Nothing New under the Sun

It's funny how sometimes what's going on in the real world and what's going on in my fictional world have something to say to each other. That just happened with the latest book I read, The King of Mulberry Street by Donna Jo Napoli.

King is the story of Beniamino, a nine-year-old Jewish boy living in Italy with his mother and extended family. Beniamino is illegitimate, which simply adds to the problems his mother faces as a Jew in trying to find work. The story begins when she has made a desperate decision - she gets Beniamino passage as a stowaway on a cargo ship heading to America. The catch? He's going alone (although he doesn't know it).

 On the passage, Beniamino gets a new name, Dom, from the sailors. When he gets to Ellis Island, he manages to escape being taken to an orphanage - but the alternative is living on the streets alone, speaking no English. Fortunately, Dom is a clever boy, and through a combination of initiative and people skills, he forms a partnership with a couple of other street boys to start a business selling sandwiches. The business thrives and at the end, Dom realizes that although his mother may have been cruel by sending him off on his own, she at least tried to help him by sacrificing to buy him a pair of shoes that saved him several times by giving the impression that he was a "somebody."

This book made me interested in reading more about the immigrant experience. Dom lived on the streets, sleeping in a barrel (until it was taken away by trash collectors) and eating whatever he could get. Yet he had it much better than the boys who were slaves to the padrone system, whose parents had indentured them in exchange for the price of a ticket to America. The interesting thing about the story is that it apparently is based on the experiences of Napoli's grandfathers. Dom may have been a character in a novel, but how many real "Doms" came into this country?

I was reading this book while reaction to the new immigration law in Arizona was being covered in news reports, and I realized again "there's nothing new under the sun." Right now, this country is struggling with attitudes toward illegal Mexican immigrants. But this struggle is nothing new. In Dom's story, the Italians see themselves as oppressed by their Irish bosses - the Irish even get to sit upstairs in the Catholic church while the Italians sit in the basement. That's in 1892. But 50 years earlier, it was the Irish who were the "undesirables" as they came to the United States to escape the potato famine.  And in the story, even though the Italians may be near the bottom of the social ladder, they still manage to find someone - the Chinese - to look down on as socially inferior. It seems to me that immigration has always been a hot button issue in this country. I read somewhere once that immigration to the United States happened in waves; first were the English and Scots and Germans, then the Irish, then southern Europeans, then eastern Europeans, then Russians (forgive me if I have the order wrong, please). Now it's the Mexicans. Each group came in to inital hostility and some degree of persecution. But eventually those groups assimiliated into the nation's culture (or the nation's culture expanded to include the group's identity) and they then became part of the establishment that looked with hostility on the next wave. It makes me wonder if the same thing won't be true of Mexicans in another 25-50 years.

I seriously would like to find some more stories about immigrants, and unlike the immigrants themselves, I have no prejudice about the national origin of the characters.  Anybody have suggestions?

A Little Jewel

I'm a sucker for bargain books. When I found The Matchlock Gun by Walter D. Edmonds as a bargain book, I picked it up for the kids, knowing nothing about it but that it was a Newberry winner. I'm so glad I did. I'm also glad that one of the kids "forgot" to put it back on the bookshelf so that it was lying on the kitchen table last Saturday while I was eating my lunch. I idly opened to the first page and was quickly enthralled.

This is a retelling of a true story from the pioneer days of New York State, when there was no "United States." The French and Indians are sweeping down into the frontier settlements, burning homes and killing settlers in the outlying areas. The book begins when Teunis Van Alstyne is leaving home for militia duty because of rumors of more raids. He leaves his wife, Gertrude, and their two young children home alone with reassurances that the militia will stop the Indians before they could threaten the Van Alstyne home.

He's wrong. Fortunately, one of the militia men is able to warn Gertrude that Indians are near, and the rest of the book relates the story of the plan Gertrude makes to protect her family using the only weapon they had available -- an antique Spanish gun that none of them are strong enough to hold.

I was impressed as I read it by the ingenuity and courage that Gertrude showed, and by the discipline and courage 10-year-old Edward showed. If either of them had failed, the entire family would no doubt have been murdered. But they don't fail, and the story lived on, handed down generation to generation until Walter Edmonds came across it and wrote it in a book.

