Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

So.

I never meant to bail for three weeks, folks. It’s just that we’ve been trying to rearrange bedrooms at our house, plus get ready for school which starts in a week, plus spend time with visiting family, plus do swimming lessons, and this is what fell by the wayside. I’m not going to promise a back-to-normal yet, either–we’re still working on the bedrooms, we’re not done with new school orientations yet (what with the oldest starting high school and the second oldest starting junior high), we have friends we haven’t yet done anything with this summer, a birthday dinner to make and have, birthday ear piercing to schedule…so many things. (At least, yesterday, we crossed pick up glasses, get the littles haircuts, and high school orientation off of my mental list.) I’m just going to warn you that posts are likely to be spotty for a bit, because ALL THE THINGS. We’ve been going through stuff in the kids’ bedrooms and have donated or passed on several boxes of things–extra purses, toddler puzzles, etc.–but the project goes on. It’s not that I literally have no time to post (I’m more honest with myself that that), but the mental energy? Not so much.

Anyway.

That being said, I finished a book this week that’s been on my shelf for a disturbingly long time, and it pleases me inordinately that I get to review I Lived on Butterfly Hill tonight. (Of course, I meant to do it earlier, which would have resulted in a much more impressive review, but I’m trying!) My friend Andrea recommended Butterfly Hill to me because she knew it would press all my buttons–historical fiction? displaced girl finds refuge on the coast of Maine? strong family ties? Sign me up! I enjoyed it, too. Marjorie Agosin’s tale of a Chilean girl sent to live with her aunt in Maine after a military coup in her country is a thought-provoking look at exile. Celeste’s grandmother is an Austrian Jew who escaped to Chile during the war, and when Celeste’s parents go into hiding and Celeste herself leaves Chile for a time, we can’t help but feel the parallels. I did find occasional weaknesses in the writing that likely stem from being translated from Spanish to English–there are always bits in translated works that don’t make the transition as well as I want them to–but the truly odd thing for me was the contrast between the text and the illustrations. This is a serious, heartfelt story–sometimes a mystical one–and yet the illustrations were whimsical. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy them, but they didn’t fit the tone of the book itself. Those things aside, however, this is a book worth reading. (Except that now I just miss Maine.) Let me know what YOU think!