Reading Mishmash

My reading has had surprising continuity in recent months, though looking at the number of books actually checked off my TBR list you'd think I'd become an American Idol addict or something. No such luck. I've been rushing to fulfill the requirement of the MFA - 40 books of the 120 listed on their required bibliography - 40 read before my first residency, the rest in my first two semesters (along with reading for courses). And yet ... I can't seem to leave the library without a handful of non-required books. So now I have three annotated bibliographies going. One of required reading for the MFA, one of reading that could be related (i.e. children's books), and one for research or books that don't really fit anywhere else. Like Your Money Counts by Howard Dayton, or Parenting With Love and Logic by Cline and Fay.



Hopkins, Lee Bennet, editor. Wolf Erlbruch, illus. Oh, No! Where Are My Pants and Other Disasters: Poems. HarperCollins, 2005.


Beyond an overuse of exclamation points, this charming collection gets into a child's world without subtlety or subtext. The poems are funny, sad, simple, but not transportive. Most are nostalgic, words of an adult looking back. The illustrations, likewise, have a feel of nostalgia. A 1940s idyllicism. At the State Fair by Rebecca Kai Dotlich was one exception. "I stay very still/in this chandelier chair." captures the child's thinking in childlike words and, interestingly, this illustration is my favorite--it has more depth of meaning, more emotional expression than the others in the book.

Janeczko, Paul B., editor. Chris Raschka, illus. A Poke in the I: a Collection of Concrete Poems. Candlewick, 2001.

The artist in me absolutely loves this book. Raschka's use of color and texture, of negative space and shape exactly melds with the whole notion of visual poetry. A few that especially captured me: "A Weak Poem" in which the poem slants downward, falling over. "Easy Diver" in which a pigeon dives off the roof and lands gently on the ground. "Merging Traffic" in which the word traffic visually merges with the word merge. These poems are quick and clever, the melding of words and meaning, and they get at childhood in such a fabulous way. Finally, "Tennis Anyone?" involves the reader's whole body, not just her eyes, as she turns her head to read from one page to the next and back again, as if she's watching a game of tennis. Brilliant. This is now likely one of my all-time favorite books of poetry.

Don't Judge a Book by the Cover

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park. Clarion, 2001.

Tree-ear’s yearning starts out a little rough—not deftly drawn—but soon I’m sucked into the story. I found this similar to Little House and Birchbark House, but about a boy and a different sort of land. The plot is stronger, more reminiscent of Katherine Paterson’s Sign of the Chrysanthemum. The voice is quite folktale, timeless, and the plot is tight but with a good many twists at the end. A stunning example of Park’s deft writing comes on page 52:

“The gentle curves of the vase, its mysterious green color. The sharp angles of the plum twigs, their blackness stark amid the airy white blossoms. The work of a human, the work of nature; clay from the earth, a branch from the sky. A kind of peace spread through Tree-ear, body and mind, as if while he looked at the vase and its branch, nothing could ever go wrong in the world.” 

Random note: the cover on my copy sucked big time: a scowling androgynous Asian with a wicker backpack against a sickly orange backdrop. Yick.

Beautiful Snowflake Bentley

Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. 1998.

Martin brings Bentley’s love and obsession to the child on a mitten-full of snow. Imagine a book about photographing snowflakes making the reader cry. But Martin does it, gently and in a voice I’ve had the privilege to hear in person! The copies of Bentley’s actual photos at the back of the book show the crisp beauty and incredible detail that fueled his passion. Inspiring.

Oh, and if you ever have the pleasure of meeting Jackie Briggs Martin, she's as lovely as her book. I want to adopt her as my mom.

Thoughts on Suffering

Life has been a little rough lately. Little jagged bits and pieces float by now and then, but otherwise it's all water. Like that scene in Perfect Storm where the boat is gone and there's just waves. Waves and waves and waves.