I like this kind of story. It gives me new appreciation for what the pioneers did. Sure, we look back on it now and judge it as ethically wrong to push the Native Americans off their land. But you've got to admire the individuals who stuck with it through hardship for the dream of a better life for their families.

Something else I think is funny in this story -- Gertrude refused to go to her mother-in-law's brick house. She says it's because she thinks they'll be just as safe at their own home, but I can read between the lines -- there's no love lost between those two women. Gertrude would rather face the Indians alone than knuckle under to her mother-in-law!

Entry for October 21, 2007 - Why Didn't I Love This Book?

The book in question is The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw. You may notice that it's been two months since I posted any reading responses. Part of that is because school started again and the workload picked up considerably, part of that is because I've been obsessed with editing my own work, but part of the problem is I could not get into reading The Moorchild. It took me six weeks to read the book, honest, when I read the latest Harry Potter book (four times the size) in a matter of hours.

Why? I was absolutely captured by the first chapter -- thought it was the best first chapter I'd ever read. That chapter establishes character, time period, and tone, and draws the reader into a mystery -- is the baby a changeling or not? But after such promise early on, the book quickly settled into one of those bogs on the moor that McGraw describes -- I felt my mental feet being sucked into goo and had to forcefully pull them out.

I don't want to give the impression that I disliked the book -- I didn't. But I didn't fall in love with it, and that sort of surprises me. It had a very likeable protagonist -- Moql/Saaski, the changeling who doesn't know she is one, only that she is very different from all the other children in the village. Saaski's journey of self-discovery is mildly interesting, as she begins to put together the clues that tell her she is one of the Folk. She has an enchanting friend, Tam, who treats her well when all the other kids are just cruel to her. And the relationship between Saaski and the couple who think they are her parents is touching, especially the relationship with her da'. When Saaski is finally revealed to be Folk, I felt myself nearly tearing up at the loyalty and kindness Yanno shows to her.

Note I said nearly tearing up. Why did this book leave me sort of cold? I'm not really sure. Maybe the premise was a little too thin to be drawn out over so many chapters?? Maybe it had more flowery description than I personally care for?? I just don't know. Maybe the book is like Saaski herself -- able to detect emotion because of her human side, but unable to experience or revel in it because of her Folk side.

I'm not sorry I read it, but I feel a huge sense of relief that I'm finally through!

Entry for July 30, 2007 -- Rich on So Many Levels

I've had a few days now to think about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. The more I think about it, the more there is to think about. For this blog entry, I'm just going to go through some random issues related to the book, not try to give any kind of coherent "review."

Where to start????

First of all, it was a great adventure story. There were several times when I found myself so tense as I was reading about the situations the "trio" got themselves into, I had to laugh at myself. My arms would actually be weak after I put the book down, ha ha! At various times during this whole series I've found the "old fogey" in me scolding Harry for getting into situations that put him in so much danger -- in this book, though, the danger and the situations are a natural culmination of the earlier action -- this book is about a war. It's thrilling and fun to read.

I guess now I'll talk about what I see as the overall message of the book, although as I try to come up with that message I think the book is sort of like the Mirror of Erised -- a person sees what he/she desires to see -- or is predisposed to see. To me, this book is about faith. SPOILER ALERT!! This theme struck me most clearly when I was reading Harry's thoughts as he is trying to decide whether to follow the task Dumbledore set out for him or to pursue the new angle he's sure Voldemort is up to. "He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way. " He's angry and disappointed that Dumbledore didn't spell it out for him so that he knew what he should do. In the end, he must trust that Dumbledore has told him enough, and he has to act on that faith. Isn't that an appropriate allegory for the Christian life? How many times in my own life have I wondered if I'm doing the right thing, wishing God would put an unambiguous message in neon letters in the sky so I could know? But if we know, it's not faith, is it? The power of faith is acting on the basis of trust -- to give up our own need to know and see how everything fits together, and to follow the path the Master has set our feet on. We have to trust that the Master has given us enough of whatever it is we need to do what He asks of us.

