Jemma Hartman, Camper Extraordinaire by Brenda A. Ferber

Nov6

Girls of a certain age do this friend ranking thing. They have “best friends,” and they get jealous if their best friend spends too much time with another girl. They write notes that ask “am I still your BFF?” and try to figure out body language and sub-texts to conversations, and it’s all kind of sticky-icky sometimes. For most girls it’s all part of growing up.

I have noticed that boys don’t mess with this kind of relationship/friendship stuff. Karate Kid (age 12) has nineteen or twenty best buds; he plays with all of them, hangs out, generally just enjoys whoever is around. He always has. I can’t imagine him or any of his friends getting mad because Joe is spending more time with Pete than with with Karate Kid. KK would just figure that they were doing something, so he’d find someone else to hang with for a while. Or he would go do something with the group, including Joe and Pete. BFF is just not an issue with most boys.

Why this division in behavior occurs, whether it’s nature or nurture, I’ll leave to the psychologists and sociologists. At any rate, Jemma Hartman is a girl book about girls being girls at a girls’ summer camp. I thought it was well written, especially from a psychological point of view, and that the author, Brenda Ferber, captured the voice of an eleven year old girl in a friendship crisis quite well.

I gave the book to Betsy-Bee, who has experienced her own friendship crises, and she is enjoying it. She did say that she thought Jemma’s erstwhile BFF was “mean.” I think when BB finishes the book we’ll talk about the difference between actual “meanness” and changes that happen in friendships as girls become older and as they, possibly, grow apart. It’s a hard lesson to learn.

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This book is also nominated for a Cybil Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own.

Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan

Nov5

Afghanistan is in the news almost every day, and those children who hear about the war there have questions about the people of Afghanistan and the culture there. Wanting Mor by Pakistani author Rukhsana Khan could serve as an introduction to a country that has become, for better or for worse, a preoccupying subject for Americans and for the world.

When Jameela’s mother, Mor, dies, her father decides that he and Jameela will move from their village to Kabul to start a new life. Unfortunately, Jameela’s father is a self-centered and cruel man. In a story that reminded me of Hansel and Gretel, Jameela’s father acquires a new wife, and then decides that Jameela, with her cleft lip and general uselessness, is an impediment to his new life.

The points that interested me the most in this book were those where cultures and ideas intersected. Jameela’s father and his new wife are typical of city dwellers in many third world and Muslim countries who are becoming Westernized and losing their loyalty to traditional customs and religious laws. Jameela herself finds comfort and strength in the traditions of Islam, particularly the head covering or chadri (also called a burka), that serves to protect Jameela from prying eyes and from the embarrassment that she feels over her cleft lip. The orphanage where Jameela ends up living is dependent on the charity of Americans and of other wealthy Afghanis and foreigners, but the attitude that children and the management of the orphanage have toward these benefactors is sometimes less than respectful or even grateful. This conversation between Jameela and another of the orphans shows the difficulties in such a relationship and perhaps could clue us in to how the Muslim world in general might feel about Americans and other westerners a lot of the time:

“What do you think of this new donor lady?”
I shrug. “She seems all right.”
“They all do when they first arrive.”
“What about the soldiers? They didn’t do anything wrong.”
Suraya scowls. “They’re invaders. They want to control us. They won’t be happy until they change us so we’re just like them.”
“They fixed things. You should be grateful.”
Soraya stands up and paces around our small room.
“I’m tired of being grateful.”

People do get tired of being grateful. And somehow we will have to find a way to leave Afghanistan, and Iraq, with a sense of mutual respect and cooperation. At least, I hope we can.

And I hope we can find a way to help girls like Jameela without taking away their cultural heritage or their self-respect.

