This is the time of year when I hate my cats. The birds are back and the cats want to go outside, but there’s still several feet of snow out there and I can’t say, in all my cat years, that I’ve ever seen a cat prowl around on top of a snow bank.

So I should be pitying the poor dears, but I can’t. I’m sick to death of them. They’re underfoot. They’re sitting in a row when I open my bedroom door in the morning, waiting to herd me to the food bags. At night, they’re all over me before I can even get my coat off, shoving and yowling me to those food bags. They just don’t have enough to do and I’m feeling bullied.

To make matters worse, my mom goes away every winter and leaves her cat with me. (That makes a total of three—in my opinion, one more than the single female’s limit.) My mom’s cat is petite and delicate. She growls when the icy cold sidewalk touches her tiny paws. She refuses to do her business outside.

My cats are big brawny fellows who always do their business outside, except, of course, when a lady’s present. Then they want to do it right there with her. So, at the time of year when everything’s snug against the cold, I’m having to change litter every day to combat kitty fug.

That’s not the only problem: Miss Dainty also has special diet food to keep her slim. It comes in cans. It smells like tuna. Seriously—we’ve got two twenty-five pound cats and one ten pound cat and a can of faux tuna. Who do you think’s going to get that special stuff?

So not only am I getting bullied, but I’m having to break up fights. I hate my cats.

Which is why it’s so nice that Seller Publishing sent me this wonderful cat book, Best Seat in the House: Cats in their Windows. Each page has a photo and a caption, and all together, there’s a delightful story. Marcie Jan Bronstein, the author and photographer, hand-colored the photos, giving them the look of old Kodachrome snapshots from the sixties and seventies.

  

Best Seat in the House is a wonderful book for people who hate—oops, I mean love their cats. It’s also a lovely book for reading aloud to children.



Best Seat in the House: Cats in their Windows
Text and photos by Marcie Jan Bronstein
Sellers Publishing
Softcover with flaps $12.95 (112pp)
978-1-4162-0531-9

The African American Experience:

Black History and Culture Through Speeches, Letters, Editorials, Poems, Songs, and Stories

Edited by Kai Wright
Black Dog & Leventhal
978-1-57912-773-2
$22.95 (736pp)

A fine collection of short pieces with introductions by Kai Wright, contributor to Mother Jones and Essence. The book begins with the building of the Spanish fort at St. Augustine in Florida, and “servants of your Majesty” asking for slaves from Havana to save the soldiers from tiring themselves out with “dragging in wood on their shoulders from the forests.” The last entry is Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech.

How Free Is Free?: The Long Death of Jim Crow
by Leon F. Litwick
Harvard University Press
978-0-674-03152-4
$18.95 (192pp)

Litwick, Pulitzer Prize winner, American Book Award winner, and recipient of the Golden Apple Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2007, examines the betrayals, broken promises, and dehumanization of black southerners, and their day to day acts of resistance and protest.

Making Freedom: The Extraordinary Life of Venture Smith
by Chandler B. Saint and George A. Krimsky
Wesleyan University Press
978-0-8195-6854-0
$18.95 (200pp)

Venture Smith (1729 - 1805), born Broteer Furro someplace in the area of modern Ghana, was captured, transported, and sold to Robertson Mumford for four gallons of rum and a piece of cloth. Later, he told the story of his life to a school teacher, who published it as A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself. This book compliments the original with historical details and illustrations. A facsimile of the original publication is included.

The Vampire of Ropraz
Jacques Chessex
Bitter Lemon Press
978-1-904738-33-6


Where I live, winter is not just the name of a season, it’s a state of being. Today I look out the windows—sure, there’s a line of geese heading to where the Boardman pours out into West Bay making a little unfrozen spot, but there’s also snow like grit, like clouds of icy gnats, and the view beyond a block fades away into clammy gray. From below, all day long, comes the sound of chopping and metal on concrete. The few people on the streets walk with their shoulders hunched into collars and faces obscured by scarves. I can see my car from here, growing a toupee of white, the interior vinyl collecting its special frostiness.

But, when all’s said and done, I live in a city. A small city, but nonetheless convivial. You won’t find boys hacking their grandparents to death for a couple hundred bucks, or bar fights that end in the spring when the body catches in the dam. Superstition drifts harmlessly in the garden dream-catchers and cement angels of liberal townies.

The regional paper tells another story—one of generational alcoholism, incest, fundamentalism, the desire for the destruction of culture and the longing to survive by tooth and folklore. A drive to the nearest major ski resort (30 minutes) takes you past homes sided with black plastic, ancient peeling doublewides, windowless cinderblock bars, and tiny isolated stores that sell gas and the smoked flesh of the local wildlife. In the summer there are campers and cabin-owners in these hundreds of acres forests of northern Michigan; in the winter, there’s the ticking of your own brain, or your wife’s brain, or your kid’s.

The people who live in the deep forests are not the entrepreneurial spirits found in cities—for a city attracts idea-makers whether they’re thieves or manufacturers. They’re not of the farmer-type either, who must clear the path to plant and watch the weather, who must plan for good times and bad. Backwoods people live day-to-day, scrap to scrap. Most of them were born in the place; some have been pushed there, like to the end of a rope; a few have invented the place for themselves.

Which is all a long introduction to the kind of chill of the suspected-unknown that The Vampire or Ropraz, a short novel by Prix Goncourt winner Jacques Chessex, produced. High in the Jurat mountains, the twenty-year old daughter of a local dignitary dies of meningitis and is buried in the frozen February earth. Two days later her grave is discovered open, the coffin unscrewed. Intestines are hanging out in the snow, the girl’s left hand has been severed, and her flesh bitten everywhere and spit out in the bushes. Although the story takes place in Switzerland, it is not so far geographically from the land of Vlad, and this rapist of dead women is quickly called “Vampire” by the press.

All right, so the press has always loved catchy titles for their criminals, and although the violation takes place in the isolated, squalid areas, where “[i]deas have no currency, tradition is a dead weight,” where poverty and lack of education leave people “barred inside their skulls,” where ailments are nourished with potions, and spells are concocted with menstrual blood and toad spittle, they don’t lynch the suspect when they finally get their hands on him.

They hand him over to a psychologist who takes him to his ward on Christmas Day to “sing of Christ’s birth, drink mulled wine and eat little cakes baked by volunteers in the kitchen.”

The young man ages twelve years in the ward before the War arrives, opening the gates. Immediately, he joins the Foreign Legion (he was rejected by the army in his youth, in his own country) and is killed seven months later on the Souain road. A broken body in a muddy battlefield would seem to be the end of it, but no: in 1920, France’s Unknown Soldier is chosen by lot from among eight anonymous coffins. Recent DNA research suggests that the body of the soldier who lies beneath the Arc de Triumph is none other than Charles-Augustin Favez, convicted in Switzerland of vampirism and desecration of graves. And the question is, how could this man be a monster in one place and a hero in another?

The Vampire of Ropraz is a superb choice for fiesty book clubs.

Jeff Herman's Guide To Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents 2009 (Three Dog Press, 978-0-9772682-4-5)is in its 19th edition.

Jeff Herman's Guide To Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents 2009 (Three Dog Press, 978-0-9772682-4-5) is in its 19th edition. Nineteen years is a long time to have been doing anything, but unlike, for example, parenting, publishing has become so much more (or less) than raising a book. Regarding what once were the established houses named for founders-like William Morrow, Harper Collins, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Simon & Schuster- and are now part of multinational conglomerates, I quote:

    The revolution came and happened quickly. Some of us complained, but it didn't make any difference. It was a funny revolution in that it reversed the usual dynamic. Unlike the breaking away of exploited tribes from masters of conquest, which is revolution in its most romantic form, we watched as faceless and formless conquerors wrapped themselves around most of our precious tribes and soundlessly absorbed them into a small number of obese oceans.

    …While some of the firms may be led by high-profile individuals or greatly influenced my multigenerational families that control large blocks of non-traded stock, it is also safe to say that these firms are greater than any one person or any unified collection of people. At the end of the day, it is the various pension funds and institutional investment firms that must be satisfied.

Fear not, authors who must. There are the independent presses. I quote again:

    Together the "independents are the other half of the game. As a unified force, they are smaller than they were a decade ago, and are likely to keep getting smaller. But as their market-share shrinks, their indispensability only grows.

    …In the end, it's quality that counts, not quantity. And the long-term consequences of the growing consolidation in the industry are not clear yet. Dominance leads to comfort, which leads to inertia. When the asteroids return, it's the ponderous dominators who will be the first to fall.

