Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

In case you’re wondering, we’re still desperately trying to reclaim the fridge from reunion food; today I cut up half of the watermelon we inherited (I have no idea who brought it), but I haven’t the fridge room or the large containers to cut up the other half. On the other hand, the lemon chicken orzo soup we brought for the soup contest is officially gone, I emptied one container of frozen watermelon for a lunch smoothie, and the chicken levels are dropping! (We had leftovers for lunch and we’re having leftovers for dinner, in case you’re wondering.)

I’ve also finished two ‘Baby-Sitters Club’ graphic novels in the last three days in a similarly desperate attempt to move some short books out of my bedroom; while I don’t always review those here (they really are quite short), Dawn on the Coast was on the longer side (comparatively), so that’s what you get today!

I actually have mixed feelings about Dawn on the Coast. The plot is pretty straightforward–Dawn goes to California to visit her dad and brother and, reminded of what she loves about it, is tempted to stay. What will she decide? On the one hand, I think the book’s target audience will vibe with Dawn’s dilemma (friends in both places, etc.), but on the other hand, I wish the author had found a way to talk through some of the issues with her. One of my favorite things about intermediate fiction is when the author uses the plot and other characters to help the main character gain deeper understanding about his/her life; done well, it can be an invaluable way to help the character gain added maturity and the readers to get a useful life lesson without realizing it. (Many of the issues Dawn faces don’t lend themselves to that in such a limited setting, true, but it did feel like she could have remembered that while her brother was thrilled to have her visiting, living with a sibling is never all sunshine and roses.) And of course, on a more personal level, I can’t relate to most of the California draws, so to speak–I’m Team Connecticut all the way. My 11-year-old thinks it’s probably a 5 star read, however, so there’s that. I’ll let you decide!

I’m still abominably tired, but here’s a quick rundown of our family reunion…

Tuesday–cooked and prepped food until I was beyond sick of the smell of taco meat. And my daughter was helping!

Wednesday–cleaned, prepped, packed, and drove to Bear Lake (okay, my hubby drove). My soup did not place in the soup contest, but it wasn’t creamy and had onions, so that wasn’t shocking. Once I wound down a bit it was a fun evening.

Thursday–family video, games, chilling, family pictures, and Fear Factor. My kiddos were brave–I was proud of all of them!

Friday–my amazing hubby took the kids to the lake. I stayed and chilled and played games and avoided the sun. There were shakes before dinner and karaoke before bed.

Saturday–we packed up and made it home by lunchtime. We were all so tired it was a blessing no one really lost it; we watched “Back to the Future” together and went to bed early. Hurrah!

Fast Sunday–still so tired, but hey, leftovers were ready to eat at dinnertime!

Today–so. much. laundry. Also Costco, and I started a new book with my youngest.

A final note–I am so blessed to love my in-laws. We had a grand old time, there were no major conflicts, and no one puked in the car in either direction. WIN!

We have an abundance of family time slated for this week, so I’m going to be radio silence until Monday. Here’s a fun fact I learned this week, though–“Eleanor Rigby” (yes, the Beatles song) has no percussion. None. The strings keep the beat.

You learn something new every day, right?

I started listening to Maleeha Siddiqui’s Any Way You Look forever ago; I received a copy for review and was considering it for a present for my second girlie, since the main character wants to design modest clothing for Muslim girls and is frustrated at the world’s attitude towards modesty and fashion. (That daughter is the most aware of fashion trends of our household, so I thought it might resonate with her.) I’m not sure why it took me so long to finish, although I imagine the narrator’s lovely accent was part of it. (Accents force me to slow down my audiobook speed and concentrate harder, and that complicates when I can listen.) There’s also the complication of not being a fashionable sort of person myself, however, so I relate less to those for whom fabrics and designs are fascinating. Whatever the reasons, though, I finally picked up the threads (pun not intended, actually) in February and went ahead and finished the book.

