Archive by Author | Sherry

My Grown-up Christmas List

Dec12

I hate that song “Grown-up Christmas List.” (If you feel compelled to read a list of my least favorite Christmas songs, written last year, go here. Just don’t blame me if one of the songs gets stuck in your head on infinite repeat.) Anyway, I don’t like the grown-up Christmas list in the song because it sounds like some Miss America contestant trying to impress Bert Parks or the judges or someone in the audience: “No more lives torn apart,/That wars would never start,/And time would heal all hearts./And everyone would have a friend,/And right would always win,/And love would never end.” Wow! why not just wish for “world peace” and be done with it? This is a description of heaven, not Christmas. Nevertheless, I do have my own equally unrealistic grown-up Christmas list, and because this is therapy for me, I’m going to share it with all of you out there in blogland.

WARNING: This list may sound whiny and self-indulgent. I don’t mean to sound that way, but it’s a bad day for me, and I may. So, if you want to skip my grown-up Christmas list, you have my permission to do so. My children DO NOT have permission to skip this post. In fact, I’ll probably send them a link, not that I think they are capable of working miracles. . . Still, I think they should read what I really want for Christmas.

1. One week in which I do not have to take anyone anywhere nor pick anyone up from anywhere. A month would be even better, but I know fantasy when I write it.

2. A clean, organized house. This wish is beyond impossible, and I know it, but we’re talking wishes here. It is not possible for eleven people to live in one house together and keep it both clean and organized in the United States of America in AD 2007. Why? Too much stuff. Even poor people in the U.S. tend to have too much stuff, and we’re not poor. (Yes, I’ve tried Fly Lady. It may work for some people, but she hasn’t seen my house nor met my family.) But I don’t want to get rid of the stuff. I like my stuff, especially my books, all 10,000 or so of them, which leads me to my next item:

3. Enough bookshelves for all our books. In this desire, you might think I’m coming closer to reality, but you, too, have not seen my house. We have bookshelves on almost every available wall. We have a bookcase headboard. We have tall bookshelves, and we have short bookshelves. We have bookshelves in the closets. Yet the books keep multiplying. I think they mate in the night when we’re not looking and produce offspring. (Book Crush by Nancy Pearl meets Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson, and suddenly we have all the books I’m planning to buy for Christmas. That’s right, blame the authors. Why don’t they go on strike like the television writers and ease the strain on my poor groaning bookshelves?)

4. A working combination CD/cassette player. No, not reality either. It must keep working. We have five or six of these ugly things in various rooms in our house, and I am always told that when I want to play a cassette that I can’t because none of the cassette players work. And when I want I play a CD I have to use either my computer or the DVD player connected to the TV because none of the CD players work either. And right now the DVD player is unplugged so that we have an ourlet to plug in the Christmas lights. But I can’t throw any of the non-functional uglies away because someone uses them to listen to the radio.

5. A maximum of five working computers, one for every two people in the house. We have six or seven working computers. The reason I’m not sure about the number is that it changes from day to day. A monitor went bad the other day; we found another one and hooked it back up. Nobody has a working printer except me. I know this because everyone wants to email me their schoolwork and have me print it out for them. Some of our computers are connected to the internet; some are not. Some are supposed to be devoted to educational games for the younger children, but they always want to play the games on my computer. One of them is taking up space on a counter that I want to use to serve food. I think five computers should be enough for one family. Are you beginning to see why, books aside, my house is so cluttered?

6. A garage sale. I would like for my children to sell everything that is not nailed down, split the money with me, and not bother me with the details. Just don’t sell any of my books or my bookshelves. Don’t sell your younger siblings either, no matter how tempting it may be.

7. A menu plan for the entire year that will please all eleven people in the family, including the vegetarian, the non-beef eater, the gourmand who’s been to France, the child who lives on pizza and sugar only, the one who would live on chips if we allowed it, and the gentleman who always comes to the table late and wonders why there’s no food left for him. And all the meals would be cheap, easy to prepare, and delightfully delicious.