"Indispensable" is the word I'd use to describe Herman's book if you're an author with a finished manuscript. The profiles of the independent houses are complete, the interviews with agents enlightening, and the advice to writers straightforward.

Nineteen years is a long time to be publishing comprehensively - and Herman, bless him, takes time and space at the beginning of his book not only to acknowledge the freelancers who help him self-publish, but also to supply their contact information. Plus, it's hard not to love a book that's dedicated to "people who share their blessings, knowledge and wisdom with others." Thanks, Jeff

My mom liked to tell us that during the Depression, she would only get one gift for Christmas and it was always a Frank L. Baum book. Although we didn’t quite believe that anyone could be so deprived (my dad used to say he had to pick rocks out of the fields and walk ten miles to baseball), the treasure was there for us to examine anytime we wanted. She had all the books, but the only one we really liked was the original. I still have it, but no one’s read it in years because it’s a mess. The boards are / have fallen off, the pages are weeping. The only reason I’ve kept it is because I learned to read from it.

Well, I’ve found a worthy replacement. Wait until you see this! It’s from Counterpoint and it’s called Frank L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, Illustrated by Graham Rawle (978-1-58243-455-1). I’ve never heard of the guy before, but he seems to have accumulated plenty of accolades for previous collage work, and by collage I mean blending illustration and text. This is no exception. The typography in this unabridged version of the classic is wonderful, but what’s going to catch your eye are the illustrations. Using real items (dolls, masks, fruits), he’s placed them in miniature landscapes to create the most amazing Over the Rainbow ever. But it’s still Dorothy and Tinman and Toto, so fear not: even if you grew up with the Judy Garland version, you’ll find something to love. Check out the amazing Emerald City, or the field of poppies. If the Depression is getting you down and you can only give one book, make it this one.


Read other reviews of Best Picture Books at our 24/7 Bookshelf.

The Love Song of Monkey
Michael S. A. Graziano
Leapfrog Press
Softcover
978-0-9815148-0-2

If this book had a different title, it would be perfect. Just after he was stuffed into a suitcase by his wife and her lover (who was also his mad doctor) but before he was thrown off a motorboat into the Atlantic, chained to a statue of Venus taken from his own living room, that title was nagging at me. Monkey Man?

Here’s a guy, dying of AIDs and he’s offered the possibility of a complete cure, a better-than-new-cure, but only if he can endure indescribable pain for an hour. Okay, he does describe it:

"Some piece of equipment turned on with a harsh buzzing sound. Then the laser beam hit the bottom of my feet…. If I hadn’t been held down on the table I would have convulsed like a fish and crashed onto the floor. No person could have withstood that pain for any hope or goal. It vaporized my strength of will. I didn’t know anything except my feet. The pain lay in a precise plane, like a deli slicer, the rotating blade taking microscopically thin slices one by one, starting from the bottom of my feet and working its way upward. It seemed that every virus particle was a twist of metal, a splinter that needed to be wriggled and wrenched out, torturing the flesh around it. Every bacterium had to be exploded and the shrapnel scraped out with a blunt spatula. Every blemish, every bit of scar tissue, cut with a microscopic scalpel and excised. This was not the torture of a thousand knives. It was six hundred billion knives and drills and lit matches concentrated into one layer of flesh."

Graziano is a psychology professor at Princeton and author of several other books, as well as articles published in the New York Times, Science Magazine, and Glamour blending fiction, music, and science. The Love Song of Monkey is fabulously imagined and seriously considered and very funny. A kind of fairytale antithesis on the meaning of existence.

Now, if it weren’t for that title. It’s a little thorn. It announces itself boldly in the title, nags where it’s remembered during almost the whole book, then sneaks in at the end and squats there, black-caped, hook-handed.

Look, it’s only 152 pages long. It’s fantastic. It has a wonderful ending. Read it and tell me what you think.

The story is that parents meddle too much with the first kid, causing pretty much fruitless heartbreak. The others we tend to leave to their own devices, equal parts lack of attention and lack of courage. By the time my third child, Hart, was born, the other two were six and nine. They’d graduated from Winnie the Pooh movies and the Berenstein Bears, and were gleefully into R.L. Stine, “Young Frankenstein,” and “Abbott and Costello Meet The Killer.” Unsurprisingly, young Hart grew up fearless, and ghost stories were at the top of the heap of favorite books.

The Georgie books by Robert Bright, for instance, were huge. My mom read these stories to me and I can’t tell you how much pleasure I felt, rediscovering the Whittaker’s attic. The first book was published in 1944, but don’t miss these just because they’re old.







A recent title that also scores high on the cute meter (although, to be fair, it’s the story that keeps Georgie haunting the bookshelves, not the adorableness) is Frankie Stein by Lola Schaefer, illustrated by Kevan Atteberry (Marshall Cavendish). It’s a rip-off of the Munsters and their “horrible” normal child, but there’s a reason that story worked as well. Here mom and dad try to scare some scariness into their beautiful blond boy. Little kids will like this for the roll-playing and the reversal at the end.







If you want something a little scarier, actually plenty scarier as far as the illustrations go, try Witches’ Night Before Halloween by Lesley Bannatyne, illustrated by Adrian Tans (Pelican). Kindergarten through second graders should be able to handle this however, simply because of the use of the well-known happy tune. The text is good for vocabulary-building, with ghoul, rheumy, snaggle, and hovel punctuating the pages of the headless and shrieking.









Moving in a slightly different direction, although staying in the season, try Uncle Monarch and the Day of the Dead by Judy Goldman, illustrated by René King Moreno (Boyds Mill). The simple but rich illustrations will be a nice change from the foregoing visual mayhem, and the story explains a holiday that honors the dead, instead of one that thumbs its nose at death.

Disappearance is what these three things in the title have in common. The books below challenge their extinction.


Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America
by Stephen Trimble
University of California
978-0-520-25111-3

When Earl Holding bought the bankrupt Snowbasin ski area in Ogden, Colorado, in 1984, he was already the owner of Sun Valley in Utah, not to mention Sinclair Oil. Yes, he had the top of the mountain, so to speak, but not the bottom. That belonged to the National Forest—in other words, to you and me. In 1996, still without the additional land, Snowbasin was named a venue for the 2002 Winter Olympics, and the pressure came to a head. Earl Holding wanted all the land, a complete whole to shape and build on and call his own. Don’t we all. As Trimble writes, “On some levels, I am Earl—we are all Earl.”

Writer, photographer, and naturalist Trimble begins his story about 30 miles outside of Laramie, Wyoming, and ends up right at the dinner table of everyone who has ever wanted to put up a fence. “How do we live ethically on land as it shifts underneath us with changing values, exploding growth, and money and politics wielding brute force?” writes Trimble. “I’m looking for answers.”


Greasy Rider: Two Dudes, One Fry-oil-powered Car, and a Cross-country Search for a Greener Future
by Greg Melville
Algonquin Books
978-1-56512-595-7

In the breezy style indicating a membership in the Men’s Journal club (also required are a wife in charge and a rather substandard knowledge of how things really work), Greg Melville sets off from Vermont to Berkeley in a 1980s Mercedes wagon, converted to run on restaurant grease. A few miles out of town, “wingman” Iggy suggests a bet, that Melville can’t “extract a lesson” in sustainability from every day they’re on the road. Melville eventually agrees, although he’d rather that Iggy just die. As a seasoned travel writer, Melville knows that tragic death beats “lessons” every time.

Motoring backwards in the path of H. Nelson Jackson, the first guy to drive coast to coast (1903), Melville and Iggy get to the brightly lit bottom of Al Gore’s personal energy consumption and suggest possible answers to questions like:

Is God angry that men have so messed up the environment?
How will the revolution be won?
Dude, would you really want to live there?

Brady Bunch allusions, waitresses, road rage, and sucking grease out of the bottom of dumpsters are just some of the joys found in this travelogue—the “lessons” are conveniently printed in a different font. Above all, this book is a tribute to American driving spirit: Gas or Grease, We Will Always Find a Way to Hit the Highway.


One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost
Edited by Peter K. Austin
University of California
978-0-520-25560-9

While the two books featured above could be printed in any medium without disrupting the message, this one needs heavy paper, lots of color, and sturdy boards. Open it up and it smells like wall-to-wall ink. After all, this is a book about language.

