Archive by Author | Sherry

Newbery Award, 2006

Jan26

Newbery Medal 2006: Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins. Sequel to Perkins’ debut novel All Alone in the Universe. This one is described in various places as “poetic”, “Zen-like”, “lyrical”, and “experimental”. With those kinds of descriptors it could either be very good or very bad.

Newbery Honor Books:

Whittington by Alan Armstrong. It’s about Dick Whittington (Lord Mayor of London) and about a boy named Ben who is dyslexic. Sounds appealing.

Hitler’s Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Nonfiction. I’ve seen this book recommended here and there. If you’re interested in this subject, I’d suggest an old book, but a good one: Hansi, the Girl Who Left the Swastika by Maria Anne Hirschmann. It’s the true story of a member of the Hitler Youth who becomes disillusioned with the promises of Hitler and the Nazis, becomes a Christian and later immigrates with her family to the United States.

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. This selection is the only one of this year’s Newbery books that I can say anything about, and not because I’ve read it. I haven’t read any of these. However, I did read Shannon Hale’s Goose Girl and liked it very much.

Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson. Also nonfiction(?). Woodson tells the history of the women of her family from slavery through today and also the history of her family’s “show way” quilts. HornBook says the book has a “patchwork motif.”

Here’s a list of all the Newbery Medalists since 1922.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born January 25th

Jan25

Robert Burns, Scots poet, b. 1759.
Kate’s Book Blog on Burns’ Birthday
Semicolon: January 25, 2004
Rebecca celebrates with a whole slew of Robbie Burns posts from last year.

Somerset Maugham, b. 1874. “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are”

Virginia Woolf, b. 1882. Eldest Daughter on Virginia Woolf: “To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. This is a beautiful poetic exploration of the ephemerality of human relationships. You can have Joyce; give me Woolf for the highest example of the stream of consciousness technique. Because with her it’s not about the technique, it’s about the people.” I couldn’t say. Modern-day philistine that I am, I’ve never read Joyce or Woolf.

Edwin Newman, b. 1919. Longtime anchorman of NBC News, he also wrote the book Strictly Speaking about the use and misuse of the English language.

More Booklists

Jan25

Mental Multivitamin gives her list of top ten must read books for high school students. In the same post, she defends the inclusion of Catcher in the Rye on the list. I never read it when I was a young adult. Would I appreciate it now? Also do you notice anything interesting about MMV’s revised list in comparison to College Board list she’s revising? Hint: Melissa at MMV says she had great success in teaching these works to students “from college lecture halls and writing centers to a juvenile detention facility for young men.” (Italics mine) I’m not criticizing Melissa’s list, just wondering about the implications.

Seasonal Soundings has a picture of her proposed reading list for 2006. And she ordered personalized bookplates featuring the photo. I have a “from the library of” stamp that I plan to use on all my books–someday. Do you mark your books with your name? Do you use bookplates, handwritten name, or a stamp–or something else? Do you write in your books?

Mrs. Happy Housewife lists all the great books she got at the library’s used book sale for only $25.00. I love library book sales!

Michael Hardt at Family Home School has set up a website for his kids to post a running list of what they’re reading. And he says your kids and mine can use it, too. I think I’ll check it out soon. By the way, I found the link to Mr. Hardt’s post at The Fourth Carnival of Homeschooling hosted by The Common Room this week.

Browning’s Education

Jan24

Browning’s education in the formal sense reduces itself to a minimum. In very early boyhood he attended a species of dame-school, which, according to some of his biographers, he had apparently to leave because he was too clever to be tolerable. However this may be, he undoubtedly went afterwards to a school kept by Mr. Ready, at which again he was marked chiefly by precocity. But the boy’s education did not in truth take place at any systematic seat of education; it took place in his own home, where one of the quaintest and most learned and most absurdly indulgent of fathers poured out in an endless stream fantastic recitals from the Greek epics and mediæval chronicles. If we test the matter by the test of actual schools and universities, Browning will appear to be almost the least educated man in English literary history. But if we test it by the amount actually learned, we shall think that he was perhaps the most educated man that ever lived; that he was in fact, if anything, overeducated. In a spirited poem he has himself described how, when he was a small child, his father used to pile up chairs in the drawing-room and call them the city of Troy. Browning came out of the home crammed with all kinds of knowledge—knowledge about the Greek poets, knowledge about the Provençal Troubadours, knowledge about the Jewish Rabbis of the Middle Ages. But along with all this knowledge he carried one definite and important piece of ignorance, an ignorance of the degree to which such knowledge was exceptional. He was no spoilt and self-conscious child, taught to regard himself as clever. In the atmosphere in which he lived learning was a pleasure, and a natural pleasure, like sport or wine. He had in it the pleasure of some old scholar of the Renascence, when grammar itself was as fresh as the flowers of spring. He had no reason to suppose that every one did not join in so admirable a game. His sagacious destiny, while giving him knowledge of everything else, left him in ignorance of the ignorance of the world. From Robert Browning by GK Chesterton

Doesn’t this sound like a wonderful sort of homeschool education? Have you ever piled up chairs to recreate Troy in the dining room?