8. The kitchen cleaned up thoroughly after every meal without my having to remind anyone —ever. We actually have a schedule for kitchen cleaning. But all my readers have a curious disability: they can’t read their own names on the kitchen clean-up schedule posted on the refrigerator. I wouild like for them to learn to do so, and then I’d like it if they actually cleaned the kitchen every time it’s their turn.

9. Light. I want the lights in every room in my house to have a full complement of working light bulbs. And I want to turn them on whenever I want light and have them glow warmly and brightly. I like lights. Lights make me happy.

10. Since all of the things on this list are either cheap or impossible or both, I’d like a month long tour of Europe for my final Christmas gift. If you can’t get the other things, I’ll take the trip. Maybe when I get back the house will be clean, the books will be shelved, the food will be made, and the lights will be glowing to welcome me back home.

I can dream, can’t I?

Children’s Fiction of 2007: When Heaven Fell by Carolyn Marsden

Dec10

Two of Carolyn Marsden’s books for middle grade readers were published this year and nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction: Bird Springs (Semicolon mini-review here) and When Heaven Fell. I liked the latter book much better than I liked Bird Springs.

When Heaven Fell is the story of nine year old Binh who lives in post-war Vietnam and sells fruit and sodas to the schoolgirls on their way to school, a school she can’t afford because her family doesn’t always have enough money for food, much less for school uniforms and books. When the family finds out that Ba Ngoai, Binh’s grandmother, had a daughter during the war, a daughter who was sent away to America to be adopted because she was half-American, and that that grown-up daughter is coming to visit her mother, Ba Ngoai, everyone in the family is excited and expecting Auntie Di Hai to bring rich presents. Maybe she’ll even take them all to America, since all Americans are rich and since Di Hai has a house big enough for the entire extended family.

The story is told from Binh’s point of view, which makes the contrast in cultural expectations and in wealth even more stark and a bit painful. The book doesn’t go for the guilt trip, however, attempting to make Americans, and indeed Westerners in general, feel guilty for their great wealth in comparison to the rest of the world. Instead, I felt Di Hai/Sharon Hughes’ quandary as she tries to understand what it is these people, her family that she doesn’t really know or remember, expect from her and what she can give. I would pair this book with Mitali Perkins’ Rickshaw Girl to start a discussion of how to help people in poverty, what our responsibilities are as “rich” people, and what family obligations and charity involve. Also, for a discussion of cross-cultural adoption, you could read this book with Kimchi and Calamari by Rose Kent, another Cybils nominee about another adopted child, this time from Korea, who tries to find his natural mother and understand his cultural heritage.

Christmas Senses

Dec10

christmas tree2007

The Christmas Senses
By Betsy

I am hearing, I am eating,
I am seeing, I am touching,
I am smelling, all on Christmas day.
I hear… Christmas bells, I eat… Christmas cookies,
I see… the Christmas lights on the house, I touch… the decorations,
and I smell… the gingerbread men, all on Christmas day.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 10th

Dec10

George MacDonald was born December 10, 1824. He wrote At the Back of the North Wind, The Light Princess, The Princess and the Goblin, and The Princess and Curdie, all fairy tale/fantasies for children. I’ve read all four of these, and I like best The Light Princess, the story of a princess who was cursed at birth with “no gravity,” both in the literal and the figurative sense. I tried to read one of MacDonald’s romances a long time ago, but I don’t remember finishing it. C.S. Lewis was quite fond of MacDonald’s adult fantasies, Phantastes and Lilith. I think I also tried one of these long ago but didn’t understand it (which proves that I’m not C.S. Lewis’ intellectual equal, not that I ever thought I was). MacDonald also had a long and successful marriage which produced six sons and five daughters.

Some people think it is not proper for a clergyman to dance. I mean to assert my freedom from any such law. If our Lord chose to represent, in His parable of the Prodigal Son, the joy in Heaven over a repentant sinner by the figure of ‘music and dancing’, I will hearken to Him rather than to man, be they as good as they may.” For I had long thought that the way to make indifferent things bad, was for good people not to do them.”

I wonder how many Christians there are who so thoroughly believe God made them that they can laugh in God’s name; who understand that God invented laughter and gave it to His children… The Lord of gladness delights in the laughter of a merry heart.”

Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness —the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.”

How do you cultivate “Sacred Idleness”? What does that mean to you? Or is it just blather?

Geroge MacDonald also wrote a book poetic devotionals, one devotional poem for each day of the year. The poem for December reads thus:

What makes thy being a bliss shall then make mine
For I shall love as thou and love in thee;
Then shall I have whatever I desire
My every faintest wish being all divine;
Power thou wilt give me to work mightily,
Even as my Lord, leading thy low men nigher,
With dance and song to cast their best upon thy fire.

If it helps, I believe the poem is addressed to God.

Advent: December 10th

Dec10

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Are you feeling that this time is hallowed and gracious? Are your nights wholesome, free of evil witchery? I hope you are having a blessed Advent.

Advent: December 9th

Dec9

He dressed himself all in his best, and at last got out into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows said, “Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!” And Scrooge said often afterwards, that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.
* * * *
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows: and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk — that anything — could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew’s house.

—A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Scrooge went to church. I know that Catholic, and I assume Anglican, churches have a tradition of midnight Mass on Christmas, and I imagine other masses are held on Christmas Day. Most evangelical churches don’t have a tradition of holding worship services on Christmas morning. Some have some kind of Christmas Eve service. Our old Southern Baptist church had a Christmas Eve Candlelight Lord’s Supper service at about 6:00 P.M. on Christmas Eve so that people could still get home in time for family festivities. Another Southern Baptist church we attended a long time ago had a silent Christmas Eve service. Signs at the doors enjoined silence upon entering the church and asked that worshippers maintain that silence until they went out the doors. Each person was given a candle, and the church was lit with candles. There was music, and the Word was read from the pulpit, but the worshippers were silent. It was quite refreshing.

What does your church do for Christmas worship —either on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day? How will your family incorporate worship inot your Christmas celebration?

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 9th

Dec9

Milton was born December 9th in London. He graduated from Cambridge in 1632, and a few years later he went on a tour of the Continent. When he returned to England, he became a Puritan and a follower of Oliver Cromwell. In 1652 he became completely blind, and his first wife died. He later remarried. He wrote much of his poetry after he became blind.

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. L’Allegro It seems to me that there a quite a number of people who cannot hear the music these days. He who has ears to hear, let him hear—and dance.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Samson Agonistes There is good reason to be silent and let some people talk themselves and their ideas into oblivion. Who has the time to argue with the wind, and why?

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. – Paradise Lost
Familiar, but still true. I hear people say all the time–in one way or another–I will not submit. I will do what I want to do. I WILL–no matter where it leads.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. And this is true liberty, not license. If we do these things, are free to do these things, according to conscience, we will surely come to the Truth , and the Truth shall make us free.

Who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe. Paradise Lost Which is why the job in Iraq is only half-finished. We must leave Iraq better than we found it, and we must demonstrate democracy amd the peace of God before we leave.

Join voices, all ye living souls: ye birds, That singing up to heaven-gate ascend, Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise. Paradise Lost Great idea.

Children’s Fiction of 2007: Leap of Faith by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Dec9

I discovered this gem of a book on the New Books shelf at the library and decided to take a chance. Then, lo and behold, it got nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction, an award for which I just happen to be on the nominating committee. I don’t know if Leap of Faith will make the finalist list for the Cybil Award or not, but it is one of the best books for children about faith and Christianity and religion that I’ve read —ever.

You can probably name several children’s and young adult books that mention God and faith and Christianity. And, of course, if you’re a Christian kid there are several preaching-to-the-choir choices available at the Christian bookstore, fiction that attempts to convert or to encourage the already converted. But how many children’s books can you name that are actually about the process of coming to faith, without being preachy or proselytizing? There’s The Bronze Bow, Newbery Award winning historical fiction by Elizabeth Speare from fifty years ago. What else?

Leap of Faith is about Abigail, a sixth grade girl from a non-religious family who’s forced to attend a Catholic school. She’s “forced” because she’s been expeled from the local public school —for attacking a boy with a knife in the school cafeteria. It doesn’t help matters that the boy Abigail knifed was the son of the public school’s principal. Nor does Abigail’s anger dissipate easily when her parents refuse to discuss the reason that she used a knife and act as if they don’t really believe that she was defending herself. (The book is a bit like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, although not quite as dark or as mature in theme.)

