This mass market paperback edition staring me down from the circular rack at the library was too much to resist; I grabbed it and dropped it into the stroller's bottom basket, hardly breaking my stride toward the check out counters. As I've mentioned before, a lot of my library reads are chosen by virtue of being displayed between the front door and the elevators that we board in order to get up to the second floor where the children's collection is housed. And I've read a couple of Davidson's books before; her mystery series starring Goldy Schulz, caterer and chef and amateur private eye, makes up for what it lacks in editing with the recipe pages setting out how to create the meals and treats that play supporting characters to Goldy as she puzzles out the whodunnit in each story.
Look, I'm no literary snob (see the newly added tag for this post--my need to read sometimes feels more like some sort of wonky addiction than a noble pursuit of enlightenment) but Davidson's books leave me feeling sort of breathless. Not breathless-the magnifigence takes my breath away, but breathless-hamster trapped on the exercise wheel. Even though the books are not terribly short (336 pages in the mass market edition), it feels as if Goldy's adventures are being crammed down to fit in between the covers. Rather than slow down to try and digest every tidbit of information, I rely on my old friend, skimming, to speed up until something new happens.
Will I read more of Davidson's books? Sure. The real question after reading one is which recipe, if any, I'll try first. From Tough Cookie, it's a toss up between and Snowboarders' Pork Tenderloin and Marmalade Mogul Muffins. Yum.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff
I read quite a bit of children's and young adult literature because they keep those books where I hang out at the library. I have two strategies for finding my own reading material outside of the juvenile section. One is to grab whatever new arrival catches my eye as we walk in the main entrance. The other is to use the internet library catalog to decide on my book ahead of our visit then at the library challenge, enlist the help of my young associates in finding the shelf with the right letters or numbers, collect my book, and get the heck out of Dodge.
Patricia Reilly Giff writes the Kids of the Polk Street School series, which I've never been inclined to pick up (I haven't sunk to reading juvenile series books quite yet, although I do enjoy an occasional Hank the Cowdog). Pictures of Hollis Woods is a beautiful book about a girl looking for a family.
Close on the heels of The Wanderer, it almost seemed as if Hollis Woods was another verision of the same story. Reading it, I was struck by the thought that perhaps there is a universal anxiety that rises up in children around the fourth or fifth grade about their place in a family, about losing a parent or a sibling, about how they know they are loved.
After I had my first son, I realized that I have learned so much about how to love from books. I always felt loved as a child, but my parents didn't discuss relationships very much. We didn't talk about how we treated each other or how we felt about each other, we just, for the most part, did what we were supposed to do and assumed the love was or would be there. It was through reading that I discovered all of the invisible elements of loving another person. It was through reading that I experienced empathy and got my first glimpses of how to practice it on my own.
And that understanding of love is one of the reasons I feel so lucky to have been hard-wired to be a reader. To live in the world without loving someone else--resounding gong or clanging cymbal indeed.
Patricia Reilly Giff writes the Kids of the Polk Street School series, which I've never been inclined to pick up (I haven't sunk to reading juvenile series books quite yet, although I do enjoy an occasional Hank the Cowdog). Pictures of Hollis Woods is a beautiful book about a girl looking for a family.
Close on the heels of The Wanderer, it almost seemed as if Hollis Woods was another verision of the same story. Reading it, I was struck by the thought that perhaps there is a universal anxiety that rises up in children around the fourth or fifth grade about their place in a family, about losing a parent or a sibling, about how they know they are loved.
After I had my first son, I realized that I have learned so much about how to love from books. I always felt loved as a child, but my parents didn't discuss relationships very much. We didn't talk about how we treated each other or how we felt about each other, we just, for the most part, did what we were supposed to do and assumed the love was or would be there. It was through reading that I discovered all of the invisible elements of loving another person. It was through reading that I experienced empathy and got my first glimpses of how to practice it on my own.
And that understanding of love is one of the reasons I feel so lucky to have been hard-wired to be a reader. To live in the world without loving someone else--resounding gong or clanging cymbal indeed.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Wanderer by Sharon Creech
I wish Sharon Creech was my aunt. Or my next door neighbor or my piano teacher. I don't need to be her intimate friend or anything, but I would like to be invited into her house so that I could look around at her books and the pictures on her walls and the objects on her shelves and get an every-so-often glimpse of life through her eyes.
The Wanderer is a YA novel about Sophie, a young girl who is driven to go to sea with three of her uncles and two of her cousins. They are going to sail from the United States to England to visit her Bompie, who is in failing health. (Bompie is Grandpa--Creech's use of the pet-name only intensifies my longing to know her, maybe to get a look at her shoe collection after I've seen the living room.)
The book is told from two points of view, first Sophie's and then her young cousin Cody's, as they write about their grand adventure in their respective journals. At first, Cody's entries were just pages to get through to return to Sophie, but then something happens. Cody tells missing pieces of Sophie's story; a story that he himself does not completely know.
I read another of Creech's novels , Bloomability, a few years ago. As I read the parts of The Wanderer told by Cody, I thought of Bloomability and what I liked so much about it. In The Wanderer, Creech gives Cody so much empathy for the other characters--she lets the reader look at the main characters through the lens of another character--and tints the chosen lens with such love and goodwill and wonder towards humanity that it buttresses my faith in the human race.
I am going to read this lovely story to my oldest son when his current read aloud ends. I hope books like The Wanderer help to keep his heart tender as he navigates his childhood and beyond.
The Wanderer is a YA novel about Sophie, a young girl who is driven to go to sea with three of her uncles and two of her cousins. They are going to sail from the United States to England to visit her Bompie, who is in failing health. (Bompie is Grandpa--Creech's use of the pet-name only intensifies my longing to know her, maybe to get a look at her shoe collection after I've seen the living room.)
The book is told from two points of view, first Sophie's and then her young cousin Cody's, as they write about their grand adventure in their respective journals. At first, Cody's entries were just pages to get through to return to Sophie, but then something happens. Cody tells missing pieces of Sophie's story; a story that he himself does not completely know.
I read another of Creech's novels , Bloomability, a few years ago. As I read the parts of The Wanderer told by Cody, I thought of Bloomability and what I liked so much about it. In The Wanderer, Creech gives Cody so much empathy for the other characters--she lets the reader look at the main characters through the lens of another character--and tints the chosen lens with such love and goodwill and wonder towards humanity that it buttresses my faith in the human race.
I am going to read this lovely story to my oldest son when his current read aloud ends. I hope books like The Wanderer help to keep his heart tender as he navigates his childhood and beyond.
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