Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I honestly don’t know how farmers’ wives did it 150 years ago. How would you deal with the fruits and veggies that were ripe and needed processing in addition to laundry by hand, cooking with a wood stove, washing dishes by hand…ugh. (No wonder families kept kids home from school to help out.) And here I am, stressing because I have apples and grapes and maybe more tomatoes!

Anyway. I did miss Friday because of the apples, though…the kids and I picked Friday morning before piano, since last week was SEPs and no school on Friday, and I made a pot of applesauce and a crockpot of apple butter before dinner. (Before MY dinner. I put the kids in charge of regular food, and they finished eating before I finished filling up the crockpot.) On Sunday we had dinner in Clearfield, and watching General Conference required all of the concentration I could spare, anyway! Now, however, I’m sitting here with at least three books waiting to be reviewed, and I have fruit leather plans for after my Tuesday trip to the library. Before that trip, however, I’m opting for a review of Sunny Makes a Splash, because my 12-year-old and I have both finished it, and the sooner it goes back, the sooner she can find something else to (re)read over breakfast!

If you haven’t read Jennifer L. and Matthew Holm’s “Sunny” graphic novels, they’re fun and deal with some interesting issues that have been facing kids for generations. (They’re set in the 70s, so the issues kind of have to be ones that have stuck around.) Their latest is the fourth of Sunny’s stories, in which Sunny gets her first paid job and is thinking about dates (albeit mostly in a removed-from-herself kind of way), her mother is struggling to deal with that, and her grandfather…well, I won’t spoil that part of the plot! Sunny is relatably ordinary, which makes her an especially fun character to read about, and her grandfather is entirely lovable. You don’t NEED to have read the previous books to enjoy this one, but why not experience the whole series? It’s a solid read for latter elementary through middle school.