1-800-Where-Was-I

I try to take advantage of spare moments to read which usually means that I have my chin on my chest and my eyes glued to my Palm Treo when I'm in the car. (Uh, when I'm the passenger).

As such, I have travel books and the most recent is the first in Meg Cabot's 1-800-Where-R-You series: When Lightning Strikes. It's grittier than I would have predicted, even in a YA context, and it reads smoothly so far.

Today, as I became more engrossed in the novel while on the way to St. Jacob's, Devyn interrupted:

"Mummy?"

"Yes?"

"Did you know that rhinoceroses are killed for their horns? Just for their horns?"

"No, I didn't know . . . How do you feel about that?" (OK, I did know but I wanted to see where she would take this conversation).

"It makes me sad."

I tried to return to my book but I didn't get much more reading done, reflecting as I was on Devyn's emerging sensitivity. A little while ago, she announced that she didn't want to "eat dead animals" -- we allow her to be a part-time vegetarian -- and she continues to process information that leads to the development of her own conscience. So, I imagine that this will be a very interesting year as she gets closer to her sixth birthday and further and further away from babyhood.

Homemaking

In The Science of Homemaking (1962), we are advised to consider the following: "Now that you no longer have to make candles and soap, what part do you play in the life of your family?"

I could take a poll of my family! I've done something similar in the past -- asked Devyn what she thinks I do -- and it was fun. But, then, sometimes a poll just isn't necessary as I learned only moments ago.

--

A tiny voice surprises me in the quiet. "I love you."

I'm snuggling up to Molly, my just-turned-two toddler, as she goes to sleep; it's part of her bedtime routine. My heart jumps. What? Did she really just say what I thought she said? For the first time?

"I love you." She did. She did say it!

"I love you, too." I feel as if I'm the happiest I've ever been.

"Mummy . . . ?"

"Yes?" It's a warm-and-fuzzy, mother-and-child moment. Could this become a game of exchanging 'I love you' until we giggle? Maybe. But she seems serious.

"The house is messy."

"The house is messy?"

"Yes . . . The house is messy. Clean it up, please."

--

The Science of Homemaking - Ruth Binnie and Mary Adams (Toronto, 1962)

The Shark

I've lost her. The shark died in my dining room the other day. Keith tried to revive her but she was pronounced at approximately 9:00 a.m. that morning.

From an older blog, dated August 2005:

Not My Grandmother's Iron

Before K left for work and the shops, I explained:

"I need a really, really good iron because I'm very bad at it. A proficient ironer can get away with using the cheapest iron because she knows what to do with it; I don't know what the %!& I'm doing."

He must have agreed. Leave it to him to come home with the most elaborate 'ironing system' that I've ever seen.

I've never had to read an instruction manual before using an iron until now. The little promo gadget: a recorded voice message on a black disk whose little red button (beneath the 3-D image), when pressed, boasts its 'X-tended Steam Burst' capabilities. It works vertically and horizontally. But that's not all. It features:

Intelligent electronic controls
360 degree pivot, extra long 12 ft cord
1700 watts of steam power
Electronic controls displays set and current
iron temperature
Advanced Electronic Technology Multi-Position Auto
Shut-Off, automatically turns iron off from any position
Stainless steel
soleplate for maximum glide-ability and heat retention
Anti-drip feature
cuts off water when temperature is too low
Permanent anti-calcium filter
prolongs the life of the iron
Self cleaning feature flushes the internal
soleplate with water

So, now my husband, when he leaves the home everyday, will leave in crisper clothes. He'll smile (ping!) as he dons his hat and leaves with his briefcase. I -- and my smartly-dressed child -- will follow him to the door, waving and smiling because I know the best housekeeping secret on the block: the Shark Intelligent Electronic Iron.

*first image: Household Management Illustrated (1953)
**second image

The curse of Scooby Doo

This morning, Devyn asked me to read her a story. She produced a school library book and we sat on the sofa to read Shiny Spooky Knights (Scooby-Doo! Readers, Level 2) by Gail Herman (Author), Duendes Del Sur (Illustrator).

Just a few pages in:

"What's a Mummy?"

"It's the effect of a process that some ancient cultures used to preserve a person's body after death. Mummies don't come back to life."

"What's a vampire?"

"In folklore, the vampire is a person who drinks blood, has to stay out of the sun in order to survive and who doesn't die. Most people don't believe that vampires exist."

"What's a witch?"

"A witch is often depicted as an old, green woman who wears black and who stands over a pot making magic potions and who can cast spells on people using magic. But, really, a witch is someone who practices a religion called Wicca. Wiccans love the earth and nature and it's a very peaceful religion."

"What's a zombie?"

"A zombie is a dead person whose body is brought back to life under mysterious circumstances. But they don't live as people; they're scary looking. Most people don't believe they exist." (Ed. I left out the David Wade books, thinking that perhaps she has enough to think about at this point in her life.)

"Why are they chasing Shaggy and Scooby?"

"Well, because we've read this book before, we know that they are really people dressed up in costumes who want to invite Scooby and his friends to a party."

"Why do they want to invite them to a party?"

"Uh, I don't know."

The rivalry thing

Me: Do you want to go to medical school and become a doctor?

Devyn: Yes.

Molly: Me, too! Me, too! Me, me, me!

Me: There's a medical school very close to us. You could go there.

Molly: Yes, Mummy. Me, Mummy. Me, me, me!

Devyn: Yes, I want to go to medical school but I don't want Molly to copy me.

Me: Well, both of you could be doctors working in separate fields. You might have different specialties or sub-subspecialties. You could be a neurosurgeon and Molly could research neuroplasticity. You could be a family doctor and Molly could be a gerontologist. You could both be doctors without being the same kind of doctor.

Devyn: I know, but I just don't want Molly to copy me.

New York

My first thought: Somebody, please tell me why this graphic novel -- New York Four -- has not been made into a series?

This is pretty much the only complaint that I have about this work that features Riley Wilder, twenty-something rich kid let loose on the streets of Manhattan to attend NYU.

I read it quickly, enjoying the portrayal of a young woman's anxieties that author Brian Wood has created. Riley's first taste of freedom is tainted by conflicting family loyalties, awkwardness, but the excitement she feels is heightened by intrigue and the unknown.

We visit Japanese restaurants, comfortable apartments, and dance clubs.

Manhattan is gritty but there's not even a glimpse of the more traditional depiction of New York City streets: crime, homelessness, etc. New York is not as bad as the media would have us believe.

The setting stands in stark contrast to the book I read before this: Overheard in New York (Updated), by Morgan S. Friedman and Michael Malice, founders of the well-known blog of the same name.

Racism, toilet humour, sexual positions and preferences. Nothing is off limits. Cruelty, indifference, ignorance and thoughtlessness. Nothing is unthinkable.

Though the latter is handpicked from reality, it actually seems less believable than the fictitious angst and naivete of a young woman on her own in the big city. Hang on. Here comes the cringe-worthy cliche: Truth is stranger than fiction.

Or is it that I'm in denial, that I don't want to believe the worst of people is possible? I doubt it. Or do I want to hang on to the image that I have cultivated of a city in my dreams? More likely.

But, it's all possible. Maybe that's partly the message -- good or ill -- of both books: Anything is possible.

But the books exist in a state of tension. To believe the worst of New York in reality in Overheard, I have to believe the best of New York in fiction in New York Four.

Overheard In New York
Brian Wood

La-La-Lost in Mommyland

Devyn is reading and printing and doing crafts and dancing and playing piano and playing soccer and going to the gym . . . She has changed so much in the past six months or so. She speaks a mile a minute and she truly doesn't realize that most people cannot sit down at a piano and work out a song within a minute or two. She's loving and caring and very bright.

She loves animals and trees. She wants to protect the homes of animals by having fewer trees cut down. She worries that the neighbourhood cat will bother or harm the caterpillar in the backyard. She says we could reuse little scraps of paper for writing in order to help save the trees.

Actually, she eats like a bird and she takes offence when someone uses that expression to describe her eating.

Molly. We had her tested by a speech pathologist at 19 months and her comprehension level (receptive language) was off the charts at 3.5 to 4.0 years. She then ably identified and labelled the colours purple, red, pink, orange, and blue. She identified letters and numbers, was fluent in English Sign Language. As a result, she attended special, hospital-based playgroups from 16 months until 22 months of age.

Both are girly, but Molly more so and at a much earlier age than her sister was. She dons a pink feather boa (her 'bee-ah') and a pink tutu just about everyday, carries a purple purse, and holds a doll outside the stroller as we walk in order to let her doll walk, too. When let loose in the bedroom shared with Devyn, she runs to her sister's bedside table and winds up the jewellery box in order to dance. Her movements are deliberate, deliberated, and, yet, very fluid. Drama.

At 23 months and two weeks, when she gets upset or frustrated that she isn't being understood, she will put her head in her hands, or put her hands to her head, or put her head down on the nearest surface. More drama.

I sometimes wonder if she should be taking an acting class! But, in September, she'll start ballet and piano classes just as Devyn did and as Devyn still does.

In February at 22 months, Molly started humming, then singing to, first, Ol' MacDonald Had A Farm and then to any song. She can't sleep without her light-and-sing Winnie-the-Pooh doll and her stuffed Blue and her baby Coraline. We can hear her singing and humming as she goes to sleep. If I sing and leave blanks by pausing, she will complete phrases throughout the whole of a song.

Until April, her favourite song was Itsy Bitsy Spider followed closely by Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. She signs along with singing. Now, she requests my renditions of Wheels on the Bus. A lot.

She won't fall asleep until she and I have cuddled in the rocking chair used by her father's mother to rock her father to sleep about four decades ago. I tell her about the past and the future. I tell her that she was once barely bigger than the very hand with which her father used to prop her up in order to feed her. I tell her how she is still very much my baby.

At 18 months, she could fully dress and undress herself, including outdoor clothing and I think this is because she is fiercely independent. Very, very independent. Feisty, even.

From about 7 months, she showed a strong interest in books. By a year, she was thumbing through them to get to her favourite pages. By a year-and-a-half, she was asking nonstop for a story to be read to her or for images of objects on pages to be labelled for her. I didn't want to ever deny a request for a book (she uses both the sign and the word), but how I could possibly clean, cook dinner, etc. was my biggest problem at that point.

At 23.5 months, she is often content to simply 'read' books on her own but if she sees me, she will ask me -- actually, insist -- that I join her in the playroom in order to read.

She signs quickly and fluently in ESL and speaks when she feels like it. She climbs into and onto everything. She understands everything that is said to her, follows compound instructions such as "Go here and do this and then do that . . ." She's been doing these things for many months.

Devyn is a typical older sister and the two share a relationship that stirs long-forgotten memories in me. There's less of an age difference between my girls. I love those moments when I catch sight of them having a tea party or of Devyn gently brushing an unusually-still Molly. They still argue over who gets which side of the easel. One always has a sudden need for the toy that the other has just picked up. One wants Playhouse Disney, the other wants Treehouse. What thing -- and I mean anything, everything -- one has, the other has to have by exactly the same method and in exactly the same measure. I often have seventy pounds of children on my lap, too. But they kiss and hug each other and cuddle and enjoy each other's company in general.

But gone from our home are the special Devyn-ized words such as 'lellow' and 'Plablo' and the space has been filled with increasingly complex questions such as, "What is plasma?" I've taken to writing down her questions on a pad in the living room if they require lengthier explanations than our seconds-before-our-appointment will allow. The awe behind her questions, the reverance for discovery, are aspects of her personality that I promote.

Gone, too, (mostly) are the tantrums for Devyn; it's more talking back and outright refusal than anything else though after-school meltdowns happen a couple of times a month at least. We've had those special locked-in stares that signal a struggle of wills and I've had glimpses into our future about ten years down the road.

And just as quietly as her other tantrum episodes have subsided, her sister's have sneaked up on us. Screaming, down-on-the-floor-kicking is our Molly and at these times I remember the word 'options' from the days when I only had one child full-time and could read an article or two. Yes, let the child think she's in control and she'll be happy. "Would you like to go to sleep with the light on or the light off?" instead of "It's time for bed." That kind of thing. It usually works.

I tend to speak in run-on sentences now because I don't ever know when I'll be interrupted for a snack, a story, a word of approval. Sometimes, it's very obvious that I've gone hours without speaking to another adult which, really, is fine until I catch myself using my Mommy Voice with my trainer or until I find myself enjoying calls from telemarketers.

Ah, yes. Traditionally, stay-at-home mothers of more than one child have precious few moments to devote attention to themselves: I have so much energy focussed on me that I don't realize how much of my own is being used. It takes me a while to recall when I last bathed. I'm less reliable at relaying messages and this annoys others. Getting sick is a luxury I can't indulge (unless I'm so sick that I'm flat on my back, in which case I'm not getting rest so much as I'm simply not vertical). I have a six-year-old whose social life is better than mine. When the opportunity to read appears, I'm often too tired.

But, on a recent solo overnight getaway, I received a call at around 7:30 p.m. from Devyn. She was crying; she and Molly missed me. I missed them, too.

On April 7, Molly proudly started calling us 'Mummy' and 'Daddy' instead of 'Mama' and 'Dada'.

And, really, what is my grammar or my hygiene, I ask, when I get to enjoy a pretend cup of tea poured from a singing teapot by a sweet almost-two-year-old? What is my sleep, really, when I get compliments and I-love-you(s) so often from a precious almost-six-year-old? I'm tired but I'm fortunate and happy.

CBC's Canada Reads chooses local author's book

Lawrence Hill. I didn't realize that he's from Burlington.

http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/525243

The drama of bedtime

Last night, I exceeded all of my past performances of Phoebe Gilman's Jillian Jiggs in the girls' room.

I was as animated as Jillian Jiggs herself being an impolite pirate or the pampered royalty or some loud monsters. My diction was as enviable as that of Fancy Nancy, even. I especially loved my portrayal of the hardworking and tired mother. (I think I brought something personal to that role.)

I became each role as fervently as I could because I knew something hinged upon the varying intonation of my voice, upon my ability to stay in each character: I needed the rapt attention of a nearly-two-year-old.

It's a long-ish picture book, 40 pages, intended for children between the ages of five and eight. But she sat there, on my lap, and took it all in and I like to think that it's because, right up to the end, I had captured the almost-inimitable personality of Jillian. But it might have been because she was drinking a bottle.

Anyway, the book's web introduction says that no one can keep up with Jillian Jiggs. "With boundless energy and imagination, Jillian rushes from game to game," after all. "One minute she's a robot, the next minute she's a tree." This is what I had expected of myself. This is what I thought I had given.

I closed the book with a sense of satisfaction.

"Well, how did you like my rendition?"

"It wasn't even the book I wanted," moaned Devyn.

"I think your Rachel and Peter need some work. They're like the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Jillian Jiggs . . ." Keith began.

Imagine my hair standing straight up on my head, each curly strand morphing into one of Medusa's snakes.

"I'm not really in the mood to critique Jillian Jiggs," I huffed.

"Goodnight, girls. I love you."

I exited stage right.

___

Jillian Jiggs.

Phoebe Gilman.

Frame of reference

The other day, I announced to Molly that I had to get some food for us (to make lunch). She disappeared into the playroom for a split second and returned with a block-y board book called Food.

Are we there yet?

In the wee hours this morning, I realized that my interests in Middle Eastern and South Asian literature were taking me somewhere, to some place I couldn't yet see.

I don't mean this in the sense that literature is transporting me via imagination. No, that would be too easy (and, possibly, trite). My reading does take me, if you will, to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Israel / Palestine, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria . . . But this, again, is not what I mean.

It seems as if I'm in the backseat of a car with a map but I can't see the driver and the windshield is fogged up. I just know that the car is moving and that the map is, so far, useless.

I only know that I'm no longer reading just because I enjoy the shadowy forms that come to life when everything else around me seems to disappear. I'm not merely escaping. I'm not only being entertained. These facets of the experience remain but there's more. I just don't know what else there is. Yet.

And I want to know. I also want there to be some shape, some place on a map that I can circle and say, "I'm finally here!" I just don't know where that is. Yet.

A Trip to Grandma's House

Mama?
Yes, Molly?
Mama!

Mama?
Yes, Molly?
Mama!

Mama?
Yes, Molly?
Mama!

How many more minutes until we're there?
About 45 minutes, Devyn.

Mama?
Molly, are you trying to tell me something?
Yes. Apple.

I'm sorry, we don't have any apples.

Mama?
Yes, Molly?
Apple.

I'm sorry, we don't have any apples.

Mama?
Yes, Molly?
Banana.

I'm sorry, we don't have any bananas.

Keith?
Yes?
Could you, please, take the next one?
I'm sorry, I have to concentrate on driving.

How many more minutes until we're there?
About 40 minutes.

Mama?

Molly, be quiet.
Devyn! Don't tell your sister to be quiet.
I need her to be quiet.
Then tell us and we'll handle it.

Mama?
Molly?
Yeh, Mama?
Let's close our eyes and sleep.

(Molly closes her eyes and pretends to snore.)

Mama?
Yes, Molly?
Apple.

How many more minutes until we're there?
About 40 minutes.

Mama . . .

Mother and Child

Though I've tried and failed to keep an accurate count and I can't remember the content of all, I've read several hundred children's books over the past three or so years. This morning, I actually had pause to think of some that I've held while cuddled up to my babies.

Some have been too didactic for my tastes while others have been set to rhymes that have made me cringe. But I think I've enjoyed most of our repertoire, especially those that illustrate some poignant, universal qualities of the parent-young child relationship and wherein the expression or acknowledgment of which usually culminates in the mother reassuringly saying, "I love you."

I'm thinking of such titles: The Runaway Bunny; Olivia; Goodnight, My Duckling . . .

Very sweet. Every mother can recognize her own relationhip in the narrative and everyone feels warm and fuzzy at this point. Even a memorably difficult parenting day depicted in Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild by Mem Fox ends with this tacit understanding of shared affection.

So, what prompted the memories of these books?

Just moments before, after joining my family in the tornadic swirl of activity that has become breakfast, I looked at my loving little 21-month-old as she reached for a piece of waffle:

"I love you, Molly." I said in a syrup-y, sing-song voice.

"I know."

Because she usually says "too" in this game, everyone laughed at the unexpected, matter-of-fact response.

But I was also stunned as well as amused. A sharp contrast to the content of those books was definitely not what I'd been set up for over the past few years, yet her first two-word response to "I love you" was really very funny.

And she's off!

It finally occurred to me the other day -- as Devyn read a book without any preparation or hesitation -- that she is now a reader. Yesterday, I realized she is also a printer when she showed me a sentence she had written on her own without dictation.

Wow. I've waited for these moments as I recalled taking a book impatiently from my own mother's hands and deciding to read it myself as she wasn't doing it "just right". I was probably Devyn's age.

The little reader books sent home each day gave her confidence to just "let go" and jump in.

The school's curriculum includes this as a goal: kindergartner's reading and printing. They started preparing in JK and now the feelings I experience as she is reading and printing are beyond joy. I'm happy for her, really very happy for her and another little reader has popped up in the universe.

Dyven, Part the Second

Last night at the supper table, Devyn waved to the window again.

"Hi," she said.

"Who are you waving to?"

"My new friend."

"Uh, what new friend?" My voice rose slightly as I decided whether or not panic should set in.

"My reflection. She's my new friend. She's very nice."

"What's her name?"

"Devyn-2."

Dyven?

At the supper table tonight, Devyn spoke to our reflections in the kitchen window:

"Hello!" she said. "How are you? You should come and play."

There was silence.

"Oh. They want us to come and play with them."

And she's never even read Neil Gaiman.

During Christmas repast with the in-laws

Me to Mother-in-law: Devyn is very active all day long. She has energy to spare.

Devyn: Yes and I've already spared it.

Catching up. Working out is working out. And I'm tired.

I don't actually know what the seven habits of highly effective people are and I've never really cared, frankly.

But, I have noticed that habits -- good ones -- have become a part of our life in the past five months.

I work out -- HARD -- six or seven days a week. This means that I walk one hour (total) to and from the gym. This means that my children get fresh air: the baby gets five days a week and the older one gets two days one week, three the next. The older one walks at least three hours a week. They need snacks at the gym's childcare and I'm pretty strict about what they can and cannot eat.

My trainer and I meet Tuesdays and he pushes hard for an hour. I'm not able to do his workouts on the day before or on the day after the training session. I can't usually go to the gym Thursday because of an appointment for Molly (at least for two more weeks), so, when you do the math, I have to be there six times a week in order to get in two resistance-circuit workouts: two of those workouts and four regular, high-intensity cardio sessions on special machines that I actually really enjoy.

Devyn says, "Ah, mom, you always go to the gym!" This can't be a bad thing because she tells people her mom goes to the gym in order to be healthy because exercise is good for you. She says when she gets older, she wants to do the same. I've told her that her weekly ballet lessons are good exercise as well as great fun.

Also, I've met people whereas before I was rather more isolated, knowing only a handful of people spread throughout the province/globe.

Plus, very importantly, I get "me" time. I get at least one hour a day during which I'm doing something for myself, by myself. This has mileage because I'm such a solitary person.

Tired but rewarded . . .

