Amused to be covering this book at the same time as my friends over at Name That Mama.
Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein Why are girls only allowed to wear or use pink anymore? And why are girls of preschool age suddenly obsessed with Disney Princesses, in all their sparkly but bland glory? Journalist Orenstein sets out to investigate these questions in this fast-reading book which nevertheless has some good scholarly underpinnings. Many of the ideas are not new – the fine line, for example, between telling girls that they are pretty and that they need to be pretty. But Orenstein’s exploration gets everything nicely together in one place, and her personal explorations are entertaining. She talks to Disney executives and visits the American Girl store in Manhattan, noting the dichotomy between the affordable glitz of the Disney and the hugely expensive old-fashioned simplicity of American Girls. She visits the Toy Fair and talks with toy marketers who make everything in pink, and say they are just “honoring play patterns”. She visits child beauty pageants and talks to parents there. She reads unsanitized fairy tales to her daughter and watches for nightmares. The chapter “From Wholesome to Whoresome” examines the sad fate of former tween stars, following which she looks at the on-line culture and teens’ place in it. Parents of girls of all ages will pay almost anything for the illusions of innocence and protection that are marketed in varying aspects to girls of all ages. Although many of the major arguments were familiar, I did learn some new and interesting if troubling facts: Kindergarten girls when asked to write a sentence in which they pretend to be something limit themselves to one of four choice: princess, fairy, ballerina or butterfly, where boys’ choices are much more varied. Toy choices, we know, seem quite hard-wired to gender, even across species, but there is nothing else but mate selection that is as tied to gender. I was really disturbed to read that recent studies asking teens and college girls about their own sexual feelings have gotten answered with how the girls think they look, with no consciousness of their own possibility for arousal. And while I knew that “tweens” as an age group was a recent invention of marketers to create a new market, I hadn’t realized that toddlerhood started the same way a century ago. There are more problems and pitfalls pointed out here than hard-and-fast solutions. I still hope for balance for my daughter and for other girls, for the confidence to be themselves, embracing aspects both traditionally feminine and masculine, and yet still to fit in well enough not be as isolated as I felt especially during my teen years. This is well worth reading for parents and anyone else interested in modern girls.
Crossposted to http://sapphireone.livejournal.com and http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org .
Natural Hospital Birth by Cynthia Gabriel Even though I feel quite done with having children, I am fascinated with birth, and I definitely want to be able to recommend good recent books to friends who are having babies. I had pretty low expectations of this book when I picked it up off the waiting-to-be-cataloged cart. The introduction hooked me enough that I checked it out and took it home as soon as it was ready. Gabriel starts off by talking about why people who want to give birth naturally might choose a hospital, even though American hospitals are quite inexperienced with natural births right now. The part that hooked me is that what she tells women is that she aims for a natural birth because she loves it. But, she has excellent creds for writing the book. She’s an anthropologist who worked in Russian hospitals where epidurals are rare, and a doula who attends births in Ann Arbor and therefore, unlike an OB, sees lots of births from start to finish. She advocates using doulas or home-birth midwives to help find the most natural-birth-friendly hospital practice you can, then building support rather than fighting by doing things like bringing in a natural birth story and talking about your hopes for a natural birth each visit. She strongly recommends that unless you are a health care professional yourself, you argue the emotional benefits of a natural birth over the health risks of a medically assisted one. She goes into some depth over writing a birth plan, recommending three separate ones: one for just you, describing your not-reality-tethered dream birth; one for your birth team (husband, doula, whatever friends you invite to help with your birth) detailing what they can do to help with that, such as turning off lights when staff members leave and answering questions on your behalf; and one short, sweet and positive one for the medical staff. Be sure, too, she says, to take a birth class out of the hospital, to help prepare for the tough realities of labor rather than just be educated on the hospital routines. She has sections detailing lots of individual snags you might run into, and longer sections for the tough cases of abuse survivors, multiples, and VBACs. The book is filled with positive birth stories and lots of encouragement. This is a very solid book, highly practical for anyone planning a hospital birth.