Divided into sections like “World Languages” (considerably spoken beyond its point of origin), then regionally, then by absence, One Thousand Languages is illustrated with the written shapes of the letters, the landscapes that produced the sounds, and the people who speak them. Each represented language also includes an article about origins and present usage. Kituba, for example, spoken by 4.3 million, began as a contact language among Africans of different tribes living along the Congo River when Portuguese traders arrived. As many of these same Central Africans were taken away to the Americas as slaves, the language survives abroad in Brazilian, Jamaican, and Cuban religious rituals; it’s a source of for Gullah, a language spoken in South Carolina and Georgia; and it became the Palenquero creole in Colombia.

Peter K. Austin has published eleven books on the lesser-spoken and endangered languages. In an article in the Guardian, Austin lists his top ten from the more than 3,000 disappearing tongues. “My selection is a personal one that tries to take into account four factors: (1) geographical coverage—if possible I wanted at least one language from each continent; (2) scientific interest—I wanted to include languages that linguists find interesting and important, because of their structural or historical significance; (3) cultural interest—if possible some information about interesting cultural and political aspects of endangered languages should be included; and (4) social impact—I wanted to include one or more situations showing why languages are endangered, as well as highlighting some of the ways communities are responding to the threat they currently face.”

This book is very warmly recommended for school libraries.

The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing
Mayra Calvani and Anne K. Edwards
Twilight Times Books
978-1-933353-22-7

Having been mostly dusted out of its corner of the newspaper (replaced by what, exactly, I don’t know), the book review has become something of national hobby. But without the red pencil of a curmudgeonly editor, the Shelfari and GoodReads reviews often reek of amateurism, hardly a tribute to the poor author they’re trying to excoriate or acclaim. Thank your lucky stars then, that Calvani and Edwards are here to kindly save the day.

According to the authors, both writers and reviewers, there are five keys to being a good reviewer:

Command of Language
Clarity of Thought
Honesty
Objectivity
Tact

Sounds like the qualities of good friend, a good person, a good sibling, a good coworker, doesn’t it?

The authors then, very simply, explain how to read critically by breaking down the techniques of writing into different categories, like, in the case of fiction, plot, pacing, and point of view. (Definitions of these techniques are included.) They go on to distinguish different kinds of reviews, and they clarify the distinction between prepublication reviews, press releases, and critiques.

The meat and potatoes of the book come in a section called “Types of Reviews.” Here, the authors produce different kinds of reviews—long/short, positive/negative, nasty/nice, fiction/nonfiction, etc.—then critique the first effort and rewrite. There’s not a reviewer out there that wouldn’t benefit from this review of reviewing.

If the hobby becomes work – in the good sense—there are helpful suggestions about everything from what to do with those books piling up all over the floor, how much money to ask for, and how to start your own book review site online. The last section on the book contains a fat list of online and print publications, divided by genre.

I have to say that the cover of this book is substandard; truly unfortunate as the content is anything but. Nevertheless, this is a great reference book for libraries, and would be a nice (nicer with another cover) addition to book club displays.

The Slippery Art authors follow all the rules of good reviewing in their writing—command of language, clarity of thought, objectivity—and they are also clearly blessed with those two rules that stand behind all good teachers: honesty and tact.

The IMBA (Independent Mystery Booksellers Association) announced today its June bestsellers, and I’m sorry to say that not a single independent title was among them. Not one. Not in hardcover, trade, or mass market. Is it possible that the mysteries published by big houses are that much better than the ones produced by independents? I don’t believe it.

I’m something of a fan(atic) about mysteries, and took on the job of reviewing titles for the July/August Mystery Feature in ForeWord. I’m pretty sure that there’s nothing we get more of around here—in the mailroom, that is—than mysteries. I must have had two hundred books in the initial pile, narrowed to about thirty, and then, finally, ten. I believe that each of the Final Ten is absolutely fabulous and deserves a place on your patio this summer.

There’s a new Kerry Greenwood out from Poisoned Pen, Queen of the Flowers. If you like cozy/whimsical/extravagant female protagonists, then this one and Assassins at Ospreys by R.T. Raichev (Soho) are for you.

If grit and unhappiness, money and dirt are your penchant, then try Blood Alley by Tom Coffey. The author’s an editor at the NYT and knows his NYC. Easy Innocence by Libby Fischer Hellman (Bleak House) takes on Chicago, actually the North Shore, in a novel about the degenerate elite.

I rather like traveling abroad in my mysteries. I learn about food, living conditions, the people, and get a little sleuthing exercise as well. Soho always has an amazing collection of these kinds of titles. I enjoyed Reconstruction by Mick Herron (takes place at a kindergarten in London) and Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage (takes place in the Brazilian boondocks). Also, The Shadow in the Water by Swedish author Laura Wideburg (Pleasure Boat Studio) is lugubriously wide-open creepy as only they can be in the far north.

Back in the States, there’s a fantastic new book out by Archer Mayer, Open Season. Mayer used to write for the big guys, but left them to publish on his own. Wonder how that’s going for him… The story takes place in Vermont, where coincidentally Mayer is a death inspector for the Medical Examiner in real life. Experience and sharp wit make this series a keeper.

Experience also works in first-time novelist Thomas Taylor’s favor. As a former protective services operator (government bodyguard), his book Mortal Shield (Southeast Missouri State) walks and talks like the real thing and mixes the ultimate American pie of God, guns, and infidelity.

Finally, Overlook has brought out a reissue of a Charles McCarry masterwork, The Better Angels. The time is post-Nixon, fuel is scarce, gas rationed, lights out at dark. And there’s an election going on for president between, on the one hand, an authoritarian, and on the other, a man of the people. Too bad the good guy is also a murderer.

Check out the complete reviews of these books online, plus features on poetry, parenting, and music—and get yourself some great independent books from your independent bookstores.

The Price of Everything is the name of a book I got in the mail recently from Princeton (978-0-691-13509-0). Apart from the intriguing title, the BISAC categories on the back were POPULAR ECONOMICS and FICTION. Huh?! Who could resist that?
 
Not me. I sat on the back porch one Saturday and didn’t get up until it was over. Then I went back through and made notes. Then, I decided that all of my children had to read it over summer break—required. A couple of days later, I talked about it to a friend of mine who teaches at a private middle school, convincing him that it would be a good pick for next year’s curriculum. Yes, it’s this good. I just love it when someone takes a topic that generally bores the pants off people and makes it discussion worthy.

Here’s how the book gets started:
 
Meet Ramon. He’s a senior at Stanford and a tennis star. He’s also an immigrant from Cuba, where his father was a champion and hero of Castro’s favorite sport, baseball. After the father’s death, however, the Great Leader’s favors dried up, and Ramon’s mother felt that opportunities for her son were greater in the US. Of course, after their immigration the statues of the baseball hero were pulled down and the photos erased.

So now, about twenty years later, Ramon and his girlfriend are having dinner one night and there’s an earthquake. They’re used to such things and finish the meal, but later decide that they could use a flashlight or two. They head to Home Depot. Too late. Flashlights are sold out. No worries; there’s a new gigantic everything store—a combo of Borders, Home Depot, and Sam’s Club—called Big Box. They’ll go there.
 
And they do. And in fact, Big Box has flashlights and milk and diapers and all the other stuff that other stores have run out of. BUT, there’s also a sign posted at the entrance that says: Tonight Only, All Prices, Double the Marked Price.
 
Predictably, in the parking lot there’s a bit of a riot going on, and some poor sap employee is trying to explain to the irate crowd that basically, there’s nothing he can do about it.
 
But, here’s the thing: Do they have flashlights? Yes. Do Ramon and his girlfriend buy one even though it costs double the usual? Yes.

In the checkout line, though, they hit a snag. A Spanish-speaking woman with a baby on her hip only has twenty bucks to cover her purchases—she didn’t plan on the prices doubling. Ramon gets involved. He calms the woman, passes a hat, and helps the woman check out. Then he heads outside to that poor sap employee who’s still trying to explain to masses why he’s just a poor sap. Ramon grabs the megaphone and starts to talk. “What kind of store,” he says, “decides to profit off of hungry children and a caring mother? We need to send a message…”

Stay tuned: between the Cuban story, Stanford economics classes, the Big Box boycott, and why no single person is capable of making a pencil, this is a beautiful little book about how the market economy works.

Author Robert Russell is also a professor of economics at George Mason University and research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. This is the third book where he stirs up an economic/fiction stew with his invisible hand.

Seeing Beyond Sight (Chronicle Books, 978-0-8118-5349-1) was a “leap in the dark” kind of project for photographer and teacher Tony Diefell. “Photography wasn’t the most obvious subject to teach at the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, North Carolina.”