Victor Frankl, holocaust survivor and psychologist, draws an analogy between suffering and a gas chamber - that pain is like gas in an empty room. It doesn't matter how much gas there is, or how big the room is, the gas expands to fill it. To deny pain because it's "too small" or less important/meaningful/awful than someone else's pain is to deny ALL pain. Because there's no way to measure how much suffering-gas will fit in a heart without destroying it. It fills it. Always.

I've been a judgmental pain in the ass in the past, thinking, what? You're so sad because you had a miscarriage the day after you got a positive test? Try having one when you're twelve weeks along! Try having three! I don't speak these thoughts. Good thing, too, because I know first hand the compounding effect on grief of words like, "Thank God you weren't farther along!" and "You should be grateful for the healthy child you have!"

I never understood why those phrases provided so little solace. No solace, actually, only guilt. Because sorrow fills us, every gap and synapse. And while it's there it doesn't matter how much worse off our neighbor is, how much more pain our friend's friend had, how bad it might have been. We have only our own reality; we have only our own suffering. To deny another person's suffering is to negate our own; to negate our own is to deny the world's. And who can stand to live without compassion?

Twice Read, Nonce Enjoyed

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. 1960.

Interesting opening, full of subtle tension. But what is the narrator dying from want of? What’s the promise of the first page? (Hahaha!) Ok, she obviously wants peace for her people and the reader suspects that the visitors will bring calamity (which they do).

The writing is not especially engaging. It rather gets out of the way quickly so the strong plot can take over, though I can’t figure out why the wild dogs only killed Ramo and didn’t eat him.

O’Dell faces the same problem that Tom Hanks faced—how to make scenes interesting and “quick” when there’s only one person? Hanks, in whatever movie that was, turns a volleyball into a god, but O’Dell tries to tap into the cultural rather than survivalist part of the story (unlike say, My Side of the Mountain, Hatchet, others). I bet a formula could be made for these books, something like step 1: isolate the protagonist (plane crash, wild dogs, running away, etc.), step 2: make weapons! Cool!, step 3: give the protagonist something really big to hunt and some wild animal intent on hunting them, step 4: every isolated survivalist needs a volleyball/pet ... and so on.

And in the end, what leads our young protagonist to let down her guard and engage the stranger (the stranger: step 11)? Female vanity. Ah, to be a man writing about women in 1960! She succumbs to a compliment about her skirt, then to a necklace.

Details are rich like Little House and others, and this gives a fascinating glimpse into history and life from an unusual perspective, but I didn’t find the survival story any more compelling now than I did when I read the book (laboriously) in 6th grade. Not my favorite by far.

It's Been a While: Why We're Glad We Quit Homeschooling

I leave in a few minutes to pick Fish up from school. Yes, school! We put St. Nick and Fish in 3rd grade and kindergarten respectively, and haven't had a moment's doubt. Well, ok, maybe a moment's doubt. But the results have been 100% fabulous. I'd like to take a minute to challenge some misconceptions the homeschool world has about traditional schooling ...

1. A lot of time is wasted in school.

While this may be true for some schools, we have found the opposite at our Heritage Academy. Every second of every day St. Nick is doing something. Doing. Something! And let me tell you, it's not whining, not begging to use the computer, not complaining over how much he doesn't want to do his work or sit by his brother or how bored he is ... all that @#$% he did at home. He learns things! He does *gasp* crafts! He writes and draws and learns and is HAPPY about it!!!! Hear my enthusiasm. My reluctant writer will now show me whole pages of (nearly illegible - some things don't change) script. He'll take pencil and paper to bed and write poetry. Poetry! Dude, I don't know what magic wand Ms. 3rd Grade Teacher has, but I sure didn't have it.

2. The social environment will destroy his fragile sense of self and he'll become a sociopathic drug addict with no will power and an overwhelming need to fit in even if that means, yes mother, that he'll jump off the cliff just because everyone else is doing it.

