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The Identity Man by Andrew Klavan

Jan18

I went back and forth about reviewing this one. It really has more sexual content and general nastiness than I’m usually comfortable with reading or recommending. The entire world of this novel is corrupt and festering with only a few islands of goodness or even normality, and those are under siege. This story gives “mean streets” a whole new level of meaning. On the other hand, Mr. Klavan has written a book that examines assumptions about redemption and getting a “new start” while at the same time entertaining and intriguing readers who just want to read to see what will happen next and find a solution to the mystery/suspense plotlines.

John Shannon is a petty thief who’s gotten in way over his head. He’s being accused of a heinous murder he didn’t commit, and he already has two strikes (convictions) against him; he’s headed for three strikes and you’re out for life in prison. Then, an anonymous phone caller throws him a lifeline: he can get a new identity. Are there strings attached? Can Shannon really become a new person? Is the mantra that his Identity Man, the man who provides the cosmetic surgery and the papers to give Shannon a second chance, repeats true? “Identity is like stain. You are not changed. You cannot change.”

It’s a basic question. Can a person really change? Can the stains of our sins and mistakes and even crimes really be washed away by positive thinking or a move to a new city or even by the blood of the Lamb? Some people say, “No way.” Nothing ever changes. Everything remains the same. You are what you are till the day that you die. The Identity Man demonstrates an avenue toward change, but it’s the same one our culture has been depending on for the past seventy years of Hollywood happy endings: a man can change by finding and claiming the love of a good woman. In fact, the idea that this particular change agent idea comes from Hollywood is implicit in the book. Shannon finds himself near the beginning of the story watching day after day of old black and white movies in which he finds a meta-narrative that he wishes he were able to emulate. The woman-saves-man solution, however, begs the question: how does the woman become a good woman? Are women innately good? And, if so, do those good women really have the power to drag the men into the realm of goodness and light?

The love of a good woman can’t ultimately save a man anymore than a heroic man can protect his woman from all harm, although both of those scenarios are played out in The Identity Man. Still, those myths have some powerful truth contained within them. True, selfless love can enable the beloved to turn toward change. And heroes, by the grace of God, do protect and defend those they love, even at the cost of their own lives. Nevertheless, real, lasting change in the life of a poor and needy sinner comes only by means of the miraculous. Change happens when God steps in.

We’re all desperate for change, for a new identity. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, all things are become new.”

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Jan17

Ship Breaker is on the shortlist for the Cybils YA Fantasy/Science Fiction Award.

Ship Breaker was a finalist for 2010 National Book Award in the category of Young People’s Literature. (The winner was Mockingbird by Katherine Erskine.)

Ship Breaker won the 2011 Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

And, having just finished reading this award-winning piece of dystopian fiction, I would say it deserves the nominations and awards and accolades it’s recieved. I would also say that the PC setting and themes in the book didn’t hurt its chances in the running for awards. The world in Ship Breaker is a world destroyed and reconfigured by climate change and the greed of oil hungry corporations and industries. By the time the story opens, oil is an extremely scarce commodity, and the world’s transportation systems run on other forms of energy, for the most part. Our hero, Nailer, is one of the lowest of the low in the New World Order, a scavenger who works the light crew on wrecked oil tankers and other useless hulks washed up on the beach where Nailer lives. The best Nailer can hope for is a place on another crew when he outgrows his ability to crawl into the small spaces where copper wiring and other “scavenge” can be found on the wrecked ships. Nailer’s mother is dead, and his father is mean, violent and drug-addicted.

Ship Breaker becomes a story about loyalty and heredity and the limits of trust when Nailer finds a “lucky strike,” something that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. Will he take advantage of his luck and run with it, or will he choose to save the life of a worthless and dangerous captive at the risk of his own? This story was exciting and spell-binding. It will appeal to Hunger Games fans and other readers of dystopian science fiction and technofiction.

I had only one problem with the book, not a problem that made me consider quitting the book, but a problem, nevertheless. Why does Nailer make the choices he makes? Nailer is a classic hero. He chooses right, no matter that he stands to gain riches and save his own life by making other decisions than the ones he makes. Why? He’s loyal to his friend, Pima, and her mother, Sadna, because they have taken care of him in the past, given him a place to stay, food, and a job. Tit for tat. Pima is Nailer’s crew leader, and Nailer has sworn a blood oath to “have her back”. Then, other people enter the equation, and although Nailer has no rational reason, and no real sense of morality, to give his loyalty to anyone else, he does. Why? Nailer himself doesn’t know, and the reader is never given any good insight into Nailer’s core allegiance either. He’s realistic about the cruelty of the world he lives, somewhat superstitious, and highly intelligent inspite of his lack of education and opportunity. So why does he turn quixotic without Quixote’s code of knightly honor to sustain him?