Here’s the thing. There’s a lot to like in this book, starting with Ainy’s passion for fashion (I absolutely respect passion, even if I don’t happen to share it) and including her family’s struggles (her dad’s away with a sick family member, and their financial situation has taken a hit) and their focus on overcoming them. Her mom makes beautiful clothes and is determinedly running her business out of a friend’s home at the moment, her sister has a second job, and Ainy herself finally convinces her mother to let her help. That proves more stressful than she anticipates–most first jobs do, right?–and is complicated further by the fact that she’s suddenly too busy to do a lot of the things she and her friend had planned for the summer. Ainy’s biggest worry, however, is the attention she’s receiving from a boy she doesn’t like, and this is the part where I’m assuming there’s a cultural disconnect. The book description talks about behavior that is not okay and the book itself makes it clear that Ainy feels harassed and uncomfortable; from my standpoint, however, that felt like an extreme assessment of the situation. How is asking a girl to sign your yearbook harassment? My own sense of Yasir is that sure, he’s being annoying, but certainly not seriously inappropriate. I honestly felt like Ainy was being rude to a boy because she didn’t like him when he was trying (in an immature young teenage boy sort of way) to be friends. I’m assuming that there are nuances of Muslim (and possibly Pakistani) culture that I don’t understand here. I did appreciate the hijab plot point–is wearing one the answer? Is wanting to avoid unwanted attention a good reason for starting to wear one? What should wearing the hijab mean?–but I’m not sure the catalyst for it will work for readers outside the culture. Thoughts?

On the homefront, I went to the temple this morning and I’m looking forward to a quiet afternoon, which, considering how busy tomorrow will be, is a good thing. I hope y’all have a good weekend!

ATTENTION: If you have a puzzle that is missing this many pieces, DO NOT DONATE IT TO A SECONDHAND STORE.* This picture includes every piece that came in the box–no edges is a somewhat entertaining challenge, but this? I finished it out of pure morbid curiosity. (And yes, I know that some people craft with puzzle pieces, but for pity’s sake, label the box. This is ridiculous.)

*In case you’re curious, I buy a lot of puzzles secondhand for kicks, and at least half of them are complete. I’m never offended when they’re missing one or two (or four or five) pieces, because you get what you pay for, right? If they’re complete, I donate them to our library’s puzzle exchange, and incomplete puzzles generally go back to the secondhand store. This one, however, is in a class by itself.

I can easily see a heartwarming movie version of Erica S. Perl’s When Life Gives You O.J. with Judd Hirsch as Ace, only I guess I’d want the Judd Hirsch of ten or fifteen years ago (91 feels a little old for the role). Ace, however, is the quintessential unapologetically Jewish grandfather, and it feels like there’s a shortage of qualified actors for that sort of role. The relationship between him and Zelly–his 10-year-old granddaughter–is a complicated one, and yet it’s the key to Perl’s story; Zelly desperately wants a dog, and Ace gives her a practice dog made out of an orange juice jug to help her convince her parents that she’s ready for one. Zelly is not impressed–I imagine we can all appreciate her dread of being ridiculed under the circumstances?–but Ace badgers her into it; it becomes, therefore, a complicated summer. A new (also Jewish) kid moves into the neighborhood, Zelly’s best friend is away at camp and experiments with a new version of her name when she comes back, and Zelly’s bully doesn’t make life easier. She and Ace both are still mourning Bubbles, his wife and her grandmother, and since her death precipitated Zelly’s family’s move from Brooklyn to Vermont (and Ace’s move into their new house with them), well–there’s a lot to work through. The process, however, is both entertaining and poignant, and it made for a great read-aloud with my youngest.

In other news, my youngest had her piano recital on Saturday, and I hope all the dads out there had a happy Father’s Day. Stay cool this week!

Seriously, though. I know I missed Friday–having all the kids home and being chauffeur is tough on my concentration–but here’s a quickie review, only because I powered through Karen’s Surprise (one of the newest ‘Baby-Sitters Little Sister’ graphic novels) yesterday evening. Karen was obviously going to be disappointed when parts for her class Thanksgiving play were drawn out of a hat and she got the turkey, and kudos to her for making the food parts more interesting, but her one less-than-stellar choice called for apologies to more than just one person, and she didn’t make them. Stop letting Karen getting away with stuff she shouldn’t, people! On the other hand, the children-of-divorced-parents Thanksgiving part of the plot was solid and dealt with well, I thought, so there was that. Now I’m heading back to our Father’s Day activities!

Not for me, thankfully. But Rob Harrell’s Popcorn is about exactly that, and even as my wincing grew more pronounced, the humor of it grew on me. Andrew has a new shirt for picture day and is hoping for a good day; from an early altercation with the class bully onward, however, the opposite is clearly going to be the rule. From a basketball in gym class to a bout of disastrous science experiment sabotage, from a ketchup incident at lunch to a family emergency, Andrew is bombarded with difficulties. Unfortunately, that means that his anxiety resembles a popcorn kernel being heated up, and he really doesn’t want to hit his exploding point at school…

Poor Andrew. A friend of mine didn’t like everything happening to him on the same day; I actually enjoyed it, because it added a humorous element to a story that resonates a little too well for this mom of multiple children with anxiety. We’ve all had a day where the hits just keep on coming, right? Luckily, Andrew has a next level best friend as well as multiple adults in his corner, and one of those adults just happens to have an apparently not-so-secret stash of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. (Which is an ugh from me, but I just imagined crunchy Cheetos instead.) As for his school picture?