Memoirs

Jan24

Is anybody familiar with either of these “memoirs”? I hate to use the quotes, but in light of recent revelations about other so-called memoirs . . . Are these, particularly the first one, truly memoirs or fiction packaged as memoirs? They’re two of the books on the Alex Awards list for 2006. “The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) selects ten adult books that will appeal to teen readers to receive the Alex Award each year.” The blurbs are my library’s descriptions, not mine.

Julia Scheeres. Jesus Land: A Memoir
At home, the Scheeres kids must endure the usual trials of adolescence – high-school hormones, incessant bullying, and the deep-seated restlessness of social misfits everywhere – under the shadow of virulent racism neither knows how to contend with. When they start to crack (or fight back), they are packed off to Escuela Caribe. This brutal, prison-like “Christian boot camp” demands that its inhabitants repent for their sins – sins that few of them are aware of having committed. Julia and David’s determination to make it though with heart and soul intact is told here with immediacy, candor, sparkling humor, and not an ounce of malice.

Jeannette Walls. The Glass Castle: A Memoir
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Here is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.

Other books on the list are Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys and Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.

Eldest or The Last in a Long Line?

Jan24

NOTE: If you’ve not read Eldest by Christopher Paolini nor seen the movies from which it borrows freely, here there be spoilers!

An orphan boy who knows little or nothing about his parentage grows up on his uncle’s farm far from the political center of the Empire. Because the boy accidentally finds something that evil Emperor wants, the Empire sends soldiers to capture the boy. He escapes, but they destroy his uncle’s farm and kill his uncle. He is befriended by a wise mentor who teaches him to use the forces of “magic” to protect himself and to defeat his enemies. He pursues the agents of the Empire and eventually is able to rescue a young woman who has been captured by the Empire, but his teacher dies at the hand of the Emperor’s soldiers. Our young hero travels through many dangers to join the forces of the rebels against the Empire, and he is able to help them win a key battle fighting an Imperial army. However, he is wounded in the battle, and he comes to realize that he must have more training if he is to finally defeat the Evil Emperor and his henchmen. He goes to a hidden land and finds there another teacher whom he calls “Master.” His training involves swordplay, meditation, and learning the many uses of magic. Before his training is complete, he must leave to go and help the rebels who are under attack by the Emperor. Near the end of part 2 of the story, the hero finds out that his father is really the Emperor’s right-hand man, an evil traitor.

Does any of this sound vaguely familiar?

How about this? A young immature hero travels with a dwarf and an elf through a mythical land. They must find a way to defeat the Evil Lord of the land who wishes to make all living creatures his slaves. Only an alliance of men, elves, and dwarves (with a few other assorted creatures thrown in for good measure) can hope to defeat the overwhelming forces of evil.

OK, one more. Dragons hatch from eggs and upon hatching choose a human partner, a dragonrider, with whom they share a telepathic connection. The dragonrider and his or her dragon work together to keep the peace and defeat the enemies of peace. They are almost inseparable and come know each other in a way that mere friends cannot understand or emulate.

I don’t mean to be too critical, and there are many things to like about Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Trilogy, the first two books of which are Eragon and Eldest. But I must say that as I read through Eldest, in particular, I kept feeling as though I had read this story before somewhere. I like fantasy, but this trilogy is far too long and not nearly as absorbing as the stories it borrows from. As you can read in my review of Eragon, I began by being skeptical about that book, and ended up liking it very much. However, Eldest just didn’t hang onto the goodwill built up in my enjoyment of Eragon. I found myself skimming–a lot.

I did like the parts about Eragon’s cousin, Roran, and the villagers that Eragon left behind when he left to become a hero and pursue revenge against his uncle’s murderers. I also enjoyed the description of the elves’ celebration of Agaeti Blodhren which featured a sort of craft/poetry exhibition in which each person in attendance brought something he had created or written. The battle scene was well done, but hard to follow, probably because of the aforementioned skimming (my fault).

I’ve had many people come to this blog looking for a Christian perspective on Eragon. I certainly can’t claim to give The Christian Viewpoint on the books, but I do have a couple of observations. First of all, I don’t believe The Inheritance Trilogy derives from a Christian worldview. Religion is dealt with in this second book of the trilogy. The dwarves are polytheistic; they worship many gods represented by idols of stone, including a creator-god named Helzvog. Their beliefs and practices sound rather Norse in origin. Humans, according to Eragon, “lacked a single overriding doctrine, but they did share a collection of superstitions and rituals, most of which concerned warding off bad luck.” Basic pagan superstition. The elves of Alagaesia, however, the epitome of the fantasy’s civilization, do not worship anyone or anything. When Eragon asks his master what elves believe, this is the reply:

We believe the world behaves according to certain inviolable rules and that. by persistent effort, we can discover those rules and use them to predict events when circumstances repeat. . . . I cannot prove that gods do not exist. Nor can I prove that the world and everything in it was not created by an entity or entities in the distant past. But I can tell you that in the millennia we elves have studied nature, we have never witnessed an instance where the rules that govern the world have been broken. That is, we have never seen a miracle. . . . Death, sickness, poverty, tyranny and countless other miseries stalk the land. If this is the handiwork of divine beings, then they are to be rebelled against and overthrown, not given obeisance, obedience, and reverence.”