I have loved the character of Harry since the first book. Over the series, it's been fun to watch his growth both as a "normal human being" and as "the Chosen One." In the climatic chapter of Deathly Hallows, it is touching to see how he deals with being both of those when the roles are mutually exclusive. I've seen articles since the book came out that compare Harry to Christ, and I don't know about that -- I'm not really comfortable with that comparison. But that chapter did relate to something I've thought about lately, and that is, what was Jesus thinking about as He went to the cross and while He was on the cross? Maybe there were some parallels to Harry's thinking as he walked into the forest to meet Voldemort. I have wondered lately if the cry "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" was not so much a cry of despair as it was the beginning of a recitation of Psalm 22 (which begins with those very words), a clinging to something that gave strength and comfort, just as Harry's --- well, don't want to give away TOO much!!

(If you're wondering why I said that about Psalm 22, it's because the last section of the psalm describes the Lord's -- and thus the Lamb's -- victory. I believe Jesus would have been well-versed in the scriptures, to the point of having much of it committed to memory. He would know the psalm that began with despair ends in triumph. But I digress too far!)

There's also a really interesting discussion-starter for students of ethics. Was Dumbledore right or wrong to treat Harry the way he did? His behavior is a good example of utilitarian ethics, and generally, I think, we would argue he's right. But seeing it from the viewpoint of the one chosen to suffer for the many is interesting.

The only thing I was disappointed in about the book was that Rowling didn't bring the four houses together in the end in a rejection of evil. The Slytherins still didn't join in. I read one posting on HPfGU (Harry Potter for Grownups) that explicated the book as confirming the power of labels and of underscoring the notion that some people are just "good," while others are just "bad," and that can't be changed. Yeah, I kind of wish there had been some change of heart for at least some of the Slytherins.

I also did not care for the epilogue, but that's because the wrong people ended up together -- in my opinion, anyway! And I despise Mrs. Weasley!! I can't really understand why -- I try to intellectualize it, but I can't seem to do that. I just have a gut reaction of truly disliking that character. I hope it's not as people say -- the things we despise most in others are the faults in ourselves, ha ha.

Oh, there's much, much more to think about and talk about. But I think I'll let this post go at this point. I'm sure there's a limit to people's tolerance!!!But I'm left with one burning question: Was Dolores Umbridge an agent of Voldemort, or was she just a bully?

Entry for June 30, 2007 - Has the World Really Changed THAT Much???

As I noted in an earlier post, one reason I'm doing this particular resolution this year is because I want to keep in touch with what my children are reading and to revisit some of the books I remember from my own childhood. I recently finished one of the books I truly treasured when I was a little girl -- Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden. It's a story about finding your place. Nona, the little girl who was uprooted from her home in India and sent to live with cousins in England, finds her place by caring for two little Japanese dolls who are also a long way from home. She forgets her own loneliness by trying to make the dolls as much at home as possible, working with her cousin Tom to build them an authentic Japanese house and with a classmate from school to furnish it with appropriate furniture. The story also has a side plot with the youngest cousin, a little girl named Belinda, who learns something about jealousy and letting someone else be the center of attention for a change. The story didn't have quite the hold on me that it once had, but that was 35 years ago, ha ha!

I suggested it to my daughter for summer reading, and she started it on a trip to camp. That was two weeks ago, and she hasn't picked it up since. It's not too hard for her -- she was reading it out loud (as she always does), and she didn't miss any words. I'm sure if I asked her if she likes it, she would say it's ok. But it just doesn't grab her, and I can't say exactly why unless it is that she lives in a different world as a child than I did. A kind, gentle story about a girl building a house for dolls seems to have trouble competing in an environment that includes Captain Underpants (whom I hate), Harry Potter (whom I love), and the Baudelaire orphans (my daughter is reading the first book in the Series of Unfortunate Events instead of finishing the doll book).

This is even more of a problem with my son -- we had a MAJOR battle over Johnny Tremain. Well, to call it a "major" battle is hyperbole -- but suffice it to say, I strongly suggested it to fulfill his historical fiction requirement for school this year, and he pretended to read it but couldn't answer specific questions about important plot points. When I asked him why, he said it was boring. I couldn't understand -- I loved Johnny when I was my son's age. I read the first couple of chapters after this battle with my son, and it still captures my imagination just like it did when I was 12. But I asked a couple of other young friends (ages 15-22) about it; most of them had never read it, and the one who had didn't like it.

It makes me wonder what makes a "classic." We hear that term batted around all the time. I suppose my definition would be "a work that has something important to say, with well-developed characters that the reader cares about." But is something REALLY a classic if no one reads it?

