Flight of the Maidens

I don't usually review my grown-up reads on this blog, but since it's for the 48 Hour Book Challenge, I will.  I finished this book last night.  It was recommended in the May/June 2010 Horn Book by someone who has loved it, and it sounded interesting to me, so I thought I would give it a try.  It is about three young women, who are friends in England after WWII.  They are all on their way to college, and this book takes place in the summer before they leave Yorkshire.  Each of the girls - Una, Hetty and Liselotte - have a very different experience.  One finds love, one finds herself, and one solves the mystery of her family.  While they each have different experiences, there is a lot for them to learn about life outside their sheltered village.  I didn't love this book, but then I don't love books about World War II anyways.  There is a lot of pain in this book,and angst, and while I think Gardam handles it well, it just didn't connect with me very much.  It took me an abnormally long time to read (maybe it's been in my To Be Read pile for more than a year?) which definitely says something.

The Flight of the Maidens - Jane Gardam.  Penguin, 2000.

from my personal collection

The Trouble Begins at 8

This is a rollicking, fun biography of Mark Twain, focusing primarily on the time he spent in Nevada, California and Hawaii.  Fleischman has a great way of writing, and his tone is very well-suited to Twain’s story.  He is pretty careful to point out where there are questions about Twain’s claims, which there are many.  He doesn’t necessarily dispute what Twain says, but he does include quotes from Mark Twain about telling the truth.  I took a class on Mark Twain in graduate school, and I don’t remember much of this information about Mark Twain and his life, but I found it very interesting.  One of the things I found so interesting about his biography was how many get-rich-quick schemes he and his brother were involved in, including mining, a newspaper, and other ideas that lost them both money (of course).   Life then was all about money, how to earn it and stay afloat.  The back matter is very rich, including an excerpt from The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, a timeline of Clemens’ life, references (one of my favorite things for encouraging additional research), and an annotated bibliography.  This book tied in so nicely with the review I did a few weeks ago of Bambino and Mr. Twain - the events of that book happen later in Twain's life.   This was a surprisingly quick read for a biography, and made me want to read more Twain.  On to the next book!

The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West - Sid Fleischman.  Greenwillow Books, 2008.

borrowed from Lewis & Clark Library

Getting Ready to Start - 48 Hour Reading Challenge

So, for the first year EVER, I am excited to announce that I am participating in the 48 Hour Book Challenge (hosted this year by Ms. Yingling Reads.  

 I know that most of you are thinking "But what about Frances and Gloria??"  I am just going to do my best to read as much as I can, working around the girls and their schedule.  They are with their father until 4pm tomorrow, and then have a birthday party to go to Sunday afternoon, so I'll try to maximize my time.  And realistically, they may watch a movie or two this weekend!

But not only is it a challenge having young children and participating in this challenge, but I am also doing a half-marathon in the morning!  I am a walker, not a runner, so it will take me about three and a half hours to do that.  However, I expect that when I am done, I will look forward to spending the rest of the day reading on the couch.

Without further ado, here is a picture of my weekend TBR pile. 

I am not going to read these in the order they are pictured, but most likely in the order mentioned below (to get as many overdue library books out as possible!):

The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West  - Sid Fleischman

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars - Katherine Marsh

Doll Bones - Holly Black

The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories - Harold Courlander

Blink and Caution - Tim Wynne-Jones

The Flight of the Maidens  - Jane Gardam

The Orchid Thief  - Susan Orlean

Real Solutions for Real Moms - Kathy Ireland

Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids - Dr. Kathy Markham

So Brave, Young and Handsome - Leif Enger

Love Medicine - Louise Erdrich

I am really looking forward to the reading.  I'll be sharing reviews of them as I finish, but they will be shorter than my usual posts.  I still have a couple of hours more work to get done this afternoon, plus some errands and cleaning to do, and a blog post I am hoping to get written this afternoon, so I am anticipating beginning around 5pm.  I can't wait to see what others are reading!

