Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I missed Friday, I know. Summer with the kiddos home (or at places they need schlepping to) is complicated, okay? But last night I finished listening to Alan Gratz’s Ban This Book, and let me tell you what–it was fantastic. Amy Anne is a lovely character who has trouble speaking up; even when she discovers that her favorite book (From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) has been removed from her elementary school library’s shelves and goes to the school board meeting at her librarian’s request, she can’t bring herself to stand up and give the speech she worked over so painstakingly. Her parents buy her her very own copy, and she supposes that’s the (unhappy) end of it. When other kids in her class start talking about some of the other books on the removed list, however, Amy Anne lends her new copy to one of them and borrows a copy of a different book that she wants to read for the first time–which somehow leads to Amy Anne running a secret ‘banned books library’ out of her locker. More books start appearing on the ‘remove’ list, however, and when Amy Anne is given a second chance to speak up, she’s determined to do it.

I loved Amy Anne’s mantra, given to her by her school librarian–“Nobody has the right to tell you what books you can and can’t read except your parents.” My parents had no idea what was in some of the books I was reading in junior high, but they instilled enough principles in me that I eventually started to be more discriminating in what I chose; I rarely tell my own children they can’t read something. (I do tell them things like ‘Let’s talk about what’s in that one before/after you read it’, or ‘I don’t think you’ll actually like that one, but it’s up to you’, or ‘I think that one’s written for older readers–it might embarrass you at this stage of your life.’) I occasionally read books and return them to the library without passing them on, but my attitude there runs along the lines of ‘if they find this one on their own, whatever, but I’m not going to put it into their hands myself.’ (Because it’s my job as a parent to feed them real food, so to speak–they’ll find enough junk food on their own.) As long as, say, Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t end up in my kids’ school libraries, I’m pretty anti-censorship.

I also loved, however, that the so-called villain of the piece isn’t vilified in the end–Amy Anne herself comes to see her as a good but misguided person, and the way she deals with her at the end is masterful. Amy Anne’s parents sometimes drive me crazy–I have strong opinions about treating kids fairly–but they ultimately come through for her in a big way. And while there’s a serious PTA accounting no-no in the last third of the book, it works out nicely for the plot, so I’m not inclined to quibble. (The accountant-by-profession state PTA treasurer most certainly would, though.)

At the end of the day, you should absolutely read Ban This Book. And while I didn’t actually like all the books on the removed list–you may recall my scathing review of Harriet the Spy–you could read those too, if you wanted.

I’M certainly not going to stop you.

I can’t even remember when I started reading Shiny Misfits–suffice it to say that it was quite some time ago and I was definitely looking for a graphic novel to gift one of my girls at the time. I must have found a better option, however, because I got not-very-far into it before stalling and setting it aside. Last week, in an effort to pare down my ‘currently reading’ list on Goodreads, I picked it up again, and I finished it Monday night while waiting for my hubby to come to bed.

I was unimpressed.

So here’s the thing. The premise for Misfits has a LOT going on–Bay Ann is a vegetarian (or possibly vegan) main character of color (Middle Eastern, I think?) with cerebral palsy whose parents are divorced. She wins her school talent show with her dance routine (she can’t do stairs easily but CAN tap dance, apparently), but the boy she either hates or has a crush on–her attitude towards him was too inconsistent for me to make sense of–ends up in the spotlight instead. And since Bay Ann is obsessed with going viral (pretty much to the exclusion of all else), she now must find a way to beat him.

I did start out rooting for Bay Ann; she wants to be seen for her talents, not her disability, and I respect that. By the time I was 2/3 of the way through the book, however, I was over her. Her obsession with going viral is so unbelievably unhealthy that her parents’ failure to address the situation is disturbing, and her increasing brattiness towards those parents is only exceeded by her callous and cavalier treatment of her two loyal best friends. By the time she has her epiphany and starts trying to atone, I found it hard to care.

To be fair, that epiphany is a solid one–complete with a grand gesture–but she’d already lost me by then; I was glad but no longer significantly invested. Add to that a mother who is either an on-the-spectrum tiger mother or a caricature, a father who sleeps on the couch in his own house for reasons that aren’t ever fully explained, and a teacher whose disengagement, while hilarious, is unavoidably terrifying, and there just isn’t enough character authenticity for me to emotionally engage with (or be invested in) the story. I suppose I’ll pass it on and see what my 11-year-old thinks, but I wouldn’t rush out to get this one.

On the home front, I may finally have to make the major Walmart run I’ve been avoiding. May the odds be ever in my favor…

This morning–the first official morning of summer vacation–my 16-year-old had to be at the high school at 6 AM for Dance Company’s ‘beginning of summer hike’. And because she doesn’t like to be late (among–ahem!–other reasons), I’ve been up since 5:30. (In case you’re wondering, the high school is a max of 15 minutes away.) On the other hand, since I was definitively too awake to go back to sleep when I got home after dropping her off, I had a quiet hour (plus) to myself in which to work on my puzzle and finish listening to Katherine Center’s The Bright Side of Disaster, one of her earliest novels. (It was first published the year my oldest was born, which tracks with the use of 411 and the phone book.) And while I love Katherine Center–she’s funny, she brings the feels, and her characters are beautifully relatable–I have to confess that this one drove me a little crazy.

First, the premise–we have very pregnant Jenny, whose live-in almost husband is clearly a loser; when he takes off at around the 25% point, my only complaint was that he hung around that long. She (of course) goes into labor the next day, and a decent chunk of the novel is taken up with the all-encompassing life change that is first-time motherhood–the sleep deprivation, the rocky road to breast-feeding successfully, and sheer terror of OH NO I’M RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS BABY. Jenny’s parenting choices don’t always make her life easier, but then, who knows what I would have done in her place; I had a husband who loved (loves) kids with me from day 1. (And don’t get me wrong, she’s a careful and loving mother–she’s just more willing to leap to attention and be a bit of a human pacifier than I was.) Eventually, through the haze, she starts having more frequent run-ins with her nice guy neighbor, and (after many conversations, not to mention dinners together while he’s painting her garage), they finally have a fantastic first date just before the loser shows up again. How she deals with him for the next hour of the audiobook is what REALLY drove me crazy, because there were some definite bad choices there. (TALK, Jenny. He claimed to actually want to talk when he first came back, and if you’d talked then, you might have spared all of us the majority of the loser reprise.) Ultimately, of course, she comes to her senses, but by then, is her chance with her neighbor gone forever?

I mean, of course not, but still. How that works out is pretty good, but not as satisfying as in her subsequent books. (Her subsequent books also have fewer f-bombs, which I appreciate.) There’s some unevenness with Jenny’s female friends in this one as well, so that while Bright Side is definitely not a waste of your time, I wouldn’t necessarily rush to put it at the top of your reading list.

In the meantime, my nephew who’s just home from his mission spoke in church on Sunday, and my oldest got set apart as a missionary, so she’s official! I hope all your weekends were lovely…