“Obvious” is a great word choice. It comes from Latin, ob- (in the way of) via (way). In the way of the way, or the path. Something that blocks something else. A quick flip though the book, and what you see is obvious: torsos without heads, beds with stuff, floors, walls. What is this? Why is it more than obvious? Diefell explains in the introduction:

“When I first saw the photographs of the sidewalk, I thought they were a mistake. Perhaps LEUWYNDA had intended to capture a classmate of one of the large oak trees scattered across the campus. I was wrong. As soon as LEUWYNDA got her camera, she knew what she wanted to do: photograph the cracks in the sidewalk.

“The pictures were proof of damage, and she sent them, along with a letter, to Superintendent Sheila Breitweiser. ‘Since you are sighted,’ LEUWYNDA wrote, ‘you may not notice these cracks. They are a big problem since my white cane gets stuck.’ LEUWYNDA asked that the cracks be fixed—and they were.”

That’s only the beginning of the revelations, for Diefell, the students, the reader. This is an amazing book, and would make a fantastic social teaching tool for use in middle and high schools. See the website at www.seeingbeyondsight.com.


Birds: The Art of Ornithology by Jonathan Elphick (Rizzoli, 978-0-8478-3134-0) sets off with the history of the art, beginning in the mid-1600s when painters left the still life behind and moved aboard ships bound for the new worlds. Originally published in 2005, this is what publisher Rizzoli calls a “mini edition,” although a foreword by Dr. Robert Prys-Jones, Collection Manager at the British Natural History Museum, is an exclusive. The reproductions in both books are primarily from the Museum’s enormous collection of more than a million books and half a million images on paper.

There’s a decent amount of text in the book, documenting the enormous range in age and personalities that sat for hours to capture in paint or ink or pencil the form of birds. Given the small dimensions of this edition however (5.5 x 6.25), I advise you to enjoy the plates and forget about the words unless you’re equipped with young eyes.

But the illustrations are beautiful, the paper is good, and the binding tough. Once the introductory chapters end, the illustrations are ordered by artist—it’s an amazing breakthrough when Audubon figures out how to realistically show birds swimming, squabbling, or flying. Birds makes a charming gift book for all ages—and looks lovely displayed on a table.

There hasn’t been a single phone call in the last month when my daughter hasn’t felt the necessity to point out just how sick she is of school. Her statistics class gets the most razzing – she can’t believe she actually paid $600 for something that even the professor finds irrelevant. Or, how would you explain a prof who allows students to chat on their cell phones during lectures. (Lectures?) When I mentioned that her brother had opted to continue in college throughout the spring, she was quick to spout off the wisdom of a recent NPR report that included music in the list of careers that benefited not at all from a college degree.

As I’m writing this, our blogger at Shelf Space just posted an article about the disconnect between what is taught in college and what is needed in a library. Eva Mays writes, “Library Science is not something that can be taught in a lecture hall; it can only be learned in a library!”



Have I got a book for you. Put out by New World Library, The Career Chronicle: An Insider’s Guide to What Jobs are Really Like (978-1-57731-573-5) is fast and fascinating reading about the realities of some of the more idealized careers. In fact, “idealized” is a key word as real people talk about college expectations and hard-world facts. “Naïve” is another one, “paperwork,” “stress,” and yes, “unprepared.” Heaven forbid we scare the idealism out of our young people, but a little foreknowledge might help them avoid cynicism in the future.

And not all the careers are so dismally represented in their university training. Pharmacists felt well-prepared, and vets, and soil scientists (whew, I had to get all the way to the end of the book to find a third entry). Architects felt competent on the design side of their work, but stiffed on the business aspects. Lawyers unanimously felt that they’d been taught to “think like an attorney,” but were woefully unprepared for the practice of judges, clients, and deadlines.

Each career (there are twenty-three) has an overview by author Michael Gregory. Employment and salary levels from the appropriate associations are included as sidebars. Short answers to interview questions follow, like “How many hours do you work each week…?” and “What do you spend most of your day doing?” Title, numbers of years working in the field, and location identify the subjects.

Come to think of it, college professor isn’t included in the line-up, but maybe they’re the ones who need this book most.

Gregory was a lawyer and is now a freelance writer. His children have followed careers in soil, information tech, TV broadcasting, and elementary teaching.



Another college-bound book of note is Careers in Renewable Energy by Gregory McNamee (PixyJack Press, 978-0-9773724-3-0); descriptions of job opportunities in everything from energy to construction, transportation, and teaching.



And to get you revved up for that job of your dreams, try Improvisation for the Spirit: Live a More Creative, Spontaneous, and Courageous Life Using the Tools of Improv Comedy by Latie Goodman (Sourcebooks, 978-1-4022-1191-1). Stepping off from the argument that nothing is more stressful than stand-up comedy; that nothing requires fleeter brain footwork or more collaborative skills than group improv, Goodman, a contributor to O, The Oprah Magazine offers stand-up and write-down exercises to enlarge your spirit and transform your life.

All right, not babies so much as the very young, but old enough to want to hear the words and look at the pictures. I’ve been collecting for a while, and have got a sweet pile of five. All but one are board books.


Starting out with My Teeth by Richard and Michele Steckel (Tricycle Press). You will not believe how completely adorable this is – and what a great idea. Page one is “no teeth.” Page two, “one tooth.” Etc. The children are from all across the world: South Africa, Peru, Turkey. The second to last page says, “Bite!” and the last page says “Brush!” Grandmas will go crazy for this book, and the babies will like it too.


Another counting book is Island Counting 1 2 3 from Frané Lessac and Candlewick Press. I don’t know about you, but My Little Island got plenty of play in our house. Here, Ms. Lessac returns to the West Indies, portraying the colorful market life, animals, housing, people, and fun of the islands. “Three painted houses sitting high on a hill,” goes the text, but children will want to find and count the other things on the page as well: the chickens (3), the lilies (3), cats (3), palm trees (3), etc.

My Up & Down & All Around Book by Marjorie W. Pitzer (Woodbine House) teaches common prepositions using action. On the left green page, the boy is “behind” the tree, on the right green page, he’s “in front of.” “Before” and “after’s” a laugh as it involves food. “Between” and “Next to” gets friendly with dogs. All the models in the photos are children with Down syndrome.

Elyse April is a licensed early childhood educator. She’s brought her expertise to We Like to Read: A Picture Book for Pre-Readers and Parents (Hohm Press, illustrated by Angie Thompson). Basically, it’s a primer for how to incorporate reading into daily life, as well as a first book for young children. The engaging rhymes and pictures compliment each other while accomplishing their dual purpose. “We like to read to the babies at play. Touching and tasting is part of their ways,” says the text, while a dad and an older daughter laugh at the baby who’s chewing on a board book. Highly recommended and would make a wonderful gift for young families.



Finally, a book about not going to bed. I mean really – who needs another “let’s be good and go to bed” book. Just Five More Minutes by Marcy Brown and Dennis Haley, illustrated by Joe Kulka (Treasure Bay) is part of the We Both Read series. The left-hand page is for the caregiver to read, the right-hand page for the child. The story concerns Mark, who needsd “Just five more minutes” before getting into bed. Yes, he needs time to brush his teeth and get into his pajamas, but then he also needs to say goodnight to all his pets, make a snowman, do some knitting, deliver a letter… No child can help but become the tiniest bit pooped with all this pre-nightie-night activity. And of course, the end is just as good.

I wonder how long books like The Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget will last in this digital world. (Rough Guides, 978-1-84353-994-0) Even though it’s a compact 5 x 7 3/4, it feels a bit dinosaur-ish at nearly two pounds.

Not that the information is excessive, or even burdensome. I love the short histories of the nations and the cities. The sidebars about things like “Taking a Bath in Budapest” or “Hiking in the Tatras.” There are language basics, maps galore, emergency numbers, and activities inside and out.

Maybe my reserve is for the olden days of travelers who needed, who really used an all-purpose guide to Europe. It may have started out a brick, but by the end of the trip, it looked more like the sole of a shoe, frayed and worn softly open.

I’m also thinking that I’d rather have this kind of information on digital device. For people who travel a lot or extensively, why not a yearly subscription to Rough Guides that allow access (and input) to guides around the world. The guides could be downloaded at any WiFi spot and stored on the device until the next download. Wouldn’t you love to have photos and info about what the Ko Tarutao looks like today, not a year ago when the guide went to press?


Phil and Carol White still have the traveling chops in Live Your Road Trip Dream: Travel for a Year for the Cost of Staying Home (RLI Press, 978-0-9752928-3-9). A concise book, designed with a sense of fresh air and no strings, the couple start with a how-to of financing, then cover planning, staying in touch, emergencies, and returning home. The last half of their book details week by week their own experiment.

 
If you’re planning a trip to Egypt or Greece this summer, check out University of California’s Dictionaries of Civilization (978-0-520-25648-4, 978-0-520-25647-7). While not exactly travel guides, you’ll want to have them with you for the plane, the airport, busses, hotels, boat. Sensationally illustrated, they cover the people, state, religion, daily life, “The World of the Dead,” and monuments. Maps, museums, chronologies, a bibliography, and an index are also included.

Funny how a domestic occupation, a crucial one at that for most of the history of civilization, can so quickly and completely become irrelevant. Cleaning, cooking, and some kind of child-care arrangement will be difficult for technology to entirely flush, but sewing ability has gone the way of sitting room poetry recitals and musical presentations. Technology has made entertainment ubiquitous and clothing too cheap to mend.

One of my grandmothers sewed all of her clothes. Fancy stuff, too. Evening gowns and lined suits, all hemmed by hand in a leafy stitch. She tried to get me interested as a kid, but after having to tear out my basted hem three – four times, I realized and choked on the meaning of the word “discipline.” Or was it “desire?”

Nevertheless, I did learn to sew from necessity. No, wait, there was a home economics class back in the seventh grade. I learned to use a sewing machine and made a lilac terry cloth jumpsuit. (No one told me that terry cloth wasn’t exactly suited for anything but bathrobes and towels. You can guess what the item looked like after a few minutes of sitting.) Home economics still exists in the middle schools around these parts, for both of my sons have taken it, but they only teach cooking. Buttons and seams apparently never come loose.

Come to think of it, it is unusual for my boys to ask me to mend something of theirs. Must be that the item wears out before it breaks. Or does it break therefore it’s worn out? I don’t know, and maybe I’m not paying very close attention, but a book did come in a little bit ago that seemed like a good idea for kids, and even grownups who’ve resisted the passion of mending.


The title Hand Mending Made Easy: Save Time and Money Repairing Your Own Clothes (by Nan L. Ides; Palmer/Pletsch Publication; 978-0-935278-74-3) implies that some of you are sending your broken items out to a tailor (instead of throwing them away). It’s quite explicit that no tools are necessary beyond scissors, needles, thread — in other words, stuff you can pick up in a grocery store. It’s a great reference, well-illustrated and covering everything from ripped crotch seams to snags and patches. Send one of these off to your children away from home. I plan to hand a copy to my teenaged sons the next time they ask for a mend. Beats me doing it while explaining and them nodding, trying to look interested, uhuh Mom, uhuh.

Some other sewing books I liked are


Closely Knit: Handmade Gifts For the Ones You Love by Hannah Fettig (North Light Books, 978-1-60061-018-9). A terrific selection of projects for the experienced knitter who likes to watch tv. What I mean is that they’re not too difficult, but they’re not scarves either. Pillows, sweaters, baby clothes, caps – good stuff for gifts or just for fun. Nicely illustrated and well organized instructions.


You know those ugly dolls the New York Times says are great for boys? Aranzi Aronzo, manga king, has a book called Cute Dolls (Vertical, 978-1-932234-78-7) that shows you how to make your own. Okay, they’re “cute” rather than “ugly,” but if it’s ugly you want, then turn the mouth upside down. Anyway, there’s plenty of weird as well as cute and the instructions remind me of the old Ed Emberly drawing books. Make a tadpole, a kidnapper, a penguin, a monkey. Yes, you’ll want them all. Instructions include full-size patterns for tracing.

Every once in a while there is a perfect book for children. The Story of Ping is perfect, and Ferdinand the Bull. And Peter Rabbit. And Where the Wild Things Are. The way I came to judge a perfect book when I was a young mom with young children was how little I had to change or embellish the words on the page.

We’re talking very young children here. And there seemed to be a lot of books that my kids liked the idea (pictures) of, but in which the text was over their heads, or just silly. It’s very tiring to rewrite the words to a book over and over, and I vividly remember one evening choosing Peter Rabbit, and then marveling at what a total pleasure it was to read out loud. There was not one single word that I wanted or needed to change.

And of course, a perfect book needs to be perfect for the children, and not just for me, so it also has to be a book that gets read and reread a hundred times. Word for word.

All right, there can be sound-effects. When I read Where the Wild Things Are there were always sound effects. But that’s it. No changing anything else.

It was perfect.


I’ve found another one. It’s called Waiting for Mama by Lee Tae-Jun, and it was published in 1938 in a Korean newspaper. This edition by NorthSouth (978-0-7358-2143-9) was illustrated with graceful lines and suspenseful color treatments by Kim Dong-Seong.

The story is simple: a little boy goes down to a streetcar stop to wait for his mother. There are probably less than fifty words in the entire tale, but there’s a beginning, a middle -- there’s tension and characterization -- and there’s an end. It’s a classic in Korea, and although the dress and street scenes are foreign to most Americans, the theme is universal. The little boy and his experience is universal. And encouraging.

Don’t miss the very interesting paragraphs at the end of the book about the Korean language either.

I guess it’s better than chips, or ciggies, though I won’t say I don’t have battles with those as well. For me, mysteries are the Valium of reading material. (Reading material used to be a euphemism for pot back in my old days; “¿Oyes, no tienes materia de lectura?”) I like to read mysteries in bed. If I can get away with it, I’ll spend an entire rotten-weather Saturday moving from couch to chair to nap to mystery until it’s over and in the clear. Yes, mysteries clear my head of the day since they have nothing to do with my job, my family, my economics, etc.

And I love Soho. The galleys come in all the time, sometimes in yellow wrappers and sometimes with a half-finished, glossy cover. There are cozies and foreigners and toughs and exotics. Here are two that I’ve recently read:

Assasins at Ospreys by R.T. Raichev
It’s not the plotting that’s riveting in this book, it’s the language and the characterization. Antonia Darcy and Major Hugh Payne set off one wintery day to rescue a damsel in distress. Darcy’d met the lady at an author meet-and-greet the last summer; Darcy is a mystery writer, Payne is, well, handsome, smart, and handy.

Goldilocks, as Darcy’d nicknamed her, had been in a wheelchair when they first met. Not any more. She’s lithe and light as champagne. She’s also a terrible flirt even though she’s a newlywed. Sound like a cliché? So do most of Raichev’s characters at first impression. Beware. It’s not that the author’s playing games with identity, it’s that he/she (?) develops his/her characters over the course of the story. And first impressions are not always accurate. Imagine!

Then, there’s the language. Pure delight. Everything from the titles of the chapters: “Malice Aforethought,” “The Enigmatic Mr Lushington,” “Ceaseless Turmoil,” “Unholy Dying,” but the sentences, word choice, dialogue, and conversation topics are delish and delovely. Assasins at Ospreys deserves a whole Saturday uninterrupted.


The Headhunters by Peter Lovesey
I know I’ve read something else by this author, but it was years ago and I’d have to see the cover to pick it out. Anyway, that’s irrelevant because nothing about this book fits easily into any category. Sure, there’s a murder – or rather, a body – in the second chapter, and another one about halfway through, but most of the time, I felt more like I was reading a novel than genre fiction.

For one thing, the detective is not the hero of the story even though it appears she is part of a series. Not only is she not a hero, she is shrill and prefers easy answers. For another thing, the characters behave like real people, speak like real people, and are often inscrutable – out of shame, shyness, or deviousness -- like real people. Finally, I had no idea who the perp was until nearly the end, and that only by process of elimination. That doesn’t happen too often without authorial tricks. Lovesey’s trick was all craft.

Is it Spring Break yet? As I’m writing this, the sun is shining and out the window, two swans glide along the Boardman River. They’re not the only ones gliding and diving: besides the ubiquitous mallards, there are mergansers, buffleheads, scoters, and ring-necks. What a nice day, you’re thinking … sounds like Spring Break. Nope. It’s March and the bay is frozen. The river’s the only open body of water around here and that’s why the crowd.

But I’m thinking about Spring Break; I’m thinking about sitting on the beach, legs stretched to the sun. My son is standing in the surf, fishing, and I’m reaching for a book… which one?



How about Mind, Life, and Universe: Conversations with Great Scientists of Our Time (Chelsea Green, 978-1-933392-43-1, edited by Lynn Margulis and Eduardo Punset). This collection of thirty-six interviews is just long enough, just short enough, just provocative enough to warrant lots of in-between surf gazing.

“People think that the brain appeared suddenly,” says Rodolfo Llinás from the NYU School of Medicine. “This is not true. It took 650 million years to become what it is.”

Hmmm. 650 million years ago there was only one land mass and it was called Pangaea.

How about an interview with Daniel Dennett, director for the Center of cognitive Studies at Tufts. He talks about consciousness, soul, will, language, and ESP. And Edward O. Wilson, Harvard professor (emeritus) and one of the greatest science writers of all time. He talks about extinctions by meteorites and the consequent diversification. The last major extinction happened 65 million years ago, and it takes about ten million years for the earth to recover. Between ten and twenty thousand years ago, the Earth was sa rich in species as it’s ever been. “Then we appeared. We are the great meteorite.”

Topics range from the why vodka sometimes refuses to unfreeze, the definition of beauty, and the lack of a biological limit on the human lifespan. What could be more wonderful?

Well, magic, I guess.

In Mind, Life and Universe Diana Deutsch, Professor of Psychology at U-C Sand Diego points out that right-handed people tend to hear high-pitched sounds on the right and low pitched sounds on the left. This is regardless of where those sounds are actually coming from. She calls it an acoustic illusion.

Almost magic, but not quite. There is an explanation.

Did anyone ever stop to ask why Orpheus’s lyre charmed stones and snakes, heaven and earth? If they did, was the answer simply because it’s music?


The Biblical account of the birth of magic, according to Astrology, Art, and Alchemy in Art by Matilde Battistini (translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia, J. Paul Getty Museum, 978-0-89236-907-2) begins with the rebellion of the angels and their outcast from heaven.

These children of heaven, having fallen in love with mortal women, decided to reveal to their brides the secret for dominating the Earth. Thus were the magic arts born, the knowledge of the stars and therapeutic properties of minerals and plants that women received and passed on for millennia.

All right. That sounds like fun.

The rest of the book is just as enticingly written, and is fabulously illustrated with the works of everyone from Marcel Duchamp to Giotto to Riminaldi to Blake. The handy size – 5 ¼ x 7 ¾ -- will pack easily in a bag, and all ages and orthodoxies will find something to wonder about when the rain falls on your holiday parade.

From Bondage to Belonging:
The Worcester Slave Narratives
Edited by B. Eugene McCarthy and Thomas L. Doughton
University of Massachusetts
978-1-55849-622-4

This book is crazy good. Why don’t they use primary materials like these in middle and high schools? The thought and feelings of these men and women are perfectly intelligible to children of that age, and incredibly powerful as they are the words of the people themselves, not some scholar telling, but real slaves showing.

And with that, I’ll let the people speak for themselves.


The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. 1842
“My infancy was spent upon the floor, in a rough cradle, or sometimes in my mother’s arms; my early boyhood in playing with the other boys and girls, colored and white, in the yard… I knew no difference between myself and the white children nor did they seem to know any in turn. Sometimes my master would come out and give a biscuit to me, and another to one of his own white boys but I did not perceive the difference between us…

“When I began to work, I discovered the difference between myself and my master’s white children. They began to order my about, and were told to do so by my master and mistress. I found, too, that they had learned to read, while I was not permitted to have a book in my hand. To be in possession of anything written or printed was regarded as an offence. And then there was the fear that I might be sold away from those who were dear to me, and conveyed far to the South I had learned that being a slave I was subject to this worst (to us) of all calamities and I knew of other in similar situations to myself, thus sold away… To know, also, that I was never to consult my own will, but was, while I lived, to be entirely under the control of another, was another state of mind hard for me to bear. Indeed all things now made me feel, what I had before known only in words, the I was a slave.”


The Life of John Thompson, A Fugitive Slave; Containing His History of 25 Years in Bondage, and His Providential Escape. Written By Himself. 1856
“The first act of slavery which I recorded in my memory , was the sale of my elder sister, who belonged to Henry Wagar, brother to J,H., and who lived three miles from our plantation. My mother heard of the sale, which was on Saturday, and on Sunday tool us with her to see our beloved sister, who was then in the yard with the trader’s drove, preparatory to being removed far South, on the Monday following. After traveling six miles, we arrived at our place of destination. Mother, approaching the door of the trader’s house, fell upon her knees, in tears begging to be permitted to see her imprisoned daughter, who was soon to be dragged away from her embrace, probably to be seen no more in the flesh. It was not his custom to admit slaves into his yard to see their friends; but at this time, his heart seemed to be moved with compassion, for he opened the door, telling us to go in, which we did.

“Here, the first thing that saluted my ears, was the rattling of the chains upon the limbs of the poor victims. It seemed to me to be a hell upon the earth, emblematical of that dreadful dungeon where the wicked are kept, until the day of God’s retribution, and where their torment ascends up forever and ever. As soon as my sister say our mother, she ran to her and fell upon her neck, but was unable to speak a word. There was a scene which angels witnessed; there were tears which, I believe, were bottled and placed in God’s depository, there to be reserved until the day when He shall pour His wrath upon this guilty nation.”

Part of my morning reading always includes the online magazine Slate, and today I discovered that the parent company, The Washington Post, had added something new. A magazine, The Root, “that provides thought-provoking commentary on today's news from a variety of black perspectives.”

Okay, doesn’t the title seems a little cliché, and the timing of the debut, well, insincere? Does it take a black man running successfully for president for black perspectives to find a forum?

Or am I wrong. Is my reaction cynical? Am I too inclined (given the season) to see slavishness and pandering where there is only coincidence?

It’s not that we don’t need a forum for black experience and voices. And after all the editor-in-chief is Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. His (and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s) eight-volume, 4,000-entry, completely stupendous African American National Biography is coming out next month from Oxford.

And the title no doubt references the interactive genealogical section that the site also hosts. Through AfricanDNA.com (co-founded by Gates) African Americans can trace their ancestry in a number of different ways, including DNA testing.

The website states that “The Root aims to be an unprecedented departure from traditional American journalism, raising the profile of black voices in mainstream media and engaging anyone interested in black culture around the world.”

We welcome their perspectives and wish them well.

On a personal note, I’ve been collecting great books about African American issues for the last couple of months in anticipation of Black History
Month. Yes, I’m a couple of days early, but here’s the first.

Andrea Cheng has written and illustrated a very unusual book, Where the Steps Were (WordSong, 978-1-932425-88-8) about an ordinary class of third graders, their always extraordinary questions, and the teacher who guides them. Miss D. takes the class through lessons on American history, with an emphasis on the experiences and contributions of blacks. Five of the children narrate the year in poems.

CARMEN
Rosa Parks

Harriet Tubman,
she came before Lincoln,
but then how did Rosa Parks
fit in?
Miss Parks
just died,
Miss D. says.
—And she was a slave?
—No, she was a seamstress
who wanted to sit
in her seat on the bus.
We find 1955
on my time line.
Dang,
that was about one hundred years
after slavery.
That’s the year I was born,
Miss D. says.
—So when you were little,
we couldn’t have sat together
on the bus?

The children also talk about personal concerns and family matters.

JONATHAN
Everything Dies

Grams had a husband once
and so did my mom
but their husbands died.
Everything dies
like these cicadas
all over the playground.
Simon’s dad
was murdered one day
and so was Lincoln
in that theater
and Martin Luther King
talking about dreams.

There is additional tension as their school is to be demolished at the end of the year.

JONATHAN
Keys

Mr. O’Leary
has all the keys,
every last one
to every last door
in our school,
even the bathrooms
and the boiler room
where he took me and Anthony
to show us
all that heat.
What’s he going to do
with those keys
when they tear our school
down?

Cheng’s sister teaches third grade in Cincinnati, and the book is based on her experience. The class takes a field trip to a farm, and finally to a theater to see a play. There, history comes home to roost as the children, sitting in the balcony, are accused without evidence of spitting on the crowd below. Back in their classroom—having missed the play—the children write letters to the theater manager, asking him if their skin color had anything to do with their presumed guilt.

Where the Steps Were is fascinating, heartbreaking, and hilarious. It’s an extraordinary collection of voices of ordinary children. Our ordinary (not) children.

It’s primary day in Michigan, where the main offices of ForeWord magazine are located. Unfortunately, the National Parties are punishing the state for wanting to have more a voice in the election process by canceling some or all of their delegates to the national conventions. While that’s nothing to celebrate, it is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, and for that, we have a few book suggestions from Sleeping Bear Press.

Riding to Washington (Sleeping Bear Press, 978-1-58536-324-7) is the story of a girl who rides with her father on a bus from Indianapolis to Washington, D.C., to see and hear Dr. King speak.