I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have To Kill You by Ally Carter

Nov3

For me, the last panel discussion of the day on Saturday at the Texas Book Festival was a discussion with four children’s/YA authors about writing series fiction. The title was something like “How To Write Characters That Go the Distance: Writing Books in a Series.” The authors were Derrick Barnes (Ruby and the Booker Boys), Ally Carter ( The Gallagher Girls, beginning with the book that gives its title to this post), Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret and sequels), and James A. Owen (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica). The only one of the four whose books I had read was Mr. Owen, but I thought all four authors were interesting and some insightful things to say. Mr. Bosch was a bit, well, secretive. He wore sunglasses and looked like a sort of leftover hippie type with wild hair. I’ll let you know what I think about his Top Secret Book as soon as I get it from the library.

James Owen started out as an artist and comic book writer, and he illustrates the books in his seriesas well as doing the writing. I have enjoyed the first three books in the Imaginarium Geographica series (Semicolon review here), and I’m looking forward to reading the fourth book, just out, called The Shadow Dragons. Mr. Owen says there are seven books planned for the series, and he already has all seven (loosely?) plotted out and planned. He seemed to be a mild-mannered, stereotypical author type, very sweet, and and a bit bemused at finding himself at a book festival in Texas of all places. I was fascinated by his answer to an off-beat question posed by one of the children in the crowd: where did you go to college? He said that he took college classes while he was still in high school, but that when he was fifteen (or maybe fourteen?) he started his own art/design studio and as it was thriving when he graduated high school, he simply continued doing what he loved to do and never went to college. It sounded like a homeschool story, but as far as I know he wasn’t homeschooled.

Mr. Barnes said he learned a lot of his craft while working as a copywriter for Hallmark cards. He got a book deal, started writing the Ruby books, even though he has three sons and no daughters, and as of now he already has ten (or more?) of the series books written and waiting to be published. The fourth book in the series was published in March, 2009 and is one of the nominees for the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction category. I checked out the first book in the series a couple of days ago, and I’ll again let you know what I think.

And last but not least, I was so impressed with Ms. Carter and her coterie of fans who were there to cheer her on that I found the first book in her Gallagher Girls series at the library and read it today. I wish the second and third books had been on the shelf, too, because now I’m dying (get it, dying) to read them. Ms. Carter told the story of her agent calling her to say that YA chicklit was selling well these days and could she come up with any ideas in that genre? Ms. Carter, starving artist that she was, immediately made a list, but her agent said her ideas weren’t good enough. So the author proceeded to watch Alias. Something on the TV show gave her the idea for a spy school for girls, and the Gallagher Girls were born. I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have To Kill You is pure fun. Lots of high-tech spy stuff, a girls’ boarding school, secrets galore, espionage at its finest. And it has no sex and no bad language that I noticed. There is a little kissing and a lot of boy craziness, but again it’s all in fun. The other two books in the series are Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy and Don’t Judge a Girl By Her Cover. The latter (book three in the series) is nominated for the YA Fiction category in the Cybils. Ally Carter said, by the way, that she writes for “immature teens” but I’m thinking that most teen girls would enjoy these as just low effort entertainment. Three cheers for fun!

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Elizabeth Berg and Amanda Eyre Ward

Nov2

One of the sessions I attended at the Texas Book Festival in Austin this past weekend was an interview/discussion with authors Elizabeth Berg and Amanda Eyre Ward. I had just finished Ms. Berg’s book, The Year of Pleasures, and I read Amanda Eyre Ward’s Forgive Me a few months ago, so I thought hearing them speak about their writing lives would be fun.

And it was.

First though, I’ll tell you something about my enjoyment of Ms. Berg’s book. Elizabeth Berg is a wonderful writer. By that I mean, she writes beautiful sentences and paragraphs and descriptions. She made me slow down and pay attention to the prose itself, something that not all authors can do. The book itself, The Year of Pleasures, is about widowhood, about investing yourself and your life into one person and having that person taken by death. What do you do? How do you survive?