Minette's Feast

It is interesting to me how sometimes related books come into your life.  Does this ever happen to you?  You read a fictional book set in South Africa, for instance, and then you come across an informational book on Desmond Tutu.  Or you pick up two seemingly unrelated books from your library's new books shelf and they have a historical figure in common.  That happened to me not that long ago when I read Dodger (a Printz Honor winner) and Splendors and Glooms (a Newbery Honor winner) and found the same character (a historical figure) in both.  I love when connections between books reveal themselves.  This year while I was on the Cybils Nonfiction Picture Book panel, it happened again.  Two picture books on Julia Child were nominated - Bon Appetit! by Jessie Hartland and the book I am going to write about today, Minette's Feast.

When the books arrived in the mail, I couldn't wait to read them.  After all, I discovered Julia Child at about the same time everyone else did - when the book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously came out.  My then-husband bought it for me since it combined some of my loves - cooking, reading and blogging.  I continued to read about Julia's life over the years, and couldn't wait to see how it was interpreted for children.

But then I began to wonder if children would sustain the same interest in the subject of Julia Child as I had.  After all, I was interested in how Julia learned to cook, her cool job during WWII, and her connection with France.  Would a child (remember these are nonfiction picture books) be interested in any of that?  If Gloria and Frances are any indication, they don't care how their food is made or what technique I used, just that it is served in a timely fashion!  I don't have a good sense of whether kids really would seek out books about Julia Child, but I suspect not.  So Reich uses a different point of view to examine Child's life - through the eyes of her cat.

Even before Minette comes to live with Julia and her husband, their life in Paris is full of cats.  When they walk down the road, cats peek out of the alley; they curl up on seats in the cafe.  And then the couple decides that "A house without a cat is like life without sunshine" and adopt Minette.

When Minette first comes to live with them, Julia isn't a cook.  And that is fine with Minette, who would prefer to hunt her own birds and mice to eat.  But soon Julia becomes inspired by living in France, exploring the markets and getting advice from the locals.  She wants to really learn to cook, and enrolls at Le Cordon Bleu.  All of the enticing smells are alluring to Minette, but ultimately Minette prefers mouse.  Then one day Julia brings home a large cut of meat.  As she prepares it, Minette shows interest, perching on Julia's shoulder while she cooks.  It develops its flavor on the windowsill for three whole days.  Julia serves the meat to dinner guests who rave over it.  When all the leftovers are finally gone, Minette gets what she's been waiting for - the bone!  She rubs on the bone, chews on the bone, and plays with the bone.  In the end, no matter how much Minette loves that bone, though, she would still rather eat mouse.

Reich's writing brings life and rhythm to the story.  Many of the cooking terms are alliterative, and lend a swinging rhythm to the reader's voice.  For instance, as Julia learns to cook, "She baked and blanched, blended and boiled, drained and dried, dusted and fried."  It's quite a feat to assemble a dinner, and this particular combination of words emphasizes the whirlwind effort Julia goes through.  Reich also uses the terms appropriately and the rhymes make them fun to say.

The same thing happens when Minette is given the bone, with a tiny bit of meat left on.  She sniffs, then pounces, then attacks: "She frisked and flounced, darted and batted.  She tiptoed and hopped, danced and pranced."  Here, too, Reich uses lists of words to convey movement.  The words flow together effortlessly, like a dance.  You can envision Minette (or any cat, really) attacking, prancing and hopping.  These are typical cat behaviors that any cat owner will be familiar with.  After all of Minette's effort, "she licked herself all over and took a nice long nap".  That sentence is all cat!  

My only complaint about the writing is that this mysterious cut of meat that Julia prepares for three days is never named in the text.  We can tell that the meat is delicious - not only do the guests rave about the meat, but Julia and Paul savor the leftovers for days before Minette gets the bone.  We see Julia preparing the meat - both rubbing it with herbs and spices before its time on the windowsill and cooking it with vegetables.  But this recipe is never named (nor is any other).  Child's techniques are described, but it seems like this would be an appetizing place for a recipe.

