Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

We didn’t even have school on Monday and Tuesday, but yowsers. Monday we were in Idaho with family, Tuesday we drove HOME from Idaho, and Wednesday I drove all over creation in our corner of the Salt Lake Valley. (Seriously–the elementary school, home for a bit, the pharmacy, the library, Great Harvest Bread, the high school, counseling in Sandy, a drive-through and then home for half an hour, the orthodontist, the elementary school again, home for another half hour, dance, the pharmacy again, the junior high, dance again, and THEN home.) Yesterday was a housework kind of day until after school, when there was more driving; today I worked at learning how to knit and then hit Costco, the elementary school, home, piano lessons, and then some housework. Good times, right?

Anyway. Over lunch yesterday I managed to finish Steve Sheinkin’s third ‘Time Twister’ book–Neil Armstrong and Nat Love, Space Cowboys. (We are NOT going to talk about how long it’s been sitting on my shelf.) The writing is just younger than I thoroughly enjoy, but the history mix-up scenarios are fun, and this one–involving the Eagle accidentally landing in the Wild West before making it to the surface of the moon, Doc and Abby coming to the rescue, and Abe Lincoln with a tuba–is no different. I’m hoping the long wait doesn’t mean my son is too old to enjoy this one!

Could you tell I’ve been out of town? It was a pretty quick trip, granted, but I meant to do a post before we left, and…yeah.

Not so much.

We’re back, however, and that’s lucky, because Andrea Wang’s Watercress is due and not renewable today. This lovely picture book is one of this year’s Newbery Honor books, and I thoroughly enjoyed it; Wang took her own experience as a child of immigrants and (with the help of Jason Chin’s illustrations) created a reminder in story of our tendency to resent what makes us different, especially when we don’t understand the reasons behind it. While this can be especially true between generations, communication can mitigate the problem…which just feels like a stuffy review for a poignant tale of how picking watercress by the roadside becomes an entirely different experience once the young narrator learns more about her parents’ early lives in China. I’m honestly not sure what my children thought of it, but it was a pleasure for me to read! And now, to get my overtired children off to bed early…

I finished Kyle Lukoff’s Too Bright to See more than a week ago–possibly more than two?–and I’ve been debating how to write and structure this review ever since. While Lukoff’s novel has moments of brilliant writing, this story didn’t work for me, for multiple reasons; for lack of any better ideas after days (weeks?) of considering, I’m going to make a list of those reasons as the main portion of my review.

1)Uncle Roderick. His living self is portrayed as tirelessly loving and supportive, which makes sense from Bug’s perspective as a child mourning a recently dead loved adult, but his ghost presence is creepy, pushy, and scary. My parental instincts screamed as this ghost put Bug into uncomfortable and not-completely-safe situations MORE THAN ONCE.
2)The treatment of the “inner narrator” idea. As a child, I constantly narrated my day-to-day life in my head, whether to spruce up (or hurry along) a tedious task or just to tell the story of my life in a more exciting way. There were frequently “monsters” (or other undefined bad guys) to be vanquished (or appeased) by my setting the table neatly in a timely fashion, not to mention a dramatic flair to my inner descriptions of how and where I rode my bike. Imagining oneself as a fictional character seems completely normal to me, and I don’t see how it would magically stop because Bug came out as trans; I can’t see how gender transforms experiences like wandering in the woods (or setting the table).
3)Dancing around the name on Bug’s birth certificate. Referring to a first name as part of the plot but refusing to reveal it was irritating when Daphne du Maurier did it in Rebecca; it still is.
4)And while we’re on the subject of names, on the first day of school everyone calls the main character Bug, and–I quote, with emphasis added–“nobody laughs or comments on my name.” Who is this book FOR? Because no kid actually starting middle school is going to buy that, and if a book feels like a fairy tale, are the intended readers going to get out of it what the author likely wants them to?
5)Potentially ignored sensory issues and/or autism spectrum tendencies, because there were possible indications of both.
6)Partly because of that, Bug’s “I’m a boy” coming twenty pages after “…I don’t think that I am a boy. I don’t feel like a boy that everyone thinks is a girl” is a jump that doesn’t make sense to me. And here’s a spoiler alert, so feel free to skip to the “Note” below if you want to–an adult ghost forcing a child to cut off all its hair in the middle of the night seems to me to be an abusive violation of that child’s bodily autonomy. (It’s not a “joint” act if one is an adult and the other a child and there has been no plan, discussion, or consent.) Lukoff treats this act as the revelatory moment, the catalyst that begins the rest of Bug’s life, and I can’t get past the fact that IT WAS NOT OKAY.
Note: This 7th reason is going to relate to my personal beliefs; I will do my best to be courteous and respectful, and I expect any readers who choose to comment to do the same.
7)I believe that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose”, and I believe that (presupposing a body to be free of significant medical abnormalities) gender is determined by biological sex. My husband is a man who loves football, enjoys Broadway musicals, and crochets; I am a woman who loves books, history, and puzzles. (Also the Oxford comma, because everyone should.) I have given birth, but my husband loves babies and small children more than I ever will. I believe that I am myself, with all my traits and characteristics, and that self is female because I am female. I don’t believe clothing and haircut choices (when they ARE choices), hobbies, friends, or other preferences change who you are.

