Small Stream to Great Canyon

Our tour guide pointed out the small meandering stream as we looked down. “Over eons of time,” he said, “this carved out the Grand Canyon.” My schoolteacher mind immediately traveled to a lesson on persistence.

Well-known writers at conferences seem to compete to claim the highest number of rejections or the most discouraging route to publication, insisting that writers should never give up. But hanging in there and carrying on is not limited to writers. A musician hits many sour notes before much practice produces a soul-stirring concert. Late nights, hard work, and discouraging times precede success for a small business owner. Becoming an athlete requires hours and hours of physical training. Even Edison failed often before that light bulb finally came on.

Last Thursday, the lesson came back to me. At 8:47 AM, an email requested a full manuscript – not exactly an acceptance, but hope that one will follow when the proposed writing has been completed and submitted. At 2:57 PM, a rejection on a different project included words like “charming historical middle grade premise . . . beautiful writing . . . warm-hearted and introspective prose” and then went on to tell what added this email to my stack of rejection letters. 

So what is this writer with a lesson from a small stream to do? I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry.

I held an abbreviated Rejection Pity Party for the second manuscript (just long enough to eat the chocolate I serve myself on such occasions). Then I pulled out my folders and began organizing a rewrite of the first manuscript to give it the highest possibility of acceptance.

Should this rewrite result in another rejection, this small stream will flow on – right after the Rejection Pity Party chocolate – carrying the sand and gravel in the form of regular blogs and a few magazine articles here and there.

For my readers with their own brooks of dreams, I wish you persistence followed by success and lots of chocolate in the pauses between times when you need to throw a pity party.

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Someone commented in a review that Jesmyn Ward’s new book, Sing, Unburied, Sing outshone her other books. Having read those other books, I doubted whether that was possible.

Set in a fictional town in her native Mississippi, the story revolves around a trip. Thirteen-year-old Jojo and toddler Kayla live with their African American grandparents – Pop who centers the family and Mam who is dying of cancer. Kayla clings to Jojo as a parental figure. Pop, who has spent time in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, tells Jojo stories to help him learn about life.

When the children’s white father is to be released from Parchman, their drug-addicted mother, who moves in and out of their lives, shows up demanding that they accompany her and her girl friend to the penitentiary for his release. Uninvited guests from the spirit world join them – her long dead brother who shows up to Leonie when she is high on drugs and Richie, a boy prisoner befriended by the grandfather when he was at Parchman who shows up to Jojo. Both spirits recall a past that forms their present. Richie follows them home and forces Jojo to ask hard questions of his grandfather Rivers.

Well-drawn individuals, both living and dead, and complex relationships are placed in a setting that becomes another character in the story. Jesmyn Ward’s way with words makes for a book that lingers when put aside between chapters and long after the last page is finished.

A doubter no longer, I agree this is her best book yet. In an interview, she said it took three years to finish – three years well spent.

Q & A

Since I frequently think the Q & A is the best part of a presentation, I’m doing both parts today for my blog.

Mississippi Book Festival 2017 hosted a display of the original art from Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day from the archives of the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. Curator Ellen Ruffin asked me. “Would you be willing to take a turn minding the paintings, passing out brochures, and answering questions?” She didn’t have to ask me twice!

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions during my turn on duty and my answers.

Q: You mean Keats was not black? (The brochure had his picture which destroyed a common assumption that only a black author would put a black child in The Snowy Day and its sequels, especially in 1960.)

A: Keats was Jewish. He saw children outside his Brooklyn window from many different cultures and thought they should be represented in books. When asked why he put a black child in his first children’s book, The Snowy Day, he always gave the same answer, “Because he should have been there all along.”

Q: Are these copies of his art?

A. I invited them to look closer at this point and see the lines of the paper collages that he had glued together to form the art. These were not copies but the original paintings he did for the book and are housed with the original paintings for his other children’s books in the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection.

Q. Are they ever all exhibited at one time?

A. That would take more space than one is likely to find. There have been large traveling exhibits with much of his work in several museums in the United States and several years ago in Japan. Other examples of his work are rotated in the de Grummond exhibit room at the Cook Library at the University of Southern Mississippi.  

Q. Was he from Mississippi?

A. No, he grew up in Brooklyn and lived there all his life except for almost a year in Paris where he studied painting and a stint in Tampa, Florida during World War II in the Army.