Ms. Berg’s protagonist, Betta Nolan, answers those questions by starting on a journey, a roadtrip from Boston to the Midwest. And when she reaches the small town of Stewart, Illinois, near Chicago, Betta finds, not exactly answers nor comfort, but a place to start living again. She does things that look from the outside to be crazy, that could be disastrous. She buys a house after looking it over for fifteen minutes. She reconnects with college friends that she hasn’t seen or spoken to in almost thirty years. She lets neighbors and chance acquaintance into her home and into her life. All of these steps toward life lead to stumbles and to near-falls, but also to a sureness and confidence that Betta can live a life even after the death of her beloved John.

I enjoyed almost every minute of reading A Year of Pleasures. I won’t hesitate to pick up another of Ms. Berg’s novels; in fact, I’m looking forward to it. However, I must insert a little warning; in one scene in the book Betta decides to date a man she meets and then decides that she “needs” to have sex with him. And then we get to see the results of that rather unwise decision —in detail. I wish the author had left the details out, but Elizabeth Berg’s writing is all about the details. I can see how she would feel compelled to tell us about Betta’s disastrous date. I just don’t enjoy reading about someone else’s sex life. Certainly not details. ‘Nuff said. Most of the book is not about sex.

At the Book Festival, Elizabeth Berg came across as both charming and distinguished, a writer about my age, a beautiful lady, who has spent quite a bit of time thinking about and working on her craft. She said she had no idea after college what she wanted to do and tried quite a few things. Then, one night she had an epiphany: she would become a nurse! So she went to nursing school and did become a nurse. She said of that era of her life, “What I learned from being a nurse is that the ordinary is everything.”

That’s what I meant about Ms. Berg’s celebrating the details. She also said something to the effect that “writing is acting on a page.” In other words, the characters she creates are not exactly herself, but she is acting them out as she writes. I thought that was a delightful metaphor, although perhaps she she got it somewhere else. I don’t know.

Amanda Eyre Ward is a younger writer with fewer books to her credit than Elizabeth Berg, but she, too, seems to have thought carefully and deeply about what it means to be a writer. I enjoyed her personality, and her quizzical answer to many of the interviewer’s questions, (insert rambling but interesting thoughts), then “It’s confusing!” I read Forgive Me in August, and here’s what I said about it then: “I didnâ€™t manage to review this novel, set in New England and in South Africa. It was readable, but I found it hard to connect with the characters.”

After having heard her speak, I’m ready to try another of Ms. Ward’s novels, but since her latest is a book of short stories, Love Stories in This Town, I’ll have to go back and try one of her earlier novels. Any suggestions?

Oh, Elizabeth Berg said her favorite of her sixteen or so novels is her first, called Durable Goods. (She also said not to tell the other books.) I like the title of one of Ms. Berg’s books: The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted. But I got the idea that it’s a book of short stories.

I don’t read short stories. Is anyone else a fan of either of these writers?

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Advanced Reading Survey: The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Nov2

I’ve decided that on Mondays I’m going to revisit the books I read for a course in college called Advanced Reading Survey, taught by the eminent scholar and lovable professor, Dr. Huff. I’m not going to re-read all the books and poems I read for that course, probably more than fifty, but I am going to post to Semicolon the entries in the reading journal that I was required to keep for that class because I think that my entries on these works of literature may be of interest to readers here and because I’m afraid that the thirty year old spiral notebook in which I wrote these entries may fall apart ere long. I may offer my more mature perspective on the books, too, if I remember enough about them to do so.

Author Note: (See last week’s post on Adam Bede.) In her novels, George Eliot often drew from her early life in Warwickshire where she grew up in an ancient red brick house as the daughter of a carpenter. This particular novel, The Mill on the Floss, was first named Sister Maggie, and later the name was changed.