Ultimately, Too Bright to See made me deeply uncomfortable. Uncle Roderick’s ghost did not encourage Bug towards self-discovery; instead, it pushed Bug in the direction of its own agenda. (To clarify, I’m using “it” for the ghost because “he” would refer to the living man as portrayed in Bug’s occasional flashbacks.) I would love to feel the presence of my deceased relatives encouraging me to embrace and love myself as I am; a ghost that invades an 11-year-old’s dreams in order to alter the child’s body is not a presence I ever need in my life.

I generally read the books I gift to my kids at Christmas-time BEFORE I gift them; I made an exception for Mac Undercover (Mac B., Kid Spy #1) in 2020 because hey, MAC BARNETT, and because I was probably getting desperate for a good fit for my son. (If you haven’t read any of Barnett’s picture books, well–what are you waiting for?!) I noted quite a while ago that it was available in audio; last week I decided to take the plunge and listen to it, since I could use my son’s copy to view the plentiful illustrations afterwards. It was so much fun that I promptly borrowed the second one–that would be The Impossible Crime (Mac B., Kid Spy #2)–and finished listening to it yesterday. (I still have some illustrations to view, but I’m hoping to manage that before bed.) Folks–these are fabulous. They are fast-paced and hilarious with a generous sprinkling of random details about growing up in the 1980s (among other things), and Barnett himself narrates the audios. If you have an elementary school boy, give these books to him posthaste (an underused word!); ditto if you have an elementary school girl who likes spy stories. After all, what 3rd or 4th grader doesn’t want to daydream about the Queen of England calling him/her up to do her the favor of retrieving–or protecting–the crown jewels, with one of her corgis as company? In England, in Russia, in Ireland–Mac cracks me up everywhere!

Yesterday my youngest turned 7, folks. How did this happen? And while she was super excited about the color reveal Barbies, when I asked her what her favorite present was (as I was toweling her off after her shower), she gave me attitude and said that she knew what present she DIDN’T get…seriously. It was likely as much adrenaline crash as just being 7, but after a long day of birthday prep interrupted by carpool and SEPs, I was kind of grouchy about it. (I did point out to her that if she hadn’t used the Amazon gift card her grandma gave her for Christmas yet, she could get Pru and Chicalinda with that, and the lightbulb going off in her head was pretty fun to watch.)