Devyn

She had her first report card this month: she did very well academically and socially. What else is there at five? Her interest in crafts has really taken off. Her ballet and music teachers are happy. Her music teacher thinks Devyn is a natural musician. She plays piano but speaks often of wanting to play the violin. Do we allow two instruments? Ugh. I don't know. Would we be overscheduling? In our opinion, she needs to stick with the piano.

She does tend to talk in the ballet and music classes, a habit we need to break. She talks back to me and Keith a lot but we're working on that.

She loves science and natural processes. She loves adding and subtracting and explaining things to people. Keith bought her a high-powered, professional microscope for Christmas.

She likes to perform experiments and she is constantly moving around. I don't know how she does it.

She is a negotiator. She loves to argue. She loves opera and tea. She discovered opera with her grandmother back in November.

Molly

I'm by myself with the girls one to two weeks out of the month as Keith travels for work to London and Manchester UK, as well as to Greenville, South Carolina. This would be easier if Molly and Devyn didn't have so many appointments: Devyn sees an asthma clinic, a pediatrician and an allergist pretty much monthly; Molly sees a host of specialists, including, coming up, a speech pathologist. They want to evaluate her because she speaks like a two-year-old and she's 19 months old.

My pediatrician and his partner told me that Molly not only speaks but listens and acts like a two-year-old instead of a year-and-a-half-old and commended me for teaching her English Sign Language. It reduces the frustration (pinching,biting, kicking, hitting) that she is not yet supposed to experience where communication is concerned. I used to have bruises all along my arms before I started teaching English Sign Language. I have been bruise-free for months now!

Her development kind of makes me nervous because I'm not sure what to do: she wants to toilet train (she knows the process). She lets me know when her diaper needs to be changed and that it WILL need to be changed. Do I try to train her now? She insists on dressing herself. She identifies letter magnets: i, e, d, m, b. She follows commands of three or more sentences. We always joke that we just hope she'll use her powers for good when she's older. Wasn't I supposed to have 6 more months of baby-ish hood? I went from baby to two right away! But she CAN have time-outs now, so that helps.

What's very tiring is that she wants me to read to her ALL the time. I jokingly refer to this as her non-fiction phase because they're books about objects that she wants labelled and explained though stories do appear in the rotation. It's HARD to read the same books all the time.

We've read this book 11x since I started writing this morning:



It was Parenting Magazine's book of the year in 1999. I'm beginning to hate it this morning.

She loves dolls and tea sets and pretending with a dolly stroller which is fun for me and Devyn.

We call her Molly Two-Two because she always wants two of everything.

Anyway . . .

Devyn and I will get some quality mummy-and-me time this weekend: We're going to see The Nutcracker as performed by the National Ballet of Cuba. I bought her a little gown for the occasion and we've been reading a rather diluted version of the story in the past couple of days. I'm looking forward to it. I hope she enjoys it because I would like it to become a Christmas tradition. We shall see . . .

For the record

It has taken me over a week to write this post.

Opportunities

I get to read while I wait in my doctor's office for appointments. My husband has the children (it's a small waiting room) and I am gloriously free for, at times, an hour to an-hour-and-a-half.

When they apologize for keeping me waiting, I always tell the staff not to worry:

"Are you kidding? This is the only rest I've had all day!"

The other day, I took along my latest issue of Quill & Quire: It's a magazine that, frankly, enables my odd habit of reading "just enough" of a blurb or a review of a book so as to note that I want to read it while seemingly avoiding spoilers that could pop up unexpectedly. Then, I mark a line in the top-right corner of the page to indicate that it's a page I want to remember.

I made note of a few titles that belong to the two subsets of literature comprise my reading list: that of the South Asian diaspora and that of the African diaspora (well, my reading also list includes authors still resident in their country-of-origin):

Vishnu Dreams by Ven Begamudre

I haven't read Ven Begamudre's first novel so I haven't the slightest sense of the author's style.

According to Emily Donaldson, Begamudre's second novel deals with "the conflicts that develop within an Indian family in the wake of their emigration to North American in the late 1960s . . . The story follows their attempts to integrate into a culture still mired in racism and ignorance."

There were also some titles for the young that really caught my eye:

The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland (Young Adult)

This account of young Mariatu Kamara's trauma in Sierra Leone -- which garnered international attention -- was released in September 2008.

Laurie McNeill writes:

"Because the text bears witness to a conflict most young Canadians will know little about, it deserves thoughtful reading, though its necessarily graphic nature makes it best suited to mature readers."

I think I'll have to work up to this and, admittedly, there are so many books awaiting my attention that it could be many months before I get to this one. Heavy.

Child of Dandelions by Shenaaz Nanji.

This novel is set in the era of Uganda's Idi Amin.

Librarian By Day writes:

"Child of Dandelions offers a positive look at a difficult period in the life of a girl, a family, and a country. This is an intriguing novel, one that could be paired with other culture-clash or immigration novels, to offer an example from the recent past." (Italics mine).

Usually, reading Uwem Akpan or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (my favourite authors) requires a strong, emotional commitment due to the serious and descriptive content that captures individual strife in the midst of national turmoil. I suspect, this novel will require the same kind of relationship. Am I ready?

The Octonauts & The Frown Fish by
Meomi

(Honestly, being so out-of-touch with, well, everything, meant that I needed to Google Meomi to find out who/what it was. It is a self-described studio.)

Wonderous Strange by Lesley Livingston

I want to write more but can't because a toddler pulls me away from my compuer to read to her.

Overheard in Kindergarten

1st Boy: There's a woman who's 200 years old.

2nd Boy: Really?

1st Boy: Yeah, it's true. I saw it on TV.

My girl wants to read all the time . . .

Molly, 18 months, wants me to read to her ALL the time. While I'm encouraged by her enthusiasm, I find it difficult to get anything done and, frankly, reading Lamaze's One, Two, Buckle My Shoe sixty times a day can be a bit much.



Sandra Boynton appears in countless reading sessions, the favourite now being Blue Hat, Green Hat. Again, reading any book thirty times can test the nerves but once I realized the intended concept being imparted, I developed an inner dialogue (a "happy place", if you will) that allowed me to keep reading.

Molly's selections sometimes surprise me as much as the fact that she actually seems to find the books she's looking for among the bookshelf unit that she shares with her sister.

They fall into two categories: books filled with objects at which she will point and label when requested and which she enjoys having narrated, as well; books with a small story or repetitive theme.

This morning -- this early morning -- began with a sweet request for the following:


She has been "self-training" for a couple of months by which I mean that I have not introduced the idea of toilet training and yet she has become impatient, no longer tolerating unchanged diapers. She even lets me know what's, er, on its way. It all started with putting things away, undressing herself, and, then, taking off her diaper. The next thing we knew, she was telling us that she needed her diaper changing and what was in it. It isn't something I've discouraged but, admittedly, I'm not yet sure where to go. It seems Molly may be pushing me in the direction she wants, anyway.

But it's good. It's a good thing. It's as good a thing as Molly using both signed and spoken language at the same time. Molly signs as a way of reducing her frustration in wanting to do more than she is developmentally capable of, such as expressing complex thoughts. (I started teaching her 'baby sign' but soon afterward switched to English Sign Language in order to give her a language that she could take beyond toddlerhood.)


Hitting was one of the difficulties we had when Molly first started trying to speak more (along with pinching, biting, kicking and throwing). Once I began teaching her English Sign Language, the assaults on me stopped! Not only has it had the intended effect, it has also increased her spoken language and she will often sign and speak at the same time as if she were bilingual (which I think she may be becoming). She loves this book.

Honestly, I've never bought into the lines of toys geared towards producing prodigies and Lamaze isn't even my favourite brand. (I actually love Melissa & Doug.) I did buy her Bright Baby's First Words and Colors because of the colours in the images and the design of the books.

This, too, when it's within reach, is requested countless times throughout the day. (I find it helpful for Devyn, too, who loves to learn to spell new words.)



In fact, Roger Priddy's books really are useful in so many ways when you realize that children of all ages love to learn if you, yourself, are enthusiastic about the process. I can barely abide the be-a-perfect-parent and my-child-is-a-sponge pressures of parenting and, generally, I would have considered these to be products of this tension-filled parenting era. But, really, they're helpful and appreciated by my children. Over and over and over . . .

As for me and my reading, it's a slow and jagged experience as I seize moments here and there. Maybe if I read on the spinning bicycle at the gym . . .

The Big Promise of Little Lights

On cold nights or after busy days, I can't resist reading in the dark by book-light and it's especially irresistible during a thunderstorm.

Tonight, I shut off the light in the girls' room and curled up with Devyn in her bunk bed. I had my favourite book-light -- yes, I have a collection -- and we read two chapters of Enchanted: A Dream Come True.

I actually don't mind the 'princess phase' that seems to have taken hold of many five-year-old girls. I think it's cute and probably necessary and I think every girl deserves to feel like a princess. Everyday, Devyn dons her princess gown (complete with its own music) and shoes and behaves like a princess.

And I'm reminded of A Little Princess:

Her trick of pretending things was the joy of her life. She never spoke of it to girls she was not fond of. Her new "pretend" about being a princess was very near to her heart, and she was shy and sensitive about it. She had meant it to be rather a secret, and here was Lavinia deriding it before nearly all the school. She felt the blood rush up into her face and tingle in her ears. She only just saved herself. If you were a princess, you did not fly into rages. Her hand dropped, and she stood quite still a moment. When she spoke it was in a quiet, steady voice; she held her head up, and everybody listened to her.

"Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one." (Frances H. Burnett)

Unlike Sara, Devyn doesn't have to defend herself: her peers like princesses and playing dress-up and they will just as easily change into Spider-man costumes, girls and boys alike.

(I'm not as comfortable with her collecting-dead-bugs phase as specimens for study but I'm glad she's going through it. I'm trying to overcome my squeamishness.)

But I've digressed.

All this is to say that I'm hoping that I've bestowed a gift upon my little girl. We've read every night since she arrived but tonight it was as if I had admitted her to a secret club or shown her something little-known-but-spectacular about the universe.

I hope that the promise of being able to curl up in the dark with a little light and a fascinating book stays with Devyn for the rest of her life. And, yes, I hope she continues to feel like a princess, too.

The White Tiger

At 6:00 tonight, I quickly checked my email and discovered that the Man Booker Prize winner had been announced. Aravind Adiga won for The White Tiger which has been on my reading list but which hasn't really moved up at all.

It's part of my South Asian-Caribbean-Nigerian reading path, I just haven't gotten there yet.

Anyway, since I was on my way to the gym at 6:30, I swung by my local book store and picked up a copy whose cover announced that the title had been shortlisted for the prize that is roughly about $100,000 CDN.

When I told the clerk that Aravind Adiga had, in fact, won, I felt like a town crier because the news was so recent!

Good candidate for Best First Sentence

"The night I moved in with Aunt Ethel, she shot a bat in the kitchen."

Josh, narrator

The Ghost's Grave

Peg Kehret
Puffin/Penguin Young Readers Group
ISBN -10: 0142408190
ISBN -13: 9780142408193
Ages 8-12
224 pages

Serendipity and A Reading Milestone!

Last Saturday, while Keith took Devyn to ballet and music classes, I took Molly to the library. While browsing the shelves for titles that might interest Devyn, I found Arthur and the Race to Read (Marc Brown) nestled among the picture books. A chapter book? I hadn't considered that Devyn was ready to begin this phase.

The Arthur Good Sports series (of which The Race is the first title) is recommended for children aged 8 and up but that didn't matter. Why not try? I put the book with the others I intended to borrow.

I ignore the age-appropriateness recommendations attached to children's titles (including picture books) because I think I usually have a good sense of what my children can or cannot appreciate.

I'm also drawing from personal experience. I loved The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Barbara Robinson). I think it was my first chapter book and I was about six years old when I sat for a reading of it.

Also, as a rule, I do not like to make books off-limits. (Trust me, this is a tough one. I cringe inwardly when Devyn brings home a Powerpuffs book from school because I find them too violent. I tell her why I find them violent, even if "only bad guys are getting hurt", but that she's welcome to read -- or, in her case -- look through them.)

It was simply Devyn's ability to sit still long enough or to delay gratification long enough to hear the whole story that I questioned. But Devyn, newly five years old, is changing so quickly. I was wrong. She loved it. She and Keith had started reading it a few days ago and this evening Devyn announced, before bedtime, that they'd read the last two chapters.

Moo, Baa, La La La!

When Molly was very young, about two months old, I found that reading Moo, Baa, La La La! by Sandra Boynton would calm her down if fussiness was near at hand. Eventually, of course, having the book in my hand was not necessary.

It was so successful a tactic that, after a short while, I only had to begin to recite the poem (because that's what it is, really) and she would immediately smile. She is almost a year-and-a-half (16 months) and the approach still works as well as it did the first time!

Now, she tries to mouth the words as I intentionally slow my speech and enunciate each word. So far, I've only heard "la".

Admittedly, reciting this in a crowded doctor's office when the baby starts screaming is a little embarrassing. But, I've asked myself, after giving birth, can anything really embarrass me anymore?



At any rate, I have enjoyed a rare opportunity of having had my first baby while already raising my first child and this places me in another odd category: I'm the mother of an older child and yet I have spent the better part of a year discovering how a baby relates to books and pictures.

At first, when she grasped a book, her interest was in turning pages. Then, after a short while, I noticed that she would go back through a book and look for a specific page, examine it and then continue through.

Molly now thumbs through books with a purpose: she's looking for something, usually food (she calls it 'na-na' ) or balls (known as 'bah') and will point to it when she sees it. Initially, I couldn't decide if she was asking me for food or just showing me that she knew what an object was.

(Last week or so, she was trying to tell me she was hungry. She was already in bed, so, having unsuccessfully proffered a bottle, I assumed she was extending the meaning of the word 'na-na'. In a fit of absolute frustration, she held up a soft block and pointed to a very unrealistic depiction of a slice of a citrus fruit and yelled, "Na-na". When the lightbulb appeared above my head, I raced downstairs to get her some yogurt and she was happy.)

So, you see, it isn't entirely improbable that she could be asking for food or for a ball when she points to the picture and utters the word. But, usually, she's just showing me a picture.

Also, I've noticed three behaviours: she will point to any circular thing -- usually, an image -- and call it a 'bah' and it happens at home or in public; she will lately try to grab an object from a book (so it seems) which creates a noise similar to nails on chalkboard; and, she likes to use her finger to outline an image in a book.

Relationship to nonfiction, etc.

Without a doubt, my older child is a scientist. With questions ranging from: "How does the water get to our house? To our bathtub? How does it get hot by the time it gets to our tub?" to "How long will it take my flashlight to melt my Freezie?", it is hard to answer each question.

I can't even answer all of her questions (and sometimes defer to Keith) and it isn't due to mere exhaustion (though that does play a role). But, when at the Discovery Centre last Family Day she could be heard loudly requesting, "Show me an orbit! Show me something in an orbit", I hastily looked for a picture of a satellite or a planet.

So, I'm almost surprised that she naturally gravitates to fiction for reading but I wonder if it isn't because I actually make fiction more available. Over the years, I've amassed a not inconsiderable number of nonfiction titles under diverse topics: how homes are built, insects and bugs, dinosaurs, manners, stranger safety, rocks and minerals, planets, etc. She loves them but when she reaches for a book, it's either one of my titles (to which she makes up her own story) or a picture book.

(Myself, I am drawn more to nonfiction. Well, not so much in the past year, actually. Anyway, I digress.)

She draws and colours but doesn't enjoy them as much as other little girls her age that I've observed. She would rather collect rocks or run around pretending to be something. She could add and subtract at the supper table before she could be taught to print.

Now, she LOVES jigsaw puzzles. The bigger, the better.

In fact, she is "very, very good," the health club child-minder told me yesterday. "Children like this often turn out to be brilliant."

Puzzles. Her son used to do 60-piece puzzles at the age of two. Now, he works for (insert LARGE COMPUTER COMPANY) in California. Devyn's appreciation of puzzles is expansive but she certainly didn't start that large and at so young an age.

When she grows up, she wants to be either a firefighter or a doctor. At the moment, she's enjoying a princess phase, so she speaks often of Ariel, Jasmine, Aurora, Annalise and Snow White and might also like to be a princess. I just hope she continues to read and to do experiments, no matter what she ends up doing or being.

Those cool cards . . .

I noticed a deck of playing cards -- that I'd bought on one of our too-many trips to the toy store -- on a dusty shelf in the basement. The illustration of the box was what attracted me on that particular day and this evening.

The colours are impressive: jazzy, even.

I know that I bought them long before my daughter was able to play cards (she's five and only recently learned how to hold cards fanned out in a 'hand'). I bought them because I liked them.

If I'd paid any attention whatsoever to the packaging, I would have noticed that they are the product of Chris Raschka's hands as part of the Eeboo Great Illustrators Playing Cards Series. A pleasant surprise!

Chris Raschka is the author/illustrator of the rhythmic Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop, a picture book read countless times over the past couple of years in our home. I look forward to reading it with my younger daughter.

The series is still available but it's difficult to actually find out the name of the illustrator of each deck. I lost patience after trying the most obvious: eeBoo, Baby Geniuses, etc.

But, in the search for some, any information about these playing cards, I discovered that a book that I'd bought just last month was, coincidentally, recalled last month due to possible lead contamination of an attached gift item. An unpleasant surprise!


The Magical Ballet Slippers comes with a ballet-slippers charm.

Anyway, obviously, not all of my shopping works out. But, I'm going to look for Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop now -- it has to be around here somewhere -- because I know my baby will enjoy it, even at 15 months of age. As for the cards, I'll show them to Devyn. I know she'll love them as much as I do.

Veering Off Course

I've definitely detoured from the original path of reading literature of South Asian and Middle Eastern fiction and nonfiction. I guess everyone needs a break.

I've also slowly worked on longer posts about books recently (and not so recently) read but, with my husband travelling on business so often lately, I've had precious few moments to spare.

Now that he's back, expect more from me. At least, don't give up on me.

Finally, a decision!

Again, I decided on a book of some controversy; at least, it was banned in the author's country of origin (Saudi Arabia): Wolves of the Crescent Moon by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed (translated). Though I've read only the first few chapters, it is already emotionally difficult.

When reading books of Saudi origin, I am always thirsty for a sense of the geophysical landscape (having never visited the kingdom before); but, this is generally the case for books. I positively crave ethnographic and geographic detail. As for books of Caribbean origin, I am drawn by a sense of the familiar, too. At the moment, I'm just exploring and absorbing and being filled with wonder.

Of course, I'm reading Wolves on my Treo; otherwise, I'd never have the opportunity to sit down with a book and read.

At the moment, I'm trying to decide what to do with the children and I think I've decided on the library.

Reading Status

I finally finished Girls of Riyadh: A Novel (Rajaa Alsanea) after two weeks. I've chosen my bedtime book: Suddenly Supernatural: School Spirit (Elizabeth Cody Kimmel). There are so many roads to turn down right now as far as the next primary book to read: Pakistani Bride (Bapsi Sidhwa), Brick Lane (Monica Ali), Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (Meera Syal) . . . The list is so long. I haven't forgotten about Uwem Akpan or Jhumpa Lahiri. Ack! Where next?

Relationships

of myself to books

I find that I can only read if it's an ebook and if it's on my Palm Treo 700w because there is so little prior commitment involved. Anyway, my appetite has been voracious lately: five in the past month which, for me, is a good record since the start of my pregnancy in 2007.

Unfortunately, reading this much this quickly with two children on hand (full time) means that my notes are sporadic at times and I might not always remember where I put them (the notes, not the children). The good news is that, of necessity, reading speed has increased. I used to have time only to read to the children -- hence, the blog title -- but now with faster reading, since giving up the small amount of television that I used to watch, and reading during some tasks, I've carved out some small space to which I may escape.

I've been working through my thoughts about the last four books but especially about Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam. This will probably be the topic of my next post. This book actually represents a deviation from my projected path -- the Path This Year -- of South Asian, Middle Eastern, Caribbean, and African fiction and memoirs.

I've almost finished another deviation from The Path: The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time (Mark Haddon) and I'm trying to decide which book will follow.

of the kids to books

Being Devyn's first year in school (JK), I actually had a 'Scholastic Club' monthly budget. It seems doubly justifiable now that I have another daughter. I'm rounding out their collection of nonfiction and picking up some classics at lower-than-usual prices.

I am reluctantly storing away all titles -- meaning chapter books, middle and young adult --intended for children over the age of seven. (I've taken photographs of each book before it enters a bin in order to achieve some organization). Culling the shelves is necessary because they have many hundreds and poor Devyn's room is cluttered.

Devyn achieved her final "Snuggle Up and Read" certificate this past Wednesday for having read over 500 books with us since October.

Little Molly (13 months) loves books, especially small ones with vivid colour. She has been able to turn pages one-by-one for a long time and it always amazes me when she arrives at a page but then, as an afterthought, returns to the previous one in order to revisit something. She always asks, "Whaz dat?" when doing so, when doing anything. She sometimes falls asleep looking at a book but, unfortunately, not very often. (This technique might work more often if I were to turn on a light for her).

