RAE’S READS
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Today we celebrate National School Librarian Day. I have been volunteering in the school library at Stevenson Primary School in Alvin, Texas since October, 2018. I had never taught below sixth grade when I taught for AISD, and had the definite motto of, “Don’t bring them to me until they are twelve!” I have never been around small children, nor ever wanted to be. But, hey, the school is located less than three blocks from my house, and the “little ones” (pre-K-2nd grade) often stop at my Little Free Library in my side yard. Often I would buy learning-to-read books for my youngest patrons. How hard could it be to work with these kids?
VERY HARD! These seventy-four year old knees complain loudly when getting down on the floor to help a first grader find a book about a specific kind of dinosaur. Once I made the mistake of settling…
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Ordinary Grace by Kent Krueger, was a Third Tuesday Book Club selection. I had skimmed the book in large print and recommended it to the group. When the book was accepted, It had been long enough that I could remember the plot, remembered vaguely that the characters developed and changed as the novel went on, but little else. Ordering the audiobook from our local library, my Better Half and I listened together. This way, I could also count Grace as part of my 2019 audiobook challenge. The story takes place in New Brenen, a real township in Minnesota. Krueger describes the “summer of the dying and the end of childhood innocence.” The first death was Bobby Cole, a schoolmate of the protagonist and narrator, Frank. Bobby, who always was “a little slow,” was hit and killed by a train as he was playing on the tracks. Frank and Jake, two years younger often had walked and followed the tracks. That fateful summer, Frank and others learned about “the awful grace of God.” Frank’s father, a minister, was a man of faith, a veteran, and a praying man. Frank’s mother, far from the typical mother of the ’60s, lived out her thwarted musical ambitions through the musical prodigy in the family, Ariel, Frank’s teenage sister. Gus, who served under Frank’s father during WWII, a family friend lived in and cleaned the church. Add in two murders, a bad cop, a judgmental town, and many prejudices, and you have a page-turning psychological thriller as well as a coming-of-age story. Krueger’s beautifully-drawn characters gain a terrible knowledge that summer and must pay for it at a terrible price.
Book Five is a classic, a novel I’ve always heard of, spoken about in reverent tones by literature professors and critics alike, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. I’m so glad I decided to listen to this novel. I tried once to read it on my own in the print version, but couldn’t get past the thick dialect and dated “feel” of the novel. Hurston wrote her novel in 1937, but it was reissued and “discovered” for the classic it was in 1975. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple found Hurston’s unmarked grave, derelict and abandoned much like her novel had been. Walker wrote an article which contributed greatly to the esteem in which Hurston is held today. Dealing with “Black Folk Traditions” and African American’s Literary Heritage, Hurston spins the tale of Jane, a “Black woman who, though constricted by the times, still demanded to be heard.” After two marriages, Jane finds the love of her life, “Teacake,” who becomes a third husband and an enforcing influence on her life. Not only is the novel an enlightening description of Black life during The Great Depression, but it is an excellent action-adventure story. the scenes of the great hurricane Jane and Teacake go through are exciting, suspenseful, and brimming with action. This novel has earned its description of “a seminal novel in American Fiction.”
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On this first day of April, National Poetry Month, I have some personal goals and plans to celebrate poetry. I began with a trip to a primary school located across from my subdivision where I volunteer in the library and have been helping students write in Mrs. Villarreal’s bilingual first-grade class. We finished our spotlight on writing by writing poetry (for the fun of it, and it was just that!). Today, I had the pleasure of bringing the students copies of Jack Prelutsky’s poetry collection, Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast. Our school Book Fair started today, and I spent a couple of hours helping out. My goal for this evening is to begin reading blogging friend, Jennifer A. Payne’s lovely poems and photo essay, The Evidence of Flossing.
I decided to plan only a day of celebrating at a time, preserving the fun and spontaneity in my month-long efforts. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
On Book Buzz, I found a Literary Calendar which lists these important dates in April 2019, worth celebrating:
April 2 is International Children’s Book Day and is also Hans Christian Anderson’s birthday.
April 4 is School Librarians Day.
April 7-13 is Library Week.
April 11 is National Library Workers Day
April 12 is Beverly Cleary’s birthday.