Anyway. I honestly meant to review Monster Friends on the 9th, but with SEPs this week, I just didn’t have it in me. And frankly, it was odd–which is unsurprising, given that Crabapple Trouble is the author’s other book. At least one description I read mentioned that it was about a bunny, which is partly why I put it on hold at the library–my bunny-owning children being pretty much obsessed with all things bunny–but bunnies don’t morph their legs into wings and fly. (Hence the “monster” in Monster Friends.) In a way, it was a sweet sort of book–Reggie has turned recluse since a traumatic experience, but when Emily meets him, she won’t allow him to stay that way–but their world feels very haphazard, if you know what I mean. Honestly, it’s probably just aimed at a younger audience than I was expecting, despite the length (over 250 pages). I’ll keep you posted on my children’s opinions!

Seriously, folks. Firoozeh Dumas’ It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel was SO good. Funny, poignant, painful, and heartwarming, Dumas’ semi-autobiographical middle grade novel is a portrait of what it was like to be Iranian in America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, during the Iran hostage crisis. (Also the rise of Khomeini–think Billy Joel singing “Ayatollah’s in Iran”.) Cindy–formerly known as Zomorod Yousefzadeh–has just moved from Compton to Newport Beach with her family and is set to reinvent herself with a Brady Bunch name. Between translating for her depressed mother, unenthusiastic participation in taarof, and starting at Lincoln Junior High, Cindy has a full plate; luckily, she manages to make some solid friends before the Iranian revolution, the hostage crisis, and the deterioration of US relations with Iran. The resultant anti-Iranian sentiment, however, threatens her family’s residence in America–but how can she return to a country that has stopped allowing women and girls to dress how they choose and become what they want to be?

How, indeed. Cindy’s situation is frighteningly NOT farfetched, and yet Dumas manages to balance the seriousness of it with her comedic approach to everyday details. I laughed out loud, I shuddered–I just about cried–and I googled the hostage crisis (which googling left me angry with my own country). We need ALL THE BOOKS that chronicle the immigrant experience in America, not to mention the complexity of lives lived between two worlds; It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel is a perfectly lovely example of both.

I’m pretty sure my 12-year-old is getting it for Christmas this year.

I’ve had Prairie Evers checked out of the library forever–I think perhaps it was one of the chicken books mentioned in Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer–and it finally occurred to me that it would make a good read-aloud with my 12-year-old. We finished a week or two ago. (Wahoo!) Interestingly, while I really enjoyed it, I didn’t quite LOVE it, and I’m not sure why. Prairie is a likable character and the setting (in which she was more or less a fish out of water) worked just fine for me, while Ivy was completely likable and considerably sympathetic. Perhaps the writing style skewed younger than I was expecting? And now that I think of it, only a few characters were noticeably developed, and even those were not as skillfully drawn as they could have been–either too much telling and not enough showing, or perhaps just not enough of the minutiae that rounds out a picture. Still, you can’t help rooting for Prairie and Ivy, and it worked well as a read-aloud. You’ll have to tell me what YOU think…

In other news, my son’s basketball team tied their game today, which was infinitely better than last week (the slaughter rule came into play). My hubby and my mother-in-law got riled up during the game, which interested me but horrified our 12-year-old, so there you go. Have a good Saturday all!

I’m frequently too caught up with my own small affairs to spend time thinking about rest of the world; that’s not a great thing, you understand, but it’s true. I did know of the existence of the recent crisis in Syria, but I knew nothing of the specifics until I finally opted to listen to The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories that Carried Them Through a War. (Which caught my eye on Libby because of the title–of course.) Part of my listening process inevitably involved some Googling, in the which I learned a bit about Bashar al-Assad and his governing style (none of it good); the book itself gave me a daily picture of a town under siege. (It reminded me of The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival, only with a far less satisfying conclusion.) Book Collectors also expresses a reverence for books, learning, history, and the act of witnessing that resonates with me, despite a certain looseness of structure. This isn’t a story with a terribly happy ending; neither, however, is it the end of “Glory”, where everybody’s dead. It’s simply a story about human beings struggling for both freedom and survival and what books and learning and ideals can do to help in that struggle. I generally prefer my nonfiction to be more tightly written; Book Collectors, however, is short enough for that to be less of an issue. This is an eminently worthwhile read, especially for those of us who do tend to concentrate on our own homes and communities; please let me know what you think.