Q. Then how did his art get here?

A. In 1980, he came to the University of Southern Mississippi to receive their annual medallion at the children’s book festival given to a children’s author or illustrator who has made a significant contribution to children’s literature. He and the librarians formed a solid friendship that eventually led to placement of his archives in the de Grummond where they would be valued, cared for, and shared with researchers and children’s book lovers.

Glow

The books I like best set a really good story, or maybe two, in an authentic time in history. Glow by Megan E. Bryant, with its book birthday today on September 1, is just such a book. Chapters rotate between two teenaged girls. Julie’s story is told in narrative in the present day while Lydia’s tale is in letters to her soldier. Not only does Megan shift between the two girls with different styles of story, their distinctive voices in the telling reflect the period in which they live.

Present day Julie has relationship issues with a father who has abandoned the family, a mother who needs her college money for debt rescue, a friend whose continuing plans for college inspire envy, and maybe a boyfriend. These become peripheral when Julie finds some mysterious art in a secondhand store that glows in the dark revealing an entirely different painting. She begins a trek to find out where and how it was produced and who the “LG” might be who signed these and other paintings she locates in her search. It is almost too late before she realizes the paintings themselves are placing her in great danger.

Lydia, in the alternating chapters, tells her story in the letters she writes to Walter beginning on September 5, 1917. She and her two sisters become caught up in the excitement of making glow-in-the-dark watches. The reader will see where this is going long before Lydia does and will want to yell out words of caution.   

Like many books listed for young adults, this one captures the attention of an adult reader as well. The Author’s Note at the end gives a good capsule of the history behind the novel. For a more detailed historical account, I recommend a paired reading with The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore, which I reviewed on this blog on May 12, 2017.

Appetizer

Searching the guide on my TV remote on the last Saturday morning in August, I knew I could find one. Some school or the other jumps the gun every year to play the first football game of the season. Turns out this year it's Oregon State vs Colorado State at 1:30 PM. I consider it an appetizer for what is to come.

Good memories surround my obsession with college football. Beginning way back when I turned thirteen, Daddy welcomed a companion to listen to the radio as Ole Miss played every Saturday afternoon. As pastor of Abbeville Baptist Church, ten miles north of Oxford and the Ole Miss campus, becoming a Rebel supporter was a given. Although he was an avid sports fan, a visual impairment kept him from playing any game well – unless you count dominoes.

He taught me the rules and how to follow the game as we listened. Little did he know he was laying groundwork for my good relationship with a future brother-in-law who was the alumni director for Ole Miss for many years. I became an avid college football fan.

High school football is fine enough that Al and I kept our season tickets for Leesville High School long after our children had graduated. Some of those players went on to star at LSU and then in the NFL. I’ll watch pro football if it’s a Saints game or if a Manning is playing, but there is nothing like a college game.

One beautiful Saturday afternoon when the three kids were growing up, they were outside with their dad. With our windows open at Fort Sam Houston, the next-door neighbor could hear whichever college game was on, and asked who was watching. He was a bit surprised when they answered nonchalantly, “Mom.”

So here we are at the beginning of another football season. My favorite college teams (Ole Miss and Baylor) have a challenge before them, but it’s okay. When it comes to college football, I’ll watch anybody who’s playing and just hope it’s a good game. The season begins in earnest Saturday, September 2. I’ll sort out the opportunities when I get up early that morning, knowing I can begin at 11 AM and watch well past my bedtime. Work that can be done while watching the game will be scheduled. I might even catch up on the ironing!

My year divides neatly into two parts – Football Season and The Rest of the Year. Thanks, Daddy, it’s been a lot of fun! 

Solo

The answer is “Yes.” Kwame Alexander told the crowd at the Kaigler Book Festival to say “yes” to life. In his new young adult book Solo with Mary Rand Hess, he tells his protagonist Blade Morrison the same thing.

It seems that life has thrown Blade more curves than anyone deserves. His mother died. His father is working to reclaim his status as a musician. His girlfriend’s father has forbidden their relationship because of his father’s reputation for abusing drugs and alcohol. He has a chance to make a positive name for himself when the valedictorian of his high school class has to bow out, and he stands in for her as the salutatorian. His father ruins the evening by roaring onto the football field and into the front of the stage on a red Harley with a scantily dressed woman.

