Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Today starts the last week of school, since yesterday was Memorial Day. Last week I managed a trip to the temple, my 8th grader had a band concert, and all three of my girls attended Saturday birthday parties. We stayed with my in-laws on Sunday night so we could meet to visit graves yesterday morning–and by we I mean my hubby and I, all three of our girls, and the two cousins who fall in between my older girls. (Our son stayed at one of those cousin’s houses.) After graves we went to the grocery store together–chips and soda were purchased along with the intended veggies–and I cut my hubby’s hair, so it was a productive day. It was an odd sort of start-of-the-summer-BBQ with our family facing school the next day, but we left at a decent time without too much gnashing of teeth, and for that I was wildly grateful.

Today has been a ‘do a random assortment of little things’ day, and the next of those little things is a review, since I finished Carolyn Mackler’s Not If I Can Help It last week. (Because when you have almost forty audio holds already, checking out a completely different audiobook is clearly the way to go.) It’s one I got at the library sale to donate to the school for literacy night, except that it came under the category of ‘sounds good enough that I want to read it first.’ My 8th grader will likely want to read it next, so we’ll see if she wants to keep it or pass it on; in the meantime, I found it occasionally frustrating but still both engaging and enjoyable. Willa’s sensory processing disorder is portrayed in a completely accessible way, and given that I haven’t read ANY other intermediate fiction that does so, it’s probably a worthwhile read for that alone. (I’m not claiming there isn’t any out there–there’s plenty I haven’t read, of course–but I’ve read enough to be surprised at how much more this does for the topic than anything else in my experience.)

Fortunately, however, its portrayal of SPD (I’m abbreviating it for simplicity here) isn’t the only reason it’s worthwhile. Willa and Ruby’s friendship is a shining example of friendship at its best, and it’s nice to see adults I’m not mad it. (Yes, unpleasant adults can be completely realistic, but we need both kinds in literature!) There were a few moments that tapped perfectly into my own grade school memories–one of them being the teacher bringing in Munchkins for a class party–and while you could argue that no one should wait so long to tell their children about a new romantic relationship (E.L. Kongisburg DID argue that very thing in one or two of her more recent books, as powerfully as she did just about everything), you can also look at why they did it and think ‘well, yeah, that also makes sense.’ The last dramatic conflict and its near-perfect resolution was a little too orchestrated, perhaps, but overall, this is a book that does a good job pointing out that our personal circumstances can give us completely different perspectives on the same event; it also does a good job representing how that might play out, and what can help all parties deal with that event. If you know or love someone with sensory processing disorder–OR like a good school story about friends–don’t miss this one.