Orion Kwirk is sure he was adopted. Or maybe he’s a space alien that got grafted into the Kwirk family. His mother studies the stars and worries about germs and accidents why too much. Rion’s father makes weird-flavored jellybeans for a living and explains scientific concepts for way too long. One sister is a drama queen, and the other is a word collector and academic star. But Rion’s somewhat estranged grandfather is the quirkiest of all the Kwirks.

This story is a little too snarky for my tastes. Rion needs an attitude adjustment from the point of view of a sixty year old grandmother (me). But he does end up growing and learning and maybe even changing his attitude over the course of the book. And Papa Kwirk, the sort of hero of the story, also becomes more understandable and sympathetic by the novel’s end. So there’s that.

The characters in the story were believable (except for the name which is just a little too apropos), and at the same time quirky. The situation, Papa Kwirk’s death and subsequent parting wishes and post-death instructions, edges over into unbelievable at times, but it’s funny and enlightening. The moral of the story is “don’t judge a book by its cover”, or “there’s often more to a person or relationship than meets the eye.” Papa Quirk failed Rion’s dad when that dad was a boy, but maybe there’s more to the story than even Rion’s dad knows. This book could make readers look at family members and others in a new way, with more compassion and understanding, reserving judgment and giving mercy and forgiveness.

The book does have some mild profanity, and the treatment of religion is respectful, but syncretic—the all roads lead to God in the end sort of thing. Nevertheless, Mr. Anderson’s story about a father and his son and the son’s eccentric grandfather touched a nerve as I was reading, partly because I recently experienced the death of a family member myself. I would recommend it as a funny story and for the development of empathy and understanding.

I really enjoyed Roseanne Parry’s middle grade novel, Heart of a Shepherd. I said at the time that Heart of a Shepherd was very Catholic, and so is this historical fiction story set in 1863 about Irish immigrants, Danny and Kathleen O’Carolan. Kathleen is the older sister, fiercely protective of her younger brother, Danny. Danny is something of a scamp and prone to trouble, as he proves when just off the ship from Ireland, he is almost inveigled into joining the Union Army as a drummer boy.

The book is a coming of age novel about immigrants and identity and perseverance and trust and holding onto one’s faith and respect for different groups of people. That’s a lot of thematic elements to pack into one story, but Ms. Parry writes well. Danny’s and Kathleen’s adventures in the New World of New York City are embedded in a realistic and vivid picture of the Civil War times, and yet the two protagonists are easy to identify with in today’s world of immigrants and identity politics and questions of whom or what to trust or hold on to.

I look forward to reading Roseanne Parry’s other middle grade novel published this year, A Wolf Called Wander, and I will look for other novels by the same author. Historical fiction isn’t always as popular these days as it used to be, but this novel might a good one to try out if you or your middle grade reader is inclined in that direction or is studying immigration or the Civil War era.

The Montgolfier brothers, Etienne and Joseph, were eighteenth century French paper manufacturers who became known for their invention and flight of the first piloted hot air balloon.

On 19 September 1783, the Aérostat Réveillon was flown with the first living beings in a basket attached to the balloon: a sheep called Montauciel (“Climb-to-the-sky”), a duck and a rooster. The sheep was believed to have a reasonable approximation of human physiology. The duck was expected to be unharmed by being lifted and was included as a control for effects created by the aircraft rather than the altitude. The rooster was included as a further control as it was a bird that did not fly at high altitudes. The demonstration was performed at the royal palace in Versailles, before King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette and a crowd. The flight lasted approximately eight minutes, covered two miles (3 km), and obtained an altitude of about 1,500 feet (460 m). The craft landed safely after flying.

Sky Chasers is a fictional account of this wonderful accomplishment of the Montgolfiers, featuring a young thief called Magpie who manages to help the Montgolfiers with their invention despite her low social class and her female gender. Girls and orphaned, homeless pickpockets were not expected to be of much use or intelligence in eighteenth century France, just as they are not very respected in this day and time. Perhaps the gulf between classes and between boys and girls was much wider back in the 1700’s than it is today, but Ms. Carroll is writing a story for middle grade readers, not for adults. In this story Magpie finds a home and finds success and respect in spite of all the obstacles that are stacked against her.

I found this book to be an engaging and informative piece of historical fiction about a little known incident and time of history. Almost all I know about Louis XVI and Marie Antionette is their ignominious end, so it was interesting to see them in a different setting, before the revolution while they were still giddy and gay and pompous and entitled. Magpie learns whom to trust and whom to distrust and how to take advantage of the God-given abilities that she has been blessed to enjoy. Particularly if you’re interested in the history of flight or of hot air balloons or of invention or of eighteenth century France, this novel would be a light-hearted but thoughtful addition to your reading life.

Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson.

Book Girl Discussion Question #11: What mentors fostered a love of reading for you? To whom are you passing along the gift of reading?

My reading mentors:

My mom, of course.