“The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family. Everything else was just so much smoke and lies.”

If that’s so, then why does Nailer sacrifice himself for someone who has done nothing for him and very likely never will?

Still, it’s a good book, and you may find answers to my questions that I didn’t see. Warning: Lots of violence, very little or no language or sexual situations.

Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

Jan12

So, on Monday Moon Over Manifest was something of a surprise winner of the Newbery Medal for “the most distinguished American children’s book published the previous year” (2010). And I just happened to have a copy of the winning book in my library basket, a leftover from the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction panel that I hadn’t been able to find before the deadline in late December for our shortlist to be finalized. I read the book yesterday.

I can now say that if the publisher (Delacorte) had seen fit to send a review copy, I might very well have pushed to put Moon Over Manifest on our shortlist. Of course, that’s easy to say now, hindsight and all. But I haven’t been too excited about or fond of some of the recent Newbery Award books. And I said so. Last year’s book, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead was great, but of course, I’m a Madeleine L’Engle fan, so I would like anything that paid tribute to A Wrinkle in Time. I tried to read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book three times year before last and never got past the first few chapters. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! seemed sort of, dare I say it, boring, and The Higher Power of Lucky was just O.K.

Moon Over Manifest is the story of a girl, twelve year old Abilene Tucker, whose father, Gideon, is a hobo. Abilene and her dad have been riding the rails together for as long as she can remember, but now (summer, 1936) Gideon has sent Abilene to live with an old friend of his in Manifest, Kansas while Gideon takes a job on the railroad back in Iowa. Abilene is not happy about being separated from her loving and beloved father, and she is determined that Gideon will come get her by the end of the summer. In the meantime, Abilene wants to find some information about the time Gideon spent in Manifest during World War I, before Abilene was born. What she gets is a nun, Sister Redempta, who teaches at the Sacred Heart of the Holy Redeemer Elementary School and gives her a summer assignment on the last day of school. Abilene also meets:
Shady Howard, the bootlegger who is also the interim pastor of the First Baptist Church
Miss Sadie, fortune teller, spirit medium, conjurer, and story-teller extraordinaire,
Hattie Mae Harper Macke, newspaper columnist and amateur historian of Manifest,
and two new friends, Lettie and Ruthanne, who join Abilene in searching for The Rattler, a spy who may or may not be selling secrets from Manifest to the enemy.

The story alternates between 1936 and Abilene and her friends and 1917-18 when the Manifest townspeople of 1936 were just growing up and when Abilene’s father should have been making his mark on Manifest’s history. Will Abilene find mention of her father in any of the stories Miss Sadie tells? How does Miss Sadie know so much about all of the secrets and events that make up the story of Manifest, Kansas? Does Shady have stories to tell about Abilene’s father? Who is or was The Rattler, and is he still in Manifest, spying on people and keeping secrets? Will Gideon come back to get Abilene, or has he deserted her for good?

Let’s start with the cover. Abilene is walking on the railroad track, thinking about her father and about the stories Miss Sadie tells. Do kids walk on the railroad tracks anymore? I lived about four blocks from the railroad tracks when I was growing up, and I certainly did. I walked along the tracks and looked for lost coins and thought about stuff. I love the cover of this book. So nostalgic.

Then there’s the story. Abilene is an engaging character, independent, feisty, and determined. But she’s also respectful and grateful for the people in Manifest who help her and feed her and take care of her. I like respectful and thankful, since it seems to be in short supply sometimes in book characters and in real kids. Abilene’s story feels real and has a flavor of the summertime adventures of the Jem and Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. Abilene and her two buddies roam all over Manifest all summer long, and they make up stories and hunt for The Rattler with impunity and without much adult interference. The adults are available, but not over-involved. I think my kids could use some of that kind of independence and free-range experience.

As Abilene grows up over the course of the summer, she also learns more about her father and about his history, his character, and his flaws. Twelve is about the right time for a daughter to begin to see her father as a real person with a past and with hurts that need to be healed. In Moon Over Manifest, Gideon is a good father who “deserts” his daughter for good reasons, unlike the mother in another lauded book of 2010, One Crazy Summer. In facter the two books could be compared in several ways—feisty young heroine, absent parent, a summer of growth and discovery, people who are not who they seem to be–and I think Moon Over Manifest would come out the winner in a head-to-head competition between the two books.