Minette is the star of the illustrations too.  Bates creates these in pencil and watercolors, and they are fairly realistic.  I've talked before about books with historical figures in them (like The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau) and Bates does a great job of drawing Julia Child and giving readers the impression of her personality without perfectly imitating her.  This allows Bates to work within her own style, but still give a feeling of authenticity to her illustrations.  And she also adds period detail, bringing France to life for readers.

Bates also does a terrific job of conveying Minette's personality through her illustrations.  In the scene at the end of the story, when Minette attacks the bone, there are a multitude of spot illustrations scattered across the page.  You can clearly see the frenzy of activity, legs akimbo and whiskers twitching.  Minette's movements are hilarious and very realistic.  The final full-page spread shows Minette eye to eye with a mouse clutching a crumb of cheese.  It encapsulates Minette's personality perfectly.

The back matter is rich in this book.  There is a two page afterword that summarizes Child's life.   Reich includes notes of all the citations for the quotes used in the story - she used quite a few, and I love seeing them treated seriously here.  There are also additional sources of information on Child's life, including a link to an online exhibit of Child's home.  And there is a glossary and pronunciation guide for many French  terms used in the story.  I didn't talk about it, but I really appreciated the way Reich not only used many French phrases and vocabulary, but also incorporated their definitions in context very naturally.

The last piece of back matter is very important to me.  It gives the author's personal connection to the story - Reich met Julia Child in 1993.  But it also explains why Reich created this story, and how she used Minette to make the story more relatable to children.  Reich notes "...Julia never actually said that Minette preferred mouse."  So some of this story is fictionalized, but I still think it does a good job of bringing the unusual aspects of Child's time in France to life for children.  I am still not wholly convinced that a child would request a book about Julia Child, but this one does combine facts with fictional elements in a natural way.  And its strong back matter satisfies my expectations for children wanting to continue their research.  It's a book that will stay in my collection of books about Julia Child.

Minette's Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and her Cat.  Susanna Reich; illustrated by Amy Bates.  Abrams, 2012.

sent by the publisher for  Cybils consideration

Note: I am on the Cybils Nonfiction Picture Book panel, but this blog post does not represent the committee's thoughts about the book.  It only represents my personal ideas and thoughts.

The Range Eternal

I am looking forward to the long weekend - how about you?  We have had lots of rain, so it's time to get into the garden and start digging.  But I also just finished that big project I mentioned (the one with LOTS of writing) and it's time to celebrate this weekend!  Of course, I am going to celebrate by catching up on some blog posts.  I am going to start by offering you a post about one of Louise Erdrich's picture books, The Range Eternal.  This post was my first one in my goal to read all of Erdrich's books, both for children and adults.  I am also reading Love Medicine right now, although I'm reading so many things that it is taking a back seat.  And this goal is a long-term goal, not one I want to race through in this year.  So when I returned Grandmother's Pigeon to the OPI library, I wasn't planning on writing another post about Erdrich so soon.  Two days later, I was browsing the shelves at our local public library, and found The Range Eternal in the picture book section.  Both The Range Eternal and Grandmother's Pigeon  are family stories - memories of a time and place.  But while Grandmother in Grandmother's Pigeon is quirky and magical, this family story is heartfelt and poetic.

It opens with a young girl, who is stirring soup with her mother.  They are creating soup from what is at hand, not using a recipe.  "No two soups were ever the same."  The one constant in all of these soups is The Range Eternal.  That's the name of their blue enameled wood stove, the heart of their family and their home.  The stove isn't just used for cooking - it also keeps them warm throughout the frigid North Dakota winters.  The little girl sleeps  as close to the stove's heat as she can at night.  She does this not only to stay warm but also to stay safe from her fears.  She believes that Windigo, the ice monster, lurks just outside her house.  But she knows The Range Eternal will keep the family safe and protected.