Characters:
Tom Tulliver
Maggie Tulliver, Tom’s younger sister.
Philip Wakem, Maggie’s childhood friend.
Stephen Guest, fiance of Maggie’s cousin, Lucy.
Lucy Deane, Maggie’s and Tom’s cousin.
Tom’s and Maggie’s aunts: Aunt Moss, Aunt Glegg, Aunt, Deane, and Aunt Pullet.
Mr. Tulliver, Tom’s and Maggie’s father.
Bessy Tulliver, Tom’s and Maggie’s mother.

Summary:
Maggie Tullliver, an intelligent and highly introspective young lady, is imprisoned by the expectations of society and of her family. As Maggie grows up all of the men in her life are obsessed with various goals –revenge, money, status –and they thwart Maggie’s growth as a person and her ambitions.

Quotations:
These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.

Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed all her life and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.

In natural science, I have understood, there is nothing petty to the mind that has a large vision of relations, and to which every single object suggests a vast sum of conditions. It is surely the same with the observation of human life.

The religion of the Dodsons consisted in reverencing whatever was customary and respectable.

She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel, –that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.

Maggie: One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.

Confidences are sometimes blinding even when they are sincere.

Philip: You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one’s nature.

Other bloggers:
Chris at Book-a-Rama: “Maggie grows into a gorgeous dark-eyed woman, receiving attention for being an exotic beauty but misunderstood because of her intelligence. Maggie finds herself trying to choose between two lovers.”

Ready When You Are, C.B.: “Mrs. Tulliver and her three sisters, their husbands and children all make up a very entertaining group and provide George Eliot ample opportunity to show off her skill at creating wide ranging characters.”

Bookish: I didn’t enjoy George Eliot’s (Mary Ann Evans) The Mill on the Floss (1860) as much as other books she’s written – this one was decidedly more Victorian, and what with watching Friday Night Lights and reading this (and living in the world), I’ve just about had it with patriarchal societies.

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Callie’s Rules by Naomi Zucker

Nov1

Some of Callie’s Rules:
A family is not a democracy. Even when your father’s a lawyer and talks a lot about rights, it’s still not.

Listen to your father. The things he tells you might be useful sometime.

Monks have the right idea. If you never open your mouth, you get into a lot less trouble.

If everybody liked their Coke the same way, the world would be a pretty boring place.

I read this book about diversity and The Town That Tried to Cancel Halloween on just the right night, Friday night October 30th in my Austin motel room while I was preparing to attend the Texas Book Festival on Saturday, Halloween. In the book some busybodies decide that Halloween is Satanic and dangerous and harmful to young psyches. Unfortunately, the head busybody is also the wife of the town banker, and Mrs. Van Dine has more influence with the Hillcrest Town Council than Callie’s weird family does. The Jones family is made up of a lawyer father, and artist mom, and seven children, each with their own unique personality. (Callie’s little sister plays and naps in a cage.) Callie’s caught right in the middle of this weird family, and she’s not sure she can ever be like her mom, who doesn’t care whether people think she’s weird or not.

The minor characters in this novel are somewhat cartoonish, Mrs. Van DIne and her snooty daughter Valeri, the obtuse Town Council members, Callie’s wishy-washy best friend Alyce, but it’s still a good exploration what it feels like to be in middle school, desperate to fit in and yet wanting to be true to one’s own passions and beliefs. Callie loves Halloween. She enjoys the “weirdos”, the metal sculptures that her mom makes every year to display in the front yard of their home at Halloween. She doesn’t want to celebrate a healthy, insipid Autumn Fest, the substitute that Mrs. Van Dine has dreamed up for Hillcrest’s children. But she also doesn’t want anyone to think she’s weirder than they already think she is.

Callie’s dilemma, the fitting in and being yourself at the same time, is the dilemma of almost all middle school students. Callie navigates this perplexing middle school conflict with grace and humor. I’m thinking this would be an enjoyable Halloween read for young people who are caught in the same quandary. They might find some of Callie’s rules quite useful. Oh, and fans of Jane Eyre will also find a kindred spirit in Callie since Charlotte Bronte’s classic is Callie’s comfort book.