So, Moon Over Manifest is a fine novel; it will probably appeal most to mature readers with good to excellent reading skills. The chronological jumps are well marked and easy to follow, but some of the psychological insights into family history and relationships are going to go over the head of young readers no matter how well they can follow the plot. Still, Ms. Vanderpool’s book is a good addition to the historical fiction of the Great Depression and a worthy Newbery Medalist.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith

Jan10

To read and enjoy one of Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street novels, one must be in a certain frame of mind. It’s not exactly the same mind set that’s required for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books by the same author. Those books are a little more linear and plot driven, although like the 44 Scotland Street novels, the plot in all of McCall Smith’s books does tend to meander a bit. The appropriate mood isn’t a Wodehousian mood either, even though McCall Smith shares some of P.G. Wodehouse’s sense of humor and appreciation for the quirks of human behavior.

McCall Smith’s books are all about the characters —and the homespun philosophical rabbit trails that the characters’ predicaments inspire in the author and in the reader. The inhabitants of 44 Scotland Street (both the novels and the setting) include:

Bertie is a precocious and endearing six year old with an overbearing mother, his own psychiatrist, a wimpy but loving father, and a desire to join the cub scouts in spite of his mother’s disapproval.

Bertie’s schoolmates, Tofu and Olive, add further confusion to his life as Tofu calls Bertie’s mom names while Olive insists on joining the cub scouts along with the boys.

Irene, Bertie’s mother, finds her fulfillment in maternal smothering of her offspring and in her own weekly visit to the psychiatrist.

Matthew, newly married to Elspeth Harmony. Their honeymoon in Australia is much more adventurous, and dangerous, than either of them could have imagined.

Angus Lordie and his dog, Cyril, both thought to be confirmed bachelors until the six puppies show up on the doorstep, soon find themselves contemplating marriage.

Bruce Anderson, “erstwhile surveyor and persistent narcissist,” undergoes a personal reformation when he realizes that moisturizer may not be enough to stave the ravages of age forever.

And Domenica MacDonald tries to catch a thief, but finds herself inadvertently becoming the very thing she abhors.

There are lots of other “characters” —in every sense of the word: Big Lou and her Jacobite boyfriend; Nick the photographer; Lard O’Connor, owner of a very special painting; Uncle Jack, president of the Cat Society of Singapore; and many more. As the reader meets each one, it is advisable to take them on their own terms, smile gently, and allow each person in the saga his or her own foibles and curious eccentricities. That’s the attitude for 44 Scotland Street: playful, amused tolerance and appreciation for the almost unbearable lightness of life.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones is the fifth book in this particular series, and although it’s not necessary at all to read the books in order or to have read the first four before reading this one, anyone who enjoys The Unbearable Lightness of Scones will want to pick up the others at some point–no hurry, when you’re in the mood.

The Narnia Code by Michael Ward

Jan9

Subtitle: C.S. Lewis and the Secret of the Seven Heavens.
Clive Staples Lewis was an awesomely talented, gifted, subtle, and boisterous genius!

Douglas Gresham on Lewis’s genius:

“He was a complete genius. He also was a very fast reader, but he had honed the talent and perfected the strange memory that resulted in never forgetting anything he had read. Now he could, he could ask you to pick any book off of his shelves, and you would pick a page and read him a line and he would quote the rest of the page; in fact, quote the rest of the book until you told him to stop. He had this enormous capacity to remember everything he’d ever read.”

In The Narnia Code by Michael Ward, Dr. Ward, who is also a minister in the Church of England, demonstrates Lewis’s genius by showing how all seven of the Narnia chronicles are linked together by a single unifying motif or plan. Ward’s thesis is that each of the seven Chronicles of Narnia takes as its central underlying imagery and atmosphere one of the seven “planets” of the medieval, classical astrological world. These “planets” are not the eight or nine that we moderns know and memorize but rather the medievals believed that the seven heavenly bodies, each with its own influences and associated imagery, were the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each of these planets is featured in a particular Narnia book in a sort of “code” of symbols and images that Lewis never spelled out for anyone but about which he left clues both in the Chronicles of Narnia themselves and in his other writings.

I found Dr. Ward’s reasoning compelling and fascinating. The Narnia Code is a popular abridgement of a longer, more scholarly dissertation on these ideas, a book called Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis. Despite the somewhat misleading title, The Narnia Code is no DaVinci Code knock-off, associating C.S. Lewis and his Narnia books with some hokey new age interpretation and bad theology. Instead, I found in The Narnia Code a new appreciation for C.S. Lewis’s genius and for his heartfelt desire to communicate the truth of the gospel in a way that would enter deep into the imaginations and souls of both children and adults. No, C.S. Lewis didn’t believe in astrology, the telling of fortunes and of the future by means of the stars. However, Lewis did believe that the ancient mythologies and symbols and worldviews contained God’s truth and had ways of speaking to us that would break through and shake up our modern paradigms.

Psalm 19
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

In Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis said of Psalm 19, it is “the greatest psalm in the psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.” In the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis apparently left traces of his love for God’s handiwork in the stars and planets and of his delight in the medieval cosmology and the mythology associated with the heavenly bodies. My next reading of The Chronicles of Narnia will be richer because of the ideas and explanations that I read about in The Narnia Code. If you are a Narnia lover, I highly recommend either Planet Narnia or The Narnia Code as an introduction to the use of cosmological symbology in the Narnia books.

Poem # 35: Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge (1816)

Jan7

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.”~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Last year I did a poem survey and began posting the top 100 poems from the survey in chronological order. Then life and laziness and Cybils and Christmas intervened, and I only posted the oldest 34 of the 100 projected poems. But I am determined to use Poetry Friday as an excuse to write about the other 66 poems on list. So, today I’m back with Coleridge.

Ice Cavephoto © 2010 Derek Gavey | more info (via: Wylio)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Coleridge was addicted to opium, and he said that this poem came to him in a an opium-induced dream. It’s essentially meaningless, as far as I can tell, even though I’ve read all sorts of interpretations that try to impose meaning on the words. Brown Bear Daughter likes to listen to lots of contemporary songs that remind me of this poem. When I ask her what they mean, she is silent and confounded, but she says the song in question is “catchy.” Kubla Khan is “catchy,” both in imagery and in words. I have pictures in my mind of Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome and and of the caves of ice and of the damsel with the dulcimer and of Coleridge the mad Poet. And I have memorized portions of this poem without trying, just because the sound is so memorable.

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Murder Your Darlings by J.J. Murphy

Jan4

Well, Dorothy Parker and her coterie at the Algonquin Round Table are the kind of people who are fun to read about, but I wouldn’t want to spend much time with them in person.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
And I am Marie of Roumania. ~Dorothy Parker

In this first in a new series of famous-people-solve-mysteries, Dorothy Parker and close friend Robert Benchley find themselves at the center of a murder investigation since the corpse was found under the famous Algonquin Round Table. Other “bright young things”–Alexander Woolcott, Robert Sherwood, Frank Adams, Heywood Broun–make their appearances, strut and fret their hour upon the stage. The writers and hangers-on at the Algonquin are much more concerned with appearances and wit than with whodunnit, and the murder mystery plot serves mostly as vehicle for the famous and fabulous celebrities to display their sparkling repartee and tell their latest jokes.

I was most interested in finding out how much of the story was based on fact. It turns out that a lot of the talk is true or true to life but not much of the action really happened. Dorothy Parker and the others certainly existed and lunched together at the Algonquin. And they were known for their literary expertise and their clever conversation. And William “Billy” Faulkner, who shows up visiting New York City from down South just in time to become the prime suspect in the murder, did actually spend some time in NYC in the early 20’s, but probably didn’t meet the Algonquin set at that time. Much of the dialogue in the book is based on quotations or purported quotations from Mrs. Parker and her friends. And, the group known as the Algonquin Round Table did drink copious amounts of alcohol, despite the difficulties associated with Prohibition.

However, no murder, and some of the timeline of Dorothy Parker’s life is moved around to accommodate the necessities of fiction. As the author J.J. Murphy says, “The members of the Algonquin Round Table didn’t usually let the facts get in the way of a good story.” I doubt they’d object to Ms. Murphy’s portrayal of their fictional selves in this romp.