Twisting through the relationships with his father who bounces in and out of rehab, his girlfriend who must be kept secret, and his sister who mediates makes one think life can’t get any worse. But that is before the big family secret sends him on a trek to Ghana. Blade’s own music and that of his favorites woven into the verse novel keep him anchored for a while until he even loses faith in his music.

I saw a quote from Kwame Alexander before I read this young adult novel which could lend itself to some pretty salty language as Blade copes with his challenges. He said he told kids they didn’t need to curse so he took his own advice. Since that language pervades today’s YA literature, I wondered if he could pull off a heartrending story without it. I’ll go back to my beginning and repeat my first sentence. The answer is “Yes.”

Home Is Where the . . .

Acknowledging the cliché “Home is where the heart is,” the middle grade writers on two panels at the recent Mississippi Book Festival discussed how home anchored their writing. On the first panel, Kimberly Willis Holt sang a tune familiar to me in her account of not really having a place to call home. As a military brat, she lived in multiple places. Like our children, she had a hard time answering the question of where she was from. Home became the place she went to visit her grandparents in Forest Hill, Louisiana. That area and Texas, where she has lived most of her adult life, came to be home to her and to the characters in her books, including her latest Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Hotel. Her fellow panelists from Mississippi, Arkansas, and Minnesota agreed that home defined the settings in their books.

In the second panel, Linda Williams Jackson (Midnight Without a Moon), Augusta Scattergood (Making Friends with Billy Wong), and Corabel Shofner (Almost Paradise) all had roots in the Mississippi delta and each of their historical fiction books grew like trees from those roots. Linda regaled the audience with her answer to the question often posed to her, “Why would an African American return to live in Mississippi?” All three authors had lived many years in other areas of the country or overseas, yet their stories came back to homes where their hearts were in Mississippi. Linda said she tried when she was living in Kansas to set a story there, but it just wouldn’t come from anywhere except Mississippi.

I wondered after this what Barry Wolverton, the only male member of the panel, would say – especially since his writing is in a fantasy world instead of historical fiction. Oddly enough, he agreed. While his world is unreal, he said the father-son relationship in the book comes from his own experience.

As a follow-up, someone asked if the characters in their books were real people in their lives. They confessed to modeling characters, especially villains, after people they knew. But that is another story for another time. 

Wicked Bugs

Besides wicked, other words that come to mind describing this book are gross, candid, entrancing, vile – I could go on. For those who like a bit of horror in their lives, for those fed up with fluff, for those who want the real scoop on what tiny varmints do, this is the book. Wicked Bugs: The Meanest, Deadliest, Grossest Bugs on Earth by Amy Stewart is a young readers adaptation of her bestselling book for adult readers. 

Each entry has pictures, entomology, habitat, size, distribution, and bug relatives, making it a good resource for looking at the science of these beasties. Other information ranges from serious to just for fun: a glossary, a list of phobias by bug title, a range of pain created by entomologist Justin Schmidt who did personal research with more than 150 insect stings. In addition, a cautionary tale winds through the book on the dangers of importing nonnative species.

Some bugs are weird as well as wicked. Monkeys in Venezuela search for millipedes whose secretions they rub into their fur to keep the mosquitoes away. There are zombie bugs that inhabit other bugs and force them to do harm. Others have strange life cycles dependent on striking it right with the life cycles of the animals they inhabit. Some provide solutions to big problems like the phorid fly that injects its eggs into the fire ant with the larvae eating the ant’s brains until its head falls off.

A nod to literature is the quote from Poe’s story of “The Tell-Tale Heart” with “a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” as he describes the death-watch beetle – a bug the author describes as an omen of death. In a different relationship with death, there are insects used in forensics to pinpoint  death’s time and place.

The book is entertaining, intriguing, and informative. It is also as engrossing as a scab that calls you back to pick a little more – just the thing for a reluctant reader.

Hope Deferred

When I took the surprise out of the package, I thought of a two-part proverb. The first part had been my experience for a number of years, “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” Well, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but this all started many years ago when our oldest son turned out beautiful calligraphy that won praise in his high school art class. When he completed an impressive rendition of Robert Frost’s poem, “Fire and Ice,” I requested that he make a similar one for my favorite quote. He quickly and easily agreed – as soon as he “got around to it.”