At least one "classic" from my childhood is still holding up -- my daughter really liked the first two Laura Ingalls Wilder books.

No sooner had I finished posting this entry than I go into the living room and find my son reading Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. I said, "Do you like it?" and he gave sort of a noncommital shrug and nodded. Go figure . . . .

Entry for April 9, 2007 - I Hope the Movie Is Better

My son has been asking to go to the movie Bridge to Terabithia, so I thought I would read the book first. Usually, movie adaptations of books are too overdone, in my opinion (like that ridiculous scene when Harry falls out of the flying car in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). But after reading Bridge to Terabithia (by Katherine Paterson), I hope the movie can fill in some of the richness I so longed for while reading.

I'm beginning to think I have something against Newberry Award winners, because I haven't really liked either of the ones I've read so far this year. Bridge to Terabithia is the story of a poor boy (Jess) with an artistic, sensitive soul who befriends the new girl in school (Leslie), who is shunned by everyone else because she is too different (for one thing, her family doesn't have a TV). Their friendship centers around the imaginary kingdom of Terabithia, which they create in a forest and enter via a rope swing over a stream.

(SPOILER ALERT!)

While Jess is visiting museums in Washington with his favorite teacher, Leslie tries to cross to Terabithia and falls when the rope swing breaks, killing her. The story then deals with the emotions Jess feels as he tries to cope with her death and his feelings of guilt for not inviting her on the trip with him.

I think this is fine subject matter for a children's book, but I kept having the weird feeling that I was missing something, like I had skipped over a couple of really important paragraphs that kept me from completely "getting" the story. For example, I wanted more explanation of Terabithia. All I know about it is that the friends built a little shack from scrap lumber but turned it into a castle for a kingdom by using their imaginations. Paterson hints to us about the kinds of adventures Jess and Leslie have in their imaginary kingdom, but I guess I wanted it more fleshed out so I could better identify with the characters.

Overall, the whole story seemed to be a Cliff Notes version of itself. I thought there were several times when characters did things that were not well-motivated (for example, why does his teacher call him up out of the blue and invite him to Washington? She had not been in the book for several chapters. AND what 20-something teacher in her right mind would invite a 10-year-old boy on a "field trip" without talking to his parents herself???!!!) . And Jess' father goes from basically ignoring him to being sensitive and supportive when Leslie dies, which could happen, I guess, but just feels contrived (to me). I've read other books in the "kid dealing with death" genre (like A Taste of Blackberries a LONG time ago, and others), and this one doesn't seem to have a convincing ring to it.

I want to like these characters, and I want to be a "participant" in Terabithia. But this book just seems to have an emotional distance that keeps me at arm's length, like it's afraid of me getting too close, and so I can't really be friends with it.

Entry for March 15, 2007 - You've Come a Long Way, Baby!

My first book for March was a little historical novel called The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker by Cynthia DeFelice. It has good reviews, and I thought it might be one I could suggest for my son, since he has to read some historical fiction for his language arts class. I don't know that I liked it quite as much as the reviewers did, but certainly I didn't see anything that I didn't like. It was just a nice, solid, little story, maybe a little simpler than what I am in the mood to read right now.

The novel takes place in New England, 1849, and is the story of a young boy who has lost his entire family to "consumption." A neighbor tells him of a "cure" that involves exhuming the first member of the family to die of the disease; however, by this time, everyone in Lucas' family is dead. Racked with guilt, Lucas wanders into a town, where he becomes an apprentice to a man who is the town's doctor/dentist/barber/undertaker. The rest of the story focuses on the struggle between superstition and knowledge that must have been a defining characteristic of the practice of medicine in the 19th century.

DeFelice does a good job of working three approaches to early medical care into her story. On the one hand, there are the superstitious townspeople who are so desperate for a cure to save their remaining family members that they will do gruesome things to the corpses of other loved ones from their family on the authority of rumors and promises that the "cure" worked in far-off places. A couple of incidents show the nearly-ridiculous lengths these people are willing to go to because of their need to have faith in something -- ANYTHING -- in the face of a terminal diagnosis.

Then there is the half-Indian woman Lucas spends some time with. She is amused by the superstitions of the townspeople, and yet some of her methods would seem just as silly to us today (like cobwebs for bleeding). She is the character that represents what I guess I would call "practical" medicine -- she knows all the herbs that can be made into teas or poultices, and most of them probably did have some actual medical effect. But she is an outcast among the townspeople, who consider her a witch.