Two children’s librarians at Tom Green County library in San Angelo, Texas: Ms. Karen Vavricka and Ms. Carolyn ?. Both of them would patiently work with me each time I came to the library, recommending books that I might like until I got to my limit of ten books to check out and read. They saved books especially for me, and they knew me and my reading preferences. I later got to work with Karen in the reference section of that same library, and I consider her my librarian mentor, too.

It seems as if there might be a teacher or two that I would consider my reading mentors, but I mostly remember sneaking in reading in classes that were devoted to boring stuff like math or science. I had to hide my books behind the math book or the geography book or hide them in my lap and hope the teacher wouldn’t notice. I had to smuggle books out onto the playground where we were supposed to play, not read.

And to whom am I passing along the gift of reading?

To my children. To the patrons of my library. To anyone who will listen. To anyone who reads my blog.

What about you? Who were your reading mentors? With whom are you sharing the joy of reading?

Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson.

Book Girl Discussion Question #6: In chapter 3, the author says ‘We understand our worlds through the words we are given.’ Can you think of a time when a passage from a book gave you empathy for or a deeper understanding of a person or situation in your life?

So many.

I recently read a couple of books by Western author Elmer Kelton, and although they are set back around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, they gave me an understanding of my own daddy and my grandfather that I didn’t have before, even though neither of them was a cowboy or anything like it. They were “good old boys” in their own way.

Hillbilly Elegy is another book that made me see my own family and upbringing and ancestry in a new way—I am a hillbilly from the flatlands of West Texas.

I also read The Borrowed House by Hilda van Stockum, bout a girl who is trained and educated as a Hitler Youth, and I was reminded of how difficult it is to transcend the limits of our childhood indoctrination and how we have to learn whom we can trust to tell the truth.

I understood the sharp pain of a prodigal son from my reading of Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, long before I experienced my own children growing older and making choices that I mourned and prayed over.

I understand a little of what it’s like to be a pastor in a small church from reading Jan Karon’s Mitford series and Bob DeGray’s We Never Stood Alone.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson gave me some insight into what it feels like to be an African American man in twenty-first century America.

Several books I’ve read, including those of Torey Hayden and Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin and Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, gave me some empathy and understanding of what it’s like to be autistic or to live with an autistic person.

Even though I didn’t get the pet-loving gene, I understand that some people do love their dogs and cats dearly because I’ve read James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small and other books about the bond between a pet-owner and his or her pet.

No Graven Image by Elizabeth Elliott gave me insight into the life of a missionary and made me realize that the missionaries I know are real people not cardboard saints.

I could go on, but obviously I’m a more understanding and sympathetic person because of the many lives I’ve explored through reading both fiction and nonfiction. What have you read that made you understand something or someone in your life better?

The Good Old Boys by Elmer Kelton.
The Smiling Country by Elmer Kelton.

These books and others by San Angelo western writer Elmer Kelton embody the West Texas I knew growing up and the West Texas I heard about from my grandparents and others, far better than the hugely popular book, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I suppose comparisons are odious, but in this case I’ll make an exception. I thought the characters in Lonesome Dove were neither likable nor believable, but Hewey Calloway, although I certainly didn’t always agree with his decisions, was understandable and convincing and characteristic of the kind of men I saw and heard about in West Texas when I was growing up. Good old boys.

Hewey Calloway wants to stay a free and somewhat irresponsible cowboy. But life and changing times seem to be pushing him in another direction: settling down. Both of these books, The Good Old Boys and The Smiling Country, are about Hewey and his ongoing battle with himself and with the outside world to remain free and independent and also to make connections and conquer his own loneliness. Can he have love and family and also maintain his liberty and his allegiance to his own code of conduct?

At first, it seems that he cannot have both. Hewey must choose, and in The Good Old Boys, he does. Then, as happens to most of us, even the most independent and ornery, life and circumstances begin to narrow Hewey’s choices until it seems as if he can have neither the freewheeling life of a cowboy nor the comfort of home and family.In The Smiling Country, Hewey confronts his inability to stop time and change, and he realizes his own limitations and the isolation that his choices have imposed upon him. And yet, he also has made good choices that bring him friendship and support the he needs it the most.

Elmer Kelton was the farm-and-ranch editor for the San Angelo Standard-Times. Also, for five years he was editor of Sheep and Goat Raiser Magazine, and for another twenty-two years he was editor of Livestock Weekly. He wrote more than thirty western novels, set mostly in Texas, and he was awarded several Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America. In 1977, Kelton received an Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement, and in 1998, he received the first Lone Star Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas.

I highly recommend Elmer Kelton’s western novels if you are at all interested in the genre, and even if you are not. There’s a smattering of language, and the cowboys are not all pure, (but they are much more honorable than McMurtry’s Gus and Call and Jake and whoever else figures in that rather dis-honorable novel). I would suggest that you read both books together to get the whole story of good old by, Hewey Calloway.

The Buckskin Line by Elmer Kelton.

The Day the Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton.

The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton.