Some nice children's books, for Veterans Day

Believe it or not, this is a really hard topic to find books or resources on. I had to do it for work -- we did a Veterans Day program for kids. I wanted to do stories and crafts. It was hard to find something that didn't glorify war (society in general does enough of that) and lent itself to being read out loud. Because of bureacracy, I couldn't get a library card for the town my job is in without going through the library director. So one of the board members went for me.

My favorite was This Land Is Your Land. I think Woody Guthrie is credited as the author. You all know what that one's about, but the illustrations in it were really beautiful. You could have framed each of them. There are also some verses at the end of that song that generally don't get sung, questioning how free the country really is, and whether this land really is made for you and me. I'd never heard them before and it made me smile at how that song's always turned into a rah-rah patriotic song. It's like when Ronald Reagan used "Born In the USA" as his campaign theme song. I guess he didn't listen to the verses!

Another good one was called The Star-Spangled Banner. It was more factual and explained all the symbols of the country: the different places, people and objects that just scream "America". Finally, Yankee Doodle told the story of that song. I wish I had the books with me so I could say who wrote them. But I can't remember -- shame, as I'm posting this partly for anyone else who anticipates finding themselves in the same boat next year. If the board member hasn't picked up her books by later in the week, I can post them.

Removed from TBR, with a tinge of sadness

Most people's favorite movie is something normal, like Gone with the Wind, or the Star Wars trilogy, or Citizen Kane. My choice is a little more offbeat. I've loved Apollo 13 ever since it came out. I've probably seen it over 100 times. Because of that movie, I planned last year's vacation around a shuttle launch (scrapped, unfortunately).

I think the real hero of that movie, and of the corresponding real-life saga, was flight director Gene Krantz. Through a combination of expertise, steely determination and excellent team management, he was able to address each problem as it arose in order to bring the astronauts home safely. The government agreed with me; he won a Congressional Medal of Freedom for his role in the mission.

So it was with a lot of excitement that I purchased his autobiography, Failure is not an Option. I was looking forward to reading the inside stories of the Apollo and Mercury programs, from the perspective of one who'd been there, not that of Hollywood. I moved it from apartment to apartment for nearly seven years before finally sitting down and giving it a real shot. I did not get far.

The early parts of the book are extremely technical, and fairly dry for such an exciting topic. Tech junkies would probably love the book, and perhaps that's who it's aimed at. Maybe one day I, too, will push through to read the more human tales of the moon landing, the launchpad fire, and the tense days of Apollo 13. I'm not going to sell the book yet, or anything like that. But for now, it's pretty far down on my TBR list.

Loyal readers, if anyone out there can recommend a book about the space program that might be more along the lines of what I'm looking for, leave me a comment!

Eeek! Nightmares Tonight

Normally, I eschew the horror genre, after reading the allegedly non-scary Stephen King book Gerald's Game the summer before college and having the shit so thoroughly scared out of me that I missed out on an entire summer's worth of sleep. But I saw Sophie by Guy Burt, and decided to give it a try.

Throughout the book, it promised to disappoint. The book tells the tale of Sophie, who is being held prisoner by Mattie (a guy). Mattie has her tied to a chair in an abandoned house, and says he wants answers to what happened in their childhood. So does the reader. There are all kinds of hints of bizarre doings: someone named either Ol' Grady or Ol' Greedy, who I could never determine whether he was an actual person or a manifestation like the Boogeyman, but who Sophie apparently killed. Their mother spends all of her time confined to one room of the house. Their father is always gone. The extraordinarily intelligent Sophie takes care of Mattie. They spend their days together and share their own world, made for two and two alone.

The tale vacillates between the present day (told through the eyes of Sophie) and the past (told from Mattie's point of view). Like most horror books, it's hard to tell too much about it without spoiling the ending. I will just say that the last fifty or so pages of the book make it worth it. If you decide to try this one, try not to get bored before then. And try not to get annoyed with all of the clumsy foreshadowing ("You knew, even then, didn't you? Tell me, what was the real purpose of the barn? How long had you been planning it all?"). Maybe other, more seasoned horror readers will find the ending predictable. I sure didn't. And it is genuinely scary too. It taps into a fear that I believe most people have, and what's revealed at the end makes the rest of the book all the more scary, as it challenges where your sympathies have lain all along.

