Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

My 13-year-old who still enjoys read-alouds prefers realistic fiction over pretty much anything else; when I tell her we need nonfiction for a change of pace, she generally picks books about animals. She never picks books about war or sad things. Which is why you could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when, out of the four nonfiction choices I offered her a few weeks ago, she picked Doreen Rappaport’s Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust. (I threw that in as a choice because I wanted to read it–I never expected her to actually choose it!) She studied Anne Frank this past school year, however, and so she was interested. Even more surprising? She didn’t bail when it got sad, and she was motivated to keep reading. As a result, we finished it together last night.

Unsurprisingly, it was a poignant, fascinating, heartbreaking, and triumphant reading experience. So much death and horror; such carefully laid plans that sometimes succeeded but often–at least partially–failed; so much loss; and yet, amidst it all, such triumph when some survived. The Jewish committee deserves to have these stories told; it deserves to have its bravery remembered. Full of fascinating facts, photographs, and stories–some untold by anyone until now–Rappaport’s record should be on middle school shelves (and in middle school classrooms) everywhere.

In the meantime, today ends the first week of summer break, and while it’s possible my children are unimpressed with the general lack of group outings, I’m getting stuff done. Go me!

It’s seriously been a week, folks. Starting with my two teenagers leaving all their bathroom stuff in Clearfield after staying over last Sunday night (including prescriptions, retainers, and braces elastics), DESPITE my pointing out to them that mid-Memorial Day, when no cousins were over and nothing much was going on, would be a good time to pack that stuff up–yeah, I was frustrated. We had our four day last-week-of-school, including random PTA things, a birthday party, and 5th grade graduation (not a huge deal, but still a thing), and then last weekend my oldest babysat and ended up having a really rough weekend, a hailstorm necessitated bailing water out of the girls’ bedroom’s window well, and my hubby and I taught Sunday School. Yesterday I drove my odd-numbered children all over creation to all the things–I’m pretty sure I had at least three bouts of home-for-20-minutes-only-to-leave-again–which brings us to today. There are still errands, but (thankfully!) fewer of them.

In the meantime, I finished I Funny: A Middle School Story–by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein–yesterday, and sadly, I was unimpressed. I know I’m not the target audience, but I read a great deal of middle grade fiction. Middle grade can (and frequently does) inspire an incredible range of emotions; at its best, it’s full of depth, feels, and awesomeness. (Can you tell my kids are home for the summer and my concentration for this review is a bit off?) I Funny, by contrast, was full of a LOT of jokes, a Roald Dahl sort of family, and some very notable gaps. It isn’t fair to give away key plot points, but multiple key bits of relationship development between Jamie and multiple other people were just–missing. As in, wait. How did we get HERE? And whoa, how did a whole bunch of people switch from one distinct emotion to another completely different and distinct emotion without any actual cause? Add to that the contrast between, on the one hand, the tone of the book and Jamie’s character and, on the other hand, Jamie’s backstory, and you get a book that makes wild and nonsensical leaps from one emotional place to another. Now–to be fair–I can see more than a few middle school boys accepting those leaps and enjoying the book; once again, it’s full of jokes, the underdog triumphs (although with less effort than a good underdog movie portrays), and that age group often finds emotions baffling anyway. That said, however, there are better books out there. My son says he’s interested, so I’ll let you know what he thinks, but I’d stick to interested or reluctant readers for this one.*

*To give credit where it’s due, however, I did really enjoy Jamie’s constantly changing back-of-his-wheelchair bumper stickers.

I’m very consistent about entering what I’m reading into Goodreads, peeps. And I may take much longer to review the books than I do reading them, but it happens eventually. Bafflingly, however, I completely missed marking Jane L. Rosen’s Nine Women, One Dress as ‘currently reading,’ which means that I have to guess completely at my start and finish dates. Sad story! On the other hand, it was a good enough book that it’s worth it.

So. As with Not If I Can Help It, I decided to listen to Nine Women, One Dress on a whim, despite it NOT being one of my dozens of audio holds. My friend Britt had recommended it, however, and I was in the mood for something new; this story of one particular little black dress–a size small of the must-have little black dress of the season–definitely fit the bill. Not all of the nine women who wear the dress are likable (and some of them barely wear it at all!), but who doesn’t love to hate the occasional awful character? Add to that the fantastic almost-90 designer of the dress (not to mention the size small in question’s hilariously awful demise), and you’ve got a thoroughly enjoyable thread of a story. It’s the dress that connects the characters, but their stories reach out and grab you, and the lovely serendipity of the end made me smile. If you’re looking for a book to make you laugh, cry a little, and smile with satisfaction this summer, don’t miss this one!

In other news, yesterday was Field Day at the elementary school, and I guilted myself onto the committee this year, so I went for the whole of it. How sitting in the shade in a camp chair and cutting hundreds of Otter Pops in half (while repeating “Yes, seconds, NO THIRDS” over and over and over and over and OVER) could leave me so ridiculously exhausted and sore I will NEVER know, but there you have it. It went well and I survived, however, and that’s what matters. Whether I’ll manage to guilt myself into it NEXT year? Well, THAT’S another matter entirely…