“Everything I’ve ever said will be credited to Dorothy Parker.”
George S. Kaufman

I must say that by the end of the book I was heartily tired of all the sophisticates and self-conscious critics in the story who were oh-so-superior and oh-so-drunk and oh-so-witty at one another’s expense that it was hard to feel much sympathy for any of them. Faulkner comes across as a droopy, alcoholic genius (which he may have been), and Mrs. Parker is a lush with a crush on her friend Benchley, who unfortunately has a wife and children in the suburbs but spends most of his time gallivanting with Dorothy and her circle. Even Dorothy Parker herself became somewhat contemptuous of her younger self and of the so-called Vicious Circle, saying:

These were no giants. Think who was writing in those days–Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them…. There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn’t have to be any truth…

So, if you’re a fan of the times or of Ms. Parker herself, Murder Your Darlings is a decent enough tribute. The plot is a little creaky and so are the jokes, but that’s the material Murphy had to work with. I enjoyed it for the most part right up until the denouement, which turned out to be rather nasty, and as I said, I was weary of empty wit by then.

Murder Your Darlings should be available in bookstores and online starting today, January 4, 2011.

Semicolon’s 12 Books to Look Forward To in 2011

Jan3

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs. Oxford University Press, US, June, 2011. Mr. Jacobs is a professor of English at Wheaton College. I’ve heard him speak on Mars Hill Audio, and he’s an expert on C.S. Lewis, among other English/theology/literary topics. I expect to enjoy this book on the joys of my favorite pastime.

The Opposite of Art by Athol Dickson. Spring or fall, 2011. “A poor woman in a shabby Los Angeles apartment receives an original oil painting by one of modern art’s great masters, easily worth half a million dollars. Although the artist has been dead for a quarter century, the painting appears to have been recently completed. When the world’s foremost authority on the artist’s work pronounces it authentic, three lives are destined to collide: the sketch artist and roustabout at a traveling Mexican circus who longs to paint the face of God, the daughter the sketch artist does not know he has, and the man who plans to kill them both.”

The Coffeehouse Chronicles by Josh McDowell and Dave Sterrett. January, 2011. This title is actually a series of novelettes (?) addressing Christian apologetics for college students. I already read the first in the series, Is the Bible True, Really?, in a very poorly formatted PDF on my new Kindle, and I still thought it was great, despite the lack of capital letters and the funky page breaks and paragraphing. The other two books in the series are: Did the Resurrection Happen, Really? and Who Is Jesus, Really? I’m looking forward to reading the entire set in a properly formatted book.

The Chasm by Randy Alcorn. February, 2011. “Along his journey, the traveler meets two other characters, a crusty old mentor and a very appealing figure who offers advice and leadership (but proves to be a deceiving shape shifter).”

Strings Attached by Judy Blundell. Scholastic, March 1, 2011. “From National Book Award winner Judy Blundell, the tale of a sixteen-year-old girl caught in a mix of love, mystery, Broadway glamour, and Mob retribution in 1950 New York.”

Ashtown by N.D. Wilson. First book in a new series, Ashtown Burials. Random House, August 2011.

Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter. Sequel to Heist Society. June 21, 2011.

Gospel Wakefulness by Jared Wilson Crossway, October 2011. We may know the gospel. We may believe it—even proclaim it. But we also may assume the gospel and become lethargic. In this book Jared Wilson seeks to answer the central question, how do we experience and present the gospel in a fresh, non-routine way in order to prevent ourselves and others from becoming numb? His answer may be surprising: “by routinely presenting the unchanging gospel in a way that does justice to its earth-shaking announcement.” We don’t excite and awaken people to the glorious truths of the gospel by spicing up our worship services or through cutting-edge, dramatic rhetoric, but by passionately and faithfully proclaiming the same truths we have already been given in Scripture.

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker. July 19, 2011. Lacey Anne Byer is a perennial good girl and lifelong member of the House of Enlightenment, the Evangelical church in her small town. With her driver’s license in hand and the chance to try out for a lead role in Hell House, her church’s annual haunted house of sin, Lacey’s junior year is looking promising. But when a cute new stranger comes to town, something begins to stir inside her. Ty Davis doesn’t know the sweet, shy Lacey Anne Byer everyone else does. With Ty, Lacey could reinvent herself. As her feelings for Ty make Lacey test her boundaries, events surrounding Hell House make her question her religion.

Doc by Mary Doria Russell, Random House (chronicles of the lives of Doc Holliday and his girlfriend Kate in Dodge City, Kansas, during one memorable summer), May 2011. Ms. Russell’s The Sparrow was one of the very best books I read in 2009, so I’m willing to try out anything she writes, even a novel with a western setting.