Comfort books, books that the protagonist reads over and over for solace and support, seem to be a theme in several books I’ve read lately, and that re-reading is also something my own children do. I don’t remember ever becoming that focused on one book or one set of books, though I do re-read favorites sometimes. The girl in Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me loves Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Brown Bear Daughter has been reading and re-reading Twilight and its sequels for about six months now. I read them once and found them entertaining, but I really don’t see that there’s enough there to go back to the well more than once. And Drama Daughter has been, dare I say, obsessed with Harry Potter for about three or four years now. Do you have a “comfort book” —one that you read again and again and that serves as metaphor and key for your life’s events?

Poetry Friday: The Childrens Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oct30

Betsy-Bee (age 10) is memorizing this poem by Longfellow. It reminds me of the way she and her sister, Z-Baby, treat their father. Engineer Husband is a very popular guy at our house.

BETWEEN the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the dayâ€™s occupations,
That is known as the Childrenâ€™s Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
Oâ€™er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

Alice, Allegra, and Edith were Longfellow’s three daughters. About a year after this poem was written, in 1861, Longfellow’s second wife and the children’s mother, Fanny, was putting locks of her children’s hair into an envelope and sealing it with hot wax when her dress caught on fire. Longfellow, who was in the room next door taking a nap, was aroused and tried to put out the flames. He was badly burned in the process, and Fanny died the next day from her severe burns.

Sad story, but a delightful family poem.

A Celebration of Longfellow.

Anna’s World by Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin

Oct29

I’ve always been interested in aberrant minds, people who think differently from the rest of us, and in aberrant religious groups, group that detour from orthodox Christianity into a spiritual path that obviously has its roots in Christianity, but doesn’t adhere to Biblical teaching. The Shakers of nineteenth century America were such a group.

Anna’s World is a Shaker world. When Anna is first left at the Shaker colony of Goshen by her bereaved and destitute father, she doesn’t understand how anyone can live according to Shaker rules and regulations. The Shakers were a “plain people” believing in plain dress and in simplicity in lifestyle. They also believed that the sin that condemned Adam and Eve was the sin of having sexual relations. (The Shakers and Phillip Pullman— what a combination!) So all Shakers were required to live celibate lives. They also held all possessions in common and owned no personal property. Anna is only fourteen when the story begins and not too concerned about relationships with boys, but she does find it difficult to follow all the rules that the Shakers have to regulate daily life. She longs for the day when her father will return to take her to Boston to live with him again.

In the meantime Anna makes friends at Goshen and becomes accustomed to Shaker life. When her father does return after she has experienced a long year of Shaker living, she realizes that her life will never be the same as it was before the flood and disease that destroyed their old life. Anna’s World is a coming of age story with a twist: Anna decides to enter a religious life and a world that her father will never understand or approve.

Although this book presents a seemingly accurate picture of Shaker life and of a young girl who is welcomed into a cultic group that has both a good side and some more questionable practices, I would not recommend it for children. It would require more discernment than an eight year old would typically have, even though the blurb on the back of the book says “for ages 8 and up.” The subject matter is much more appropriate for high school students, and even some adults, maybe those who are interested in the whole “Amish fiction” craze, would enjoy this story. Anna’s World was nominated for Cybils Middle Grade Fiction, but I would recommend it as young adult fiction. I just don’t think the 8-13 year old crowd would be very interested.

Read Aloud Thursday: Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace

Oct29

Z-Baby (age eight) has been listening all week to Betsy-Tacy on CD’s. As far as I can tell this first book in the series is the only one that is available in audiobook form, but Z-Baby would very much like for someone to record the other books in the series so that she can listen to them.

Me: So what have you been listening to and what did you like about it?

Z-Baby: Well, I’ve been listening to Besty-Tacy over and over again. Probably what I like the best about it is that in every chapter something happens. Some audiotapes nothing happens, and it’s boring.