Devyn loves to 'read' to her as she sits in Molly's rocking chair and Molly listens from her crib. Of course, there is often a child's CD blaring in the background so the narrative in itself could hardly be considered a soothing experience for the baby.

Kabul Beauty School (Random House, April 2007)

As often happens, I find a brilliant passage in an article that describes something far more effectively than I. In this case, the following from the New York Times captures both the co-author, Deborah Rodriquez, and the bottom-line effect of Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind The Veil:

The book, released April 10 [2007] by Random House, is a story of a
flame-haired, cigarette-smoking, multiply-divorced Michigan hairdresser who travels to Afghanistan, falls in love with the country, and returns later to set up a beauty school.

The story provides a greater appreciation of the cultural mores (and sometimes laws) governing male-female relationships in Afghanistan and it is this kind of ethnographic detail of both fiction and nonfiction that I generally crave.

Initially, I wanted to say that the account is kind of thin. The author could have done more to flesh out relationships, maybe focus more indepthly on the follow-up of the individual lives that she affected.

And I asked myself: What was Deborah Rodriguez's original intention in writing this book? Clearly, she wants to let the world know about the organization responsible for getting the beauty school-cum-salon off the ground.

She probably wants people to know her own difficulties in getting and keeping funding for the school which included starting a salon of her own. (In this way, she trained would-be professional beauticians, generated revenue and sourced additional teachers as the project grew.)

I like to think that she wants to convey the magnitude of the accomplishment: Empowering women with skills to run their own salons and generate income for themselves or for their families seems no small feat in a country in which women are discouraged from doing such things.

Considering the general public reaction to the book, my own observations seem inconsequential. The narrative, at times, is jagged and I wonder what, if anything, I might be missing. But I like the dialogue and the sometimes creative means by which the author overcomes language barriers.

I think she fails in some important respects. The personal stories -- when mentioned -- are not detailed enough for me. I still want to know what happened -- what really happened -- to Topekai, Baseera, Roshanna, Laila and Hama. I am still curious about Shaz.

But there are bigger problems and I may have been too optimistic in thinking that she and others might have started social reform in Afghanistan from which future generations will benefit.

According to the NPR in June 2007, the details already shared in the narrative cause controversy and anger:

the subjects of her book say Rodriguez and her newfound fame have put theirlives in danger . . .

About the subject women, the article continues:

At least one of the girls from the school has made an escape plan. One, who is called "Topekai" in the book, says her husband, who read the book, is moving their family to Pakistan.

The others — whose husbands are unaware of the
book — say they don't know what to do.

The woman called "Baseera" in Rodriguez's book says it may not matter. She is convinced someone will kill her.

This is serious and saddening: Cross-cultural value systems colliding, sociopolitical fears casting shadows over well-intentioned efforts.

And there is yet more controversy. According to quoted subjects in the New York Times (April 2007), there are questions about consistency and accuracy and perhaps enough changes to actual details that place the very nature of the narrative in question.

Frankly, like the project itself, the book initially seemed to be the start of something and, hopefully, the promise of something more. Now, I am not so certain. Did I even read a memoir?

Shades of Truth: An Account of a Kabul School Is Challenged (Abby Ellin, NYT, April 29, 2007)

Subjects of 'Kabul Beauty School' Face New Risks
(Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR, June 1, 2007)

Down The Pipe

I just ordered Manil Suri's The Death of Vishnu. I also just bought Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea and Intrepreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri . I've steadfastly avoided seeing anything about the movie based on The Namesake because I don't want it to spoil the reading experience for me (because I do intend to restart and actually finish it soon).

But, even though at times I don't want to do so, I'm faithfully reading Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg. It's well-written and the characters are interesting; the plot creates suspense but it's not magical for me though I was drawn to its setting in Denmark. I'm not excited about this book; but, then, I haven't finished it, either. I'm uncomfortable saying much about it at the moment.

For Devyn's Easter present, I ordered The Pigeon Finds A Hot Dog by Mo Willems. The series promotes complete interaction from page to page and Devyn goes "crazy like a pig" for Mo Willems's pigeons.

What I am really waiting for is Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan, a collection of short fiction due out in June 2008. I actually have it marked on my calendar. In the meantime, I ordered from Audible a reading of one of Uwem Akpan's short stories from the New Yorker Festival 2006 (it also features fiction by Louise Erdrich). I haven't even had time to find out which story it actually is!

Devyn and Molly's Scholastic order arrived on Friday. It's large. Maybe I'll post the titles with links later. No promises.

_____

Short fiction, Uwem Akpan, "My Parents' Bedroom" The New Yorker (June 12, 2006)
Uwem Akpan Interview with Cressida Leyshon, The New Yorker (June 13, 2005).
Short fiction, Uwem Akpan, "An Xmas Feast" The New Yorker (June 13, 2005)

Short fiction, Jhumpa Lahiri, "Once In A Lifetime" The New Yorker (May 8, 2006)
Article, Pulitzer for Jhumpa Lahiri, Rediff.com (April 11, 2000)
Article, Lahiri as one of 20 writers for 21st century, Rediff.com (June 19, 1999)

PostSecret

PostSecret.com is popular; its message is powerful: If secrecy alienates, then vulnerability unites.

It also attracts humans in hordes, including me.

In fact, I may have to eat my own words. I once publicly decried the rise of reality-based television as marking the end of collective reason that would have us wandering around like incoherent halfwits while civilization around us slowly declined.

Now, I see that it is the hope of glimpsing the unedited that is so compelling to an audience whether that glimpse be in a staged photograph, a carefully written celebrity interview or a tightly produced reality show. At least, that is true for me. So, when I first read a blurb about PostSecret in a magazine, I was interested.

After downloading the site, I wanted more -- much more -- so, I immediately bought the first two books: PostSecret and My Secret. At first, I was embarrassed by my interest in the lives of other people, even as I asked the clerk at my local bookstore for the copies. Then, it hit me: having secrets makes us uncomfortable because it reminds us that we're human; having access to other people's secrets makes us comfortable because it reminds us that they're human, too.

I think it is this uncensored honesty of the project's content that I found particularly moving. It also helped me with my writing. Winburn, in my weekly course readings, suggests searching for "emotional truth" in producing narrative and this now makes sense to me. The more the author gives of himself, the more willing the reader is to contribute, or to commit, to the text because he sees himself in the story.

The project also raises questions about relationships: reader and author, reader and text, author and text. Who authored this work? Certainly, the nameless public contributed the content, but did Frank Warren edit in even the slightest way? Was there purpose behind the order in which the postcards appeared? For example, was he trying to, or, did he subconsciously, elicit different emotional reactions?

My immediate impression was that there was no intention behind the sequence of secrets. The only way in which he could have removed himself from the work would have been to lay out the book without first having read the cards and, in the introduction to the book, he suggests that he did, in fact, read the secrets.

At any rate, Frank Warren seems to have achieved a significant goal of mine: He has produced a narrative that has dictated its own compositional form to the degree that this is actually possible.

______

All the books in the series are available on the website for purchase.

Links

The links in the previous post are working now.

Royal Society of Literature Review: http://www.rslit.org/

100 books every child should read (Telegraph.co.uk)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/01/19/bokidsbooks219.xml

Reading: A pill for intellectual development?

An article in the Telegraph.co.uk by Michael Morpurgo today about instilling the love of reading in children is followed by the Telegraph's guide to the 100 books that every child should read (per three age groups).

Mr. Morpurgo says that Britain (though it sounds pretty widespread to me) is in a muddle about literacy. Treating the ability to read as a tool for success rather than focussing on the appreciation of storytelling and the story have created the commodification of reading. He partly blames education:

Ironically, it may be responsible both for the great blossoming of our literature, and at the same time for leaving so many with the impression that literature is not for them, but the preserve of a certain educated elite. As a consequence, much of our society has become separated from its own stories.

When I reflect on my early reading experiences, those that come immediately to mind involve teachers/librarians/authors reading to the class. I guess that I already had a love of story.

At any rate, there are some surprising choices for the Top 100s (because I haven't seen them very often on other lists of the sort) and I'm glad that I have copies of many of the titles. I've not read all of what I own.

There's a story by Jacqueline Wilson -- one of my favourites -- that I haven't read and now intend to do so: The Story of Tracy Beaker.

Some of my childhood favourites, read over and over again, made the lists: Pippi Longstocking, Winnie The Pooh, Tom's Midnight Garden, The Outsiders.

Books I've avoided appear: Watership Down. (I've avoided it because I've heard that it's powerful emotionally and it has taken me years to grow comfortable with The Velveteen Rabbit. I don't want to go through that again.) Charlotte's Web. As a child, the story saddened me.

Book(s) I didn't like appeared, as well: The Story of Babar. Anything Babar, really, I just don't like.

Some books that I've even recently considered reading: I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith and Coraline by Neil Gaiman (both started years back but remain unfinished).

Some books that I'd like to buy made the lists: The Worst Witch Collection, by Jill Murphy.

A longer version of the article in the Royal Society of Literature Review: http://www.rslit.org/

Here are the lists:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/01/19/bokidsbooks219.xml

Note to self: Er, stop avoiding the books that require intense, emotional engagement. This is a comfort-zone alert!

Settling in

I finally finished my second journalism course. It was fun and not too difficult. My next course starts on January 11. I'm aiming for one course per term.

Devyn's finally established in Junior Kindergarten. Despite her surprising lack of confidence, she is now printing and sounding out words. She has started to read.

I'm surprised by Molly's interest in stories being read. She is always present for Devyn's bedtime ritual and it's clear that she examines the pages and listens to the narrative. I've started to read to her. In the first week of December, my mother brought the girls some pop-up books and Molly threw a tantrum each time hers was removed from her hands. This is a side to her that I'd never seen before.

Tonight, for the first time -- it being Christmas, after all -- it suddenly occurred to me to collect all of the children's christmas books (never read) and place them in the living room where they're most likely to be read throughout the next couple of weeks.

In fact, Devyn and I read this evening: Santa Mouse, Christmas With the Santa Bears and The Berenstain Bears Meet Santa Bear.

And I have been recording all of the books that I read to the girls but haven't bothered to post about it since October, I think.

I could cite any number of reasons. We've had bout after bout of illness making the rounds. I'm still adjusting to having two children and not just one to look after. Actually, though, I'm tired. Sometimes, I fall asleep when putting Molly down at 6:00 or 7:00 pm.

Keith and Devyn are the ones in the family who actually have energy and they keep each other busy: Today, they sled down the hill in our backyard and made snow angels, too.

They also have a game that they play several times a day in the kitchen: Devyn asks Keith how to spell a word or asks for a word to spell and they use the foamy magnetic letters on the fridge. I can hear their voices raised in excitement.

At the moment, everyone is asleep. Well, except for me but I'm on my way to bed.

Strangers and . . . other animals?

My four-year-old has been told not to talk to strangers for a couple of years now. Lately, she has been asking just what a stranger is. Oftentimes, after speaking to an acquaintance of mine, I'll feel a tug on my shirt: "Is she a stranger?"

What a difficult question!

"Yes," I answer. "But, as long as you're with Mummy, you're safe." She cuddles closer to me.

When I received the Scholastic package that I'd ordered from her supplemental Junior Kindergarten programme last week, I looked for two titles: Never Talk To Strangers by Irma Joyce (illustrated S.D. Schindler) and Don't Talk To Strangers by Christine Mehlhaff (illustrated by Kathi Ember).

I read Never Talk To Strangers first (before the other book and before reading it to my daughter) and my first impression: lt would have been better marketed with a don't-approach-strange-animals message:

If you are hanging from a trapeze

And up sneaks a camel with bony knees,

Remember this rule, if you please --

Never talk to strangers.

I just wondered how a preschooler would abstract from the pictures of animals the idea that people are strangers and that they are dangerous (especially when some of the animals are rarely perceived as dangerous and because children of that age range have difficulty defining "stranger"). Granted, it was written in the 1960s and the author laboured under different social constraints.

Still, I had just started to read when my daughter quipped, "Hey, a giraffe isn't a stranger!"

And that's just about what I'd expected. So, the intended message is constant but lacks, well, meaningful content which makes it less of a message than a . . . slogan. I guess. (Oh, dear, that's probably another post: "Are slogans meaningful?")

Mehlhaff's Don't Talk To Strangers is much more direct and it hits all the right points about stranger safety: don't talk to strangers, don't help strangers, don't accept rides from strangers or acquaintances, etc. It even includes an Internet safety message.

Oh, yes, there are animals -- a family -- but, in this book, they're friendly and they're the main characters.

Understandably, neither book directly addresses possible consequences of disobeying the safety rules and I'm not the only mother trying to figure out how to answer the inevitable "But, why?" question. I suspect that answers are produced and nuanced by each particular parent-child relationship that engages in this dialogue. So far, for me and mine, the books' implied -- and my explicit -- answer suffices: Because it's dangerous and you could get hurt.

I do hereby swear to post interesting and meaningful links about these titles. At some point.

Books Read - September 2007

(Please note: Books read since September 11 only. LGB=Little Golden Book. Author/Illustrator in parenthesis. A few titles were read previously as well before 2007. Number of linked titles will increase.)

I'd Know You Anywhere (Hazel Hutchins/Ruth Ohi)
Wiggle (Doreen Cronin)
Little Brown Bear and the Bundle of Joy (Jane Dyer)
Hubert Horatio Bartle-Bottom Trent (Lauren Child)
I'm Gonna Like Me...(Jamie Lee Curtis/Laura Cornell)
Julius Baby of the World (Kevin Henkes)
Sheep In A Jeep (Kevin Henkes)
Circle Dogs (Kevin Henkes)
Ella Sarah Gets Dressed (Margaret Chodos-Irvine)
I Went Walking (Sue Williams/Julie Vivas)
Henny Penny (H. Werner Zimmermann)
Angela's Airplane (Robert N. Munsch)
Lily's Big Day (Kevin Henkes)
So Happy! (Kevin Henkes/Anita Lobel)
Froggy Goes to the Doctor (Jonathan London/Frankie Remkiewicz)
Togg and Leftover In Trouble (Mike Ratnett)
I Like Myself (Karen Beaumont)
Ben Overnight (Sarah Ellis)
Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild (Mem Fox/Marla Frazee)
Lemonade Parade (Ben Brooks/Bill Slavin)
Marianna May & Nursey (Tomie di Paola)
LGB: Scuffy the Tugboat (Gertrude Crampton/Tibor Gergely)
LGB: The Pokey Little Puppy (Janette Sebring Lowrey/Gustaf Tenggren)
I've Won No I've Won No I've Won (Lauren Child)
My Leafs Sweater (Mike Leonetti)
Bootsie Barker Bites (Barbara Bottner/Peggy Rathmann)
A House Is A House For Me (Mary Hoberman)
Muffin Mouse's New House (Laurence DiFiori)
LGB: A Hunny, Funny, Sunny Day (Ann Braybrooks)
Then the Troll Heard the Squeak (Kevin Hawkes)
All Together Now (Anita Jeram)
The Berenstain Bears and The Messy Room (Stan Berenstain)
Pet Show (Ezra Jack Keats)
Just Shopping With Mom {Little Critters}(Mercer Mayer)
Clorinda (Robert Kinerk)
One Hundred Hungry Ants (Elinor J. Pinczes/Bonnie MacKain)
I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go To Bed (Lauren Child)
Where's Jamela (Niki Daly)
Lottie's Princess Dress (Doris Dorrie)
The Growing-Up Feet (Beverly Cleary/DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan)
Chrysanthemum (Kevin Henkes)
Eeney, Meeney, Miney, Mo (B. Hennessey/Galli Letizia)
LGB: The Owl and The Pusseycat (Edward Lear)
LGB: Whose Mess Is This? (Carol Roth/Richard Walz)
The Little Engine That Could (Watty Piper)
Russell The Sheep (Rob Scotton)
Mary Wore Her Red Dress...(Merle Peek)
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (Bill Martin, Jr./John Archambault - Lois Ehlert)
Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown/Clement Hurd)
The Magic Hat (Mem Fox/Marla Frazee)
You Are My I Love You (Maryann Cusimano Love/Satomi Ichikawa)
Being Friends (Karen Beaumont/Joy Allen)
Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type (Doreen Cronin/Betty Lewin)
A Chair For My Mother (Vera B. Williams)
For You Are A Kenyan Child (Kelly Cunnane)
Come On, Rain (Karen Hesse/John J. Muth)
One Little Mouse (Dori Chaconas)
Just Go To Bed {Critters} - (Mercer Mayer)
Clifford: The Show-and-Tell Surprise (Ted Margules)
Amelia Bedelia (Peggy Parish/Fritz Siebel)
20 Hungry Piggies (Trudy Harris/Andrew N. Harris)
Yancy & Bear (Hazel Hutchins/Ruth Ohi)
Biscuit's Show-and-Share Day (Alyssa Satin Capucilli/Mary O'Keefe Young)
Caillou: Play With Me (Claude LaPierre/Christine L'Heureux)
Green Eggs and Ham (Dr. Seuss)
Amos's Sweater (Janet Lunn/Kim LaFave)
Boo! (Robert N. Munsch)
LGB: I Am A Bunny (Ole Risom/Richard Scarry)
Titch (Pat Hutchins)
Where The Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak)
LGB: The Sailor Dog (Margaret Wise Brown/Garth Williams)
LGB: The Little Red Caboose (Marian Potter/Tibor Gergely)
LGB: The Color Kittens (Margaret Wise Brown/Kathi Ember)
I Can Do It Myself (Emily Perl Kingsley/Richard Brown)
Caribbean Dream (Rachel Isadora)
Best Best Friend (Margaret Chodos-Irvine)
Alphabet Rescue (Audrey Wood/Bruce Wood)
Walk On (Marla Frazee)
Stella: Star of the Sea (Marie-Louise Gay)
Stella: Good Morning Sam (Marie-Louise Gay)
The Baby Beebee Bird (Diane Redfield Massie/Steven Kellog)
Holly: The True Story of a Cat (Ruth Brown)
Janet's Thingamajigs (Beverly Cleary/DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan)
Arthur's Birthday {Arthur's Adventure Series} (Marc Brown)
Bedtime for Frances (Russell Hoban/Garth Williams)
Goodnight, Gorilla (Peggy Rathmann)
Owen (Kevin Henkes)
Harry the Dirty Dog (Gene Zion/Margaret Bloy Graham)
First Tomato: A Voyage To the Bunny Planet (Rosemary Wells)
The Story of Ferdinand (Munro Leaf/Robert Lawson)
Whose Mouse Are You? (Robert Kraus/Jose Aruego)
LGB: The Saggy Baggy Elephant (Gustaf Tengren)
The Story of Little Babaji (Helen Bannermann/Fred Marcellino)
I Will Never Not Ever Eat A Tomato (Lauren Child)
LGB: Thumbelina (Hans Christian Andersen/Jan Palmer)
LGB: Jack and the Beanstalk (Rita Balducci/Richard Walz)
LGB: Baby Sister (Dorothea M. Sachs/Joy Friedman)
LGB: ABC Rhymes (Carl Memling/Roland Rodegast-Grace Clarke)
LGB: The Taxi That Hurried (Mitchell, Black, Stanton/Tibor Gergely)
LGB: Tootle (Gertrude Crampton/Tibor Gergely)
LGB: The Magic Next Door (Evelyn Swetnam/Judy Stang)
Mama Panya's Pancakes (Mary and Rich Chamberlin/Julia Cairns)
LGB: Walt Disney's Favorite Nursery Tales {Gingerbread Man/Golden Goose}
LGB: Let's Go Shopping (Steven Lindblom/Kathy Allert)
Petunia ( )

Asthma and Late Nights

Devyn is often awakened in the middle of the night due to coughing or discomfort. I usually give her Ventolin and read to her.

Just a half hour or so ago, I read Jack and the Beanstalk (Little Golden Book), Baby Sister (Little Golden Book) and ABC Rhymes (Little Golden Book).

I haven't added it up yet because it's not officially October yet, but I think we've managed more than one hundred books since September 11. Yay for us!

Reading To My Kids - Not Finished Yet

There's so much cleaning up to do here. In a few days, the links in the sidebar will be functional once again.

Last Night

Devyn was so ill-behaved that, by the time that she'd returned home from JK-Sup, she'd had time-outs and had lost some privileges, including bedtime stories.

Well, I'm not usually one to undermine K's parenting but, as she lay there awake last night speaking sweetly to me, I knew that she needed her books. I pulled out three Little Golden Books (LGBs -- of which we have many, vintage and new -- and began to read: The Sailor Dog (Margaret Wise Brown), The Color Kittens (Margaret Wise Brown)and The Little Red Caboose (Marian Potter).

She especially liked The Color Kittens.

How? Why?

I have tried so hard to keep it from happening but it doesn't matter; my efforts have been futile.

While I've spent the month carefully selecting and planning our daily reading times together, Devyn has been taking trips to the school library (per the class schedule). As it turns out, she consistently chooses the "Critters" books (Mercer Mayer) or Arthur.

Well, at least, she's getting a wide exposure to different narrative and illustrative styles during our time together.

I must admit that I'm fascinated or perplexed by Devyn's ostensibly visceral rejection of a book that she's (1) never read with me; (2) never read with anyone else and (3) never looked through on her own.