Update: there, it's done

Wow, that really needed to be done! I feel as good as I feel after cleaning the bathtub after ignoring it for three weeks. There was some dead wood on there that I'm not quite ready to admit defeat towards, but mostly it was books I've come across that I want to read, but haven't. The new Barbara Kingsolver, Jasper Fforde, and Jen Lancaster. All those books that my parents wanted me to give to the book sale. Some other stuff I've heard of here and there. I see the beginnings of a World War II thing, as well as further continuation of my aborted colonial history thing. Plus more trips to the library, and more posts!

When NaBloPoMo gets tough

The tough get NaBloPoMo...or something. Alert readers probably spotted the flaw in someone who maintains a blog about the books she reads participating in such a NaBloPoMo thing. I didn't spot it until early this week, when I realized I was current on all the books I'd read when I didn't have internet access and wasn't due to complete anything anytime soon. Yesterday's book was a godsend that way. I came across it when unpacking, and thought: I know! Children's short stories! That'll go fast! It did, too. It only took me about an hour to read, but then I was right back where I started.

I visited the NaBloPoMo site, sure that this would be the day when I fail. Then I came across a new group: List Lovers...for people who love to make lists! Sweet! I like to make lists. I like it so much that I have a notebook full of different lists I've made. Some of them are things I'd like to do. Some of them are lists of things I have done (the whole list book idea started because I got tired of trying to list off every guy I'd ever kissed every time I kissed someone new). So I thought maybe this would salvage today's entry.

But after giving it some thought, I can't come up with a much better list than a new and improved TBR list. The one on the sidebar has a ton of dead wood and mostly came from this post, where I went through my book collection and set aside the ones I'd never actually read. Maybe it's time to admit that my interest in some of them has passed, that I'm never going to pick them up, and that it's time to pass them on to someone who will read them and take them off my list. At the same token, there are some books that I do want to read that aren't on there. Also, I could cheat and put the book I'm reading right now on my list just so I can vanquish it right away, a trick I frequently employ with my more mundane "to-do" lists.

Another TBR book vanquished!

Books can join a TBR list in a variety of ways. Maybe it's one that a friend recommended, or a professor assigned the week you had three papers and two projects due, or that you heard about on NPR or in the New Yorker or someplace equally tony (I certainly never put books on my TBR list after hearing about them in People magazine or on Craigslist, not that I even know what these things are!!!) Others may come into your life in a more passive way: you receive them as gifts, or your parents were going to donate them to the library and you decided to keep them. The Book of Changes by Tim Wynne-Jones, came into my life in about the most passive way imaginable. Six years ago, I presented at a librarians' conference about the services my museum offered to school libraries. Each conference participant got a goody bag. I would imagine it was the librarian's version of the goody bags guests to the Oscars receive: in addition to the boring branded letter openers and tape dispensers, there were notecards with animals encouraging people to read, this roll of shiny silver tape, and best of all, the chance to receive one book from a selection of seven or eight. They had extra bags, so I got this book.

Your first question may be, does this Tim Wynne-Jones have anything to do with Diana Wynne Jones? After looking at about fifteen different websites, I still can't tell you for sure. I visited both of their official websites and read their autobiographies. They don't match. Diana is much older (hers dwells mostly on memories of her childhood during World War II), whereas Tim has young children. However, Tim does have a sister named Di, which could be short for Diana, so she could be a relative. None of the websites mentioned any relation between the two, but how many "Wynne-Jones" can there be out there?

Tim does have an interesting background, though. He grew up in England (Diana is British, too...) and emigrated to Canada with his family as a little boy. He played in a rock band and wrote music for "Fraggle Rock." How terrific is that? He's an author and editor of children's books, and designed his own home.

The Book of Changes is a book of short stories, aimed at older children. There are seven stories in the book, and each deals with themes that kids can relate to. "The Clark Beans Man" is about negotiating the complexities of the social scene at school. The kid in "Madhouse" feels his family stacks up unfavorably to that of his friend -- until he takes a closer look. The kid in "Hard Sell" learns how good it can feel to defend someone else.

My favorite was "The Ghost of Eddy Longo", for its supernatural element. It was the tale of a teenaged hockey phenom, a goalie who had never been scored on, a third-generation local hockey great. His grandfather was so famous in town that there was a statue of him outside the local arena. His father, however, for all his promise, had disappeared the night of the unveiling of the statue...or had he? It was much less "lessony" than some of the other stories, and more human, but still conveyed its central moral: that it's not about winning or losing, but about how you play and how much fun you have.