Since you’ve read the first half of the proverb, you can probably guess the gist of what happened next. There was college, early career, marriage to a good wife who came with a bonus of three-year-old twin daughters, and a son a few years later. Work and family occupied his time. Off and on, I reminded him of his promise. “Yeah, yeah,” he would say. But his interest in calligraphy faded and the hope deferred eventually made me give up the art as a lost cause.

This spring the now middle-aged son hinted that a surprise package was on its way. When it came, I tore into it and experienced the second half of the proverb, “but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” (Also, a bit dramatic) Not in calligraphy, but in a new art form that he has mastered, there was my favorite quote. Etched into a piece of wood, polished and finished in a painstaking process that he explained to me in our recent visit – he had completed it now when he has a son the age he was when he first made the promise.  

My desire fulfilled, I found it a special place. Centered on a shelf above my writing place, I look up and see Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s words from Aurora Leigh,

“Earth’s crammed with heaven

and every common bush afire with God,

but only those who see take off their shoes.

The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.”

Added to my love of the quote is my satisfaction in a promise kept and the enduring desire fulfilled.

Journeys: Young Readers Letters

One of my favorite activities to do with junior high students came from the Library of Congress Center for the Book. Each year, in a Letters About Literature contest, students wrote to an author, living or dead, telling him or her how the author’s book had changed or influenced their lives. The challenge often lay in convincing students not to write a book report but to chat with the author, reacting to words that were meaningful to them. Once they understood the object, the authors they chose and personal applications were wide-ranging and extremely interesting to their teacher.

Now Candlewick has produced a book, Journeys: Young Readers Letters to Authors Who Have Changed Their Lives, with selections from the contest’s national winners in three age categories – upper elementary, middle school, and high school, grouped by ages and within those ages by stages of a journey – destination, realization, and return home. Student selections range from classic writers like Robert Frost and Anne Frank to modern writers like J. K. Rowling and Laurie Halse Anderson. Just in case the reader is not familiar with the work the student references, a short passage about the work and author come before each reader’s letter. Editors did minimal editing in order to retain the student writer’s voice.  

Jayanth responds to Sharon Draper’s book Out of My Mind by describing how the book helped her understand the survival instinct of her brother who has a form of autism causing difficulty expressing himself.   Anna takes on several levels of understanding from Shel Silvestein’s poem “Hug o’War,” – first when she was seven and it brought a reminder of a lost tooth in a tug of war with her brother, second when she was nine for the camaraderie she felt as she shared it in a class recitation and the idea of being kinder to each other came through, and finally as a current eleven-year-old with a greater message for the world at large. Becky, who lost her mother to cancer a month before she wrote the letter, finds comfort in remembering her mother’s voice as she picks up an old favorite, Dr. Seuss’s One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

I recommend the book to students and teachers who participate in the contest each year for models of responses to authors. Beyond that, the variety makes a good read for anyone looking for ways books change readers or for those seeking book selections for themselves or as gifts for young people in upper elementary through high school.

Before I leave this review entirely, I must say I was extremely proud the year one of my students placed third in the Louisiana contest and had an event at the local library where a representative of the Louisiana State Libraries presented her award.

About that Eulogy

Is life conspiring to tell me something about death? Our recent two-week trip to see national parks out west began with a visit to a long-time friend who had recently lost her husband. While on the trip, we received three notices of deaths among friends or their families. Shortly after we arrived at home, we learned that one of Al’s classmates had died.

As if this wasn’t enough to get my attention, I opened my most recent Poets and Writers magazine to find an article “The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story” by Edwidge Danticat taken from her book by the same name. In the article, she focuses on her own mother’s death. She brings up the possibility of writing one’s own eulogy while one is healthy and death is still an abstraction and suggests that writing or talking about one’s death makes one an active participant in one’s own life.

In her take, Death is not always the enemy, nor was it the adversary in all the messages we received. Sorrow was a presence in all of them sandwiched as they were before, during, and after our trip, but some were also merciful releases from pain and suffering. I didn’t apply any of these deaths to myself, however, until I read the article.

Obviously, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that I write a variety of things. However, my eulogy is not going to be one of them. As I’ve mulled this over, I’ve come up with a plan which I will suggest for your consideration if should you outlive me – not that I expect this to happen any time soon. Skip the eulogy, and throw a party. Discuss a few books we’ve shared. Talk about the good times we had together. Laugh at my human frailties, applying forgiveness where needed.

Edwidge closes her article with a Haitian expression that means “over the water” and can mean someone has traveled abroad or has died. If I’m where I expect to be once this life has ended, I’ll look down from over the water and enjoy the celebration.

Poe: Stories and Poems

When I began to think how to review Gareth Hinds’s unusual rendition of Poe: Stories and Poems, I thought of the old bridal tradition of something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

The old was obvious since Hinds takes the classic poems and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe for his graphic representations. Poe lived from 1809-1849 so there’s no question that these creations written more than a hundred years ago are aged.

The new is what he does with them. As he adds new graphic art to these seven old treasures, I was a bit skeptical about whether a visual would enhance Poe’s work, but convincing me didn’t take long. Before the stories and poems even start, the Raven sits on a spiky fence with an ominous tree branch behind him crossing the moon. I could almost hear him calling, “Nevermore.”

I would have thought “The Pit and the Pendulum” could not get any more terrifying than when I first read it, but as the sharp steel crescent of the pendulum grazes the protagonist’s chest in Hind’s picture, I found myself gasping. Other graphics for other works are equally impressive.

Something borrowed? These are Edgar Allan Poe’s works after all.

And blue? Maybe it’s not the use found in the bridal rhyme, but “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” conjure up feelings of being blue in their original state. Gareth Hinds turns that blue so dark it becomes navy with his rendition of the Raven atop Poe’s tombstone in the cemetery and in the series of pictures to make Annabel’s grave in the sea.

Poe and Hinds turn out a happy marriage, if I may carry the metaphor so far. If you love Poe, don’t miss this!

Historic notes at the end are interesting to any reader, but especially helpful for the teacher or librarian who wants to use this book with a class.

Tunnel!

Brian, our national parks tour guide, caught himself halfway through the word “tunnel” and moved on to describe the rest of our morning, but I heard. I’m assuming he’s had those on other trips who were fearful of tunnels. In this case, the only way into Zion National Park was through what he called a “practice tunnel” and then a longer one. His plan seemed to involve not letting us know until we were trapped and moving on the bus. By that time, the tunnel could not be escaped.

I used my new tricube pattern to describe it. (In case you need a reminder, it is 3 syllables per line x 3 lines per stanza x 3 stanzas = 1 tricube.)

Dark tunnel

Up ahead

Frightening

Black as night

How far through?

Proceed in.

Facing fear

Quickest way

To the light.

Truth is Brian was just having a little fun with his travelers. He went on to point out occasional small windows to peer outside or take a picture as we passed through the darkness.

Should we have chosen to let our fear win out, what could we have missed? Only this:

Pieces of Happiness

Can life begin again from a new perspective for five old high school friends after the age of sixty? Newly widowed Kat sends an invitation to Sina, Maya, Ingrid, and Lisbeth to join her in Fiji and find out. Each accepts and brings a lifetime, with roots in their early years, in need of sorting out together. Pieces of Happiness by Anne Ostby follows the women as they look to answer the question.

There is single mother Sina with the son she chose to keep over her mother’s objections after a teenage pregnancy, a son now 50 years old and still expecting financial bailout from his mother. Maya comes as early onset Alzheimer’s Disease begins its destruction of her mind and body. Ingrid arrives with her less inhibited alter ego seeking to emerge. Lisbeth, who seemingly has had it all, needs to find out who she really is now that youthful beauty becomes harder to maintain. And Kat herself, who has lived the maverick lifestyle in the interim and issues the invitation, has unresolved secrets. Will renewing the old friendships give them a new lease on life? Do they want to stay and start a chocolate business together? 

The story line rotates among the friends and a secondary character Ateca, Kat’s housekeeper. Ateca sees and understands each of the group and the dynamics of their interaction together and may be my favorite character. Speaking her wisdom periodically through prayer, she mingles her concern for the women with her own hopes that her son Vilivo can find work and start a family. “Calm Madam Sina’s worries for her child, dear Lord. And calm my worries for Vilivo. Let him find work, so he can support himself, become an adult, and start a family. In Jesus holy name. Emeni.”  

The author, Norwegian Anne Ostby, is a world citizen herself having lived in several countries and writes often on themes of finding identity in a country not one’s own. The book publication is international with the English translation done by her daughter Marie.

Pieces of Happiness is a good read that can be appropriately enhanced by pairing it with some fine chocolate.