The Attenbury Emeralds By Jill Paton Walsh. Minotaur, January 2011. New Dorothy Sayers-inspired mystery, which revisits Lord Peter Wimsey’s first case; set in 1951. I’ve read at least one of Jill Paton Walsh’s Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, the first called Thrones, Dominations, and I thought she did a good job of following in the footsteps of a master mystery writer, Dorothy Sayers.

Paradise Valley by Dale Cramer, Bethany House, January 2011. In 1921, a new Ohio law forces the Amish to attend public schools. I’ve read several other novels by Mr. Cramer, and I think he’s quite a good writer.
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Many Happy Returns . . . January 3rd

Jan3

JRR Tolkien, b.1892.

Semicolon: Lost in Middle Earth.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Tolkien! and Happy Birthday, Professor Tolkien!

Thoughts on The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: A Literary Friendship and Rivalry by Ethan Gilsdorf. “I had vowed to take Dead Man’s Walk. To sneak into Gothic-trimmed courtyards. To wander beside the shadow of J. R. R. Tolkien, the father of modern fantasy, and listen for remnants of his voice.”

The Lord of the Rings and its prequel, The Hobbit, are probably tied with Les Miserables for my favorite books of all time. I owe a great debt to the hard work and imagination of Professor Tolkien, and today, his birthday, is as good a time as any to express my gratitude for the Lord’s gifting in him.

The Many Faces of Homeschooling in Cybils Middle Grade Fiction

Jan3

The Ignorant Abusive Religious Zealot Homeschoolers: Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth by Sandra Dutton. The “Christian” mother in the story threatens to homeschool Mary Mae if Mary doesn’t forget about fossils and quit asking so many questions about the Bible. Then Mama slaps Mary Mae for being sassy. That was the last straw for me. Homeschooling is not a threat or a penalty, folks.

The Negligent Irresponsible Homeschoolers: I, Emma Freke by Elizabeth Atkinson. Semicolon review here. Donatella decides that Emma isn’t fitting at school, and she needs help in the bead shop. So mom gives her an old math book and puts Emma behind the counter to mind the shop. Not my favorite image of homeschooling and not fair.

The Overprotective Smothering Homeschoolers: How To Survive Middle School by Donna Gephart.
A secondary character in the book is David’s new friend, Sophie, whose mom has serious smother mother issues. Sophie has been homeschooled before the beginning of the story, and now she’s “escaped.” Her mother just needs to find something to occupy her time other than Sophie’s life and education.

The Happy Nomad Homeschoolers: Travels With Gannon and Wyatt by Patti Wheeler and Keith Hemstreet.

“A home, most of us think, is where we have our stuff–our bed and clothes and books and games–but I don’t really agree. My home is wherever I happen to go to bed that night, be it a hotel in Hong Kong or a sailboat off the coast of Fiji.
My brother and I have been home schooled most of our lives. Lucky for us, my mother is an amazing teacher. So is my dad, for that matter.”

The Simple Life Homeschoolers: Nuts by Kacy Cook.

“I wasn’t always homeschooled. When I was in first grade, we lived in a big city and I went to a big school. But Mom and Dad wanted to ‘simplify’ our lives, so we moved to this small town, Meadowlake, Ohio. Mom began working from home and learned about homeschooling. I haven’t gone to regular school since. My brothers have never been.
There is a lot I like about being homeschooled–especially that we get to travel and I can spend more time playing the piano, reading, or poking around on the computer–but at that moment I loved being homeschooled. There wouldn’t be any way to raise a baby squirrel if I went to regular school all day.”

Of course, I prefer the impression that the last title on the list gives of homeschooling. The adventure scenario isn’t too bad either, although most of us don’t get to go to Africa on safari.

I must say that the other three are stereotypes that I really don’t see too often, if at all. I’ve never met a homeschool mom as ignorant as Mary Mae’s mother in Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth. I don’t know any homeschooled families who use their kids as free child laborers and throw them outdated textbooks as a pretense of educating them the way Emma Freke’s mother does. And if some of the homeschool parents I know are a little over-protective by my standards, so are many of the moms and dads who have their children in public and private schools. I’m sort of a free-range kids advocate myself with a lot of spiritual (Christian) training thrown into the mix.

Have you noticed homeschooling becoming more mainstream in children’s and YA fiction? If so, is it being depicted faithfully or stereotypically? I did notice that the only Christian (so-called) homeschooler in this bunch was Mary Mae’s mom, and of course she’s the one who slaps her daughter for being sassy. Whereas most of the homeschoolers I know are approaching education from a Christian perspective, no slapping involved, and only a healthy minority are non-religious.