Sewn With Love by Fiona Bell I’ve had a really hard time finding time for sewing since I had children, and I’ve mostly only made the time to sew garb, since that’s really hard and expensive to buy if you don’t make it yourself. And yet – when I saw this book at work, not even cataloged yet, I was inspired. It is full of beautiful, classic designs for clothes and accessories, for both boys and girls. OK, the clothing for boys was in the simple department – button-down shirts, shorts, and pajamas. The bulletin board was done in a more masculine print, too, and the simple but adorable stuffed frog (indeed, all the non-clothing items) could easily go either way. The girls’ clothing featured lots of dresses with full skirts and details like pin tucks, lace, or rick-rack. Pretty much everything is done in vintage-looking print fabric. I was so inspired that I checked out the book and am trying to make a dress for my little girl. And now comes the reality check. The book has lots of gorgeous color photography of all the clothes, and instructions for sewing. A CD-ROM in the back includes patterns to print out. Not until I went to print out the pattern was I able to track down the size chart. Instead of putting the ranges for the patterns with each pattern, this is located in a tiny box buried at the back of the book. Even though most patterns in the book give the yardage required, they give just one yardage for all the size ranges, which is quite puzzling. I discovered as I was going to print out the pattern that my daughter is too big for the largest size of the baby patterns I’d chosen, though still too young for me to feel she’d look good in any of the big girl patterns. I do wish they’d put the size ranges with differentiated yardage requirements in for each pattern, and, again puzzling, their measurements assume that children have waists smaller than their chests. The photographs are gorgeous, but not calculated to show the full design of the garments, and no schematic drawings are given either in the book or on the cd-rom. The instructions are written for people with a fair amount of sewing experience – she suggests starting with the laundry bag or the duvet cover if you’re new to sewing. I have yet to find explanations for the symbols used in the patterns – again fine if you’re experienced. Bell also seems to assume that the sewer will have both a regular sewing machine and a serger. On the plus side, she does include resources for buying vintage-style fabric (she uses 
The Adventures of Thor the Thunder God by Lisa Lunge-Larsen. Illustrated by Jim Madsen So there’s a movie about Thor coming out, and somehow the boy, despite it being far too old for him, has picked up on this and is wildly interested in Thor. A movie based loosely (I presume) on comic books, which are based loosely on old Norse legends. Naturally I looked for something as close to the original as possible, and found this rare collection of stories all about Thor. We have stories of how Thor got his hammer, of a visit to mortals, and of course, how his hammer, Mjolnir, was lost and recovered. The large, full-page illustrations look something in between your classic fairy-tale oil and animation, which works well. This is a great book for young would-be Thor admirers. 
Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett. Performed by Stephen Briggs. I view Terry Pratchett as a fantasy savings account. Not as in money, but as in “If I am ever in the bind for some light but good fantasy entertainment, there will always be a Terry Pratchett I haven’t yet read.” The books are enough part of the world to feel familiar, but free-standing enough that I don’t feel out of the loop for going years between Discworld visits. I had one of these moments recently, and was so happy to find an audio copy of this recent effort. In this book, the wizards of Unseen University discover to their horror that they will lose a good bit of funding if they don’t start playing the game of Foot the Ball. This is a raucous street game, with very loose rules and intensely loyal local teams throughout Ankh-Morphokh. Below stairs, we meet another cast of characters who get caught up in the ensuing madness: Nutt, a very well-educated goblin who is inexplicably working as a candle dribbler; Trev, the head candle dribbler, previously specializing in nothing much but being able to kick a tin can around wherever he goes; Glenda, the large and capable head of the night kitchen; and Juliet, her assistant, whose fairly empty but beautiful head attracts notice from every male who sees her. There’s some romance, a bit of dwarf fashion, a little reflection on racism, and a whole lot of silly fun, admirably read by the capable Briggs.
Matched by Ally Condie In the Society, problems have been smoothed away by careful application of statistical science. Everyone is told what to eat and wear and where to work. But everyone is pretty much happy, and guaranteed to live a healthy 80 years. As the story opens, 17-year-old Cassia is about to attend her Match banquet. Wearing a beautiful, borrowed dress, she will get to see the face of the boy the Society has chosen to be her best Match. Shockingly, rather than a stranger in some other town, her best friend and neighbor down the street, Xander, is chosen instead. She can hardly believe her good fortune. But then, when she gets home and looks on the data card she’s been given, she sees not only Xander’s picture, but the picture of Ky, another boy she knows. Even though an Official tells her it was a mistake, she can’t stop thinking about Ky, who came to her town from the Outer Provinces when they were children. At the same time, her beloved Grandfather is very close to his 80th birthday, when citizens of the Society die. At their last meeting, he gives her contraband poetry from Before, hidden in a legal antique Artifact. And now she is possessed of beautiful words that are too dangerous to keep. For the first time in her life, Cassia begins to doubt the perfection of the Society, both for her individually and as a whole. But how much will resistance cost those she loves? And how much her own are her thoughts and feelings after all? The ending leaves things open enough for a sequel.