Tricube

Airplane recreation came with a new-to-me poetic form in a catchup read of the September 2016 Writer’s Digest. The form, tricube, adds some “not much ‘rithmetic” that I mention in my blog title. 3 syllables per line x 3 lines per stanza x 3 stanzas = 1 tricube.

Butterfly

seeks passion

flower vine

knowing her

picky babes

only eat

its green leaves

chewing from

outside in.

This tricube violates my writerly need to be specific about the Gulf Fritillary variety of butterfly, but you can see that “fritillary” has four syllables. My “passion,” if you will pardon my pun, of watching the stages from egg to butterfly and seeing the caterpillars (also an unusable four syllables) devour my passion flower (AKA maypop) vine through July and August sometimes plays havoc with my writing time.

Oh, and not to worry about the vines. They look stripped by the time the flock of Gulf Fritillaries feeds on my lantana bushes, but the maypop vines will pop up again in the spring and only fail to invade the yard because Al mows regularly.

LISTEN!

A few years ago, I sat at lunch with Leda Schubert at the Kaigler Book Festival and listened to her dream of a book about Pete Seeger. She had bravely faced her fear of flying to come down for the occasion. We Hattiesburgers (no joke, that’s officially what we are called) claim a close relationship with Pete. He was one of the movers and shakers of the Hattiesburg Freedom School during Freedom Summer. I’ve been waiting impatiently for Leda’s book ever since. It’s here and appropriately named LISTEN.

Leda emphasizes two themes in the book – LISTEN and SING.

Listen.
There was nobody like Pete Seeger.
Wherever he went, he got people singing.
With his head thrown back
and his Adam’s apple bouncing,
picking his long-necked banjo
or strumming his twelve-string guitar,
Pete sang old songs,
new songs,
new words to old songs,
and songs he made up.

The singing comes up as she strews those songs he sang throughout her narrative of his fight against social injustice. She recounts his popular concerts as well as his difficulties with the McCarthy era witch hunts. The beautiful illustrations by Raul Colon match her gift of story-telling.

Since I wanted my book signed for two special little boys and since I love supporting local independent book stores, I ordered it from her local Bear Pond Books. After it arrived, I suggested to those boys that I would read it to them after lunch. Benjamin said, “Oh, you can read it to us while we eat.” He didn’t want to wait to LISTEN. And I found myself wanting to SING when I came to a list of Pete’s song selections,

“If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning . . . ”

Don’t miss it – not the listening, not the nostalgic illustrations, not the reading, and not the singing.

Enjoy the Journey

Ideally, one starts with anticipation, but the To-Do List left me little time for that before our trip to visit our son’s family in Phoenix followed by a tour of the western national parks. The list did serve as a carrot, encouraging me to stay on task so I could enjoy the vacation without the guilt of uncompleted tasks. (I finished. Yes, I did!)

I can’t say I was overjoyed when the alarm went off at 2:30 AM on Thursday morning – at least half an hour earlier than necessary – but my travel agent is Al and that’s his schedule. With a good book already started on Kindle, pleasure began in the hour drive to the airport. (Al is also the chauffeur, giving me reading time.)

Al and I settled in to seats on the plane with leg room, pillows, and blankets. He was now forgiven for the early start since he had arranged for expedited check-in and a bargain upgrade to first class. Delta personnel from the first person who checked our ID’s through the cabin attendants all appeared to be morning people like me with their cheerfulness and helpful attitudes.

The hour to Atlanta included a gorgeous sunrise and my newest issue of Thema Magazine, enjoyed with offerings of roasted California almonds lightly dusted with sea salt and fresh hot coffee. Rising higher as day broke, we rode in the clear blue sky looking down on clouds reminiscent of discarded lumps of stuffing from an old couch. I even liked the view when we got to the Atlanta airport with the all-important words on the sign for our next leg – “On Time.”

In a cozy niche for the lengthy leg to Phoenix, I varied my activities. There was lunch before a nap. (Remember I got up at 2:30 AM.) Playing with words, I wrote a couple of blogs – including this one – before I began amusing myself with a new poem form – putting words in, taking them out, rearranging them. These will all be here for your reading pleasure in days to come.

Landing in Phoenix right on time seemed to complete a perfect trip until the announcement came over the intercom, “Phoenix temperature is 108.” As they say, nothing is perfect.

Almost Paradise

The first clue that Almost Paradise would qualify for a good Southern yarn came when I saw the author’s name, Corabel Shofner, on the Net Galley offering for an advance reading copy. She did, indeed, grow up in the Mississippi Delta with a long line of Southern ancestors. The second clue came in Corabel’s workshop at the Faye B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival when she recounted growing up among eccentric relatives. By this time, I had her book downloaded on my Kindle ready to read when it came up in the queue.

It’s a good thing I didn’t know just how entertaining it would be or my queue would have been completely messed up. There are problems aplenty for protagonist Ruby Clyde (also a Southern name) – a father who died before she was born, a mean grandmother, an estranged aunt. And these are before her mother’s boyfriend takes her and her mother on a trip where they steal/rescue a pig from a show and the boyfriend commits armed robbery. When her mother is falsely accused of abetting the crime and is put in jail, Ruby Clyde must rely on others to help her find the estranged aunt who turns out to have secrets of her own.

Spunk and humor lace into Ruby Clyde’s search for home and vindication for her mother. Those who do her harm are balanced by others who genuinely care for her. Even as the author brings rescuers into Ruby Clyde’s life, she pokes fun at the icons of Southern culture. “Mr. Gaylord Lewis had gone to court and told the judge he would watch after my mother until trial. And since Mr. Lewis was so big and important with football and money and God, the judge couldn’t say no.”

I’ll miss Ruby Clyde now that I’ve closed the last page of the book. It’s available for purchase on July 25.

I would suggest pairing this book written by a descendant of Delta landowners with Midnight Without a Moon, written by a descendant of sharecroppers, that I reviewed on June 16. The authors met in a coincidence as their books came out and have become friends.

Sermon in a Stone

A friend gave me an unusual gift – an agate geode with quartz crystals. I’ll give the short version of what it is with the little trick I played on my four-year-old grandson. You can find more detail and other pictures on an Internet search.

I held it like the picture that begins this blog and asked Benjamin what he saw. He looked at me like I was a befuddled grandmother and said, “A rock.” Then I turned it over so that it’s inner crystals caught the sunlight. His matter-of-fact answer quickly turned into an “Ooooh!”

Perhaps it’s the preacher’s daughter in me that saw a sermon in the stone. I thought of a story Daddy loved to tell about one of his rural church members that I will call Mr. Smith. When he came to church, he wore his dress overalls and shoes. That was the peak of his style. It wasn’t that this successful farmer could not afford better, just that he dressed to please himself.

One day, Mr. Smith decided he needed a new car and took himself to the dealership in town. A young salesman came out to talk to him and condescendingly began to talk about a used car and payment plans. Fortunately, the dealer who knew Mr. Smith saw him come onto the lot and intervened quickly.

When their business was finished, the dealer took the young man aside and admonished him about going with his first impression.  “Mr. Smith,” he said, “could have written you a check for any car on this lot.”

I keep the geode next to my computer where it catches the light from the lamp and keeps the sermon in sight that what looks like a rock might hide quartz crystals, and one does not know what wealth of either money or character hides beneath a person’s outward appearance. 

Lost and Found Cat

There are two issues at work in this book that make it a bit ironic that I’m reviewing it. First, the star is a cat. Now, I have very good friends who are cat people and have brought me to an understanding of how important these animals can be. They have not convinced me to be a cat person. Second, the book was shared with me by another friend who knows I already own more books than I can read in a lifetime even though I’ve read fast since my youth – not to mention that I continue to acquire more books on a regular basis and visit the library often.

That said, I must recommend Lost and Found Cat by Doug Kuntz and Amy Shrodes, both volunteers with refugees who were involved in this true story. It follows a family of a mother and four children being smuggled out of Mosul in Iraq who are intent on keeping their cat named Kunkush hidden from the smugglers. They safely pass from one place to another through a Kurdish village and Istanbul. After a treacherous boat ride to the Greek Island of Lesbos, Kunkush escapes though a break in its carrier. No amount of searching finds the cat, and the brokenhearted family must move on without him.

The rest of the story has volunteers and the modern wonder of Facebook bringing a happy ending. The beautiful illustrations of Sue Cornelison enhance the story, particularly her ability to express the many different feelings of the family and their fellow travelers in their facial expressions. I recommend sharing this read and a discussion afterwards with a child in your life.