It's called Sophie by Mem Fox. I'd chosen it because her grandparents aren't well (she doesn't know this) and thought it might help us subtly work through some issues in that regard because the book's treatment of the subject is so gentle. She won't have anything to do with it and looks almost afraid when she rejects it. She's rejected it four times! I won't push the issue any further.

Visual Bookshelf I + II (notes on Facebook) - Updated

I think this (Visual Bookshop app) is a great idea, except for the fact that people get updated in the News Feed on Facebook to the degree that it could be annoying. Sorry folks!

I started adding books I've already read until I realized (1) I doubt I could remember every book I've ever read and (2) it would take a long time to do this. So, I've decided to list only the books I've read in past month or so.

I thought it would be a good idea to keep track of the books that I read to Devyn for a year: starting September 11.

Of course, now my bookspace reads more like a this-is-what-I-want-to-read-vs.-this-is-what-I-get-to-read.

But, I love children's books. Well, except for the Berenstain Bears, Dora, Thomas The Tank Engine and Blue's Clues. I'm sick of Madeline now because Devyn's jag is unrelenting. I also hate Clifford the Dog and anything to do with Caillou.

To keep her from requesting Madeline cartoons and movies repeatedly, I read to her. I just prop Molly up in her Bumbo seat and Devyn sits beside her in front of me and I read before snack time, lunch time, naptime, etc. Then, there's also practicing her tracing, letters, numbers and so forth. Mix in the changing/feeding/comforting baby and a host of other responsibilities and it's a busy day... But we must read.

Next week, Devyn will be in school five days a week (JK and the JK programme at daycare) and I'll miss reading to her.

I was about to give up on this blog...

First-trimester woes and a Journalism course kept me so busy. I found myself writing assignments and running to the washroom with Barney playing in the background.

I'm well into the second trimester, I finished my course (90%) and the discomforts --though still present -- I've managed to work around somehow.

I won't give up but there are some changes here in the offing...

The Cutting Room: Louise Welsh

In Louise Welsh’s debut novel, The Cutting Room, Rilke, an auctioneer, is an unlikely detective as he combs the streets of the underworld in which the dirty, the dark and the unseen are the norm.

While the narrator’s proclivities keep him hovering both above and below the lines of the law, his ethos is strong. We – both the audience and Rilke – discover his boundaries when he finds evidence of a gruesome crime that propels him through the underground in search of its origins.

We trudge along the streets of Glasgow, into alleys and through velvet curtains to backrooms filled with stacks of pornography. We find that the world of antiques and dealers offers a portal to another, hidden sphere in which objects of sexual fantasy throughout history have secretly collected.

Some backstories develop through Rilke’s conversations, and, for the most part, this is satisfying; however, the main character’s own history is missing. We have the impression – and, indeed, another character implies – that Rilke’s need to solve this mystery is personally motivated but the details are absent. The pace of the novel lags as these backstories develop but this seems insignificant in the overall impact of the work itself.

Secondary characters consistently reflect an awareness of the city’s dual nature and, unsurprisingly, each bears some connection to the world of crime. Imagery and actions of the underground come to the fore in vivid detail. We are chillingly reminded that crime in the world of the criminal often meets swift, brutal justice and that people are reduced to expendable resources.

Most prominently, the dialogue is comfortable: it is that of the redeemer, the gossip and the secular sinner; it illustrates the carnivalesque and the profound, the ugly and the beautiful, the criminal and the lawful, in equal measure. It lulls us into each conversation with an immediate sense of intimacy. To great effect, Welsh uses references to popular culture, poetry and stunning figurative language as she pulls us into the world of pubs, auction houses, hospitals and dimly-lit, side-street stores.

We stare unflinchingly at the unsavoury details conjured through language that is both clear and poetic, but it is a novel of immense compassion. In fact, its spiritual tone is captured in Rilke’s own words: “… there are some bad individuals, but most people do their best to be good and everybody slips up sometimes.”

In our narrator we find a credible male voice and his thoughts, appetites and character strike us with force and precision. Through him, we smell garbage and litter in alleyways and we see blood and corpses under dark, grey skies but we also hear fear in the voices of those compelled to dwell here and sense the tragedy of those who, now immobile, would rather be elsewhere.

In the end, The Cutting Room is not merely a work of crime fiction; it is also a poignant essay concerning decisions and events that push us beyond our own expectations and the power of self-acceptance.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
First Canadian Edition
Trade Paper, 294 pp

Published September 10, 2006
www.bookfetish.org

Recently

New

Christopher Moore's Lamb - Irreverence. Like a moth to a flame... (Trade paper)

Joy Fielding's The Deep End - Narrator seems as stressed out as I am (Paperback)

Nicholas Sparks's True Believer - Psychics, sceptics and leaps of faith (Trade paper)

Eva Ibbotson's The Beasts of Clawstone Castle - I'm tired of the boy-wizard, It-Girl subgenres and it reminds me very much of Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell Trilogy (Trade paper)

Martha O'Connor's The Bitch Posse - Gift from K on business trip (Trade paper)

Used/Vintage

Cinderella (Softcover, 1932) - I can't resist the colour palette of the 1930s and it's a great addition to my vintage collections

Nancy Drew #1: The Secret Of The Old Clock (Hardcover, 1959) - Need to complete my collection

Nancy Drew #42: The Phantom of Pine Hill (Hardcover, 1965) - Need to complete my collection

Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006: The Longlist

http://www.themanbookerprize.com/pressoffice/release.php?r=26

Carey, Peter - Theft: A Love Story (Faber & Faber)
Desai, Kiran - The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton)
Edric, Robert - Gathering the Water (Doubleday)
Gordimer, Nadine - Get a Life (Bloomsbury)
Grenville, Kate - The Secret River (Canongate)
Hyland, M.J. - Carry Me Down (Canongate)
Jacobson, Howard - Kalooki Nights (Jonathan Cape)
Lasdun, James - Seven Lies (Jonathan Cape)
Lawson, Mary - The Other Side of the Bridge (Chatto & Windus)
McGregor, Jon - So Many Ways to Begin (Bloomsbury)
Matar, Hisham - In the Country of Men (Viking)
Messud, Claire - The Emperor’s Children (Picador)
Mitchell, David - Black Swan Green (Sceptre)
Murr, Naeem - The Perfect Man (William Heinemann)
O’Hagan, Andrew - Be Near Me (Faber & Faber)
Robertson, James - The Testament of Gideon Mack (Hamish Hamilton)
St Aubyn, Edward - Mother’s Milk (Picador)
Unsworth, Barry - The Ruby in her Navel (Hamish Hamilton)
Waters, Sarah - The Night Watch (Virago)

Discomfort

As I sat in the doctor's office yesterday -- a very small space that seats about 7 people -- I seized the opportunity to read since my husband had taken our restless preschooler for a drive.

The older man beside me forgot the social rule about curiosity. As I swept my hair back in a bun, he turned his head and ended up being so close that I could actually feel him breathing on me.

Ignoring him, I opened The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh and found a section--whose contents were unknown to me--that I'd been waiting to read. I slowly read and I was aware that Mr. Breath was reading over my shoulder as imagery of sexual violence suddenly unfolded in sharp detail!

While I could have guessed that this imagery would crop up again in the book, I hadn't a clue about what I was about to read at that particular moment.

Um, that's a new one for me. How do you handle book-interlopers while you're reading material that would make you uncomfortable even if you were by yourself?

There's the toothless smile that you give just after turning your head in the direction of the interloper followed by an uncomfortable shift of shoulder position and clearing of the throat. That's the only remedy that comes to mind.

I didn't do anything. I just sat there, continuing to read.

If I Stop To Think About It...

K was on two business trips in as many weeks, I developed bronchitis/sinus infection and a sprained foot and I renovated the dining room, threw Devyn a birthday party and got my driver's license. This past week was all about playing through the pain.

***

I feel deprived of reading lately. I've been busy but I have managed to get halfway through Louise Welsh's The Cutting Room in the past week or so. War and Peace is still on my nightstand, in my thoughts and on my list of Books to Finish.

***

Yesterday, after getting my G1 license, I went into a big-chain bookstore and bought myself, Signs Taken For Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms by Franco Moretti.

***

I've just learnt that, this year, TD Canadian Book Week will be November 18 - 25.

Notes

The Cutting Room

It's dark and brooding and so is the unconventional narrator. Sometimes, again, I'm playing through the pain: it's not always believable but it's more interesting than the Ontario Driver's Handbook.

Olivia!

I've become disenchanted with Ian Falconer's titular character. For Devyn's birthday, I bought Olivia Forms A Band and there just isn't much to it. I know that what counts is that my three-year-old is still buoyed by the adventures of this pig.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: Jonathan Safran Foer

In Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, we find a very credible and intelligent narrator in nine-year-old Oskar Schell. We discover him—inquisitive and resourceful-- in his family’s home in New York City.

Though we are not privy to the details of the tragedy that he has suffered during September 11, 2001, we begin to see the immediate post-cataclysmic world from Oskar’s perspective. It’s a reality filled with dangerous gaping spaces left by generations, politics, histories and personal mysteries.

We learn of unspeakable realities and the need to talk about them, of trauma and coping mechanisms and the parodoxical. The author captures the discomfort felt by many who desperately needed to be around family and yet who unexpectedly embraced strangers instead. If tragedy visits questions upon us, then the answers force us to separate, at least temporarily, in order to discover how our common pain is accommodated by our individual plight.

In this light, then, we expect a novel of this emotional density to be sparse in levity but Foer manages quite a feat: he injects intense, laugh-out-loud humour right from the start and it seems to promise a smooth story.

Though its highs are high and its lows low, it isn’t, unfortunately, a rolling narrative terrain. The flow is interrupted unpredictably by other narrators who develop backstories. As impressively as the novel pivots on single events from perspective to perspective, it also jags because the narrative shifts are choppy. They hinder pace and render the unfolding of the main story altogether too sluggish.

The backstories illustrate another historical tragedy. By unflinching juxtaposition, the writer presents the horror of two particular events in vivid detail and we are spared no information that would make us uncomfortable. We are reminded that tragedy freezes us in time, creating tableaux that are released only when we have the information that we need to be able to move. Life becomes a matter of standing still, coping, and opportunities a matter of avoidance. The shadows cast by other lives dart around us, voices become invasive notes that threaten to remove hope and breathing is measured equally with tears and trepidation.

Nevertheless, reading fiction should not be labour-intensive. Questions about whether or not they belong in a novel targeted to a mature readership aside, the presence of photographs forces a continual disengagement of the reader from the text. When an author reminds us that we’re reading, he immediately places us at a distance from the imagined world, making the suspension of disbelief a matter of strife.

It is difficult to understand how a literary novel’s graphics could enhance an understanding of the work’s substance. If Mr. Foer’s illustration of the novel creates within us a sense of the alienation felt by someone who did not directly experience loss as a result of the attacks, then he succeeds. The chasm between those experiencing 9/11 and those watching the events unfold on television is unbridgeable. In the novel, we are still watching and painfully aware of this fact.

If the use of photographs, moreover, demonstrates the real-life understanding that even in our common experiences, we are separated by personal knowledge of individual circumstance, then the author, again, succeeds.

If, however, the decision represents Mr. Foer’s concern that we remember that the events of 9/11 were not imagined, it isn’t necessary and the illustrations render the flow choppy. Besides, through the use of traditional devices—the language of tragedy and a seemingly innate grasp of the machinations of a child’s mind—he keeps the horrors of that day to the fore.

In the end, it is a novel complicated by a sense that the ineffable needs to be recorded and this, too, is Jonathan Safran Foer’s success.

Trade Paper
356 pages
Mariner Books (2006)
ISBN: 0-618-71165-1

Published July 15, 2006
http://www.bookfetish.org/

My Self

Just bought: Junk Mail (2006) by Will Self (his literary journalism, bought last week) and Edmonds's translation of War and Peace. This afternoon I had occasion to read the first article of Junk Mail. Typical, hot Will Self. In this piece, he's hanging out with drug dealers and describing the subculture. Deceptively casual, reminds me of banter.

It's 1991 all over again for me when I connect with him. The Quantity Theory of Insanity Together With Five Supporting Propositions, see "The North London Book Of The Dead" and "The Quantity Theory of Insanity." Actually, read it. Doris Lessing did:

Very funny and very good, with that unmistakable sign of the genuine comic writer: absurdity unfurls logically from absurdity, but always as a mirror of what we are living in- and wish we didn't. (Back cover blurb.)

I love Dr. Jules Smith's description:

His narrative voice, whether in short stories or lengthy novels, is relentlessly surreal-comic, smart and vehement... (British Council Arts, Biography: Will Self)

Translation Difficulties

I'm frustrated. I've been to three online bookstores (including that of my alma mater university) and I can't shop for Tolstoy's War and Peace by translation. Worse still, I can't even find the translator's name in the listings. Why not? Why wouldn't stores include translation information?

Presently Reading:

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. It's the author's second novel, the first being Everything Is Illuminated.

I made it a point to not read the first. I don't want to compare the novels yet and, had I read the first, I would automatically compare them while reading. (Better explanation: I didn't want to read the second book in the shadow of the first. Chalk it up to sleep deprivation blunting the ability to articulate.)

I sat on the front step of my house last night, waiting for K to come home so that we could go pick up Devyn from school together. As I sat and read, I burst into laughter twice within the first four pages. Considering that the predominant tone of the novel is created by an awareness of 9/11 and a personal history, I thought that this was quite an accomplishment.

Before I knew it, one hundred pages had sped by and I stayed up later than usual to keep reading it. At 6:00 this morning, K brought me coffee while he got ready for work and I read until Devyn woke up. With a good book, my behaviour changes. With a not-so-great read, I make no changes in routine to experience it. The last time this happened was with Camilla Gibb's Sweetness In The Belly (last month).

On Umberto Eco (Updated)

On Literature. Today, in my mailbox, an opportunity to time-travel awaited me. Back in the day--the university days--my favourite courses were often in the area of Aesthetics, sitting in lectures that, ultimately, entailed an intersection of my philosophy and comp lit pursuits. I especially remember in fact--not in appreciable detail--reading Umberto Eco's opinions on interpretation:

Readings works of literature forces on us an exercise of fidelity and respect,
albeit within a certain freedom of interpretation. There is a dangerous critical
heresy, typical of our time, according to which we can do anything we like with
a work of literature, reading into it whatever our most uncontrolled impulses
dictate to us. This is not true. Literary works encourage freedom of
interpretation, because they offer us a discourse that has many layers of
reading and place before us the ambiguities of language and of real life. But in
order to play this game, which allows every generation to read literary works in
a different way, we must be moved by a profound respect for what I have called
elsewhere the intention of the text.

The relationships between the literary work and the author, between the literary work and the reader and the distance between the author and the reader: I realize that it doesn't bear saying that Eco's position is not universally held (these relationships are constant sources of dialogue) but, there, I said it anyway.

Umberto Eco: On Literature
(Translation of Sulla Litteratura by Martin McLaughlin)
Umberto Eco
Softcover, 334 pp
Harcourt, Inc. (2004)

For Richard Rorty's (!) opposing opinion, there's Interpretation and Overinterpretation (published in the early 90s, university-days time). Damn, now I have to buy this. I seem to recall having taken a course on a single paragraph written by Richard Rorty (OK, I'm exaggerating at little) and enjoyed his pragmatism. In Interpretation and Overinterpretation,

Three of the world’s leading figures in philosophy, literary theory and
criticism take up the challenge of entering into debate with Eco on the question
of interpretation. Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler and Christine Brooke-Rose each
offer a distinctive perspective on this contentious topic, contributing to a
unique exchange of ideas between some of the foremost and most exciting
theorists in the field.

I can see where this is leading me. I'm going to end up reading Richard Rorty again. I'm going to end up returning to Eco On Literature again and again.

An Embarrassment of Literary Riches

I don't usually have a plan when I get to a bookstore. I don't premeditate my browsing. Actually, when I walk through the doors, I feel a little of the anxiety I think I might feel if I'd just won a shopping spree and I had to decide now, now, now where I needed to be. I don't know why the urgency exists. It always has but it disappears, too.

Once I choose a direction, once I've established where I need to be, I browse in a standing-still-forget-where-you-are manner. I like the experience of having to wonder just how long I've been standing in this one spot. I might even have been muttering to myself, for all I know.

Anyway, last night, in a giant bookstore with my husband, I bought: Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus! (Paper) and J. Maarten Troost's Getting Stoned with Savages : A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu (Paper) and by Justine Larbalestier's Magic or Madness (Paper).

Last week, I bought a box of 10-cent books from an art college sale: beautiful antique and vintage bindings and some new-ish fiction. The number of titles, I'm sorry to say, I don't know yet.

On Sunday, K and I had the opportunity to browse used books and we did. And I bought some! I had the good fortune of finding some vintage Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys to augment my collections. I also found an edition of Louisa May Alcott's Jack and Jill. Each of these books cost 50 cents.

I'm reluctant to tally my findings.

Anyway, I'm reading Coupland's Hey Nostradamus!.

Camilla Gibb's Sweetness In the Belly

Camilla Gibb’s most recent novel, Sweetness In The Belly, tells the story of Lilly. We discover her in London, England, but we quickly learn that her sense of self develops in Africa.

It is on this continent that she absorbs the culture and the religion of those around her in earnest—at first because she must and then because it becomes her own—and the reader falls headlong into her powerful tale.

The story develops on two continents. As it gently rocks back and forth between Ethiopia and London, we revisit eras marked by the consequences of corruption and the different faces of human pain. In the midst of poverty and alienation in Ethiopia, Lilly discovers beauty. In the midst of political tumult and upheaval in general, she discovers personal passion. We eventually learn the circumstances and details of her relationships.

It is a moving tale of romance. It is also a probing and profound exploration of the concept of personal identity. Whether derived from religious instruction, the product of a formal education or a matter of cultural identity (trying to gain acceptance or trying to escape), there are any number of ways through which we may—actively or passively--define ourselves.

The story isn’t dry. In the tiniest details, we glimpse the sound and the animation and the decay of living and, in this way, the author’s prose captures life: the sounds of sewing machines in the market, the light of a new day in a Muezzin’s call to prayer and the isolation of a sleeping city in the sounds of prowling hyenas. She even manages to convincingly trace an instance of human frailty to its ultimate cause in a long deterministic chain of events.

The author does something difficult with seeming ease: from the political, she extracts the personal; from culture-specific events, she extracts the general in human experience and we are forced to accept this one thing: movement in the world of government and organizations is not isolated to some dry, political arena. Rather, it stirs the individual. The effectiveness with which she conveys this point renders her appropriation of Lilly’s voice—a character with which the author seems to share little in common—beyond question.

Finally, she accomplishes all of this with an enviable sense of pace, language and the breathtaking realization that life can change in a single instant.

Published June 1, 2006
www.bookfetish.org

Reading

My, my. It's been about three weeks since my last confession here.

Just finished: Camilla Gibb's Sweetness In The Belly. I scribbled and outlined as I went along but I won't be reviewing it here.

Just picked up: Ramabai Espinet's The Swinging Bridge. I grew up in the Trinidadian/Bajun cultures. I'm anxious to experience the geography, the language and the cultures of Trinidad through her novel. Ramabai Espinet was born in Trinidad and has lived in Canada for 25 years.

What Ails Us?

There are many issues that affect our children. I believe that how we handle each one is critical. I can't relax about my child's welfare but I also believe that I've learned enough about raising a child to decide when an authority is necessary and when one isn't.

I'm actually not a parent who eschews the advice of parenting books. I don't think that they, The Books, make us overly paranoid or strip us of self-confidence. I also don't rush to the doctor every time there's an illness or problem. I like to think that I take a balanced, judicious approach to raising my child. Of course, I have encountered some people who avoid The Books and some who rush to the doctor always (and those who do both). I wonder how much might this be a function of our blind respect for authority.

I've just read an article about bibliotherapy by Maeve Visser Knoth in The Horn Book that challenges authority in an interesting way. She outlines her own approach to bibliotherapy as distinct from that of parents and teachers: rather than use appropriate books to guide children through difficult experiences, use them in advance of such experiences. She explains:

Rather than address what is happening in the present, I am inclined to prepare children for emotional experiences before they occur. I would rather inoculate children than treat the symptoms of the emotional trauma. We give children vaccinations against measles. We can’t vaccinate against divorce, but we can give children some emotional knowledge to use when their families, or other families they know, do go through a divorce. I advocate that we read picture books about death and divorce and new babies when no one is dying, when a marriage is strong, before anyone is pregnant.

Simply put, in contrast, traditional bibliotherapy involves matching children with characters with which they will identify. This allows a child to move through the same/similar experience(s) as that of the character, releasing emotions and gaining insight into the present problems of both himself and the character.

The author isn’t a therapist but I think that she's on to something. For those of us to whom this sounds like common sense, we must bear in mind what the author points out: parents routinely ask librarians for books in order to help a child cope with, say, the death of a loved one and teachers often "search for books that will address the emotional lives of the children in their care" as difficulties occur.

I was glad to discover this article because I'd recently made a decision that her ideas supported. I didn't need the affirmation so much as I wanted to hear someone else say that this approach only made sense.

Recently, it occurred to me once again that I should be dealing with the issue of racism because my daughter, inevitably, would be confronted with it. I struggled daily with the issue of beginning a dialogue with her on the subject. I wanted her to be forewarned and forearmed but I didn't want to frighten her or cause her to see monsters at every turn.

Some people around me offered opinions and these were divided along the single line of exactly when to begin the dialogue. Nobody argued that such communication shouldn't occur. I could discuss it before she even realized that there was a superficial difference in complexion between herself and many around her or I could wait until some racially-motivated comment or slur occurred and then discuss it with her.

Frankly, neither option seemed palatable. In the first scenario, I would have to alert her to a difference and thereby possibly cause her to think along complexion lines. In the second scenario, I would risk her one day staring blankly, hurt and confused on the playground and hope that she might bring it up with me.

This wasn't actually a dichotomy, however, since there was a third option: I could begin a discussion about peoples and cultures of the world----alerting her to the concept of difference in this respect instead of addressing head-on racism--using visual aids. (I had decided long ago that I would instruct our children--even before one existed--in matters cultural and religio-spiritual.) I could begin now, at any time, in fact, and Devyn would naturally notice differences of complexion without the need to point it out.

Turning to books only made sense and answering when to do so was easy but I was reluctant to heed my intuition. On the one hand, doing what only made sense made me nervous: maybe there was a correct way to handle the situation and I just didn't know about it? On the other hand, I felt very strongly that books-as-dialogue wouldn't be of much use once my little girl had heard the ugly language of racism, that they might just deepen raw wounds, just as Ms. Visser Knoth notes about the reading-through-experience approach:

I worry that the child who hears the story while experiencing grief will find it simplistic. What if, after thirty-two pages, the reader does not feel better? What if he feels worse? Will he feel that he has failed because Everett Anderson’s grief is now all wrapped up and the book is closed? Similarly, does the child who is living through his mother’s breast cancer treatments want to revisit them in fiction? Would he not rather escape to Narnia? I am not a therapist and don’t pretend to know.

I noted my impulse to override intuition but, inwardly, my decision was already made. I would begin using books-as-dialogue in the category of world cultures and religions beforehand and, thereby, in a natural progression, discuss prejudices, biases and the language that develops in those belief systems.

Ms. Visser Knoth states that she doesn't have teams of research to back up her approach to reading. Would teams of research even be necessary? Can’t we simply say, "Hey, this makes sense. Let's give a child tools to deal with events he's likely to encounter." Can't we, as parents, make some decisions without the benefit of expert advice? Is our struggle with the question of what to do in the face of problems complicated by a deeply-rooted sense of obedience to authority? Does our intuition--and, in this case, an intuitive approach--have to be ignored simply because it doesn't have statistical or academic sanction?

The originating article: What Ails Bibliotherapy? by Maeve Visser Knoth.

A good article as explanation of bibliotherapy.

Notes On A Reading Experience


Last night, I introduced Charlie Parker Played Be Bop to both my child and my husband. It's one hip book. (I even provided a preamble on Thelonious Monk.)

The story was well received last night and there were requests for an encore or two.

From Horn Book:

"Raschka has created a memorable tribute to jazz great Charlie Parker in
this rhymic, syncopated, compelling, funny celebration of a man and a musical
form. The brief text sings and swings and skips along, practically of its own
volition, while the pictures add humor and just the right amount of jazziness to
the mix. One of the most innovative picture books of recent times."

It stood neglected on our shelves for a very long time. What a shame! Its time had come, I suppose.

My little girl imitated every sound that she heard and asked me to repeat some phrases.

To get a sense of the story, go here. But having the book in hand, turning pages, and returning to favourite sounds is an experience I wouldn't want to miss.

Madonna, My Confessions

I have to admit that I didn't think I'd ever get around to reading The English Roses by Madonna. Something about the idea repelled me: did I believe, perhaps, that this most recent self-invention of the popstar could not be much more impressive to me than her non-literary pursuits? I couldn't tell you.

I will say that I was nicely surprised. The narrative style is engrossing, the narrator engaging and the messages were, if not original, effective. (After all, how many original messages in children's literature are available to the writer?)

What impressed me was a motif about the tendency to form cliques. Madonna doesn't sugarcoat the fact that young girls can be mean; what she offers is the message that girls, if encouraged to empathize, are capable of stepping on firmer ground from which to form their beliefs. The clique doesn't disappear--because that would be an unrealistic expectation in the reader--it grows, it matures.

I love the illustrations by Jeffrey Fulvimari whose name, I note, tends to disappear in the Madonna glare. The colours are bright, feminine-looking in combination and characteristic of youthful tastes. There is also an elegance found not only in the textures (metallic adornment, striped and geometric furnishings) but also in both the figures and features of the characters: large eyes, larger-but-well-defined faces).

I will read this to my little girl when she's older (between 5 and 8 years of age). At that point, she may even read it herself.

My Week On The Sofa...

I've done a respectable amount of reading recently which I, of course, have failed to note here. To begin with, I've read the early Babar books by Jean de Brunhoff. I truly felt as if this needed to be done and, now, since reading them, I'm wondering what all the fuss has been about, historically and personally.

I didn't enjoy The Story of Babar The Little Elephant, Babar The King or Babar and His Children. Perhaps, if read in the original French... Anyway, I didn't find anything at all amazing about the text or in the illustrations. Why is Babar so popular? I know that this will be a question that motivates me to read more about the elephant king.

This past week also, having found a vintage, non-ex libris copy of Amelia Bedelia and a more recent edition of Come Back, Amelia Bedelia, both by Peggy Parish, both on the library sale shelf, both were read in a rare few moments of silence.

Surprisingly, these two books are quite philosophical: they articulate the quest to find ourselves in a unique way. Jump ahead one paragraph to avoid what might be a spoiler: Amelia Bedelia's glaring deficiencies in certain areas of her life actually illustrate this quest without the character's personal insight.

(I'd only vague memories of hearing about the titular character in my adulthood. Having been deprived of children's books in my childhood is actually giving me a great sense of discovery.)

Just when it seemed that The Cat in the Hat and Babar and The Ghost would be the extent of bedtime reading...My daughter now requests Olivia and Olivia and The Missing Toy by Ian Falconer (primarily, the latter). I can't recall just how I stumbled across this little gem of a character but I do remember that I'd hoped that my little girl would like it. Now that she's old enough to appreciate it--she's almost three--my wish has come true. Olivia, the pig with lots of personality, has become part of the family.

My husband, back from a short business trip later in the week, brought us books as presents: for the little one, it was When I Miss You: A Concept Book by Cornelia Maude Spelman, illustrated by Kathy Parkinson; for me, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

During baby nap-times and moments of relative peace (for I'm able to read with background noise), I've bored much of the way through Blowing My Cover: My Life As A CIA Spy And Other Misadventures by Lindsay Moran. Unfortunately, I did not read anything of Middlemarch this week.

When At A Libary Book Sale...

If you're not a collector and, therefore, don't mind a picture book ex libris, grab any title by Kevin Henkes. He is, by far, one of my favourite authors of children's books. Yesterday, I found a copy of Chrysanthemum in much-greater-than-readable condition.

I also found Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild! by Mem Fox. It's nice to have a copy of our own since, when we read it last year, we had borrowed from the library.

It was a nice surprise to find A Apple Pie by Kate Greenaway:

This classic ABC first appeared with Kate Greenaway's illustrations in 1886 and immediately met with considerable success in Britain, America and France.

The publisher's note describes the rhyme as very ancient and indicates an early reference to it in 1671 by John Eachard.

I also picked up quite a few works of nonfiction since I believe that my daughter's collection is lacking in this particular area: birds, electricity, house construction, etc.

For myself, I picked up some interesting titles but I'll have to list them later.

I Stole A Book

I honestly don't know how I became a reader. In Grade One, teachers told my mother that I read many grades above my expected reading level, that I should advance a grade, etc., but she wasn't interested. I didn't own a book until I was twelve years old!

After I'd outgrown Little Golden Books--which she occasionally could be convinced to buy me at the local grocery store--my mother seemed to have lost interest in supplying me with reading material (or toys, come to think of it). So, when I read, it was possible because of the school library.

At any rate, at the age of twelve, my family and I were living in a high-rise apartment building on the bad side of town. I didn't have much supervision when my mother was working and I often visited my maternal grandmother who lived many floors above us. Stepping into her home really seemed like stepping into another world. Sometimes, I simply escaped to her apartment without permission.

She was an academic: she had received a few undergraduate degrees and a Master's before marrying my grandfather. Considering my mother's lack of education and disinclination towards reading, it was hard to believe that these two women were even related much less mother and daughter.

She had books: mostly hardcover, mostly vintage or antique. Often, I would kneel on the floor while browsing her bookshelves. She was not a woman of excess by any means but she owned many works of nonfiction and poetry.

I'll probably never know why I did it. I can only guess that, when I held a small, leather-bound collection of Wordsworth poetry, I felt as if my world was smaller than it had to be. I think I felt cheated. I think that this little book, in my hands, reminded me that life with my mother wasn't going to last forever, that there was something to which I might look forward.

I still have the book. That day, as I, surreptitiously, closed my grandmother's door behind me, two aspects of my life changed: there would be distance now between my grandmother and myself because she would detect my thievery and because I would deny it; importantly, I now owned a book.

I read it often, allowing my mind to wander around odes and verse about nature and love:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze

Of all the books that I own, it is in the best condition. Now, I own thousands of books (acquired legitimately) and my child's personal library contains many hundreds. I collect and I read or I accumulate and I read; sometimes it's both. I still borrow from the library, too, on a regular basis.

So, I may not know exactly how it is that I became one but I think that I can pinpoint the very moment at which I knew that I was, in fact, a reader.

From The Journals of Andre Gide, Volume II: 1924 -1949

Are so many words necessary? and the concentration of the mind, the effort to construct a plot, in order to stretch before the reader that motley embroidery which, for a time, shimmers before him and veils reality....

(1928, Detached Pages)

The best thing Sisyphus can do is to leave his rock alone and to climb up on it in order to "dominate the situation". But, for this, it is still essential that the rock should be of good quality. How many of these young writers, who make so much of their writhings, are pushing only a cardboard rock, or have nothing to life but a bookcase. (October 20, 1927)

Scanning Books for Meaning

The process of entering book information into a database is almost hypnotic in the sense that memories surface and lead me down certain paths directly to activities that used to interest me or, at least, keep me sane.

One activity of which I speak would probably not be of interest to anyone.

While at university, I worked part-time at a large-ish, independent bookstore. I handled the processing of hundreds of books as they arrived (or returned to publishers). The store was unique in that it was the first that I knew of that actually used point-of-sale inventory. The ISBN of the book was used to store and retrieve information on a local area network. This sounds pretty commonplace but it wasn't in the very early nineties, at least not in my university city.

I constantly looked for patterns, meaning, in the ISBNs. I did this quietly while receiving books into the inventory and while scanning a purchase.

The memories of scanning, physically and mentally, for meaning/patterns in ISBNs are occurring to me this evening as I record book information.

I guess it was just a way to pass the time back then.

Irons In the Fire

Recent Projects Undertaken

Revisiting and Learning Irish
Reading Irish literature in Irish
Reading Middlemarch in group context

Projects Ongoing Since Last Year

Book collection to book database
Reading Children's literature (picture books/middle age/young adult)
Documenting reading herein

On Reading

OK, I'm never going to promise to update my reading lists again. I will do it, but I just won't promise.

Yesterday, I joined an online reading group: Reading Middlemarch and Middlemarch is what I'm reading in fiction at the moment.

Hyperspace and Hip Hop

My reading lately has been sporadic: a paragraph here from Michio Kaku's Hyperspace, a paragraph there from Forever Barbie. There have been several, nay countless, articles in various magazines on subjects ranging from Punjabi Hip Hop (Canadian Geographic) to history of the classical guitar.

I haven't recorded any of these in my blog and I figure I'll do it all in one block of time.

I have, happily, finally found a book database for my PDA with a desktop interface. So, I can save wear-and-tear on the handheld by entering crazy amounts of data into the database.

Is It Just Me?

This is going to sound like a small urban legend of sorts but I know both people involved. I'll change names for the sake of privacy.

Jane lent Sally a hardcover Diana Gabaldon book. Sally took a long time to read it (which doesn't surprise me and shouldn't have surprised Jane). When Jane received the book back, there was a tiny tear (apparently, less than one cm) at the top of the dustjacket. Sally hadn't even noticed it.

Jane, it transpired through her boyfriend, was very upset about the condition of her book and expected it to be replaced. Sally knew that, in order to preserve the friendship, she would have to buy another copy for Jane.

Wow. How many people are this, er, fussy about the condition of their books?

For one thing, I don't EVER lend books (shame on me) and I don't borrow anymore, either. My impatience would have to weigh more heavily than my cheapness in order for me to buy a hardcover. If I DO read a hardcover, I always remove the dustjacket until I'm finished.

If someone is THAT concerned about the condition of her books, I should think she wouldn't want to lend them to others.

I don't know if Sally actually did replace the book and I don't know the status of the friendship but this situation strikes me as, well, odd.

Do others consider Jane's reaction to be overly much?

A Good Find, A Provocative Title

One of my favourite sources of buyable books is the library. At the local branch today, I found a copy of The Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary for $1.00 (Cdn).

It's in excellent condition since it was read, obviously, by someone who is careful enough to avoid creasing the binding. That people can do this has always perplexed me. I mean, doesn't the process of losing yourself in a book mean that you must throw yourself into the relationship, come what may?

Author: Simon Winchester
Genre: History
Publisher: English Harper Collins Canada (2005)
Format: Softcover, 242 pp
ISBN: 0060839783

To Date

I haven't updated at all. I've been keeping track of my reading, on paper, and I want to record them here soon.

I've been ill with bacterial bronchitis and I've had to stay in bed. So, in between periods of sleep, I've been cataloguing my children's books in a palm database.

Indigestion

Fine. Sometimes, change is good.

Despite my earlier concerns, I find myself enjoying the new MacLean's. It truly isn't the same periodical and the maple leaf-instead-of-an-apostrophe on the front cover did signal more than a cosmetic change.

It's not stuffy and it's not tabloid. Politics and popular culture nest alongside each other if not in harmony then, at least, in a resigned state of mutual recognition.

Some might even say that the magazine has an earthy tone. In the most recent issue (Jan. 9-16), one article ("Murder by numbers") focuses on gun violence in Toronto and gun provenance in Canada, while another ("Jesus is our homey") addresses a "hip, bold take on Christianity" found in Geez magazine. In business? "Revenge of the geeks" discusses a comeback of the dot-com-ers in Ottawa. It's not news from concentrate. It's digging deeper and it's also opinion.

The new MacLean's makes me think of New York Magazine, or, at least, what I imagine New York Magazine might have been like in its earlier days of the late 1960s.

Is the new MacLean's hip? I don't know. I'm not hip.

On The Go

I've started to read Judy Blume's 'Fudge' books which begin with Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing. I can't believe that, since I primarily read children's books, I didn't manage to read any Judy Blume books in 2005.

My first Judy Blume book was Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret when I was about nine or ten years old. Not all of the content made sense to me but I read it many, many times. It contained strong themes concerning female rites of passage to which I simply was not yet privy.

I know that I read a Young Adult novel as well, at a later point, but the title eludes me.

I've also started to read Due Preparations For The Plague by Janette Turner Hospital. From Publishers Weekly (2003):

In intense, lyrical prose, Hospital introduces seemingly disparate characters and places and connects them through an elaborate and poignantly tragic plot, only disrupted by the distracting inclusion of overelaborate descriptions of terrorist tactics. In this age of global terrorism, Hospital's sophisticated psychological thriller offers a thought-provoking glimpse of the sociopolitical intricacies of the individuals and organizations that track terrorism, as well as of the enduring personal struggles of those left behind after an attack.

Where Is My Mind?

This area of my life has been disorganized. While I've got a handle on homemaking, childrearing and working, sort of, I haven't been able to settle into a good book.

I attempted to read Trace by Patricia Cornwell because I knew that a copy of Predator (her most recent) was on its way to me. Unfortunately, as with Blowfly, I was completely disinterested by the time the narration shifted, this time, to the perspective of the psychopathic criminal.

I've drifted among middle reader and young adult and picture books. (My library books are now overdue). I've neglected to record any that I have read.

There have been several articles (sources: New Yorker, New York, The Walrus) that I have not, despite my earlier vow, recorded herein.

Anyway, I think that once the Christmas holiday is over, once the New Year begins, I will be able to find my book. A book. Any book.

Ah, The Memories...

Pink Panther: The Ultimate Guide To The Coolest Cat In Town
Author: Jerry Beck
Publisher: Dorling Kindersley (2005)
Status: Not Yet Published
Format: Hardcover, 144 pp
Trim Size: 10.31 x 12.24 in
ISBN: 0756610338
Reading Level: Age 8+

Notes on Toad and Marsupial Sue

It wasn't a great day for reading yesterday. Besides having to read The Cat In The Hat* again, I also read Toad by Ruth Brown and Marsupial Sue by John Lithgow.

The illustrations of both books (the first is dark and earth-toned, the other vibrant and light with yellow-greens and aqua) are really effective in conveying mood.

To the toad. I broke one of my rules: don't read a book to her without reading it myself beforehand.

My immediate reaction to Toad was that it was grotesque (in both graphic and figurative detail). I was also confused. I couldn't understand the disparate presentations (during the story) of the toad or the reason for the disparity. Maybe I just need to read it again. I couldn't help the self-scolding for not having pre-read it before introducing it to my daughter.

I also found myself having to answer questions about Toad (the usual, preschooler queries) while trying to sort out my own reactions to the text: a monstrous toad is not in itself difficult to explain but the toad was in a natural setting without anything monster-like about it or its environment. I was contradicting the text. "Does he look like a monster? No? I don't think so either."

As for Marsupial Sue, I'm not sure how high my expectations were set when I started reading my first John Lithgow book. I suppose it intrigued me because the actor had struck me as intelligent and talented. The book even has a musical score that was co-written by Lithgow with Bill Elliott.

I note that the musical score made the book unique in my reading journey.

The rhyming verse seemed clumsy at points and my impression was that it made a better song. (I can sight-read music and I might sing it with my daughter before it's due back at the library.)

For the first time in a very long while, I have to say that I wouldn't recommend either of these books.

*I love The Cat In The Hat but I read it daily at least twice to my daughter.

NYT: Berenstain Bears Author Dies

Stan Berenstain, who with his wife, Jan, churned out more than 250 books showing how the warm and fuzzy Berenstain Bears - Mama, Papa, Brother and Sister - confronted and learned from life's little crises, died on Saturday in Doylestown, Pa. He was 82.

A Choppy Reflection

I used to read their books to those I babysat when I was a teenager: book after book after...

Now, I watch the cartoon adaptation with my preschooler. She enjoys the Bears but definitely not as much as the cartoons that promote problem-solving and skill acquisition.

I've avoided the books so far because of the intended age range of the material and I haven't yet decided if they will figure prominently in Devyn's reading or not.

Both the books and the cartoon strongly moralize. To this point, I've actually agreed with the instruction in morality but I wonder if there will come a time when I disagree and will have to explain my objections.

At any rate, his contribution to children's literature certainly was considerable.

Happy Birthday, Frances Hodgson Burnett

She was born on this day in 1849.

A magazine writer. A novelist. A children's book author.

Notable Children's Books:

Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886)
The Secret Garden (1888)
The Little Princess (Sara Crew - 1909)

She died October 29, 1924.

Notes On An Article

I have to admit that I'm addicted to magazines, especially to The Walrus and to The New Yorker. In fact, the purpose of this blog has always been to catalogue my reading for future reference, etc. but, if you'll look at my list, the nonfiction component got away from me because that is how much I read. At any rate, in an attempt to put greater effort into recording my nonfiction reading, I want to note my reaction to an article by John Lahr.

The November 14, 2005 issue of The New Yorker is worth buying just for one particular article: "The Thin Man: How Steve Buscemi Became An Indie Icon." It traces the artist from his humble beginnings to his cult-status acting. It also discusses his quiet directorial prowess.

John Lahr's gift seems to be that he can place you so intimately before his subject that, at the end, you feel as if you have been welcomed into a warm and comfortable friendship. Reaching the end of the article feels like saying goodbye to the friends with the knowledge that you probably won't see them again.

(to be continued...)

Goodnight Moon, Goodbye Cigarette

It seems that the cigarette has sparked controversy in matters of censorship. Goodnight Moon, the children's classic by Margaret Wise Brown, is undergoing a change.

According to the New York Times, HarperCollins Children's Books has reconsidered the use of a photograph bearing a cigarette-smoking illustrator, Clement Hurd. In fact, the cigarette was digitally removed from the photograph in a recent printing.

The publisher said it printed 20,000 hardcover and 50,000 paperback books with the altered photograph. No photo runs in the popular board-book format, for younger readers, which accounts for three-quarters of the 800,000 copies of "Goodnight Moon" HarperCollins said it sells annually.

The originating article by Edward Wyatt, is here.

Whitbread 2005

In The Guardian, John Ezard addresses the shortlist selections and, to some degree, the selection process of the Whitbread 2005 awards while noting the absences of Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Julian Barnes and John Banville.

Novel Award Shortlist

Nick Hornby Long Way Down (Viking)

"Four strangers at a low ebb meet in a tower block in Hornby's north London territory, nicknamed Toppers Towers for its suicides. One is a TV producer in disgrace for sleeping with a 15-year-old. Yet the book manages comic moments."

Salman Rushdie Shalimar the Clown (Jonathan Cape)

"The story of Max, the man who kills him, his daughter, and of a fourth character who links them. Has been called a magical-realist masterpiece."

Ali Smith The Accidental (Hamish Hamilton)

"A beguiling and seductive stranger called Amber has a car breakdown outside the Smart family's tatty Norfolk holiday home. The publishers say hopefully: 'This book will change you'. It certainly changes the Smart family."

Christopher Wilson The Ballad of Lee Cotton (Little, Brown)

"Lee, half Icelandic, is apart from other black kids in Mississippi. One review said it was 'destined for literary prizes'. The Guardian said: 'Lee Cotton is a literary Forrest Gump. The Everyman who wanders through decades of American identity politics. It is a sustained act of invention, but the novel runs against the limits of invention, too.'"

Here is the list of shortlists as published in Mr. Ezard's article:

First Novel Shortlist

Tash Aw The Harmony Silk Factory (Harper Perennial)

Diana Evans 26a (Chatto & Windus)

Peter Hobbs The Short Day Dying (Faber and Faber)

Rachel Zadok Gem Squash Tokoloshe (Pan Macmillan)


Biography Shortlist

Nigel Farndale Haw-Haw (Macmillan)

Richard Mabey Nature Cure (Chatto & Windus)

Alexander Masters Stuart: A Life Backwards (Fourth Estate)

Hilary Spurling Matisse the Master (Hamish Hamilton)


Poetry Shortlist

David Harsent Legion (Faber)

Christopher Logue Cold Calls (Faber)

Richard Price Lucky Day (Carcanet)

Jane Yeh Marabou (Carcanet)


Children's Book Shortlist

Frank Cottrell Boyce Framed (Macmillan)

Geraldine McCaughrean The White Darkness (Oxford University Press)

Hilary McKay Permanent Rose (Hodder Headline)

Kate Thompson The New Policeman (Bodley Head)

***

The Whitbread Book Awards. Launched in 1971 as the Whitbread Literary Awards, the total prize fund is £50,000 (103,498.00 CAD or (86,740.00 USD).

Shortlists archived to 1995.

Meet the judges of the 2005 awards in this Guardian article.

NYTBR: Ten Best Illustrated Children's Books Of 2005

From New York Times: Richard Beards

It seems that, before I subscribed to The New York Times Book Review, procuring it (taking a 30-minute bus into the city) actually led to reading it as soon as I possibly could. Unfortunately, every week for the past few months, it now sits waiting for me--sometimes until the next issue--while I take its existence for granted.

Had I hurried to read it, I would have discovered (and, hence, written timely about) this week's featured biannual section on children's books which, itself, contains a guide to the Review's 10 best illustrated children's books of 2005:

Every year since 1952, the Book Review has asked a panel of judges to make a selection from among the several thousand children's books published that year. The jusdges this year were Roger Sutton, the editor of The Horn Book magazine; Starr LaTronica, from the Four County Library System in Vestal, N.Y.; and Jules Feiffer, a writer and illustrator whose most recent book is "A Room With a Zoo." As a matter of note, Chris Raschka has been a winner three times before, and Alexis Deacon and Robert Sabuda once each.

This year's list:

Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs
written/illustrated by Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart (Ages 5+)

The Hello, Goodbye Window
Norton Juster, illustrated by Chris Raschka (Ages 2+)

Terrific
written/illustrated by Jon Agee (All ages)

Brave Charlotte
Anu Stohner, illustrated by Henrike Wilson (Ages 4 - 8)

Are You Going To Be Good?
Cari Best, illustrated by G. Brian Karas (Ages 3 - 6)

Chato Goes Cruisin'
Gary Soto, illustrated by Susan Geuvara (Ages 4+)

Traction Man Is Here!
written/illustrated by Mini Grey (Ages 4 - 8)

Carmine: A Little More Red
written/illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Ages 4+)

The Problem With Chickens
Bruce McMillan, illustrated by Gunnella (Ages 3 - 5)

Jitterbug Jam
Barbara Jean Hicks, illustrated by Alexis Deacon (Ages 4 - 8)

Digesting Grief

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol

According to the Globe and Mail today, Maclean's magazine is undergoing a transformation:

...as of Nov. 14, the magazine will no longer carry that descriptor which has been on its cover by the nameplate since September, 1978, when Maclean's broke with the bi-monthly publishing schedule it had adopted in 1975.

Instead, the "new" Maclean's -- the premiere issue will be dated Nov. 21 -- will be called simply Maclean's, albeit with a stylized, swooping red maple leaf taking the place of the comma. (A preview of the maple leaf was included on the cover of the magazine's Oct. 10, 2005 "Centennial" issue. It's a return of sorts for the emblem which was a cover staple through the 1970s into the early eighties.)

This cosmetic change heralds a deep commitment by Kenneth Whyte (former National Post editor-in-chief) to create a different periodical:

[It]...will have a much more current-affairs thrust, with a determination to break stories and, instead of duplicating what has been heard on radio and TV or published in newspapers, to advance such stories with its own reportage and spin. a much more current-affairs thrust, with a determination to break stories and, instead of duplicating what has been heard on radio and TV or published in newspapers, to advance such stories with its own reportage and spin.

Frankly, I will miss Maclean's. It enabled me to catch up with the news of the week and it was also good bus reading material.

Being Mad About...

Madeline

The morning before yesterday, my long-awaited book club order arrived: Mad About Madeline: The Complete Tales (Ludwig Bemelmans with an introduction by Anna Quindlen). This morning, I unwrapped it. I'm so pleased with it. Like all of the collections that I purchase, nothing is abridged or tampered with. It is Bemelmans straightforward. It also contains a selection of original sketches of Madeline from Bemelmans's sketchbook.

Click here for information.

Coraline



After three years of procrastination, I finally got around to reading Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I'm not finished but, to this point, I am thrilled by it. I love it. My husband finished reading it just after we purchased the hardcover in 2002 and then I just kept reshuffling it back into the shelves while searching for books to surf and then read.

The Spectre of Danger

Exposure. Transparency. I thought about these words while reading a book recently--a children's book--that I had considered to be wonderfully original. The main character--a superintendent's child--enters the apartment of a quirky, nay strange, tenant and finds herself looking through objects: everything but the ceiling in this apartment is made of glass including the floor. She can even see the tenants below.

The issue of transparency in this novel is not incidental or an accident of production. Olivia Kidney, the titular character created by Ellen Potter, finds a world turned inside out in which what isn't normally seen is exposed. The author uses various devices such as humour and psychic phenomena in order to achieve this and Olivia learns that things don't always appear as they seem: this is sometimes dangerous and sometimes not.

Reading this book brought back so many memories. Back in the mid-90s, I lived in a three-story walk-up in the middle of downtown. It wasn't in the least glamourous: dingy, yellow walls absorbed the smoke from unidentified burning substances while a feckless 'superintendent' sat on the front steps mentally recording everyone's activities. I didn't want to be there but I couldn't bring myself to leave: there was something familiar about the bizarre array of occupants, even about the strangeness of everyone and everything. It takes time to reach that level of familiarity.

Olivia Kidney knows this well. She has moved from building to building as her father is fired and hired as superintendent around the city. Settling and developing friendships are difficult--if not foreign--ideas for Olivia and her initial uneasiness isn't exactly quelled by the occupants of this latest building.

Again, more memories arise for me. An elderly woman befriended me. 'Ursula' called me--whether I liked it or not--daily and once cryptically warned me: "Nothing is as it seems in this building." When pressed for more information, she squirmed away from the conversation. I never did find out what she meant but Olivia is more fortunate in that she gains insight into the nature of both her surroundings and her relationships.

In this little girl, you'll find courage, strength and a fractured sense of well-being after traumatic experiences. You'll also find sorrow, anger and a determination to conquer her fears.

You'll also find her funny because Ellen Potter has a sense of humour and she's not afraid to show it. At the outset of the novel, Olivia carries around a book--about seances--that once belonged to her older brother. The following is the most original passage that I've ever read concerning the paranormal:

The first chapter of the book was full of warnings. It told of all the bad things that could happen if you didn't conduct your seance properly. It seemed that dead people could be quite ornery about being disturbed. If you didn't summon them in the right way, they might pinch your leg or tackle you to the floor. Then there were the boring dead people. If you had the misfortune to summon one of these, they could yabber on and on about bathroom towels and how the weather was so terribly changeable, and what sorts of plants were best for indoors. And they would not leave either, even after the seance was over. That was because none of the other dead people would talk to them. So they would float next to you, blathering and blathering without stopping, night and day. In some instances boring dead people literally drove living people insane. In fact, the book said, many psychiatric hospitals are 40 percent full of people who have accidentally summoned a boring ghost.

One problematic area of Olivia Kidney is the pace. Olivia leaves an elevator and enters the unknown; maybe she lingers in certain areas longer than necessary. It did seem to slow considerably in the middle but it regained its momentum near the end.

At one point, Potter introduces the possibility of insanity but it is fleeting. You are supposed to decide if Olivia is delusional or if she is experiencing the paranormal. I don't think that this device was necessary. First, Olivia Kidney is not a genre gothic novel and the question of sanity is not required. Secondly, the novel could stand its own ground in an argument about the paranormal. There are sufficient numbers of those who believe in the paranormal to ensure that this book will reach a wide audience.

There are so many features of this book that deserve discussion but the scope of this blog entry won't cover them. Besides, it's better to discover these for yourself. At any rate, this is the kind of book that you'll read in uncomfortable positions if necessary.

Book Information:



Author: Ellen Potter
Illustrated: Peter H. Reynolds
Publisher: Puffin Books (2004)
Format: Paperback, 160 pp
Trim Size: 12.9 cm x 19.7 cm
ISBN: 0-14-240234-6
Reading Level: Ages 8 - 12

(Posted simultaneously to I See Dead People.)

A Note On My Absence

I'm sick but still working on notes, etc. about my reading and I've promised myself that I will get back to blogging here more frequently as soon as I'm well again.

A Conversation Continues

A conversation about re-reading books in the Guardian and discussed at a friend's blog.

I don't re-read books anymore though I did as a teenager. In my teens, I loved A Streetcar Named Desire and read it repeatedly as well as Pygmalian. There were many more but those stand out. Dramatic works were a large portion of my reading diet until I reached adulthood.

I didn't read Middle Age (MA) and Young Adult (YA) books until my adulthood. In my twenties, I found YA novels to be quick, fun reads in between papers due, etc. They also helped through some not-so-great times.

Even children's books don't get re-read though I'm planning to go through the Hardy Boys series soon and I look forward to sharing others with Devyn as she ages.

I've had to re-read books because they appeared in university syllabi after having read for pleasure: Plato's Republic, Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, The Scarlet Letter, Waiting for Godot, Hamlet...

There were those that appeared in more than one syllabus at different times: The Aeneid, The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Republic, The Meditations and too many more to enumerate.

There were also the accidental re-reads: books about which I had some vague sense of familiarity but could never be quite sure; then, as soon as deja vu made sense, I would continue to the end.

Unfortunately, I cannot join the club: War and Peace was never able to sustain my interest though I did (once) thoroughly enjoy The Death of Ivan Ilych.

Not My Three Little Pigs

As I browsed the "For Sale" shelves at the local library on Thursday, I found Paul Galdone's The Three Little Pigs. My two-year-old played nearby, unfamiliar so far with the stories of her mother's childhood.

While growing up, I read the usual tales: Goldilocks And The Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs among many others. Each one affected me, provoked thought, stirred anxiety and/or simply entertained me in some way.

I was both intriqued and frightened by The Three Little Pigs. Bothered by the wolf's persistance, by the separation of the siblings from their parents and from each other as well as by the deaths of the first two pigs, I still returned again and again to this story.

The ingenuity of the third pig delighted me and understanding the necessity of outwitting those who would harm you empowered me.

Unfortunately, I don't recall the version and, of course, in picture books the illustrations are equally as important as the text.

The above interpretation was not satisfying: while the text was faithful to my memory, the spare illustrations did not contribute to the power of the story as tiny snapshots of individual events. Colour didn't move me or impress me (it was a bit bland, actually): perhaps stronger, deeper colours would have been more effective.

I couldn't feel the sadness as I watched the crying pigs separate. The depiction of the wolf wasn't as realistic as the frightening one from my childhood. In fact, the illustrations that I recall had managed to convey a quiet, modest intelligence in the brick-building pig of my memory that is absent in this book.

Perhaps it is because I recall detailed, water-colour renderings from my childhood--perhaps that is the standard by which I've judged this book--that I am left wanting a different interpretation.

Childhood experiences with fairy tales are powerful, and remain with us until we rediscover them. (A friend discusses her experiences here.) Seeing them in the light of adulthood is a fantastic experience even if it means embarking on a quest for the exact rendering.

I will continue to search for the The Three Little Pigs of my childhood because, though it is of the same vintage, this just isn't it; but, just in case it's your version, the following:

Book Information:

Title: Three Little Pigs
Author: Paul Galdone
Illustrated: Paul Galdone
Publisher: Clarion Books (1970)
Format: Paperback, 22 pp
ISBN: 0-89919-275-0

Eliot Letters Auctioned

In the New York Times today:

A collection of largely unpublished letters from T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) to the Faber publishing family, and inscribed first editions of Eliot's work were sold for �242,652 ($436,725) yesterday at an auction at Bonhams in London. One set of letters, some of them illustrated and including poems, from Eliot to Tom Faber, his godson, sold for about $82,000); and a second set, from Eliot to Enid Faber...

Read more here.

The Seattle Times: Authors accuse Google of "massive copyright infringement"

An organization of more than 8,000 authors accused Google today of "massive copyright infringement," saying the powerful Internet search engine cannot put its books in the public domain for commercial use without permission.

Read more about this here.

Neil Gaiman Interview

With Nail Gaiman's new book tour of the U.S. and Canada beginning today--in promotion of Anansi Boys--Mark Flanagan interviews the author.

Book Information:

Author: Neil Gaiman
Title: Anansi Boys
Format: Hardcover, 432 pp
Published: William Morrow (September 2005)
Trim Size: 6.31 x 9.28 in
ISBN: 006051518X

I Will Never NOT EVER Eat A Tomato

I love this book. The pace is rapid and the mixed-media, cut-and-paste appearance of the illustrations is imaginative and eye-catching.

Even the fonts are playful if just a little distracting to the reader.

From New York Times Book Review: "Very funny indeed."

From Publishers Weekly:

A delectable variation on the picky-eater-themed tale...Apt not to be satiated with one serving of the appetizing fare, youngsters will never--not ever--pass up a second helping.

Book Information:

Author: Lauren Child
Illustrated: Lauren Child
Publisher: Candlewick Press (2000)
Edition: First U.S.(2003)
Format: Softcover, 32 pp
Trim Size: 10.76 x 9.82 in
ISBN: 0-7636-2180-3
Reading Level: Ages 4 - 8

Illustrations: Mixed Media

Winner: Kate Greenaway Medal
Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Seal Award Winner 2001

Times Online - 2005 Man Booker Award Shortlist

John Banville, The Sea

Julian Barnes, Arthur & George

Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Ali Smith, The Accidental

Zadie Smith, On Beauty

For the longlist and information about the judges, etc. click here.

This year, according to the Times Online:

Julian Barnes was confirmed as the favourite to win the Man Booker literary prize today after his main heavyweight rivals were left off the shortlist.

In my early days at university back in the '90s, I enjoyed reading Julian Barnes. In fact, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters was my favourite retreat.

This Arrived Today

Of course, I have written, at some length, about Curious George recently and in the past but I have also read about other characters developed by the Reys. Most recently, in mid-August, I read Spotty. I look forward to reading more adventures of the other characters.

By the way, there is a movie about Curious George in production and I've only just found out! Read about it here and here. How did this escape my attention?

On another note, I have one book left to purchase from the Children's Book-of-the-Month Club.

Book information:

Curious George and Friends:
Favorite Stories by Margret & H.A. Rey
Houghton Mifflin Company (2003)
Hardcover, 272 pp
0-618-22610-9

Curious George

Title: The Complete Adventures of Curious George
Author/Illustrated: Margret & H.A. Rey
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company (2001)
(This seems to be a reprint of the 60th anniversay edition)
Format: Hardcover, 424 pp
Trim Size: 8.29 x 10.36 x 1.47 in
ISBN: 0-618-16441-3

As a very young child, I loved Curious George. In fact, my memories of reading about him are some of the most vivid that I can recall.

This edition includes a publisher's note by Anita Silvey, a retrospective essay by Dee Jones and a photograph album of the authors.

I waited anxiously for it to arrive and, now, I have to wait to read it due to personal responsibilities, etc.

Secrets

Author: Jacqueline Wilson
Illustrated: Nick Sharratt
Translator: Vanessa Rubio
Publisher: Doubleday/Transworld Publishers/Gallimard Jeunesse (2003)
Format: Paperback, 252 pp
Trim Size 178 x 124 mm
ISBN: 2070537560
Reading Level: Ages 10 - 13

Weeks ago, I ordered Jacqueline Wilson's Secrets online. Unfortunately, I must have misread a blurb because I ordered a French copy and it arrived yesterday.

Our daily outdoor adventure became a trip to the local bookstore at which I purchased The Ultimate French Review and Practice. Yes, I have decided to put my French comprehension to the test and to read the French version.



Author: David M. Stillman, Ronni L. Gordon
Published: McGraw-Hill (1999)
Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pp
Trim Size: 17.78 x 25.4 x 2.64
ISBN: 0658000748

My reading of the language is far better than my spoken or listening comprehension but it will be a struggle. In the past, I have read in German, a language in which I used to be fluent and can still negotiate rather well, but I have never had such facility in French in my adulthood. An adventure, to be sure!

Reading: Alexander McCall Smith

Title: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Anchor Books (2003)
Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pp
Trim Size: 5.22 x 7.99 x 0.62 IN
ISBN: 1400034779
Series Title: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Precious Ramotswe is an entrepreneur. She has created a detective agency in Gaberone, Botswana in order to "help people with the problems in their lives." As its proprietor, she avoids disappointing her clients. As a narrator, she paints a beautiful picture of an African country: the colours, the textures and the moments of personal history that fascinate as well as stir a sense of urgency in every question. We must solve her professional--and personal--puzzles.

My sister and I have decided to read this series together (and to share the books). I waited anxiously for her to finish this one and I even bought her the second title in the series as an incentive (Tears of the Giraffe).

It should take the whole of this week for me to finish since my opportunities to read are sporadic.

Notes

I've been spending most of my free time reading these days. It hasn't been easy: I've been sacrificing sleep to do so. Along the sidebar, I've been keeping track of my reading in order to prove to myself that I can find the time to read if I really want to do so. The only other thing that I have left to sacrifice is personal hygiene!

A friend asked me how I was managing on so little sleep and I explained that I have become less coherent and less articulate but I'm still somewhat affable.

I make notes as I'm reading--and afterwards--in order to use them in the future. So, I have books filled with scribbled notes sitting on the radiator beside my bed.

I regret that I haven't kept track of the reading that I do with my toddler and maybe I will begin to do this after all with another linked page.

Significant Dates

It appears that Fall will be busy: if you check the sidebar, there's a list of literary events that start in September!

Puss In Boots

Free Translation From the French of Charles Perrault

I was surprised to find so much information about Marcia Brown and her translation of Puss in Boots. In 1953, the book received a Caldecott Honor .

It's an ex-library copy. I have been meaning to read it this week and it has been sitting on the radiator beside my bed for ages.

If you're unfamiliar with the story, it is about a cat--bequeathed to a reluctant owner --who feels compelled to prove his worth in order to save his own skin. He, consequently, undertakes a number of tasks to this end.

The moral(s) of the story:

There is great advantage in receiving a large inheritance, but diligence and ingenuity are worth more than wealth acquired from others.

If a miller's son can win the heart of a princess in so short a time, causing her to gaze at him with lovelorn eyes, it must be due to his clothes, his appearance, and his youth. These things do play a role in matters of the heart.
(University of Pitts.)

Frankly, I have always found one of the messages disturbing: in the pursuit of one's own interests, the ends will justify the means.

The cat schemes, deceives, manipulates, intimidates--and worse--in order to render himself invaluable. He increases the worth of his owner and thereby ensures his own security.

Just one day after losing my beloved Avery, I might have waited to read it: this morning found me lying in bed, sobbing over the owner's cruel indifference and the cat's desperation.




19th-cent. chapbook (University of Pittsburgh)

It is one of the stories collected by M. Perrault in Contes de ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose Tales), c.1697*. There is an even earlier version (1630s) by Giambattista Basile in Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille ("The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones").

In her interpretation, Marcia Brown's style permits the reader's imagination to soar as she provides enough detail to guide without being overbearing in her construction of the cat's world. We see glimpses of landscape and blushes of expression. It is not surprising, then, that she is "noted for her spare texts, strong images and the vitality of her experimentation with a variety of media ranging from her trademark woodcuts to pen and ink and gouache." (The Horn Book).

Author: Charles Perrault

Illustrated: Marcia Brown

Format: Library Binding

Published: Charles Scribner's Sons, N.Y. (1952)

Trim Size: 27 cm x 22 cm

*The origin of the name, Mother Goose, has been a matter of dispute.

Coping

What do you do when grieving starts? Well, in our family, we head to a large bookstore and browse with the purpose of finding solace.

I developed this habit, this coping mechanism, as a girl of sixteen. When I married, my husband was quick to adopt the same.

Unfortunately, our beloved cat of 10 years passed away yesterday morning and we were laden with grief all day. We planned an evening trip to the bookstore (followed by swinging in the park.)

What soothes, obviously, has to be subjective. In general, I think it is finding a book that I have always wanted to read or finding one that wakens curiosity in an exciting way.

These were our finds:

Author: Gregory Maguire
Format: Trade Paperback, 466 pp
Published: Harper Collins Canada (October 1996)
Trim Size: 6.12 x 9.21 x 1.13 IN
ISBN: 0060987103



Author: Jacqueline Wilson
Format: Trade Paperback
Published: CORGI (October 2004)
Trim Size: 5 x 7.55 in
ISBN: 0440863686

My husband found:



Author: Douglas Hofstadter
Format: Trade Paperback, 800 pp
Published: Basic Books (January 1999)
Trim Size: 6.43 x 9.25 x 1.42 in
ISBN: 0465026567

Nothing replaces grief but a good book can help to distract during the process.

A Unique Mother

Katy No-Pocket
Author: Emmy Payne
Illustrated: H.A. Rey
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
ISBN: 0395137179
Hardcover, 32 pages
Publication Date: 12/01/1973
Age Range: 5-8 years
Grade Range: Grades K-3

I love this book. Katy No-Pocket is not your typical kangaroo mother and this doesn't sit well with her. Through conversations with animal mothers of all types, she comes to learn the impossibility of being exactly like others in style or method. She begins to appreciate that her parenting can be just as effective as that of kangaroos with pouches.

There is so much to learn from this book: general knowledge about animals, the diversity of life and lifestyles, the importance of seeking help in times of trouble and the value of self-esteem.

For my own part, not being a biological mother, I can relate to Katy No-Pocket: there may come a time when an adoptive mother feels inadequate or harbours doubts about her abilities versus those of biological mothers; this amazing picture book illustrates that biology isn't necessary in tending to the needs of one's children or in loving them.

If the illustrations seem somewhat familiar, they are the creations of none other than one half of the team responsible for Curious George. The pictures possess the same colour range and style in the detail.

My own little one is too young to appreciate it fully but I intend to introduce it to her as soon as possible.

Spiritualism

Lily Dale
Christine Wicker
Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Harper Collins (2004)
ISBN: 006008667X

More findings at the local library 'discard' shelf. For $1.00, I purchased this book about a community of spiritualists, mediums, healers, etc. in New York.

There's a review here. After I get a chance to read it, I'll probably scribble some notes about it.

Book Ends

I'm almost finished transferring all of my children's books to Devyn's new playroom (a change necessitated by a lack of space in the basement). There are two boxes left.

I almost bought a collection of Biscuit stories today but I reminded myself that such books are readily available at the library. They're cute, light, early-reading books that my toddler enjoys for the noises: Thump! Bang! Woof! Do I need them to be part of a permanent collection? I don't think so.

Lately, I have found a surprising number of Caillou books at the local dollar store and one even included a height chart.

A jaunt into a thrift store at the end of the day today yielded a box of hand-picked children's books that helped me to complete some series.

Finally, I picked up the July/August issue of The Walrus. I'm still attempting to read an article from the April 2005 issue: "Danger Signs" by Larry Frolick. Just ten more minutes would do it.

Books: Enduring Relationships

I have spent most of my spare time lately transferring my 1000+ children's books to my little one's room. She has so many bookshelves that it only seems right; besides, she can't actually reach them.

These books sat in boxes in the basement, untouched, for the past year. There was always something so wrong about this, about the fact that they could not be enjoyed.

For years, all of my books were transported from one temporary home to another and I don't know why I insisted on this being so. They could easily have stayed at my parents' home until I finished university; however, I didn't feel secure without them.

Now, as I pack up other titles to make room for the children's books, I feel as if these treasures have finally found a home. All of them, from my collection of Little Golden Books and the hardcover, vintage Hardy Boys to picture books, collections of nursery rhymes and the rare, aged UK Puffin titles, are settling in.

There are also the antique children's books (on the same shelves that will also house a 19th century porcelain children's tea service) and these, too, will be out of reach of little hands for quite some time.

In time, those being packed away (until renovations are completed) will find their way to a permanent home. In time, my husband's office will have that wonderful, old-book smell when he first walks in. In time, this family will have private spaces and places defined in part by individual relationships to books and it will feel good.

The vastness of our collections and the diversity of genres, topics and interests startles people who visit.

I'm not very discriminating. I collect books that interest me and care little--if anything at all--for the monetary value or collectibility status: I own rare first editions, but I'm not averse to buying ex-library or book club findings.

How much a book could fetch at auction does not impress me.

The value of a book has to be subjective: what it contains, what it could contain and what an owner/prospective owner thinks it contains as well as associations ephemeral or archetypal and just so much more...

This lazy Sunday, again spent filling a little girl's many shelves, reminds me of the value of this relationship in my life.

Not Afraid of the Unknown Masterpieces

I often wake thinking about books. When I woke today, I was thinking about anthologies. Frankly, I've paid them little attention. My aversion, at times, seems irrational but I think it stems from my university days: some professors assigned anthologies with excerpts--instead of the full body--of the target literature. Mind you, I've always known that they don't only contain mere excerpts of the classics. (Hence, the irrationality of it all.) They often present works of creative nonfiction, too.

Unknown Masterpieces: Writers Rediscover Literature's Hidden Classics
Ed. Edwin Frank
NYRB Classics, 2003
ISBN: 1590170776



At any rate, I wasn't thinking of any one volume in particular this morning; I was thinking of the anthology as a category or subcategory of literature. Much to my surprise, dear reader, I found one today while surfing that I would very much like to pick up:

Here Toni Morrison celebrates a great Guinean storyteller whose novel of mystical adventure and surprising revelation transforms our image of Africa, while Susan Sontag raises the curtain on a distant summer when three of the greatest poets of the twentieth century exchanged love letters like no others. Here too John Updike analyzes the rare art of an English comic genius, Jonathan Lethem considers a hard-boiled and heartbreaking story of prison life, and Michael Cunningham uncovers the secrets of what may well be the finest short novel in modern American literature. Other contributors include such noted authors as Arthur C. Danto, Lydia Davis, Elizabeth Hardwick, Francine Prose, Luc Sante, Colm Tóibín, Eliot Weinberger, and James Wood.

It's not a new title--2003--but it's new to me.

Gorey Details

The New York Review of Books (NYRB) offers a special, hardcover edition of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds:

This special hardcover edition from NYRB Classics brings back for today's readers a richly rewarding collaboration between two modern masters of all that's wonderful and strange.

The illustrations by Edward Gorey (1925-2000)--one of my favourite illustrators--have been unavailable for nearly fifty years.

The Antiquarian

My book collection is divided into, well, collections. One of my favourite collections is that of my books on antiques (antique, vintage, used and new). Books for the collector or dealer, by the collector or the expert, can date--in my collection--to the early 1800s. (I highly recommend the experience of reading about antique-collecting mores at the turn of the 19th century.)

Admittedly, I buy so many books that I sometimes forget about the purchase. I recently wrote about my findings at a local thrift shop that was closing and selling its children's books at 50% off the ticketed price. There were other genres, too, for sale.

One such forgotten--but not forgettable--relic is, The Collector's Progress (Revised Edition, 1971).

It was written by Stanley W. Fisher, an antique dealer, who was a member of the British Antique Dealers Association. The cover boasts the distinction of an authoritative look at the subject from the "dual viewpoint of collector and dealer." (It should be noted that there are, nowadays, several publications authored by the collector/dealer.)

As you would expect, the revised edition of this title is less collectible than the first edition (1957); at the time of publication, some thirty years ago, the original edition was considered a rare collector's item.

What Was I Thinking?

Today, on a rare outing without the little one, I picked up a copy of, And God Created the Au Pair by Benedicte Newland and Pascale Smets.

This represents my first foray into Mommy Lit. Frankly, I have been avoiding this subgenre--as vigilantly as I would a migraine--until now.

Why now?

Maybe it's because I've been reading about Isabel Kallman, the "Martha Stewart of Parenting", in New York Magazine. Maybe it's because, after five months since the ball of energy came to live with us, it has finally sunk in: I am a mother. Maybe, just maybe, it's because the novel highlights the relationship between two sisters who share a bond of motherhood (both authors and characters).

At any rate, it caught my eye and I hope that it holds my interest.

Mark Your Calendar

Considering that my previous post concerned book acquisitions, it is, perhaps, fitting somehow that this post should be about book giveaways.

Each year, TD Bank Financial Group and The Canadian Children's Book Centre offer TD Children's Book Week in November. The event is self-described as, the "single most important bilingual, national event celebrating Canadian children's books and the importance of reading."

To celebrate the book week, a far-reaching and successful program exists: the TD Grade One Book Giveaway. By way of introduction, the website declares:

Since 2000, in cooperation with ministries of education and school boards across the country, the Canadian Children's Book Centre has given a free Canadian children’s book to every Grade One child in Canada.

It amounts to over 420,000 books distributed throughout Canada during the TD Children's Book Week.

This year's selection for the 2005 Grade One Book Giveaway book is Alligator Stew: Favourite Poems by Dennis Lee.



"Key Porter Books and the CCBC have worked with well-known author and poet Dennis Lee to produce an anthology of some of his best-loved poems from his collections such as Alligator Pie, Garbage Delight and Jelly Belly... This book is to be taken home by each Grade One student and read with their parents."

In 2003, The selection was The Girl Who Hated Books by Manjusha Pawagi (illustration: Leanne Franson).



RL: Under 9
Paper, 24 pages
Illustrated: Leanne Franson
Second Story Press (1998)
ISBN: 1-896764-09-6

I loved this philosophical tale: what really is a book? What does it mean to read? What is the relationship between book and reader? All of these questions are answered in an intelligent, quirky manner.

The illustrations caught my eye: they are fanciful, larger-than-life depictions of a topsy-turvy situation in a child's life.

Recent Acquisitions

My book-buying capacity is probably limited only by time. Over the past 9 days or so, I found these titles in different places and they all ended up beside me tonight.

The Breadwinner Trilogy - Deborah Ellis

The author is of local origin: Toronto.

From Publishers Weekly:

When the war in Afghanistan captured international headlines in October 2001, adults had trouble making sense of the reported images, the refugee situation and the plight of Afghan women under Taliban rule.

The Breadwinner Trilogy, bought in whole by myself on a trip last week, consists of these titles:

The Breadwinner

RL: 10-14
Paper, 170 pages
Groundwood Books, 2000
ISBN: 0-88899-416-8

Parvana's Journey
RL: 10-14
Paper, 199 pages
Groundwood Books, 2002
ISBN: 0-88899-519-9
Winner: Governor General's Literary Awards
Winner: Jane Addams Children's Book Award

All royalties from the sale of this book go to Women for Women (an international aid organization to benefit, in this case, the women of Afghanistan).

Mud City
RL: 10-14
Paper, 164 pages
Groundwood Books, 2003
ISBN: 0-8899-542-3


Hippos Go Berserk - Sandra Boynton

RL: 0-2
Board Book, 29 pages
Illustrated: Sandra Boynton
Simon & Schuster, N.Y., (1977,1996)
ISBN: 0-689-83434-9

"One hippo all alone calls two hippos on the phone."

This is the first of Sandra Boynton's books. I know that it's actually available in hardcover and paperback as well. (By the way, the author's site is attractive, playful and easily navigable.)

I actively sought, first the title, then the book itself. After watching an episode of E.R., many weeks ago, in which a character recites the verse over the telephone to her child, I assumed that I would find a book to which it belonged.

I read it almost nightly to my little one (who flashes an ear-to-ear grin as soon as she sees it). In her first year, I bought a Boynton board book, Moo, Baa La La La!(.) It turned out to be such a big hit that she still loves it at the end of her second year.


A Family Treasury of Little Golden Books: 46 Best-Loved Stories

RL: Ages 4-8
Hardcover, 174 pages
Edited: Ellen Louis Buell
Golden Books (1998)
ISBN: 0307168506

The cute, square-shaped Little Golden Book series. I own most of the originals but I would rather read this collection in order to avoid sullying them. This collection presents merely a fraction of the stories published in the 60 or so years of the series.


Oh, the Places You'll Go! - Dr. Seuss

RL: All Ages
Hardcover, 46 pages
Illustrated: Dr. Seuss
Random House, N.Y. (1990)
ISBN: 0-679-80527-3

"Congratulations! Today is your day. You're off to Great Places! You're off and away!"

I ordered this from the Children's Book-of-the-Month Club and it came with a cute tote bag. Apparently, I acted quickly enough because there were limited quantities. I have most of the original, vintage series and I wanted to fill in the blanks.

The Library of Congress Publication Data includes this fascinating blurb: "Advice in rhyme for proceeding in life; weathering fear, loneliness, and confusion; and being in charge of your actions."

Seussville is a nice place to visit but pack a lunch.


Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren

RL: Ages 8 - 11
Paper, 160 pages
Translated: Florence Lamborn
Illustrated: Louis S. Glanzman
Puffin Books (1950,1978)
ISBN: 0-14-240249-4

One of the reasons that I'm trying to catalogue my children's books is that I lose track sometimes of what books I own. I think I have the original (one of my childhood favourites) but I absolutely loved this new edition. The only complaint is that Pippi's crooked braids aren't shown on the cover. I have such vivid recollection of enjoying this story over and over again.

I did try to read it to my toddler last night but she was primarily interested in cuddling. It was one of my favourites while growing up. My experience in reading it this time was, naturally, radically different from when I was 6 or 7 years old: I discovered heart-tugging details about Pippi that, as a child, I had simply accepted as quirky characteristics.

This was found at the local shop.

Uwem Akpan

"Research is important. But normally I start writing the story first. Imagination first."

That answers my question. When I picked up the June 13 & 20 issue of The New Yorker, it was precisely because Uwem Akpan's debut fiction, "An Ex-Mas Feast", had caught my eye.

While reading about the street-gang subculture of Nairobi, I truly believed that it had to be autobiographical. Uwem Akpan had to have been there and, in a sense different than I had imagined, he had been:

I used to visit the City Centre to watch them some Saturdays, following them from a distance, afraid because they can be wild. I did not know Kiswahili, so that was a barrier, too. I wasn’t thinking of writing then. I was just fascinated and amazed at the endurance I saw in them—how they moved as a group, how they sniffed glue, how they robbed people, how the rest of society regarded them.

It was his imagination combined with his keen sense of the craft that created the story, that placed me within such immediate reach of his characters and their physical surroundings. He writes as if he, himself, had been a child of the streets like the narrator, Jigana. The emotional attachments, the moral roundabout of an impoverished family doing what it needs to do and the future of its narrator: in great detail, exposed; between breaths, absorbed.

I will keep my eyes open for more of Uwem Akpan's writing.


*quotations from The New Yorker Online Only interview with deputy fiction editor, Cressida Leyshon, posted June 6, 2005, in which we also learn that the author is a Jesuit priest from Nigeria

Book Meme

Total number of books I've owned

This is impossible to answer accurately: maybe about 10,000. Our in-house collection is at least 5000 thousand strong (there are more than 1000 children's books alone.) I've sold hundreds over the years and our basement, presently, is filled with Grand & Toy boxes stacked many high and spanning the width of the space (awaiting completion of the renovations.)

My husband and I disagree on the possible numbers but, years ago, I began a database and reached 600 books in one small area of our old dining room alone. Our former home was filled, top to bottom, wall to wall, with bookshelves and books. In short, I think that I have a clearer understanding.

The last book I bought

Dan Brown's Angels & Demons. I love this book. Each day, I grow increasingly caught up in the intrigue and increasingly attached to the protagonist. The dialogue is wonderful and the premise is irresistible.


The last book I read



Olivia and The Missing Toy by Ian Falconer (in the same sitting as Olivia by Mr. Falconer.)

The author based the title character and others on his niece and her own family.



Read about him here and here.


Five books that mean a lot to me

I think this would change from year to year for me; at least, it has changed from last year.

Aeschylus: The Oresteia - because it opened my eyes to ancient literature; because it read like a modern-day soap opera; because the characters have stayed with me through every book I've read since and because the characters are constantly reincarnated today in popular culture.

Petronius: The Satyricon - because it was a voyeuristic voyage to the past to witness a gritty, Roman culture (the Age of Nero) and it was so much fun that I'll definitely read it again. (I've linked to a public-domain translation from 1930. I don't think that I've read this translation (Alfred R. Allinson): the link is more like a bookmark for me.)

Will Self: The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1991) - because he broke boundaries with these stories that other authors, it seemed, didn't even discuss at the time; because his ideas were painfully original (as original as can be); because it marks a period of reading in my life (early 1990s) that included many new, young British authors.

Helen Forrester - Series beginning with Twopence to Cross The Mercy because it was what kept me moving during the worst period in my life, because I was too poor to pay my $10.00 library fine and I trekked to the library everyday to sit and read it. I did that through the whole series and found that it killed many hours of wretched loneliness. (Just writing about it, I experience the same swelling anxiety in my chest as I did while walking to the library: what if the book was borrowed? I also hate thinking back to that time.)

Unknown Author, Unknown Title. During high school, I was often permitted by teachers to leave classes to "do my own thing". During one such absence with leave in Grade 9, I read a book that moved me beyond the words to express my appreciation. In it, such phenomena as reincarnation, astral projection and ghostly encounters were discussed. It fascinated me and empowered me through a vocabulary to describe some personal experiences. (See my other blog for reasons why this is so.)

Hence, my nigh-lifelong habit of thumbing through pages of books that might resemble that of which I speak. It doesn't explain or justify the ridiculous number of books on the paranormal that I amassed from that age onward. At any rate, for more than twenty years, it has eluded me. (I hope that I won't be found someday pacing the floors of an asylum while muttering and laughing to myself because of this).

Tag 5 people

I don't really know five people. So, I guess it ends here for me. Many people who read my blog remain silent and quite a few don't blog to my knowledge.

Added

The other day, I tagged atomicvelvetsigh in my comments.

Today, I have another person: I tag A Tundra with this meme.

The Bookstore Cure

Devyn and I were in a bookstore yesterday (as usual) and it occurred to me that I didn't even WANT to buy a book. I was there because it makes me feel better. I was there because my house--with its renovation, ever-present inlaws doing renovations, a dozen gardens that need weeding, six baskets full of laundry to be put away and an ever-shrinking kitchen--is insane.

Bookstores make me feel better in much the same way that libraries do. Maybe I'm teaching Devyn a useful coping mechanism for stress.

My relationship with Dan Brown and Angels & Demons is still flirtatious at best. Though significantly deeper into the story now, I have yet to have an hour devoted to reading.

My first job--a comic-book store clerk--lasted for three years: I learnt much of Science Fiction because of one large wall that held used SF books.

An independent bookstore offered me a job that helped me get through university and beyond. It sold both new and used books and it boasted the largest number of mags (including imported porn) in the city. Its senior-citizen owner wore slips that dragged down to her ankles and she barked out commands with a cigarette--whose arc of ashes always defied gravity--stuck in the side of her mouth.

The job was stressful but coveted among university students (though I still don't know why). I learnt much of various publishers and their relationships to bookstores. Near the end of my Tour of Duty, I was exclusively ordering, etc. instead of clerking.

I sought solace from the stresses of school deadlines in this bookstore.

I hope that Devyn eventually learns the same.

Now I Lay Me Down To Read

I lay down to read last night, surrounded by two The Walrus
magazines and a minipedia on World Mythology and promptly fell asleep.

I know it wasn't the material. I wish that I could have enjoyed the reading time because I had been looking forward to it, felt refreshed and was sure I'd get a couple of hours into some inspiration for writing.

Oh, well. Better luck next time.

I spent yesterday looking online for a particular toy for Devyn (the Tupperware Shape-O shape-sorter, like I used to have) and for some flashcards.



Success!

...A playdate that was scheduled didn't take place: Devyn and I were stood up without word before or since. We went shopping instead.

...Today is supposed to be 22 degrees! I'm hoping that this is the case.

...We received word yesterday that our water service would be interrupted for 8 hours due to construction.

We spent Sunday at my in-laws' home. We all walked down to a nearby park at which Devyn learned about flying a kite and, to my chagrin, that other people push her higher on the swings than I do. My stomach was in knots.

I went down a slide with her, however, and had great fun.

A cute report: Devyn's adult-like sunglasses are worn with finesse all day. She loves them and wearing them garners her much attention from people who just have to stop and comment.

Children's Book Club Books

I signed Devyn up for a Book Club of the Month account. These are my first selections. Umm...the first, second and fifth books are actually intended for her.

