that has my son recalling good times with Pops and Grandma. As the hourglass continues to turn, it sits in the master bedroom at his new house in Hattiesburg and draws a request for a blog.