At first, she’s convinced that the only reason she’s going is because she’s too much trouble for her mother to handle alone, what with her two baby brothers. On the way, however, she experiences first-hand the effects of inequality and segregation and comes to understand the need for all people, even little trouble-makers like herself, to do the right thing.

Author Gwenyth Swain’s father and grandfather made this trip in 1963, to march for civil rights. The language of the book is colloquial and historical – a choice that will provide discussion material for classrooms. The book is beautifully illustrated by David Geister, with the colors, sites, and textures of the '60s.

Sleeping Bear of Chelsea, Michigan, began publishing in 1998, and considers its authors and illustrators to be “the heart and soul” of the press. Many of their books would be welcome additions to public or home libraries. Here are two others that celebrate the trials and contributions of Black Americans.

 

Let Them Play by Margot Theis Raven
Illustrated by Chris Ellison
978-1-58536-260-8

In 1955 there were 62 official Little League programs in South Carolina, and all but one were white. This is the story of the Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars, an all-black team, that wins the state tournament by default when none of the other teams will play them. At the Little League Baseball World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the Cannon Street team is invited as guests, but they are not allowed to play. Let Them Play takes its title from the chant shouted by the spectators who attended the World Series final.

 

D is for Drinking Gourd: An African American Alphabet
by Nancy Sanders
Illustrated by E. B. Lewis
978-1-58536-293-6

D is for Drinking Gourd,
and the North Star that led through the night
from station to station on the Underground Railroad,
escaping on a dangerous flight.

From the abolitionists to the Harlem Renaissance, D is for Drinking Gourd celebrates the role the African American community has played in the shaping of America.

Barefoot Books,  NorthSouth Books, and Green Tiger Press are all offering beautiful and well written picture books for children of all ages.

 

The selections from Barefoot Books are for older children, and are great for both reading out loud and reading silently in bed, or on a windowseat, or under a tree. The first one, Indian Tales by Shenaaz Nanji, showcases stories from the Punjab, Utter Pradesh, Rajasthan – each one different. All of the stories are introduced with an explanation of the origin of the tale, and a succinct and interesting overview of the region. Christopher Corr’s illustrations capture the colors of the world’s largest democracy. (978-1-84686-083-6)

 

Fireside Stories: Tales for a Winter’s Eve is another fabulous anthology, this time of winter stories from around the world. Sumptuous illustrations by Helen Cann and elegant writing by Caitlin Matthews make this one a pleasure for readers and listeners.

 

The illustrations in NorthSouth Books’ retelling of Anderson’s Fairy Tales are more restrained, but certainly no less imaginative. Silke Leffler’s choice of what to put on the page will keep the attention of lap-sitters, while the timeless stories unfold. Originally published in Austria, author Friederun Reichenstetter lives outside of Munich and writes briskly, and with poise. (978-0-7358-2141-5)

Ludwig van Beethoven: A Musical Picture Book was also first published in Austria. An amazing story, detailed illustrations, a chronology on the back endpage and a packaged CD of compositions all make this the perfect gift of knowledge and joy. (Written by Lene Mayer-Skumanz, illustrated by Winfried Opgenoorth, 978-0-7358-2123-1)

 

These last two books, from Green Tiger Press, will certainly entertain children, but they’ll also delight adults. Their version of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse looks just like something my mom used to read me. (In fact, it is. It’s a reprint of the 1947 edition.) The cut-out shape, primary colors, the pink cake, and the cook’s dairy cheeks. The sensational expressions on the faces of the mice! You’ll have so much fun reading it out loud, the kids won’t be able to resist. (Illustrated by Ethel Hays, 978-1-59583-1-927)

 

Another nostalgic Green Tiger volume is their Make It Yourself: Paper & Cardboard Projects for Kids. Old fashioned illustrations and pretty projects are guaranteed to be irresistible to anyone over the age of forty. (Those who can wield a pair of scissors with more grace than a Wii, e.g.) Don’t they get to have fun over the holiday as well? (978-1-59583-188-0)

Cheers!

Once upon a time, I had to drive my son Hart to school every morning – a good 40 minute round trip. We passed the time, and the years, listening to books. All of the Phillip Pullman books got covered, and J.K. Rowling; oh, and we loved Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series. Many, many times, we’d pop the CD out of the player in the car and bring it inside with us, where we’d listen at the table, drawing (or knitting), as the story continued.

Hart is by far the youngest in our family; I read long books out loud to the other two children before bed. Reading aloud is tiring in comparison with the joy I found in sharing the listening experience with Hart. Also, with the older children, we were confined to that one time of the day, unlike Hart and I who turned on the story even if we were just going to the market ten minutes away.

This year, however, Hart moved up to junior high and takes the bus to school. Alone in the car, what do I read?

Here’s something I just finished, and it’s terrific.

 

The Art Thief
Noah Charney
Read by Simon Vance
Blackstone Audio
Approximately 10 hours on 8 CDs
$55.00 (still shows a higher price -- $11 – for Canada)
978-1-4332-0371-8

The book begins with the professional heist of a Carravagio in Rome. Then, off to Paris where an all-white painting, a “White on White” by Suprematist Kasimir Malevich, disappears from a gallery storeroom. Up in London, the National Gallery of Modern Art buys one of these “White on White” paintings at auction, and nearly the same moment that it’s delivered, the work is stolen. (There is, by the way, a Malevich at MoMA called "White Square on a White Background.")

Anyway, while it appears that there may be a connection between the thefts since they all happened at nearly the same time, it’s a rather peculiar, even indigestible combination of styles. Who would want both a Carravagio and a Malevich?

Who indeed? And that’s where this book is so fascinating, for it answers all sorts of questions about who buys art, who sells it, who steals it, and why. There are also art history lessons thrown in, and amazing details concerning the techniques of forgery, smuggling, conservation, authentication, etc.

And the characters: two fat Frenchman who roly-poly from appetizer to clue to dessert; dry and baffled Inspector Harry Wickenden, who has no interest in art, only in art thieves; Gabriel Coffin who travels around giving conferences on heisting, and has just managed to have his girlfriend – a thief, of course – sprung from prison; two smart and elegant, no nonsense female curators. But perhaps the greatest character is the reader himself.

Simon Vance’s audio interpretation of The Art Thief is light, rich, frothy, bubbling, humorous, nimble, and totally entertaining.

Yesterday, when I was thinking about writing this blog, I looked up the author online. To my astonishment, Publishers Weekly hated the book, saying it was “a story so bogged down with minutiae that even the most dedicated reader will get stuck.” I beg to disagree. I enjoyed every minute of the caper. The characters are unforgettable – I’d love to have dinner with any one of them. The dialogue is full of humor, the plot spins around deliciously, and the details of the business of art fascinate. Add to that the masterful performance of Simon Vance, and this book is pure delight.

Noah Charney holds degrees in art history from Courtauld and Cambridge. He’s also the founding director of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, an international think tank on art crime. Check out his page at Amazon.com: he’s compiled a list of must-see paintings in American galleries, and a short article called “The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa.”

I don’t know about you, but I give away books for the holidays. Here are three that deserve some gift-wrapping.

DUST STORM

A Grave in Gaza by Matt Beynon Rees (Soho Press, 352 pages, hardcover $24.00, 978-1-56947-472-3)

Omar Yussef, principal of a school in Bethlehem, hasn’t been to Gaza since he “had nice curly hair and…could carry an overnight case without breaking into a sweat.” He arrives with a Swede, Magnus Wallender, and meets a Scot, James Cree at the border. Both of them work for the UN While Yussef’s visit is to inspect UN schools, it takes all of five pages to sidetrack him into a rescue mission. The very dangerous rescue mission of a teacher taken into custody after discovering the sale of university degrees to the members of one of the two dueling security (is that the word?) agencies. The next day, it starts to blow, and the murkiness of Gazan politics gets down and dirty as well.

This is the second in Rees’ series, and the writing is superb. As is the pacing. And as improbable as Yussef’s passion is to get to the bottom of things—to go where even angels, gangsters, and corruption fear to tread—he’s a character with humor, strength, and depth. I read this one on the way to New York and back and found, at the end, that I’d formed a great attachment to the brave, portly do-gooder. This is a series I’ll keep up with.

“DON’T BLOW BUBBLES OF DESPAIR.”

This book sits face up on a shelf in my office. Always a step ahead, New Directions published this new edition of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art as a hardcover, without a dust jacket. Smart. And fun. Hence the title. This book is full of wonders, wits, and wisdoms, like:

Poetry the shortest distance between two humans.