Finally, there is the doctor that Lucas is apprenticed to. He keeps meticulous records of the weather and of his patients, looking for any patterns that might emerge to indicate a cause-effect relationship. His sister (who lives with him as housekeeper) insists on hygiene. The doctor has sympathy for the families who believe in the "cure," but he makes it clear to Lucas that it is mere superstition that makes them do what they are doing. However, he also admits that he doesn't have any answer and that there's nothing he can do for the patients with consumption. At the end of the book, he has acquired a microscope, and he and Lucas are being introduced to the world of "animacules."

I read a non-fiction book several years ago about medicine in the 19th century. It's shocking to think how little they knew of what we take for granted today -- how disease is transmitted, how to prevent that transmission, the role that clean drinking water plays in health (that book emphasized the terrible cholera epidemics of the 19th century), even basic cleaniness. I think DeFelice's little book is probably a pretty good way to help kids be aware that things weren't always the way they are now and that people routinely died from diseases that we don't even take that seriously anymore.

Oh, one last thing -- the book has enough of a "gross" factor that I think my son will get into it. Usually I like to read while I'm having my lunch at work -- not this book!! There are rather graphic descriptions of graverobbing and an amputation scene (with no anesthesia, of course) that would have turned my stomach if I let myself think about it too much. It's not that DeFelice goes out of her way to be gross; grossness just seems to go with the territory of 19th-century life, particularly that of a doctor!

Postscript: My son actually did NOT like the book, precisely because of the gross factor! He read five chapters, then quit. Oh, well, shows what I know!

Entry for February 28, 2007 - In Which She Reflects on Race Relations

I cut it close, but I did manage to finish my book for this month -- here on the last day.

I knew there were kid/young adult books written by African American authors that have had good reviews, so I thought I would read one this month. I selected Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. It's a Newberry Award winner, so I expected it to be exceptionally good. However, I was disappointed, especially at first-- in fact, I considered just dropping the book and moving on to something like Bud, Not Buddy. The book moves very slowly in the beginning -- VERY slowly. Taylor likes to use description -- the "slow the story down to a crawl" type of description, and the characters don't really seem to ring true to me. The "good" characters are totally good, and the "bad" characters are totally bad with no redeeming qualities. It seemed like a sort of cardboard morality story.

(Note: This entry is going to contain spoilers, because I can't say what I want to without revealing important plot action.)

The narrator of the story is 9-year-old Cassie Logan, who lives with her 3 brothers, her parents, and her grandmother in the Mississippi delta in 1933. The story goes through most of a year with the Logan family, who are different than the other black families in the area because the Logans own their land instead of sharecropping for the wealthy descendants of the pre-Civil War plantation owners. The family has managed to keep the land for about 50 years, though the father has to go to Louisiana to work on the railroad to get money to pay for the mortgage and taxes.

The story describes the persecution the blacks in the area suffer, starting with an incident (which the Logan children only hear about) in which three men are burned alive for supposedly making advances to a white woman. The children have to bear up under the indignity of having school books that are discards from the white schools and the taunts of the white children on the school bus that passes them every day. Over the course of the story, the persecution escalates after Cassie's parents organize a boycott of the local storekeeper, who was responsible for the burning incident. Cassie's mother loses her job as a teacher, and her father is attacked on his way home from getting supplies from a store in Vicksburg. Cassie herself is the subject of harassment when she accidentally bumps into a white girl and is forced to apologize and to refer to the girl as "Miss" Lillian Jean. But all the tension between the blacks and the whites in the area comes to a crisis point when TJ Avery, one of Cassie's oldest brother's friends, gets involved in a robbery gone bad with two white boys, who put all the blame on him. Cassie and her brothers observe the "night men" come and haul the entire Avery family out of their house, and only a fire that threatens one of the plantations keeps the vigilantes from lynching TJ.

The climax of the book must be why it was a Newberry winner, because all those things I complained about above are no longer true at that point. The scene is vivid, to the point that it is painful to read it and to know that scenes like that really happened to people. But as painful as it is to look, we can't afford to look away. It's part of the truth of the American South of the early 20th century, and recognizing and remembering the brutality of race relations at that time is important. The ending of the book was especially poignant -- "What had happened to TJ in the night I did not understand, but I knew it would not pass. And I cried for those things which had happened in the night and would not pass."