Me: Tell me one of their adventures.

Z-Baby: One of them is called “Betsy Meets Tacy,” and that’s the first one. Betsy has her nose pasted against the window, and she saw a little girl step out of the new house. That was Tacy, but she didn’t know it. Tacy went up on a hill and stared into the black. Betsy knew just how she felt because she thought the girl wanted to know what this place was like. Betsy asked to go outside to meet the girl, and Julia helped Betsy get dressed. But when Tacy saw Betsy, she ran away because Tacy was bashful. But Tacy called out “Tacy,” and Betsy thought she was calling her a name. Betsy finds out Tacy’s name in the next chapter.

Me: Do you have a friend like Tacy?

Z-Baby: Unfortunately, I don’t really. None of my friends are really shy and bashful.

Me: If Tacy is shy and bashful, what is Betsy like?

Z-Baby: Betsy always wears braids, and she is kind of plump. She’s usually the one that makes up games and stories.

Me: Did you hear anything in the book that you would like to do?

Z-Baby: I would like to float up on a feather.

Me: ?????

Z-Baby: Just listen to the book and you’ll find out.

Me: Anything else you want to tell us about this book?

Z-Baby: I like it, and it’s interesting. I would play with Betsy and Tacy if they lived here because everyone on my block isn’t my age so I really can’t play with anyone on my block.

Read Aloud Thursday: Love Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur

Oct29

Bethy-Bee (age 10) read and then listened to this book on CD and enjoyed it very much, although it’s not a Pollyanna-type book. In fact it’s rather sad, as we repeated many times in our talk about the book.

Me: What was Love, Aubrey about?

BB: A girl named Aubrey whose dad and sister died in a car crash and her mom abandoned her. It’s kind of a sad book, Her grandma comes to visit her and her mom, and when she finds out that her mom isn’t there, she has to take Aubrey back to where the grandma lives.

Me: How old is Aubrey?

BB: She’s eleven.

Me: Do you think you could take care of yourself? You’re ten. How long could you take care of yourself?

BB: Yeah I’d be really scared, but yeah, I could. As long as the TV was working and I had lots of food. As long as everything was still working. I could probably do it for a while.

Me: Aubrey made a friend when she came to her grandma’s. Why do you think Bridget wanted to be Aubrey’s friend?

BB: She knew Aubrey didn’t have any other friends, and Aubrey had been having a really hard time. And they just started playing together and became friends.

Me: What did Bridget do for Aubrey to be a friend to her?

BB: She was nice to her, didn’t talk about what happened to her dad and sister.

Me: What did you like best about the book?

BB: Hmmm. I liked the part where she stayed with Bridget for a while when her Grandma went to be with her mom. Really, I liked all the parts where she kept remembering stuff, all the little flashbacks.

Me: Was there anything you didn’t like?

BB: Not really.

Me: I thought it was kind of weird that she was friends with that boy, Marcus.

BB: Yeah, he was strange.

BB: One thing is Aubrey was always sad. Most of the book she always remembered her dad and little sister, and she was really sad. And when I listened to the audio version the reader made her sound really sad all the time and depressed. I guess I would be sad, too, if it happened to me. The audio version also made Aubrey’s little sister sound really countrified, like she was from the Veggie Tales Grapes of Wrath or something.

Me: Aubrey had to make a hard decision at the end of the book. Do you think she made the right decision?

BB: I think she did make the right decision because her mom was ready, but she wasn’t. I think if she went back to her mom then it wouldn’t work because she would still be really sad. I thought that counselor lady in the book sort of helped her, but she was kind of annoying. She was kind of interfering with Aubrey’s business, and it made her annoyed. And her grandma was dumb to think she needed a guidance counselor. Aubrey was already writing letters, and that helped her. But the counselor did help her when she was trying to run away, and that was good. If Aubrey did need to talk to anybody, though, she could talk to her fish.