Not true! Partly because of my own antisocial tendencies we never got hooked into a homeschool group, so St. Nick never had any concentrated time with other kids, so St. Nick never had any real friends. You know, those people we remember from childhood who call on weekends and giggle during sleepovers? (Ok, boys may not giggle.) Well, he now has lots of contact with other kids, and my once surly, bad-attitude (look back at our homeschool coop experiences), socially awkward child has friends! He gets phone calls! He has secret clubs! He has a CRUSH!!! He also gets to make tough choices every day. Does he tell the teacher when a classmate has something she's not supposed to have in her backpack (her Nintendo DS, not cocaine)? Does he tease the kid who can't have birthday treats because of his religion, just because his friends do? St. Nick proves again and again that even children are capable of critical thinking. And even my kid (raised by wolves) can make the right decisions much of the time. And he comes home with lots to talk about over dinner.

3. Family cohesion will fall apart and we'll all eat pop tarts at the counter before rushing from one practice/event/lesson to the next.

So totally false. Perhaps because of my aforementioned antisocial tendencies, our evenings running to school activities are rare treats. And they really are treats! We went to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time EVER with his school, which turned into a fabulous time to connect with other parents, meet classmates, and blow off steam. Sorry to say, it rocked far and away over the homeschool softball-nite or square dancing hoe-down. Ok, sorry for the unfair jab. The truth is, we ran around like headless chickens far more when we were homeschooling. Now we enjoy evenings at home together. And major bonus, Dr. D totally digs helping St. Nick with homework! The same Dr. D who was almost entirely uninvolved in homeschooling now works with his son every single night. I've seen those two grow in crazy leaps this year in mutual respect. St. Nick blossoming from the attention of his dad, and Dad realizing his little smart-ass is really pretty dang smart.

4. Siblings won't get along because they'll be, like, separated by artificial age categories and hierarchies and whatnot.

Wrongers. Here's our day: St. Nick and Fish leave at 7:30 am. I get to have Mud Pie all to myself all morning (ok, this is mostly Pie playing in my office with an occasional preschool lesson thrown in). 11:30 Pie and I go pick up Fish. We have a great lunch together and Pie, geeked beyond measure to have her big brother home, plays with Fish who, geeked beyond measure to be with this adoring little sister, relishes every moment. They play without stopping until 3pm when we go to pick up St. Nick. Pie is craving rest time by then, so Fish and St. Nick (who were once arch enemies) pair up on computer games or legos or just hanging out. They actually like one another! From the bickering and constant drive to divert my attention from whoever was getting it at any given moment, to friends. It's a miracle.

5. Schools don't really teach anything.

Don't get me started on the actual content of the education. While I'm still an advocate of teaching reading at home (the one-on-one is invaluable), St. Nick does activities and learns stuff I never would have thought to teach him. Stuff I don't care two whits about but he LOVES (uh, like math? Kidding, kidding). His spongy little mind just soaks it all in, tons of stuff, and the teacher has time and energy to do things I could never get myself to do. Spelling for example. Who knew my son would be a great speller? Certainly not me since I could never keep on track with weekly spelling words, pre-tests, tests, etc. I tried, but little things (like two younger siblings) always pushed it to the to-do-later pile.

One final look at what traditional school has given us:



This from the kid who cried buckets when we put him in an angel costume for his PreK Sunday School Christmas play. All on his own, he auditioned, memorized his lines, and performed in front of a packed house (1,100+ people).

What's that on your Head?

Imogene’s Antlers by David Small. Crown, 1985.

The fun begins on the first page when Imogene finds she grew antlers in the night. Right away, Imogene proves she’s a creative, fun-loving child. What child doesn’t have difficulties that feel as big as antlers? In a satisfying way, Imogene turns her predicament into a triumph, only her mother and principal remaining disturbed. The humor comes from the incongruent responses, and clever visual irony boosts the laughs.

Alternate to Lonely Fireflies

In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming. Henry Holt, 1991.

Bright, bold illustrations, rhyme and alliteration, bugs and snakes that naturally capture a child’s imagination ... perfection. I would have loved to have this in board-book format for my own children when they were young. Similar to one of Carle’s (the Lonely Firefly, I think), but simpler/makes more immediate sense.