The title story, "The Book of Changes", was also clever, and evocative. The main character had to do a project on some aspect of Chinese culture. The day before it was due, he still hadn't started. The girl who presented that day was presenting on the I Ching, and he boldly asked the I Ching what he should do for his project. It actually had an answer for him, too, although it wasn't apparent right away. As he sweated through the night, made false start after false start, procrastinated, worried, I was right back there in fifth grade (or grad school, or NaBloPoMo) facing an impossible deadline.

But yet, I feel I missed Tim Wynne-Jones's target audience. I don't know if kids would like these or not. I didn't dislike them, I just felt that they weren't aimed at me. Which they weren't, but still, I don't feel that way when reading the Harry Potter books, or books by Phillip Pullman.

If anyone can enlighten me on whether a connection exists between Tim Wynne-Jones and Diana Wynne-Jones, please do so!

From vaudeville to late-night video

For some reason, I've always loved Hollywood tales, true or not. I've read several biographies of Marilyn Monroe, each with their own theory about how she died, from murder to a mishap involving enemas, sleeping pills, lack of fluids and overwork. I read Lillian Gish's account of the dawn of the moving picture, back when the concept of close-ups and feature-length films were new. I enjoyed Lana Turner's autobiography, as well as seamier stuff like that of Tatum O'Neal and Danny Bonaduce. In fact, I still have a booklet I received in my Easter basket as a child, published by one of the tabloid magazines and called "Hollywood Mysteries," where I first learned the stories of the Black Dahlia, the unsolved murder of Thelma Todd, the mysterious death of the first Superman (whose real name I don't remember), etc.

So when I saw Niagara Falls All Over Again, a novel by Elizabeth McCracken, I decided to check it out. This novel follows the careers of the fictional comedy team Carter and Sharp, told from the perspective of straight man Mose (or Mike, as he's known professionally) Sharp, from vaudeville to movies, radio and television.

The story makes the typical arc of any show-biz tale. There are the early years, full of struggle and optimism. The future icons have nothing but dreams and hopes. They work hard, travel a lot, sacrifice all material comfort in pursuit of their ambition. Then, the big break comes. They ride high, they get all the material comforts they want and then some. This period cannot last, though, and then there's the long fall from grace, often fueled by drugs and alcohol. If it's an autobiography, it usually ends with the main character getting clean and vowing (if not actually succeeding in) a comeback. If it's a biography, that usually means that the subject didn't survive, and died of an OD, often in a run-down hotel room, or the beat-up Chevy in which they were forced to live.

The end of Carter and Sharp's tale is free from that particular melodrama. Rather, it ends with the more mundane issues that dissolve the partnerships, careers and attachments of an average person. One person changed while the other one didn't. Committments to home and family take over committments to friends. One person starts to feel taken advantage of, which makes the other one defensive. There's alcohol and infidelity involved, but it plays a secondary role.

There aren't really a lot of novels on male relationships. I guess there's something in our culture that makes it almost impossible for straight men to admit they love one another, although women are free to declare their love for their female friends without having their sexuality questioned in the least. That was one thing I enjoyed about this book. Despite the fact that their partnership doesn't end on the best note, Mose isn't shy about proclaiming his love for his larger-than-life partner, who he still misses well into his eighties.

Vaudeville is fading from our collective memory. There aren't many performers left who got their start that way. Those that did, like Gracie Allen and George Burns, or Laurel and Hardy, belong to a whole other generation, existing in the collective subconscious (as Mose points out Carter and Sharp did) only as answers to crossword puzzles, or names on DVDs in Wal-Mart's dollar bin. The early chapters of the book introduce it to the generations like my own, whose grandparents didn't even get to see vaudeville live. You get to experience the surreal quality to the acts (like the one-legged contortionist), the sweat and hard work, the impermanence of it all (Mose goes from replacing a straight man who left the industry, to stepping in for anyone who was sick, and gets his big break stepping in for a straight man who was too drunk that night to go on -- virtually none of it under his own name).

That's always been one of my favorite things about fiction: the way it can preserve the past like nothing else can. Museums can save the material pieces of the past. Documentarians can describe what the past was like. But a good novel, like Niagara Falls all over again, can actually take you there.