Definitely epic.

Anyway. This one didn’t make the cut for Battle of the Books, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t vote for it. Sprinkled with Andrew’s anxiety comics, this is an entertaining and relatable read. I’ll let you know what my kiddos think!

On the homefront, three of my kids and I are done with the dentist for the summer and my youngest has an appointment in July to have her cavities filled. I’ve done five loads of wash in the past couple of days, AND my two youngest children gave dinner a thumbs up. How’s your week going?

My house, that is. Today I emptied out a drawer set full of colored pencils, crayons, and stickers that my older kids had grown out of; my youngest took what she wanted to put with her stuff, and I washed out the drawer set (the plastic kind, you understand) and passed it on to my 16-year-old for her stuff. (And while I was at it, I washed out our 5 gallon water jug, which is one of those tasks I loathe and therefore put off for an embarrassingly long time.) I also went through more than half a stack of papers, gave the coloring pages to my youngest daughter’s friend for her younger brothers, and had my son shred the papers that I brought home from the PTA closet to shred and then forgot about until now. More things leaving my house!

As for a book review, I finished Arree Chung’s Don’t Cause Trouble over the weekend, and while I had my misgivings partway through, I ended up enjoying it. Ming makes for an engaging main character, and plenty of us can relate to having our moms cut our hair in less-than-cool styles as well as having to wear hand-me-down or secondhand clothes; it makes fitting in hard enough, and being a son of Asian immigrants just complicates things for Ming. On the one hand, he makes a couple of solid friends, which is a good start to middle school; on the other hand, family money troubles, some ugly racism, and an unexpected blow put Ming in a dark enough place to make a seriously bad decision. Can he fix his relationship with his friends afterwards–as well as some of the problems his family’s been struggling with?

Overall, Don’t Cause Trouble may have special appeal for boys and children of immigrants, but there’s enough in it to please a wide audience. I’ll let you know what my 11-year-old daughter thinks!

Once upon a time, I used to read nonfiction written for adults. Sometimes it took me a long time, true, but somewhere between graduating from high school and having children, my love of history blossomed into the realization that well written nonfiction is nothing like reading a textbook, and so I started to read a much wider variety of book than I did when I was growing up. I even read some after my first child–or two, even?–was born. At my current stage in life, however, I find I lack the concentration (partly because of my chronic lack of sleep, no doubt) to do much reading of adult nonfiction, which is why I’m so grateful that good middle grade nonfiction exists. The best of it is fascinating and well researched while being a much more manageable literary bite, so to speak. And since my son’s Battle of the Books year introduced me to the ‘History Smashers’ series, today I get to review Kate Messner’s History Smashers: Plagues and Pandemics, having finished it on Wednesday.

As author Candace Fleming says in her cover blurb, the History Smasher series is “fun, fast history for kids who want the truth”; there are occasional comic panels, humorous illustrations, and media from the time period, and they’re full of fascinating facts. (Did you know that according to WHO estimates, 1.5 million people died of tuberculosis in 2018? ) In Plagues and Pandemics, Messner covers the Black Death, Smallpox, Cholera, TB, and polio–among others–and finishes up talking about new microbes, the dangers of the anti-vaccination movement, and simple things even kids can do to keep harmful diseases from spreading. (She also debunks the prevalence of plague doctors dressing up in “elaborate outfits that made them look like they couldn’t quite decide what they wanted to be for Halloween–the Grim Reaper or a weird, creepy seagull.” Which made me laugh out loud.)

I’m honestly sad that my younger children didn’t want to read this one, but I can’t say I’m surprised–they inherited their dad’s squeamish genes as opposed to my ghoulish ones. I’m hoping, however, that they’ll be interested in other books in the series; in the meantime, if you have middle graders, take a look at the series yourself. Pick whichever one you or your children is most interested in–and enjoy!

On the homefront, I took my youngest to see her friend (and that friend’s siblings) in a ballet production of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ last night, so tonight I packed her off to bed early. I have hopes of focusing on my garage tomorrow, although finding out that my daughter is taking the ACT not at Taylorsville High School, where she goes, but WEST High–at 7:55 am, no less!–may put a damper on what we accomplish. Have a great weekend, folks!