Brave New Knits by Julie TurjomanBrave New Knits is profiles of and patterns by knit bloggers, and in particular those whom the internet helped to knitting-designer success. Many of these are knitters I’ve heard of before, like Grumperina and Ysolda Teague, although I hadn’t read any of their blogs. The book is roughly divided into sections by pattern type – sweaters and accessories – but what makes this book really unique is the in-depth profiles of each of the bloggers. Where most books will give a paragraph at most to each designer, Turjoman includes a lengthy three to four page profile for each designer before the pattern. These invariably made me wish I were reading next to a computer, so I could look at their blog and Ravelry profiles. It also made for a disconnect the couple of times when the profile said that the designer was known for making garments top-down, say, and then the pattern included was knit flat in pieces. There were a lot of sweaters – quite lovely – ranging from quite complicated to simple – and socks, and non-sock projects with sock yarn. The patterns looked quite nice, though I read on Amazon that there are a lot of errata. All in all, I found the patterns nice, but what really interested me about this book was the designer-bloggers and their paths to making a life out of knitting.
Among Others by Jo Walton Our heroine – who doesn’t share her name with us until well into the book – is a Welsh teen who ran away from her mother and is now (now being 1979) being sent to English boarding school. Of course she doesn’t fit in; her leg was damaged in the accident that killed her twin sister, and she can’t participate in the all-important school sports. Although the school is out in the country, it’s less wild than the outskirts of town in Wales, and that means many fewer fairies, and the ones she can find won’t talk to her. But it’s after the great battle, she says, after the Scouring of the Shire. You don’t expect everyone to survive or for things to go smoothly. The world is still going on, and that means you succeeded. Mori spends her time reading, mostly lots and lots of science fiction. Eventually she joins a science fiction book club, her only real social outlet. Oh, how very close to her I have been! It’s a somewhat sneaky book – most of what happens in the present is pretty mundane, so that I thought at first that the story was going to be the slow and tiny revelations about the Big Battle of the past. Mori suffers through school, tries to figure out the social rules, tries to understand the father she met for the first time when she ran away from her mother. She visits her family in Wales – the people she loves who raised her in the face of her mother’s neglect and craziness. She thinks about love and sexuality, and she reads and thinks about what she reads, often comparing the magic in books to the magic that she has experienced herself. And then suddenly, she is in actual present danger and must rely on the knowledge she has gained from her reading. It was a plot twist that I was not expecting at all. I am left feeling that I ought to go back and re-read it. I was also torn between all the fabulous books that she read that I have also loved, many that I have heard of but not read (mostly sci-fi classics that were missing from my parents’ bookshelf), as well as a few authors that I have never heard of. I should read more science fiction! But I’m already behind on all the areas that I try to read already – aggh! I will also note that the cover of this book, while lovely, seemed to have very little to do with the contents and moreover, made it look like mainstream women’s fiction instead of fantasy that would be enjoyed by either gender. This fantasy is a love poem to science fiction and the power of reading, as well as a strong coming-of-age story featuring a most sympathetic protagonist. 
Vimanarama by Grant Morrison and Philip Bond This is a short and wacky adventure story loaned to my love from our friend 
Return of the Dapper Men by Jim McCann and Janet Lee Once upon a time there was a world where time stopped, and all that was left were children and machines. The machines lived above ground and the children below, with only one robot girl and one human boy daring to risk friendship across that divide. Then one day, a whole host of dapper men – very dapper men, in white pin-striped suits with green umbrellas – falls from the sky. Only one of them talks, and he only talks to Ayden and Zoe. At this point, I was expecting something along the lines of the Grey Gentlemen from Michael Ende’s Momo – quite decidedly evil. But this turns out not to be the case at all, and it is only like Momo, and The Little Prince in that inside of a story for children is a message probably best captured by adults on how to appreciate life. The story is beautifully told, but the artwork really shines. It’s done in an Art Nouveau style, but with the figures in watercolor and ink cut out and pasted on pre-treated boards. I bought this for the adult collection at the library, but I think now it would do just as well in the children’s section, though it probably has too much of the air of the innocence of childhood to appeal to teens. I could be wrong, though. That art might pull just about anyone in. Go look at it, and see if you don’t think so.