The Range Eternal also creates pictures within its flames.  Those flames invite the young girl into the past of the plains, when animals ran free on a different type of eternal range.  Her family relies on this stove for everything for many years.  It is a part of their family, for better or worse - with all the chores that go into getting the stove going each morning, and all winter long.  Then, inevitably, electricity comes to their home.  When electricity comes, then the Range Eternal is no longer needed, and is replaced.  The young girl, now telling the story from her point of view as an adult and mother, yearns still for the Range Eternal, that "center of true warmth", until she find a stove of her own.  She finds that it doesn't just warm her body, it warms her soul.

Erdrich's writing is incredibly poetic and evocative without sounding too sentimental.  On the first page, when the girl and her Mama are making soup, the girl cuts onions.  She marvels "As I cut the onions, I held a kitchen match between my teeth.  I still don't know why, but the match stopped my tears."  Of course, there is science behind the match trick, but that isn't the point.  There is magic in that moment, and in that stove.

It is the same with The Range Eternal and the Windigo.  The girl huddles in the dark, worrying about the ice monster at the door.  But there is a protective heat that emanates from The Range Eternal, one that reassures the scared girl.  She knows that "Those wind claws and ice teeth would melt away before I could be hurt."  The stove looms over the little girl in the illustration, strong, tough, durable and fiery hot.

The stove unites her whole family with its work - her brothers split wood to feed The Range Eternal.  In the freezing early dawn, her father gets up and starts to feed strips of birchbark into the stove to get the warmth going before the rest of the family rouses.  The girl watches as the logs catch fire: "The roar of the heat was loud as wind, but warm.  The night's fears seemed small."  As the wood stove is carted away, the girl notes that it is "still gleaming from Mama's polishing cloth" - the loving care that Mama took to make sure the stove continued to support all of them. While the stove requires a lot of the family - chopping, feeding it, keeping the fire going at the right temperature for both heat and cooking - it gives back to the family too.  When the stove is carted away, some of the work disappears too, which saves time and effort.  But the routine of cleaning and maintaining The Range Eternal was part of their family structure.

This is a story about the girl's whole family and their relationships with each other and the stove, but the most beautiful passages are about the girl's mother.  She cooks on that stove for every meal.  She bakes potatoes for the children to keep in their pockets on their trek to school.  In the mornings, the girl recalls that "by the time we got out of bed, Mama was standing at the stove.  With one hand, she stirred the oatmeal smooth.  The other sure hand reached for salt, sugar, sometimes raisins."  Her mother is always at the stove, moving around it, working with it.  The stove and her mother are the "center of true warmth" in their home and family.

The illustrations are dreamy, with large expanses of farmland and the North Dakota prairie.  In the paintings, color swirls around the page - there are wisps of steam above the soup, and on the stormy Windigo-filled nights, the wind whips almost audibly around the family's house.  The paintings are realistic, which is appropriate to the memoir style of the book.  But there is a hint of nostalgia and a bit of magic in these paintings too.  The stove is majestic and eternal, bright blue and shining silver.

The Range Eternal is a warm, gorgeous ode to a time that is not so long ago, and a reminder of the fact that we all sometimes need the warmth of our family and a bright blue stove.

The Range Eternal.  Louise Erdrich; paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher.  Hyperion Books for Children, 2002.

borrowed from Lewis & Clark Library

Care For Our World

These last few weeks have been full of exciting holidays in Frances' Kindergarten class.  There was Earth Day, then Arbor Day before May Day came along.  She and the rest of her class are now very focused on recycling, becoming environmentally savvy and saving the earth.  Sometimes the message is a little garbled : "Mama, did you know that driving around town kills trees?"  "If you don't recycle your paper, animals will die."  But I can't fault her for her earnest words and the lesson she is trying to teach us.  And so it was a perfect time to introduce Care for Our World.