But that brings me to the thing that bothered me about this book. The message seems to be that things between blacks and whites won't get any better. Of course, we see the brutality and the harsh use of power by the whites in the story. But the blacks also do things that keep the relationship negative. Cassie's older brother Stacy engineers revenge on the busload of white kids who have splashed him and his siblings with mud earlier in the day. Cassie herself masquerades for a month in "Uncle Tom" style so she can get a chance to get back at "Miss" Lillian Jean. And it doesn't matter to her that Lillian Jean doesn't understand why Cassie turns on her -- Cassie is satisfied with the revenge.

The saddest part, to me, is the relationship between the Logans and a poor, "white trash" boy named Jeremy. Jeremy keeps reaching out in an effort to be friends with the Logan kids. He walks part of the way to school with them every day. At Christmas, he brings Stacy a present. He comes over to their house in the summer just to talk and he invites them to come see the bedroom he built for himself up in a tree. But they rebuff all his attempts at friendship. As Mr. Logan explained it after Jeremy brought the Christmas gift, "Far as I'm concerned, friendship between white and black don't mean that much 'cause it usually ain't on a equal basis. Right now you and Jeremy might get along fine, but in a few years he'll think of himself as a man but you'll probably still be a boy to him. And if he feels that way, he'll turn on you in a minute . . . . white folks mean trouble. You see blacks hanging 'round with whites, they're headed for trouble. Maybe one day whites and blacks can be real friends . . . . the trouble is, down here in Mississippi, it costs too much to find out."

I have to take a little side trip here for a minute. The other day, I was talking to a friend about this book (before I'd finished it and when these thoughts were first coming together in my head). He said he's reading a book about the Crow and Sioux Indians and the way they dealt with the occupation of whites and being forced onto the reservation. He said the book says the leader of the Crow had a dream about a chickadee, which he took as a sign that the Crow should be like the bird -- smart and adaptable and able to learn from those around them. So they began to raise cattle rather than hunt buffalo, and they prospered as ranchers. The Sioux, on the other hand, followed Sitting Bull's vision of the ghost dance, which reinforced their past identity as great warriors of the plains -- and we know what the ultimate outcome was there. My friend said the book said the Sioux had a "thin" identity that limited their world and their options to the point that there couldn't have been a different outcome.

I think the view of race relationships in Roll of Thunder is a similar "thin" identity. Just about everyone in the book -- black and white -- has a view of others that is based only on skin color. It doesn't matter that Jeremy acts more like a friend than TJ does (he's always trying to use Stacy to get the answers to tests for school, he cheats Stacy out of a good wool coat, he gets Mrs. Logan fired from her teaching job); when it comes down to it, the Logans stick with TJ because he's black and they reject Jeremy because he's white. If we identify the "other" as the enemy based on outside appearance rather than trying to get past that appearance to find out who the person is, of course racism and prejudice "w[ill] not pass."

Maybe I'm naive. Maybe it's easy for me to say that because I'm white, and I've never had to face a lynch mob or be dragged out of my house in the middle of the night. But it seems to me there's a element of risk in any relationship. Anyone -- white or black -- can turn on you. But if we allow ourselves to have relationships only with those people who are "safe" because they belong in the same category we do, or if we treat others who are different as if only that "skin" is the reality, the world becomes a small, tight straitjacket. The only way we can achieve Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream world -- a world of "thick" relationships with possibilities -- is by opening ourselves up to the risk of getting to know the person behind the skin.

Entry for February 6, 2007 - This One Is for My Daughter

My daughter is what I would call a "developing" reader, meaning she's just starting to take on chapter books. That transition from picture books to real chapter books is sort of a mystery to me. I got a book by Beverly Cleary for her in the fall, only to find out that it is a fifth-grade level book on the Accelerated Reader list -- two levels above her "zone" (or whatever. I may have to rant about Accelerated Reader some time). Anyway, she tried reading the first couple of pages and now it's lying on the top of her bookcase, in the same spot where she put it down that day. So what do "developing" readers read?