As the story progresses, Abigail decides to get her parents’ attention by doing something completely outrageous, becoming a Catholic. She doesn’t really believe any of that God stuff, but she’s not sure why her lack of faith should be an obstacle to her saying the words and doing what’s necessary to shock her parents into seeing her and listening to what she says. Abigail’s just tired of being invisible in her home.

She also becomes involved in drama class at her new school, and despite her intentions to remain invisible at school, she makes friends, especially one friend Chris, who’s really Catholic and good at drama and just easy to be around. As Abigail grows and learns to deal with her anger, she unexpected discovers that she has a gift for acting. And she discovers some other unexpected things about herself, too.

Again, this is a great book about a hard subject to get right. God, especially Christianity and God, is almost a taboo subject in children’s literature. It’s OK to mention prayer or going to church or questions about God and the Bible. But to write an entire book about a girl who pretends to become a Christian and then surprises herself by actually believing . . . well, that’s ground-breaking, as far as I’m concerned. And I commend Ms. Bradley for her guts and her excellent writing.

By the way, I’m not Catholic, but I am Christian. I think non-Catholics and non-Christians and Catholics and anyone with an open mind would enjoy reading Leap of Faith.

Other bloggers:

Miss Erin: “One of my favorite things about Cybils is the opportunity to read a book that I probably wouldn’t have picked up otherwise; particularly when I end up really liking it. Leap of Faith was one of those, and I’m happy I had the chance to discover it.”

Young Adult Fiction of 2007: Cracker: The Best Dog in Vietnam by Cynthia Kadohata

Dec8

Cynthia Kadohata is the author of the Newbery Award winning book, Kira-Kira as well as last year’s Cybil Finalist for Middle Grade Fiction, Weedflower. They’re both great books, and this new book, Cracker is just as good. But unlike Kira-Kira, a book about a Japanese American girl named Katie remembering her childhood, and Weedflower, the story of a young middle school age girl who is sent with her family to a Japanese interment camp during WW II, Cracker is not about being Japanese American, and it’s not about a young teenage or pre-teen girl.

It’s a war story about a seventeen year old young man named Rick Hanski and his experiences as a dog handler in Vietnam toward the end of the American involvement in Vietnam’s civil war. Cracker is Rick’s dog, a German shepherd, and part of the story is told from the point of view of the dog. This switch back and forth from Rick’s point of view to Cracker’s doesn’t always work. Sometimes the change from one to the other is even done in mid-paragraph with no warning, but the story’s so good that I was willing to ignore the difficulties in role changing that I had to jump through as a reader. Ms. Kadohata doesn’t anthropomorphize Cracker, the dog, too much, but Cracker’s thoughts are a little bit sophisticated for a German shepherd.

Yeah, this book is for dog lovers, but it’s also for guys, or girls, who are thinking about joining the military. Or it might be just the book for sending over to a soldier friend in Iraq or Afghanistan. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone younger than, say, twelve years old, however. The language is relatively clean, and there are no “mature situations” as they say in the movie disclaimers, but the violence of a real shooting war is described in all of its, well, violence.

Rick, the protagonist, is a great character. He’s been told that he’s a “generalist” not a “specialist”, that her doesn’t really “apply himself”, and that he doesn’t have any particular gifts or talents. Nevertheless, Rick decides that he’s going to “whip the world.” He doesn’t know how or where or when, but as he kind of stumbles into the army, then into dog handling, then over to Vietnam, Rick grows into a man of integrity and purpose. I want to give this book to Computer Guru Son, age 22, but I know he wouldn’t read it with the picture of the dog on the front and the subtitle “the best dog in Vietnam.” That subtitle makes the book sound and look way too juvenile, and I’m afraid it’s going to be a hard sell to those young adults that I think would really enjoy it the most.

Cracker: The Best Dog in Vietnam by Cynthia Kadohata is nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction.