Shabbat

A Facebook friend recently took a week off Facebook--indeed, the whole internet--and when she came back and posted about it, a friend of hers posted these two articles to the thread she'd started about taking time off. I loved them both, found them so interesting. http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/39784/jewish/Shalom-Shabbat.htm http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1131514/jewish/The-Shabbat-Experiment.htm I don't have a religious reason to do this, which is sad, perhaps. But I'm going to try it anyway. Try it once, then again probably not the next week, but within the next couple months? Both articles are about how the fourth commandment says that we should get our work done during six days, then take the seventh day off. Both women talk about all the things they don't do during the Sabbath--turning lights on or off, driving, cooking, shopping, writing... and they talk about the things they do do: spend time with children, family, friends; read; rest. Go for walks. It sounds lovely, really. And so sensible. Whether one is religious or not. And I'm not, but... yeah. There will be a follow-up post to this one, and follow-ups to that. Stay tuned.

Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field

I just finished Hitty: Her First Hundred Years. By Rachel Field, this book won the Newbery in 1930. I recently bought a withdrawn copy at a library sale, and finally read it. I'm interested in reading the Newbery winners I haven't read, but honestly this didn't look like the most exciting book to me, so it took me a while to get to it. But once I did, it went fast. It's pretty engrossing, though it doesn't sound like it would be: Hitty is a doll, and this book follows her through the first hundred years of her life. She starts in Maine, where she is crafted out of mountain-ash by an Old Peddler--a small piece of wood he'd brought with him from home, from Ireland, because "A piece of mountain-ash wood is a good thing to keep close at hand, for it brings luck besides having power against witchcraft and evil." But when he shows up at the Preble's doorstep, it's cold, getting toward winter, and Phoebe's father is off on a voyage at sea, so the Old Peddler ends up staying the winter with Phoebe, her mother, and Andy the hired boy, and at some point during that long winter, the Old Peddler makes the mountain-ash into a doll and gives it to Phoebe Preble. Phoebe treasures Hitty, whose name is helpfully stitched onto her camisole, so she keeps her name through the years. Anyway Phoebe treasures Hitty, but then she and her mother (and Hitty, of course!) end up going--a bit inexplicably--to sea with her father, and Phoebe has adventures in the South Seas. From there, Hitty ends up in India, the doll of a little missionary girl, and from there, she goes back to the U.S., to Philadelphia this time. Etcetera. Eventually she becomes an antique, but first she is a special doll for a lot of little girls.

Been Reading a TON Lately

This is going to be one of those make-up posts summarizing everything I've read lately, because there's too much! I finally read Wild, by Cheryl Strayed. I loved Wild. Lots of people have had lots to say about it, though. Perhaps eventually I'll have something to add, but for now, just read what the New York Times and Micha Hohorst had to say, okay? That seems like as good a place to start as any--a better place to start than most, really. I also read The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron, a sci-fi novel written in the early 50's and set then, too, about a couple of kids who enter a contest to build a space ship, and end up visiting a small asteroid orbiting Earth. It was pretty great for what it is, but I don't really feel the need to read the other five in the series. One was enough. Been feeling that way a lot lately, with series. Also read: Big Machine, by Victor La Valle. It was heavily praised, and it was good, but in the end it was too... strange for me? And too long, which was good to notice in light of my own overly long tome currently being revised and revised and revised. The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka. I loved this book too, actually. Amazing. I think I read her other novel years ago, but I have to track it down and read it again, and I'm hoping I didn't read it before, because then I'll get to read it for the first time!

Atlas of Remote Islands, by Judith Schalansky

This was another Lucky Day! book, which meant I had to read it before I read all the other books I had checked out, because I could renew those, after all. Except it's not the kind of book I want to just sit down and read start to finish, though I did try. And it's only three days late. But this book is awesome. I'm probably going to have to buy a copy for my classroom (when I have a classroom again!). The subtitle is Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will. It's translated from the German. Judith Schalansky was born in the German Democratic Republic, though when she was nine, it became part of Germany again, its own country no more. I spent most of my time with this book reading the introduction, and flipping back and forth between the intro and the islands mentioned in the intro. When I finally finished the introduction, I read through the whole book, the fifty islands described. I'd already read the entries for maybe half of them, some of them several times. I loved this book. Highly recommended.

My Most Excellent Year; A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park, by Steve Kluger

I just read My Most Excellent Year; A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, & Fenway Park, by Steve Kluger. I'd put it on hold at the library ages ago, and it's been on the "to read" shelf for a while. It doesn't help that I don't remember why I put it on hold. Someone recommended it, probably on child_lit. Anyway. It was good. I could've quit reading it at several points, but didn't. I read the whole thing. I'm glad I did. Primarily the story of "brothers" T.C. and Augie's junior year of high school, it's told in a combination of instant messages (between T.C. and Augie, but also T.C.'s huge crush Alé, Augie's boyfriend Andy, and the deaf kid who over the course of the book becomes their little brother--Hucky), emails between the parents and other adults, and journal entries that are a school assignment for Augie, T.C., and Alé. There is also a fair amount of straightforward dialogue, usually narrated by one of the brothers, and maybe some other stuff too. It works. A fun, quick read (in spite of the page count!).

Second Fiddle, by Rosanne Parry

Rosanne Parry posts on the child_lit listserv I belong to, which is where I first encountered her and her work, and which is why I got Second Fiddle out of the library in the first place. As happpens, it then took me a long time to actually read it--but I did, finally, and was glad to! Written in 2011, this book is set in 1990 in Berlin, right around when the Berlin Wall fell. I remember that happening--it was a huge, talked about deal when I was in eighth grade--but it was so abstract to me. I had no sense, really, of what it signified--and in some ways, I still don't really get it. After reading Second Fiddle, I get it more, but I still have such a shaky grasp of it. Anyhow, this novel is about three twelve-year-old American army brats living in Berlin in 1990, all about to be be transferred with their families and split up--it will be Jody's fourth fresh start, and she's sick of it. But her dad's going to retire, they're going to buy a house in Texas and have that kind of life. However, first she and her two best friends are going to have an adventure. It turns out to be quite a bit more of an adventure than anticipated. I like this book a lot. About place, and friendship, and growing up, and history. Recommended.

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick

This book was on the Lucky Day! shelf at the library, and I'd never heard of it, but it seemed awesome--"14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales"--by some of my favorite writers: Lois Lowry! Sherman Alexie! Louis Sachar! Walter Dean Myers! So I took it home. Turns out that there are fourteen illustrations that were originally published as a picture book in 1984, just the illustrations and their mysterious captions. The book I got is those pictures, with stories to go with them. The pictures are great. Very mysterious and creepy and excellent. Google them. The stories are a lot of fun too. There could be infinite versions of this book, with different stories written about the pictures.