So in the world of Alagaesia, we can choose between pagan polytheistic idol worship, pagan superstition, and “enlightened” closed-system scientism. Those options are limited and short-sighted. In addition, the themes of meditating and becoming one with nature and wielding magical powers for the good of all humanity are not Christian, but rather New Age spiritualism.

If you’ve read Eldest and disagree with my opinion, you’re free to share your ideas about the book in the comments. I’m rather disappointed that with such a promising beginning in Eragon, Mr. Paolini didn’t give us a better sequel.

Easily Led

Jan23

It is no surprise that conservative Christians admire these books (Chronicles of Narnia). They teach us to accept authority; to love and follow our leaders instinctively, as the children in the Narnia books love and follow Aslan. By implication, they suggest that we should and will admire and fear and obey whatever impressive-looking and powerful male authority figures we come in contact with. They also suggest that without the help of Aslan (that is, of such powerful figures, or their representatives on earth) we are bound to fail. Alone, we are weak and ignorant and helpless. Individual initiative is limited—almost everything has already been planned out for us in advance, and we cannot know anything or achieve anything without the help of God. The Passion of CS Lewis by Alison Lurie in NY Review of Books, February 9, 2006

Why do supposedly intelligent liberals confuse two easily separable issues? “Conservative Christians” (and all other Christians that I know of) do preach that “alone we are weak and ignorant and helpless.” We believe that we are dependent upon and subject to the authority of God through Jesus Christ who is the Lord of all creation. It does not follow “by implication” that these same Christians follow all male leaders instinctively or fear and obey any impressive-looking Joe who comes along with a strong voice and a nice haircut. In fact, following Christ often impels the Christian to reject or respectfully disobey authority, although we are told in Scripture to be careful to obey lawful authorities insofar as they do not contravene the law of God. I really think that’s what makes the liberals who do have some influence and power angry and scornful. Like Peter and John, “we (Christians) must obey God rather than men.” They want us to be “poor, undereducated, and easily led,” and They keep trying to find the right buttons to push so that They can do the leading.

And just who are They? Well, Allison Lurie is a Pultizer prize winning novelist and an editor of children’s books. I’ve never read any of her novels–which probably suggests that I’m bound under the authority of male novelists. Another author who has been critical of the male and female role models in Narnia is Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials books, who says that the Chronicles of Narnia are “monumentally disparaging of girls and women.” I’m assuming he would prefer that children read his books which are monumentally disparaging of Christians and the Church. A couple of quotes are sufficient: ” That’s what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.” And “the Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.”

So do the Narnia books disparage girls and exalt all male authority? I find it difficult to make that case. Aslan is exalted; The White Witch/Jadis is defeated. Lucy leads the children to Narnia; Edmund is the traitor in need of redemption. All four of the children become kings and queens in Narnia. Throughout the Chronicles, the girls are generally the ones with the level headed common sense needed to get the children out of whatever predicament they are in. The boys are sometimes brave and sometimes foolish, just as boys are. All of the children in the books are called to follow and obey Aslan, not just any male authority that happens to come along.

And conservative Christians are smart enough to know the difference between Christ and George W. Bush.

Picture Book Preschool Book of the Week (4)

Jan22

The Toolbox by Anne and Harlow Rockwell is a basic utilitarian preschool picture book about a basic, fascinating-to-most-preschoolers subject–the tools in Father’s toolbox. The text is straightforward, telling about the toolbox itself and then its contents: hammer and nails, a saw, a drill, screws and a screwdriver, a clamp, a wrench, a plane, a ruler, and pliers. “There is sandpaper to smooth wood and plaster. There are work gloves, and there is a file to rub on rough edges of metal to make them smooth.”

Your preschooler may want to actually handle the tools themselves after reading this simply and boldly illustrated book. And that’s OK, too. With close supervision and the right tools, children can enjoy building with their hands–or just trying out the tools–as much as adults do.

A great article by Tamar Andrews on woodworking with children.
Our local Home Depot offers woodworking workshops for preschoolers and older children.
I searched a little for a source for real child-sized tools on the internet, but I didn’t find anything that looked like the sort of thing I have in mind. I know we bought some child-sized tools for one of our children somewhere many years ago, and his grandfather made him a toolbox of his own. If your child is interested in tools and building and you know where to buy tools for little hands, maybe you could leave a note for the benefit of those who are reading.

Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase a downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.