April 13 is Scrabble Day
April 16 is National Librarians Day. It is also National Bookmobile Day.
April 18 is Celebrate Teen Literature Day.
April 18 is Newspaper Columnists Day.
April 23 is Shakespeare’s birthday.
April 23 is World Book Day.
April 27 is Tell a Story Day.
April 28 is Great Poetry Day.
April 29-May 5 is Children’s Book Week.
April 30 is Children’s Book Day.
DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THERE ARE PLANS TO CELEBRATE “POEM IN MY POCKET DAY” THIS YEAR? My classes and I had such fun with that day last year.
My first goal is to read one whole book of poetry. Last year I read Colin Chappell’s Just Thinking. This year I have chosen another blogging friend, Jen Payne and plan to read her Evidence of Flossing.
I hope to teach at least one session of poetry writing, workshop-style at our local public library.
I would like to sponsor at least one read-aloud/critique session for budding poets at the same venue.
Poetry and Poets are worth celebrating in your classroom, your neighborhood, on a personal level. Give it a thought and share in the reply/comments box your own goals and plans.
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This charming 2018 novel grabbed my attention at my local library when I picked up the large print book on display and read,
“Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric Uncle Billy’s bookshop, solving the scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on her 12th birthday, Billy has a falling- out with her mother and disappears from Miranda’s life. Sixteen years later, she receives unexpected news: Uncle Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy and one final scavenger hunt. Returning to the bookstore as its owner, Miranda is drawn into a journey through Billy’s past –and the terrible secret that tore her family apart.”
Intrigued? I most certainly was, and the novel did NOT disappoint. It was all it promised to be. I cared about Mirando and Prospero Books wondering and musing at the possible connections to The Tempest, perhaps my favorite Shakespeare play. The “romance angle,” thankfully light, was a bit “predictable” and maybe even “formulaic,” but that did not detract from the family mystery, Miranda’s problematic relationships with her parents, and current boyfriend, or the enjoyable twists and reveals that keeps the reader turning pages late into the night. I rate it a full five out of five and thank the author for a delightful read. Another thank you to whoever wrote the blurb on the back of the LP edition for a lovely, attention-grabbing piece of good writing!
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The month of April is National Poetry Month. I hope to do something each day to celebrate poetry. For information on how my students and I celebrated last April, use the search box to find last year’s PWR posts. I will review them myself in a few minutes and try to make this year’s celebrations even better.
Happy Reading!
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My Tuesday Teaser on Crazy Lady will have to do, instead of the promised review because I visited my friend in her nursing home and picked up about eight Nicholas Sparks’ novels for my Little Free Library. Vivian is 90 and very alert, not to mention entertaining. I had Crazy Lady, a junior high book with me, and as I told her about it, she said she’d like to read it, “especially since it was such a nice thin book.” Two other residents asked to read Crazy Lady next, so the book has a new home.
I have worked with first-grade bilingual students all week, reading and writing “color poems” from Hailstones and Halibut Bones. The teacher became the most excited person there and found she would read and do rhythm in Spanish Very well.
Moving to an adult “venue,” My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, one of my favorite contemporary novelists, has been waiting patiently for me to tell PWR readers how much I enjoyed it. Lucy my was published back in 2016 when I first started PWR , and I probably read it within a year of that time. It is such a memorable book, however, that it remains fresh in my mind.
Strout’s novel reveals and unspools in a way that captivated me as a reader, describing Lucy’s “escape from her troubled family.” As the novel progresses, Lucy turns a “strange” hospital extended-stay into “fodder” for her writing career, and in consequence, ends her marriage. At the beginning of the novel, there is a “strange” visit from her mother, which leaves the reader to muse on the “strange” relationship the two women have. The reader desperately wants to read more.
I had already read Olive Kitteridge and Modern Lovers when I started Lucy Barton. All three novels sounded familiar somehow, and then I realized I had read excerpts of them in The New Yorker when they were published as short stories. Various themes that pop up in Lucy are ones that Strout has dealt with before: “How incompletely we know each other, and how desperately hard every person in the world [works] to get what they need.” As in many of her novels, she deals with my favorite of her themes, “the redemptive power in ‘little things.’” Strout is a gifted novelist who is rapidly becoming my go-to author for a darned good read. I rate it five out of five!
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