I Like Myself - Karen Beaumont

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - Roald Dahl

A Guide To Canadian Children's Books - Deidre Baker & Ken Setterington

Olivia - Ian Falconer

Olivia and the Missing Toy - Ian Falconer

20th Century Children's Book Treasury - ed. Janet Schulman

Unfortunately, we'll have to wait about a month for them to arrive.

Susan Maushart

Bargain-bin-hopping shopping. I live within five minutes of a Coles Bookstore (yes, I mentioned the business name). Two or three times a week, Devyn and I walk over and peruse the bargain boxes, look for new releases and interesting magazines. (O.K., she sits there, hanging out the side of the stroller, occasionally grabbing books off the shelves.)

I picked up a copy of Wifework for $2.99 less 10 per cent (my iRewards card). I started reading it this evening. I like her wit:

So, you're Dr Susan Maushart?

I am, and let's not forget that. I trot that out when I need a bank loan because I think having a PhD is a bit like having nits: you shouldn't flaunt it but it's a good way of getting people to back off when you need some space

I will undergo a Sleep Study tomorrow night. I figured that this would make intriguing reading (one predictable message, however: in the division of household labour, women perform the most work and this can be seen worldwide. I have been seeing this message since 1988.) The precise distinction between men's marriage and women's marriage has begun to arouse my curiosity over the past 10 years or so. Besides, there are enough mind-numbing statistics to help me fall asleep. It can be tiresome for me to read statistic after statistic because I find it difficult to concentrate (with such questions as, which study? how was the data gathered? who gathered it? how did the author compile it? why this study?) on the point.

Madeline: Straight Lines and Rare Finds

"In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines,

lived twelve little girls in two straight lines
They left the house at half past nine...

The smallest one was Madeline."

I had fun while looking for information to give you about an original copy of Madeline (1939) by Ludwig Bemelmans that I found. Not that you need another reason to go the library, but I found the copy as a discard for sale yesterday. I always find cheap rare books in the cracks and crevices of the region but I paid about 10 cents for this book.

The Official Madeline Website.

See all of the titles in the Madeline series.

Read about Ludwig Bemelmans.

Here is a list of other children's books by the same author.

(Images: Official Madeline Website)

London After Dark

Breathtaking

· Photography: Alan Delaney
· Commentary: Robert Cowan
· Hardcover
· Publisher: Phaidon Press (November 1, 1993)
· ISBN: 071482870X
· Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 9.8 x 11.2 inches

When I was twelve, I was bored at school. I made up any excuse to avoid it. In fact, I had learnt years before that if I faked an earache, my deception was virtually imperceptible. It was around this time that I became fascinated with England. I began to compile my own encyclopedia of the country: hand-drawn, coloured maps of the counties and major commercial centres, annotated with demographic information that I had gathered from several sources (including the bookshelves of my maternal grandmother, a retired secondary school teacher.) I could force myself to attend school by reminding myself that I could work on “my project” once I got home.

Seven years later, my affair with London began. I packed a suitcase and announced to my family that I was going to England by myself. A few years later, I returned to London for a couple of months.

(In retrospect, I think Henry Miller was right: All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.)

Subsequently, I developed an obsession with the London that I had been unable to experience: the London that existed while everyone slept, the fog-enshrouded, trance-inducing beauty of the architecture illuminated by the city itself. (At the time, London was considered one of the safest cities in the world for a lone travelling woman but I still would not venture out past midnight.) Of course, I am well aware that no one could observe this London: it is precisely the unobserved that intrigues me; however, senses of it may be captured in snapshots.

I love photography, especially black-and-white and the combination of this and London is always irresistible to me. While in the university bookstore back in the early 90s, I bought a coffee-table book entitled, London After Dark (Phaidon, 1993). It featured the work of Alan Delaney and commentary by Robert Cowan. There, page after page, was my favourite city, a city eerily captured through the sense of the subterranean that I'd always loved.

There is something about a self-sufficient city, a place that doesn’t rely upon daytime inhabitants or even nightlife human activity to assert itself. A strong recollection of mine: I am standing in Endsleigh Gardens, near Euston Station, people are speedily walking past, eyes averted, and there is nothing of the leisurely to be noted. At that moment, I feel as if the city is merely tolerating me and the other people, as if it is waiting for some time on its own.

The pulse of the city, then, is certainly -- but not exclusively -- measured in activity. Nightlife simply has to be experienced to be believed: Piccadilly and Soho are especially interesting. Once the sky has become a velvety dark blue, turning into Soho with one’s head bowed results in a time-shift. One could be walking into 19th Century London with only the dim glow of a gaslight. Of course, to lift one’s head means instant restoration to the present as women stand, smiling, in doorways and pounding, modern music is heard briefly as doors swing open or shut.

This being as it is there are, in the subterranean, in the darkened city, stories to be told of the darker areas of human behaviour and existence.

In the silence of the night the city speaks for itself. No one listened more attentively than Charles Dickens, who as much as anyone has shaped Londoners’ response to the dark side of their city. The lowest point of Dickens’s early experience of London was as a 12-year-old working in a blacking factory, his father imprisoned for debt.

The London that I yearned to experience, however, exists afterward, after the pulsating vehicular and pedestrian traffic has flowed to the suburbs or to urban neighbourhoods with closet-like flats. The stories of individual lives have already unfolded. The pizza stands and newsagents have shut down. This is the London found in London After Dark. London is a city that continues to breathe after everyone leaves.

As noted within this photographic essay, Ford Madox Ford observed:

To enter London with the market wagons in the darkness before dawn was to be not awed by the immense humanity but disturbed by entering what seems some realm of the half supernatural…All the vacant blinds, the sinister, the jocular, the lugubriously inquiring, or the lamentable expressions that windows give to houses asleep, all the unsmoking chimneys, the pale skies, and the thought of all these countless thousands lying invisible, with their souls, in sleep, parted from their bodies – all these things give an effect, in its silence, immense, stealthy, and overpowering.

It doesn’t appear that London After Dark is still in print. A search of the Phaidon site fails to turn up the title. It, however, does seem to be available through big chain bookstores.

Just this past week, I was in a tiny port town and visited a tiny store that was jam-packed with books and miscellanea. One treasure that I unearthed in the charming chaos was a hardcover (with dust jacket) called The Nights of London, companion to The Heart of London and The Spell of London. The series bears "unconventional essays on London after dark." (I have the 15th edition from 1948 and the book was first published in 1926.)

Admittedly, this volume often addresses the machinations of the city at night, the springs and coils that keep the city working by day:

You may not realize that when the tubes cease work the current is switched off in sections. As each section becomes ‘juiceless’, gangs of men waiting at the stations set out to examine every yard of the one hundred and seventy-one miles of track on the Tube and District systems. It is probably the most important four hours’ work during the London night.

(Ed. Note: I am here reminded of Fritz Lang’s film, Metropolis (1927), which is, in fact, pretty much contemporaneous with Morton’s written series on London after dark.)

But Mr. Morton entices the reader:

I promise not to drag you through that inevitable night on the Thames Embankment, or the equally ancient night in a doss house. I will try to take you as little as I must in the well-worn footsteps of other night-errants.

The reader is drawn, instead, into a habit of lurking around corners (“Through the door burst a number of pretty young girls chattering of last trams and trains.”) and peering—perhaps surreptitiously -- into darkened windows:

When you pass a London hospital at night think of this…The wards are darkened. The nurse goes tiptoe over the polished floor between the two white shrouded ranks. It is very quiet…

Finding H.V. Morton's tome has thrilled me. What a treat to read about London through the lens of the 1920s!

Just about equally as thrilling is the generosity that the bookseller demonstrated: as my eyes widened and I tried to contain my enthusiasm (as befitting a mature woman), the gentleman reduced the price by 90 per cent. I bought the book for a dollar! I gladly would have paid his asking price, too.

Read about H.V. Morton

Phaidon has an excellent, easily navigable website. Search through its book gallery and discover some great volumes.

This is a great site for night photography of London (and New York City).

I’m glad that I’m not the only one who appreciates London at night. Those who appreciate “night photography” as a genre might also do well to visit this site: History of Night Photography.

For more information about Mr. Morton, there is the H.V. Morton Society.

Spirits Moving Musically

A steadfast fan of the gothic in literature and film, I can't remember when it started. I know that Edgar Allan Poe was an early inhabitant of my reading world since he replaced Oscar Wilde when I was 12.

I shall have to add this link to my sidebar. The poem, The Haunted Palace (1839), is worth a read:

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace-
Radiant palace- reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion-
It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This- all this- was in the olden
Time long ago,)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically,
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne where, sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well-befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!- for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh- but smile no more.

Speaking of spirits and music, for my birthday today I received the DVD collection of Ken Burns' Jazz documentary. Very cool.

Jazz, for me, is at once cerebral, visceral and spiritual. I don't produce it myself but I have long-suspected that it emanates from the very core of our existence, from the "soul" of the world. What I know is that when I listen to it, there seems to be a perfect intersection of my interior being with the external world. It just tugs at the universal strings of thought, emotion and the desire for transcendence.

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this interview with Ken Burns:

There was something about jazz that reminded me of something bigger and larger, more than myself, more than who we are. Jazz was the Holy Ghost. You thought you were in the presence of something that could transform, could transcend the mundane and the ordinary of our lives, and really point in the direction of harmony, not just between people and races and sexes, but between just the normal stuff of everyday life.

So, what exactly does this music mean to Ken Burns and how is it expressed in the documentary?

The first thing we recognized is how controversial it was, how powerful it was emotionally for the people who play it and write about it all the time. We listened to them, and sort of sampled and selected and got a big, rolling machine of a film. It's about two world wars, and a depression, about race, always race, about sex. I mean, this is the music that men and women speak to each other with. It's the mating call, the ritual of courtship.

And it's also about drug abuse and its terrible cost, and extraordinary creativity. Naturally, it's going to be filled with lots of controversy. It's going to touch on lots of social issues. And at the heart, it's going to be about joy, about communication, about this language that is so much more precise than my moving my mouth right now.

(pbs.org/jazz)

In my opinion, Ken Burns "gets" the music and I'm glad that I've got the documentary.

A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams

I found it in a box while visiting my aunt's ancient farmhouse one summer.

The box was for me and I went to bed early every evening just so that I could peruse the books inside until the wee hours. I read Homer, Marquis de Sade, Tennessee Williams....I don't remember how old I was. I might have been 13 or 14. There was also D.H. Lawrence and some general-knowledge reference material.

I read it several times, in rapid succession. Maybe, it was 9 times in a row. Then, again when I was 16.

I honestly don't know why I enjoyed it so much.

Those were lazy days, thinking back. The peachy-pink sky, the quilt-like colour patches of crops for miles and miles. Corn stalks close by and a tree with a wooden swing.

I will re-read the play. Someday. Soon, even.

Moratorium...After This Book

January 2005

5" x 8", 200pp

Hardcover YA novel

ISBN: 1582349525

First, I have arbitrarily declared a moratorium on book buying. My "100-dollar-per-month" habit is no longer sustainable. As I mentioned in my other blog, my husband will be helping me cope with the withdrawal symptoms.

Secondly, the moratorium doesn't start until AFTER the above-depicted book. I can't help it. I have really thought about this and the purchase can be justified: it combines Caribbean history, slavery, the Civil Rights Movement and children's literature, all of which are of great interest to me.

My circular reasoning aside (of course it interests me, otherwise I wouldn't be considering buying it), I will get it.

Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction

Though I should have been napping while the baby slept, in the last two days I managed to read half of Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The series was great until Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years. A. Mole is a credible character of tender years when we first meet him in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. We see in him the eagerness to realize the life of an intellectual and his fact-fumbling combined with his amusing misinterpretations is endearing.

Now, he is a thirty-something adult with a disturbing capacity for social cruelty. His aesthetic and academic sensibilities are informed by long-held, unexamined opinions. We know that his lack of self-knowledge will result in personal tragedy and we just wait for it to occur.

Yes, on the one hand, it is entirely possible that the author has created in Adrian Mole a good example of human frailty and fallibility and that the joke is on us: we are reading about ourselves, criticizing a person for shortcomings that we all possess. On the other hand, we want him to make different decisions and to be more insightful while he instructs others in how to do just these things.

This raises several questions for me. Not the least among them: is he a credible character anymore? I don't think so.

I actually don't have enough time to go into great detail but the author lost me on this point in the very first entry of Adrian Mole's latest diary. (Also, in my opinion, to elaborate would be spoiling the reading of this latest book.)

I have to go prepare a bottle for the baby. Maybe I'll find some good links later on but haven't found anything very impressive yet.

Books In The Household

One of my favourite features of the vintage household book is that it contains advice that is never offered nowadays:

To open a new book, open the front cover, then the back, then turn back a few leaves at a time from each end until you reach the center.

From the Essential Home Library: Housekeeping Made Easy by Linda Marvin (Nelson Doubleday, 1943).

Our husbands were at work and we had to know how to efficiently run a household so that they needn't have bothered about such details. The husband's mind had to be concerned with the Important Things.

Foggy Felines

Fog

The fog comes
on little feet

It sits looking
over harbour and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on

- Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) -

I prefer the fog to a clear, crisp day of stinging temperatures and a futile sun but it all looks good from this house. Because we live in a valley, however, fog is something to which I can look forward in the months to come.

I also love the cat metaphor in describing fog. T.S. Eliot used it, too, in The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
(First Published June 1915)

Since reading Prufrock almost twenty years ago, I find it difficult to look at fog without recalling this metaphor.

Bajun Gierl

I picked up Austin Clarke's The Polished Hoe. My attraction to it: Austin Clarke, local (Toronto) writer, Barbadian immigrant, the narrator has a familiar "patois".

Being of Caribbean descent myself (my father is from Barbados, my stepfather is from Trinidad), I have grown up speaking these creoles. In a multicultural society, my sense of self is informed by many cultures. At home, it was Irish, Barbadian and Trinidadian.

I am curious and I have to ask myself: will my familiarity with the Barbadian culture afford me a closer connection to the narrator or somehow enrich my experience of the narrative beyond what someone else of a different background might experience? I think so, but I can't know, obviously, the experience of one without such a background.

My father-daughter issues have resurfaced lately. Sometimes, I'm struck with the sense that I ought to know more about my father's past, his childhood/young adulthood as an African-Caribbean person in Barbados.

Certainly, there are questions and more questions. Thoughts reflecting a sense of tri-cultural guilt have tugged at me:

Should I be observing some traditions specific to two other sets of cultural norms: Barbadian and Trinidadian?

My sister is the reluctant one whom my father has designated to be liaison with family in Barbados. Should I be of greater help? (I really LIKED that I didn't have to host my Auntie last year.)

How much Barbadian literature should I read in order to be considered a good Bajun girl? (What about Irish? My mother is Irish. Should I be reading books written in the Irish language, too?)

Should I pick up a copy of The Poet and His Place in Barbadian Culture by Kamau Braithwaite?

Naturally, I have been instructed in Barbadian and Trinidadian cultures and what I have learned is reflected in some of my behaviour and ideas.

I automatically decipher linguistic clues and I know that, when around native speakers of either creole, I actually fall quite naturally into speaking/comprehension.

I realize that there are even bigger questions than my own concerns have posed:

How do we define our relationship to literature? What defines it?

How does our culturo-linguistic inheritance, if you will, affect what we read and how we read it?

How does our reading experience of familiar cultural product differ from that of, say, someone from another culturo-linguistic background reading the same product?

That is, at what points do literary appreciation and culture intersect?

I look forward to exploring these ideas in Reading Lolita in Tehran.

My web travels resulted in a great find: Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal.

So, there you have it, another addition to my Reading List 2005.


***
More about Austin Clarke and The Polished Hoe:

Regretfully, I didn't finish Pigtails n' Breadfruit: the Rituals of Slave Food, a "food memoir" that combines recipes with memories of his formative years in Barbados. Read more here

The Polished Hoe
WINNER OF THE 2003 COMMONWEALTH PRIZE FOR BEST BOOK

WINNER OF THE 2002 GILLER PRIZE

CO-WINNER OF THE 2003 TRILLIUM BOOK AWARD

FINALIST FOR THE 2004 ZORA NEALE HURSTON/RICHARD WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER ? OVER 17 WEEKS ON BESTSELLER LISTS

A BOOK SENSE 76 PICK

A COSTCO BOOK CLUB MAIN SELECTION

As Seen On The News Hour With JIM LEHRER
And Good Morning America With Laura Bush

Lola Rose

Children are resilient.

How many times have we heard this? As trite as it sounds, I know this to be true and, in this book, the author heartily assents. Fairy tales today seem to enlighten but not to frighten children; however, perhaps the sanitized versions no longer impart the kind of insight that is found in Jacqueline Wilson's Lola Rose.

The reader might well label this book an "Anti-Fairy Tale": the pre-teen narrator has many responsibilities and ugly realities with which to deal and she does so with the heartrending acceptance and grace so characteristic of abused children.

When life at home suddenly gets really frightening, Jayni, her mum and her little brother Kenny have to pack their bags and escape in the middle of the night. They also have to choose new names -- and so Jayni becomes the glamorous, grown-up Lola Rose!

As another element of instability enters Jayni's already tumultuous life, we watch a young girl as she struggles with identity, body image and the responsibilities of raising a younger sibling as well as herself. Her journey is more than that of self-discovery: it is about learning such harsh realities as injustice, dread fear and addiction in a seemingly impersonal world.

As the pressures mount at home and her mother's behaviour becomes more disappointingly predictable, Jayni cannot concentrate at school--even in her new life, everything new is old again--and she must find a way to cope that will not result in the destruction of her family unit.

For the older child, this book has so much to offer by way of illustrating certain universal conditions: the need for acceptance, peer pressures and issues of identity. Most importantly, for a child who has always worried about not having "normal" parents, this book brings comfort and reassurance.

For the child who has not had her childhood yanked away, it brings enlightenment and, probably, an appreciation of her family life as she knows it. It also aids in developing personal identity. We often define ourselves through the negative: "this" is "not me". I am confident that many readers--teenage and adult alike--will declare this throughout the book.

For the adult reader, the book is a humbling experience. In Jayni The Child we find the adult that we would like to become: insightful, strong through adversity and wise, very wise.

In the end, we want more for Jayni but she is much stronger and wiser than we: she knew all along what to expect about her circumstances; she has inhabited no fairy tale.

So, it is we who have grown. She has taught us that sometimes hope is not the strong, faithful night-light in the dark hours that we all would like; it is sometimes as brief and as fleeting as a firefly, but it can be just as stunning and powerful wherever it appears.

Don't be put off by the harsh subject matter: there is wit and humour enough to sustain even a casual reader from page to page. As trite as it sounds, trust me: you'll laugh and you'll cry and you'll want to read another Jacqueline Wilson book right away.

***

Here is The Guardian's Review

I Did It

I broke down and bought Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I had been in the holding queue at the library in the 500s. Today, at Coles Bookstore, I noticed that it was 30 per cent off.

Last night, I couldn't sleep so I went searching in my immediate proximity for something to read that would put me to sleep. No offense meant to William Boyd, but I grabbed Brazzaville Beach.

Instead of putting me to sleep, of course, it kept me wide awake with anticipation until 4:30 a.m. or so. What a strong voice! The narration was gripping.

Again, no offense to Mr. Boyd, but I picked the paperback up at a local literacy council 25-cent sale table about 4 years or so ago.

Wow, that was a good find.

Voice Literary Supplement: Seeking Hyde

I am a little behind in reading my Voice Literary Supplement but today is the day to comb through my inbox.

I have to say that Rachel Aviv creates a stirring of inclination in me where Alberto Manguel's Stevenson Under the Palm Trees is concerned.

To begin with, her opening paragraph is compelling:

Robert Louis Stevenson, a sickly, self-described "wretched house-plant," died at age 44 while making a dinner salad. Like other ailing 19th-century writers, RLS was living in the South Seas (in this case, Samoa), hoping the warm air would soothe his hemorrhaging lungs. Deep into his convalescence, feeling lonely and apparently melodramatic, the author sent a letter to a friend, warning, "If nobody writes to me, I shall die."

Actually, she had me at the opening paragraph. The combination of Victoriana, murder mystery and the South Pacific, however, was the clincher.

In Stevenson Under the Palm Trees, the Argentine literary critic Alberto Manguel (who describes readers as "post-mortem creators") resuscitates the Victorian author, creating a murder mystery based on his final days in Samoa. Much has been made of Stevenson's atheism (particularly in contrast with his father's Calvinism), and in this taut novella, the spiritual struggle comes to a head: Stevenson falls victim to a malady he could reasonably be credited with inventing—a split personality à la Jekyll and Hyde.

I'll add this to my reading wishlist.

It's Not Too Early...

The Granta 2005 Diary

It isn't about the gifts; it's the thought that counts, etc., but I really don't need a plastic, stein-shaped, beer-and-bubble candle this year. My sister-in-law's mother already gave us one.

This, the diary, would make a great gift.

This is a diary for those who like books, containing 52 striking book jacket designs in full colour; favourites chosen from 100 years of publishing history, and important dates for life and literature in the year ahead

I will probably get it for someone, too.