Care for Our World was nominated in the Nonfiction Picture Book category for the Cybils.  In the front jacket flap, a Punch-Out Play Set is advertised that comes with most copies of the book.  We did not receive the play set as part of our review process (it's sadly but reasonably against the rules), but I selfishly want that Punch-Out Play Set - it comes with a habitat box and animals to punch out, and it looks like so much fun!  Perhaps more fun for me to set up and play with than Frances and Gloria, but maybe not!  Gloria particularly is very interested in that kind of play.

We have read this book over and over in our house because of its ties to Frances' current curriculum.  It is a rhyming exhortation to young children to take care of the many, many things in our world.  Robbins asks children to care for each other, flowers, grass, the animals, fish and bugs.  I like the emphasis Robbins places on teamwork - that children cannot do this alone or just with one friend.  They must all come together to save Earth.  I also like that Robbins doesn't just value the animals, plants, and nature of our planet, she also emphasizes the value of supporting and caring for each other.

The rhyming text flows very naturally.  Each page follows a similar pattern - mostly a list of things children can and should care about.  Each page's list is organized into categories.  There is a spread about Australian animals - emus, kangaroos and wallabies; another page features fish, crabs and sharks.  This makes it easy for young readers to see these groups in their natural habitats, interacting with children and each other.

One of the things I love most about this books is its illustrations.  As I have noted before, I wish the illustrative style was noted in the CIP information in the front of the book.  There is certainly textured paper used in the illustrations, though, and it subtly reinforces the environmental theme.  Each double-page spread includes two children who are learning to care for their world.  On a page with a list of pets, a boy is cradling a hamster, and a girl is feeding a turtle and fish in a pond.  The children are observing nature, gently and with intention.  Their faces are friendly and open.  All of the animals, too, are friendly, cuddling with the children and other animals.  

There is only one illustration that I questioned.  The text on the page reads in part "...for black bears with cubs in deep winter sleep."  While part of the illustration does show a cut-away of bears hibernating in a den, there is no snow to indicate winter at all.  In fact, on the left-hand side of the page, the boy paddles his feet in a small pond - something that would never happen in winter.

But the illustrations and book design are elegant without being too sophisticated for young readers.  In fact the whole book is perfectly aimed at bringing environmental awareness to young readers.  I could easily see it being used in Kindergarten classes at this time of the year.  We've used it to talk about caring for animals as well as the earth, since the past few weeks Frances has focused on the environment.  It helps young children, who are very self-centered, realize the sheer number of other things on the Earth which need their help.

One drawback to this book is that there is no back matter - something that would help this book extend further in a classroom.  While Robbins is bringing nature and our world to children's attention, it would have been useful to provide a list of resources or ways children could help care for their world.  There are many things that could have been added to the book, including additional information about the animals in the book or information about endangered species.  Back matter would move this from picture book more solidly into nonfiction.

This book is still impactful for young children, even without the additional resources.  They can realize their efforts and how they can help care for our world.  It can be a conversation-starter for families and classes alike.  It can help spur young children into action.

Care for Our World.  Written by Karen Robbins; illustrated by Alexandra Ball.  Compendium, 2011.

Note: I am on the Cybils Nonfiction Picture Book panel, but this blog post does not represent the committee's thoughts about the book.  It only represents my personal ideas and thoughts.

The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau

I am still trying to catch up with blog posts for some of the titles that were nominated in the Cybils nonfiction picture book category, but didn't make the cut for one reason or another.  I have had a whole pile of books to blog about.  I've already written about Looking for Lincoln and Bambino and Mr. Twain.  I still have a few more to call your attention to, so I am going to try to finish those posts up in the next couple of weeks.  I've been working on a huge writing-intensive project at my day job for the past few weeks, and that has really sapped my desire to write anywhere else.  But the biggest part of that project is complete, so I'll turn my attention back to children's books, where it belongs.