Great poets are the antennae of the race, with more than rabbit ears.

Oh my, and this:

Be a dark barker before the tents of existence.

Great for the purse, car, bathroom, or hanging by its ear from the Xmas tree. (978-0-8112-1719-4)

ALL THE REST IS NOISE

In Praise of Flattery by Willis Goth Regier (University of Nebraska, 23 illustrations, 232 pages, Softcover $21.95, 978-0-8032-3969-2)

This one’s been sitting in a pile for months. I just couldn’t get to it, and I couldn’t let it go either. Good thing, as I finally cracked it open a couple of days ago and spent a couple of hours laughing. I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff. Yes, in a way, it’s much like Ferlinghetti’s book above, but better, because there are notes and illustrations and quotations from Tacitus and La Rochefoucauld and Saint Simon and anon, etcetera. To La Fontaine, “Flatterers thrive on fool’s credulity.” Samuel Johnson said Dryden was the paragon of “meanness and servility of hyperbolic adulation.” Shakespeare called it “the monarch’s plague.” But instead of just throwing out aphorisms, Regier has numbered RULES. One hundred twenty-eight of them. Here’s one:

RULE 2: Praise must please.

If it does not please, it’s noise....

And another:

RULE 5: To stand out, flattery must fit in.

When flattery is misplaced it is fatal to a flatterer. A flatterer must be able to work a crowd or flatter a target in the midst of one. The audience needs to be taken into account, not just the persons flattered, and not only the present audience but possible future ones. “Holbien, according to legend, so flattered Anne of Cleves that Hery VIII married her on the strength of the likeness, with the result that as soon as the King saw the original the painter had to fly the country.” [Bowen]

Or,

RULE 13: Flattery is a science. [Colton]

Flattery needs to be carefully calibrated. It improves with education, it advances through close observation of cause and effect, and it is based on repeated experience. Among fine-tuned people, flattery requires almost atomic precision.

Last one.

RULE 27: Flattery adapts to all emotions.

Percy Shelley wrote that pity, admiration, and sympathy are “flattering emotions.” There are more. If you doubt yourself you flatter your intelligence. If you blame yourself you flatter your conscience. Love flatters lovers, fear flatters bullies. Apologies flatter. Twilights flatter. Flowers flatter. Oils and alcohol flatter. Words flatter better than anything else, except, on occasion, rapt silence (Rule 66)….

RULE 66: Silence flatters.

“Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise,” says the Proverb (17:28)….

See now, wasn’t that too much fun.

Comes the season of Christmas stories, and now that Thanksgiving is past and my tree is up, I feel that I can brightly bring them forth with comfort and joy.

Lucy’s Christmas, written by Donald Hall and illustrated by Michael McCurdy (David R. Godine, 978-1-56792-342-1) is the story of Donald Hall’s mother, Lucy, a stove, and a rural Christmas in 1909. Beautifully illustrated by scratching away the black to reveal bright colors beneath, this book is a gem, particularly for families whose traditions include church.

Another story based on a family story is Eli Remembers by Ruth Vander Zee and Marian Sneider, illustrated by Bill Farnsworth (Eerdmans Books, 978-0-8028-5309-7). A more apt title might have been, Eli Finds Out, for the boy discovers why his grandparents are so sad on Rosh Hashanah. A journey to Lithuania and the Ponar Forest provide the answer. Unsentimental and yet full of feeling, from the texture of the illustrations to the layout of the text, this is a good book for introducing history within the family.

The Sheltering Cedar by Anne Marshall Runyon (Portal Press, 978-1-933454-02-3) mostly takes place on Ocracoke Island, one of the Barrier Islands off the North Carolina coast. On the island, an old cedar tree, bent from the fierce nor’easters, shelters the creatures of the beach, just like a harbor shelters boats and a house shelters people. Cardinals, plovers, beetles, and toads decorate the pages of this book’s Christmas pages.

Kate DiCamillo, Newberry Medal winner, joins with illustrator Bagram Ibatoulline to create the story of Frances, a little girl in Cincinnati whose father is away, fighting in World War II. DiCamillo doesn’t actually tell the reader this, but through the carefully crafted illustrations in Great Joy (Candlewick, 978-0-7636-2920-5), Frances’s concern for an organ grinder strike a chord. This is a wonderful story about the spirit of Christmas, so often lacking in our contemporary commercial holiday.

Finally, I can’t resist this The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore (Candlewick, 978-0-7636-3469-8). The inky illustrations, reminiscent of 19th century cut-outs, are both crisp and frothy. Every single ornament on the Christmas tree sparkles and intrigues! At least as delightful is the biography of the illustrator, Niroot Puttapipat, who is the son of a Thai princess. This new version of an old favorite perfectly combines nostalgia and high-tech, with its two-dimensional graphics and its three-dimensional pop-ups.

Kids in Crisis: A Workable Plan for Successful Parenting
Ross Wright with Dean Merrill
B&H Publishing Group
978-0-8054-4399-8

How did this get categorized as a book about religion?

All right, I see it. I went to the publisher’s website and this is what it says:

“From its original core of Bibles, textbooks, and reference titles, B&H has blossomed into a major publisher of Christian living, fiction, homeschool, youth, history, and other categories.”

I’m sorry to tell you B&H Publishing (and even sorrier to inform the author), that you’re shooting yourself in the foot with this knee-jerk categorizing based first and foremost on religion. Just because someone mentions a Psalm, does that make it a Christian book? Because someone doesn’t mention a Psalm, does that make it a non-Christian book? Just because a book is labeled Christian, does that make it acceptable to ALL Christians. How about books (the vast majority, to put it mildly) that don’t carry the Christian stamp of approval… Are they to be considered, by Christians, as bad or corrupting or simply off topic. As a non-Christian, is it impossible to gain understanding about, say, parenting, from a book found on the Religion shelf of a library or bookstore.

Of course not.

However, I’m not going to find a book about parenting on the Religion shelf of a library or a bookstore because I’m not going to look there. I’m going to look on the Parenting shelf, or as BISAC calls it, “Family & Relationships.”

And that’s what I mean about shooting yourself in the foot. Kids in Crisis is an interesting, thoughtful, and useful book based on experience, no matter what your thoughts on faith, and it’s destined for a quiet and uncommented death unless someone, like me, picks it up and reads it for the title instead of shelving it according to a rigid category stamped on its backside.

So, got that out of my system. Let’s talk about the book. As the parent of two ex-teens, believe me, I’ve been to the Parenting section of my library looking for hints on how to deal with -- even understand -- crisis.  Theirs and mine.

Here’s a question for you, then. Say your teenager comes home, alcohol on his breath, car keys in his hand. He’s left the headlights on, so you go out to turn them off, and discover the front fender smashed in. You march back inside, only to find him passed out and insensible to your calls. In the morning, to make matters worse, he won’t get up to go to school. He’s too tired.

Honestly, what’s your first reaction?

Honestly, mine was to shout and threaten, followed closely by slam, rattle, bang, etcetera.

It was almost always completely useless.

So right, say the authors. There is no quick fix (i.e. drugs and beatings won’t help). “If force could solve our issues with difficult kids, we would have achieved family peace a long time ago.”

The authors liken a child in crisis to a steel bar, and they note some of the different “hammers” families use -- like grounding and time-outs -- to reshape the steel bar. The problem is, that to shape steel, you need heat and pressure and time. Bashing the bar on the door isn’t going to do anything but create dents.

 “Discipline only works when you have total power and control,” say Wright and Merrill. And after a kid is about two years old, you do not have total power and control unless you’re willing to maim, imprison, or kill you kid for his misbehavior. Rules alone don’t work, they say; your job isn’t to beat the child at his own game, it’s to “organize the match and keep it flowing within proper boundaries.” To do this you need relationship and rules.

The authors quote Josh McDowell, a youth speaker. “Rules without relationship is a jail. Relationship without rules is a zoo. Relationship with rules if a home.”

And here’s the gist of the argument in Kids in Crisis: that discipline in the sense of overpowering a child does not have any real goal in sight beyond the immediate one of obedience. That a farsighted goal, and one that most parents truly desire for their children, is “emancipation” not rank obedience. Parents want their children to be able to be in control of themselves when they grow up -- to do the right thing because they want to not because they’ve been told to.

How do you achieve that? Read the book. Wright and Merrill have some very interesting things to say about what works, what doesn’t, and signs to watch out for.

Ross Wright is CEO and executive director of Hope & Home, a Christian foster care agency. Dean Merrill is a child psychologist and author.