Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock I know that I wrote about Dairy Queen when I first read it, but I’m so entranced that I thought I’d mention that book three in this series is now out. D.J. Schwenk is back to school after spending several months helping her brother Win recuperate from a spinal injury. She’s broken up with Brian Nelson and intends to focus on school and basketball. Only of course life can’t be that simple. Her coach informs her that college coaches are scouting her, and she has to decide on colleges now – junior year – or all the scholarships will be gone. Why so fast? And can someone who can barely manage to talk to classmates handle the potential pressure of a Big 10 team? Plus, her best male friend, Beaner, wants to date, which she might enjoy – if only Brian Nelson would stop coming around. I am just in awe of Murdock for writing books that cover deep thoughts and feelings while managing to be laugh-out-loud funny at the same time. I especially love how authentic this feels – DJ’s narrative in long casual sentences with a wry sense of humor, and the rural Midwest setting with character names like Knudsen and Jorgenson.
Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. Read by Robert Sevra This is a sweet old-fashioned story of young Elmer Elevator and his adventures rescuing first a baby dragon and then the baby dragon’s family. The most startling thing is how little trouble Elmer gets into at home when he goes missing for days at a time. I was highly amused at Gannet’s proclivity towards counting what Elmer eats – fourteen tangerines or five Fig Newtons. Lightening Bolt and I enjoyed listening to this in the car. I don’t think he’ll want it over and over again, because it just doesn’t have the adrenaline he’s looking for these days. Still, if you are looking for a not-too-scary tale of dragons for your child, this is a solid choice.
NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman Our “common sense” about children reflects a lot of thinking that hasn’t held up to testing, usually along the lines that children react like adults. This book by award-wining science journalists tells what newer research shows about various aspects of child development. A few areas were already familiar to me, but most of them were new. They are all discrete and entertaining articles, to make for good dipping into. Topics include the negative effects of praise (by now familiar to me), the importance of sleep, the impossibility of kindergarten iq testing, teaching self-control, why children lie and what it means, infant speech development and why educational videos don’t work, why watching typical preschool tv shows makes kids more aggressive, how to keep siblings from fighting, and why teens feel that arguing is showing respect. Many of the articles would seem to require systemic change to actually implement – things like starting high school an hour later or delaying gifted program testing until third grade. Some are hopefully possible, like being conscious of your own lying behaviors in front of your children or being more conscientious about putting them to bed early. But mostly, this is just a fascinating look into the way children and teens work. Someone else please read it so I can talk about it with you!
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin Is happiness really worth pursuing? Rubin decides that yes, it is. Her happiness affects her whole family’s happiness, and she doesn’t want the best years of her life to slip by without her being able to enjoy them. Happiness is quite a deep topic, but fortunately, Rubin puts in the heavy lifting on the philosophy reading end of things to produce a book that’s easy to read while covering a wide spectrum of ideas about happiness. She picks an overarching happiness-increasing goal and a handful of smaller goals for each month, and talks about what ideas are most effective and easiest to accomplish – two quite independent variables. A sampling of her ideas: declutter, exercise, be kind to her husband and children, spend money well, find and do what she really likes to do, find a spiritual guide, start a blog (after which the text includes comments from blog readers). This was both entertaining and thought-provoking.
Larklight by Phillip Reeve. Read by Greg Steinbruner. Larklight is set in an alternate Victorian world, where the British Empire spans the solar system. Our narrator, Art Mumby (eleven or so, I’d guess), and his proper teen-aged sister Myrtle live in an ancient and remote manor house, Larklight, that orbits the earth past the moon. When their home is attacked by giant white spiders, Art and Myrtle escape to the moon, where they are rescued from the fearsome wildlife there by the young pirate Jack Havock. Art, Myrtle, Jack Havock and his crew of aliens then embark on a quest to save the solar system. I found a whole lot to like about this book. There is the wonderful Victorian-flavored prose, with both the floweriness and schoolboy slang. As part of this, the wooden ether ships are powered by the alchemical wedding which naturally occurs not in an engine room but in a wedding chamber. Many of the characters are archetypes twisted just enough to be self-aware – the Plucky British Schoolboy, the Very Proper Young Lady in Search of Love, and the Pirate with the Heart of Gold. Despite the unreality of wildlife that can survive in the ether and on the moon, the vast distances of the solar system seem much more accurately represented here than in much of sci-fi: Mars is the farthest regular British outpost. There are aliens and a few humans on the moons of Jupiter, but Saturn is farther than humans have ever managed to go. I really enjoyed Steinbruner’s reading of the text, his British accents as Art appropriately youthful and plucky, but the print book is also lovingly illustrated, so you can take your pick. My library has this shelved in teen, but I can’t see why – it seems more appropriate for children’s fiction. If you love this (and why wouldn’t you?) there are two more books in the series.