In my daughter's case, the "Magic Tree House" books by Mary Pope Osborne. She's crazy about them. So I decided I would read one to see what they are like. I read #17 (they all have a number), which was Tonight on the Titanic (they apparently all have an alliterative title, too), and I was pleased. My son never really got into the MTH books -- I think they came along after he had already "developed" as a reader. Instead, he read Junie B. Jones, which I find rather annoying after a while. I get tired of the cutesy "kid" talk and the immature social skills -- who needs to read that in a book when you can look out and see it sitting at your dinner table?

Back to Tonight on the Titanic. The overall premise of the MTH books is that a brother and sister (Jack and Annie) discovered a magic tree house that will take them anywhere they point to in a book. (That's already a plus for me -- I remember wishing I could do that when I was a kid.) To add some plot (and sell more books, I do believe), there is a "mission" that Jack and Annie have to fulfill that will last for 3 or 4 books. For example, in ToT, they have to retrieve four items to free a little dog from a spell. In this case, it is a gift from an "unsinkable ship." So they go back in time to the Titanic, help a little boy and his sister get to the lifeboats, get the gift they need, and come back home in the tree house just in time.

I can see the story would appeal to "developing" readers. I mean, even though it was a very simple plot, I (as an adult) was interested in how it would turn out. Characterization of Jack and Annie was decent -- at the end, after they are back home and safe, there is sort of a nice little section where they are thinking about the people who died when the ship went down. It's not maudlin, but it also doesn't try to ignore the reality of what happened, which I think is a good lesson for young kids. Mary Pope Osborne wrote in the forward that she wasn't sure she wanted to write about such a sad event, but that she decided that if she could show something good that happened, it would be worthwhile. And I think she succeeded -- Jack and Annie do something that is believable and kind and brave.

One thing I really liked was that this is a way to sneak in some history on kids. My daughter will say, "This part is in dark print - that means it's real." See, Jack has to put together "clues" to help them accomplish their mission, and those clues are usually historical facts. Another thing my daughter likes is "when the kids have on different clothes." Osborne sneaks in a little social/cultural history by having the characters' clothes magically change to those of the time period. Ha! Clever, Mary Pope Osborne!So, thumbs up! My "developing" reader has something good to read. She'll eventually be ready for that Beverly Cleary book, but for now, I'm happy she's crazy about something that actually teaches her something instead of something that simply entertains her.

The Blogging Refugee Moves On

This is my third attempt to find a place my musings can rest. The original site for my blog is undergoing some changes to make it more like MySpace - not what I'm interested in, so I packed up my musings and left. Not being a very sophisticated traveler in cyberspace, I set myself down at Live Journal. But after a couple of weeks there and facing the pressure to make "friends," I think I'm ready to move on. I guess what I want is a diary -- you know, I pour my thoughts into it, and it doesn't expect anything in return. Why not keep one on paper? Laziness, I guess. I type just about everything now - can't seem to be as creative without the convenience of the "backspace" key (those scribbled-out spots on paper taunt me). Also, the last thing I need in my writing space is another notebook. It's nice to have a storage spot for my musings that doesn't collect dust!

A brief introduction to these musings: When it was time to make a New Year's Resolution, I decided mine for the year would be to read at least one book for pleasure each month. I've always loved to read, but lately it seems the only things I have time to read are textbooks I scan to prepare for classes or student papers I'm grading. I decided whatever I read couldn't be anything connected to work -- it had to be simply for the joy of reading. And for me, part of the pleasure of reading something is talking about it, even if I'm talking to myself. So the blog began as a way to keep a record of what I'd read during the year and the things I thought about and learned from my reading.

Anyone looking through the refugee posts will notice that mostly what I've read this year are children's or young adult's books. While I was doing last year's Christmas shopping for my kids, I went sort of book-crazy. I kept seeing good books I remembered from my childhood, or books that had good reviews, or Newberry winners. I must have bought 15 books for two kids! As I was wrapping the books, I sort of wistfully flipped through the first few pages of a couple of them, and the resolution was born. I chose to read children's books for a couple of different reasons. First, I would like to read some of the things my kids are reading so we can talk about them. Second, I just don't like reading about murder or explicit sex -- or kinky, explicit sex that leads to murder -- or celebrities, or, actually, most of the topics current, popular books for adults seem to be about. Finally just because a book is written for young people doesn't mean it doesn't hit on some very important ideas.

Over the next couple of days, I'll be unpacking my refugee posts here. I hope I've found a home.