The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau was nominated for a Cybil.  It interested me because I am very aware of books for children about famous artists.  First of all, I think it is incredibly tricky to describe the artistic process in a clear, concise way for children.  I also recognize the difficulty in creating art that gives readers a strong impression of the artist's work without copying it or resorting to photographs of the artist's work.  Illustrators also should maintain their own style while showing readers the artist's way of creating.

Henri Rousseau has a fascinating life story.  He didn't start painting until he was forty.  And even then, Rousseau was self-taught.  Markel says "Not a single person has ever told him he is talented."  But he loves nature, and wants to express his love and how nature makes him feel.  Clearly, the way he sees nature is very different from the traditional way others see art and nature.  But Rousseau uses the traditional artists to educate himself about art and anatomy.  He takes his education into his own hands, going to the Louvre and looking at art wherever he can find it.

Rousseau then takes an enormous risk by exhibiting his paintings at a major competition.  He is laughed at, but Rousseau doesn't take it to heart.  He keeps on working, thinking, viewing art and submitting his creations.  He isn't disgraced once, or even twice, but multiple times.  For more than twenty years, Rousseau only hears criticism of his vision, but he continues on.  I cannot even imagine the perseverance Rousseau had, the drive and the belief in his own art that he displayed.

Finally, Rousseau's strength and creativity are rewarded.  He is around long enough to impress a whole new generation of artists, including Picasso.  At the end of the book, Markel calls him "one of the most gifted self-taught artists in history", and it is true.  For much of his life, Rousseau only had his art.  He was extremely poor.  His art is what carries him.  "Every morning", Markel writes, "he wakes up and smiles at his pictures."  It is a compelling picture of the creative impetus, how it feeds Rousseau despite the criticism.

One of the things that struck me about this picture book was Markel's writing.  There are some gorgeous descriptive passages in this book.  When Markel is describing Rousseau's love of nature, she says that "it's like the flowers open their hearts, the trees spread their arms, and the sun is a blushing ruby, all for him."  Some of these passages are so well put together, they create a word picture of Rousseau's creative spark.  She perfectly describes Rousseau's vision of the world around her.  And Markel also does a good job of relating this artist, admittedly unique, to her young, contemporary readers.  She talks about how Rousseau doesn't give up, year after year, on what he thinks is beautiful.  Markel says "Sometimes Henri is so startled what he paints that he has to open the window to let in some air."  Beautifully written, and yet it gives readers the sense that creativity can be mysterious, too.

Hall's paintings are just as compelling and mysterious.  As I said previously, I recognize the challenge of creating pictures that give a sense of the artist's unique style without totally mimicking the artist.  And in any book that depicts an artist's life, not every illustration should be in that artist's style anyway - some illustrations usually show their actual life, if that makes sense.  Not every part of their life needs to be seen through the filter of their art.  But Hall does a great job of combining Rousseau's style with other, more realistic visions of his life.  There are paintings where Rousseau's artistic vision literally comes to life.  The jungle he creates includes a tiger leaping off the easel, tropical birds soaring around his room.  Art experts perch incongruously on a sharply pointed mountain range.  Hall's paintings are richly imaginative, giving readers a taste of Rousseau's work.

There is very little back matter in this book.  There is a column-long author's note with a few additional facts about Rousseau.  The only dates of Rousseau's life are included here (Markel mentions the 1889 World Fair, but there is no context of Rousseau's life in that date either).  There is a short description of some of Hall's choices when creating the paintings.  There is also a key to two paintings that include other famous historical figures.  This key only lists their names, though, which might make any connection for young readers more challenging.  I am not sure how many young readers are familiar with Gertrude Stein, for instance.  

But while the back matter is a little lacking, I think this is a thoughtful look at one man's desire to create art, no matter what anyone else says.

The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau.  Written by Michelle Markel; illustrated by Amanda Hall.  Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2012.

sent by the publisher for Cybils consideration

Note: I am on the Cybils Nonfiction Picture Book panel, but this blog post does not represent the committee's thoughts about the book.  It only represents my personal ideas and thoughts.