Dignifying Science: Stories about Women Scientists by Jim Ottaviani et al Oh my goodness – a man writing about women’s history! OK, now that we’re over the shock, let’s move on. Jim Ottaviani is a very nice local comic book writer and librarian who focuses on science titles. This one came out after a similar book featuring male scientists. I recently saw him at a panel discussion where he talked about all the research he does for his books, putting in days and years of reading to find the small true details that will bring the story to life. This book features stories about lesser-known women scientists who nonetheless made great contributions to science and technology. Each short story is both interesting and packs in a lot of information about its subject. Each is illustrated by a different female comic book artist – I recognized Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), Lea Hernandez (Birds of Prey, Killer Princesses), and Linda Medley (Castle Waiting). Featured scientists include Hedy Lamarr, Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin, Barbara McClintock and Birute Galdikas, with prologue and epilogue featuring Marie Sklodovska Curie. These are stories of women passionate and enthusiastic about their fields, even as they are often encouraged to go into different fields, their contributions unrecognized while their male colleagues receive Nobel prizes. Copious end-notes include explanations, sources, and recommended books for further reading. This could be enjoyed by middle elementary children up through adults, though it’s shelved in teen at my library.
I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll. Illustrated by Howard McWilliam Young Ethan is shocked at bedtime to discover that his personal under-the-bed monster, Gabe, has gone on vacation for a week. Since he can’t possibly get to sleep without a monster, he sends for a substitute – but can any one else can live up to his exacting monster standards? It’s a fun and unusual premise, and the pictures match perfectly. They are (according to the note) pencil on paper filled in with digital acrylic paint. It’s a vivid style reminiscent of Pixar, with lots of inventive monsters and Ethan’s big-eyed reactions. This is perfect both for kids enamored of monsters, as mine is, and could help those afraid of monsters to put a more pleasant spin on them.
The No-Cry Nap Solution by Elizabeth PantleyThis is one that I wish had been out when LB was small. Pantley does her usual thorough job, outlining how much sleep infants and young children need and when they need it. As in, both how much sleep they need total and how long they can stay awake, at different ages, before they need to sleep again. She talks about why nap problems can be more challenging than night-time sleep problems to solve. Pantley tells you first only to try to fix something if it’s a problem for you; if nursing your child to sleep in bed is working for you and getting your child enough sleep, there’s no need to change anything. Where there are problems, she says right up front that this isn’t going to be a quick fix. She then goes into individual problems to help parents put together a solution to work with their child in their family. Problems covered include things like “will only sleep in the car”, “naps are not long enough”, “child is resisting naps”. After reading through all the ideas, you can put together your own nap plan. The upside of having all the ideas that worked for her numerous test families listed can of course also be a downside: you have to read through all the ideas to pick out the ones that sound most like they would work for your child and in your family. A friend recommended Mary Sheedy Kurcinka’s Sleepless in America for a personality-based approach to solving sleep problems; I haven’t read that, although I really enjoyed her Kids, Parents and Power Struggles. We’ve been working with Baby Godzilla using the Pantley methods for a couple of weeks now. We haven’t yet reached the gold standard of her being able to be set down in her crib drowsy but awake by anyone and sleeping for an hour and a half to two hours. But she is going down into the crib much more easily for me and sometimes allowing Daddy to put her down – which is enormous progress.
The Time-Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer The title might say most of it – but I’ll elaborate a little more. To start with, Mortimer picks just one century of the middle ages, the tumultuous 14th century, home to Chaucer and the Great Plague and my favorite fashions, among other things. Rather than the standard approach of looking at the important people and events, he talks about what you’d need to know if you were actually to go to fourteenth century England as a tourist. What would the landscape look and sound like? How should you behave and what should you wear so as not to offend anyone? How do the different types of people live and eat? I found that I had to skip the detailed chapter on medical care, though that depends on your personal tolerance level. Still, so many aspects were covered and wittily described that I found myself engrossed and frequently wanting to share. Alas, my love decided that he wanted to read the book as well and so would not let me. Mortimer also discusses the philosophy behind his approach – reminding us that these were real people who shared a basic humanity with us and whose actions continue to affect life in modern-day England (this is explained in more detail especially in the legal chapter.) It’s unfair, he says, to call a fourteenth-century housewife dirty because she doesn’t clean with antibacterial wipes – our cleaning methods will probably seem ineffectual in 700 years, too, but that doesn’t mean that either we or the hypothetical housewives don’t care about cleanliness. There’s a lot to enjoy here both for the history buff and the re-enactor, and the annotated end-notes give even more commentary and jumping-off points for those who want to take it further.-
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