Why I'm Like This

Praise for Why I'm Like This by Cynthia Kaplan:
"Striking a note somewhere between David Sedaris and Anna Quindlen, Kaplan spins traumas personal and professional for maximum laughs..." --People

A blend of David Sedaris and Anna Quindlen? Two of my favorites...SOLD! (You want to know what a blend of Sedaris and Quindlen sounds like, and by proxy what Kaplan sounds like? Mother Reader. Check out her Tinkerbell post and her tooth fairy post and then read Kaplan and tell me if I'm not right.)

Kaplan's new book, Leave the Building Quickly was the one that originally caught my eye in the new nonfiction display at the Tattered Cover in Denver, but you might know how I am about reading books in order. I had to buy and read Why I'm Like This first. I will be buying Leave The Building Quickly as soon as I'm in a bookstore again.

I'm only about halfway through Why I'm Like This, but it gave me the first cosmic reading event of the summer. I was reading it on the plane on the way home from a "Care For An Elderly Parent" trip. Only recently have I begun to be able to consistently act like an adult when I'm back home with my mom. I've finally figured out how not to revert automatically back to a surly 13 year-old. In the nick of time, I might add. So I've just had a stressful, but successful week, and I read this:

"One of the hardest things about growing up is how one day it suddenly dawns on you that your parents are human. It hadn't occurred to you before. Why should it have? But then something happens, some thing happens, and the veil drops...These are just moments, really, blips on the parental screen, during which they reveal their humanity, and that they are in the world, flailing about as helplessly as everyone else, everyone who is not your parents. Blowing it. Surviving. Hanging on by their nails. That they are at once more spectacularly resourceful and more deeply flawed than you might have ever imagined inspires both scorn and admiration, two emotions you'd always reserved for nonrelatives. But, happily, between the blips, they are just the same as they have always been...and you breathe a sigh of relief. It is too painful for them to be human."

(I know, that's not a particularly Sedaris/Quindlen/MR-sounding quote, but it was my cosmic reading event. Go get the book, either one, and read some whole essays. See if you can read them without snorting, smirking, guffawing, or having one of your own cosmic reading events.)

Yet Another Cosmic Reading Event

First there was the time I was reading PRODIGAL SUMMER by Barbara Kingsolver and it was not just the same season, but exactly the same dates in spring in my world and in the book. Same wildflowers were blooming, everything.

Then there was ANGELA'S ASHES by Frank McCourt while I was cold, hungry, and uncomfortable (just like him in the book) the time I got snowed in at the Alamo car rental place at the (then) new Denver Airport. That was before the city and the airport had figured out who was responsible for plowing Pena Blvd. out of the airport to I-70.

Last week I was reading 1776 by David McCullough while home visiting Mom. I finished it the day before we sorted boxes of pictures of her ancestors when I learned that her grandmother had been a member of the DAR. So that means I, too, can trace ancestors back to the 1700's and Vermont and the Battle of Bennington.

Now, today's cosmic reading event: the very next book I picked after one room schools in Montana (THE WHISTLING SEASON) was a one room school in Nebraska! ROOM ONE by Andrew Clements.

2 New Books from Cover to Cover

I went to Cover to Cover to pick up two middle grade novels that are on my To-Be-Read pile. If you have not been following Donalyn Miller on her Book Whisperer blog, she is finishing a book a day this summer. This has been costing me a bit of money so after this new update, I had to order COSMIC and THE WATER SEEKER. I am excited to read them both.

I wasn't in the mood to buy much else. My house seems to have been taken over by books that I don't have time for. So, as Beth showed me several new books, I told her that I had to REALLY REALLY love them if I was going to buy them. Well, I found two that I just LOVED LOVED LOVED--I totally needed them.

The first was a nonfiction book called ORANGUTANS ARE TICKLISH: FUN FACTS FROM AN ANIMAL PHOTOGRAPHER by Steve Grubman and Jill Davis. The cover makes you want to pick it up--a great photo of a fun orangutan! This is a great book that I am sure kids of all ages will love. Each spread focuses on one animal. Against a white background, the animal photos are amazing. A few paragraphs of a good size print accompany each animal. The writing is fun and includes lots of fun facts about each animal. My favorite part is the photography info. As an introduction to the book, Steve Grubman tells about his life as an animal photographer--what is involved, how he prepares, the number of people who help at a shoot, etc. Then throughout the book, Steve gives a little tidbit about each animal photo shoot. He says things like, "I had to lie on my belly to get this shot." The final pages of the book include more fun facts. This is a great book in so many ways. The photos are amazing. But the writing is fun. It would be a great mentor text for kids doing any research writing on animals. Each animal has a few paragraphs of writing next to the photo. They are good samples for kids to learn from. I also love the photography piece--I love that it is embedded in the text. Kids can really enjoy the book but also stop to think about how they created it. It is a great combination.

The other book I picked up was SWIM! SWIM! by Lerch (a snazzy, handsome, charismatic fish). I was drawn to this one because it is a great picture book in graphic novel form. If I find great graphica for young children, I like to buy those to add to the collection. This is definitely a picture book but it is set up in graphic novel/comic form with frames and talking bubbles to tell the story. This is the story of Lerch--a fish in a bowl who is desperate for a friend. He looks everywhere and almost gives up. (Even though he is by himself, his words and thoughts give you an insight into his amusing personality:-) Finally, when he has almost given up, he has a friend. The ending leaves readers with a bit to wonder about. There is lots to love about this book too. First of all, the illustrations are great. Great colors. Huge characters whose eyes and facial expressions tell so much of the story. The text is simple enough for newer readers but the story is interesting enough to hold the attention of older kids. An all around fun book.

Amelia Lost

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

by Candace Fleming 

Schwartz & Wade, 2011

Last night I finished reading Amelia Lost. This morning I read this on The Writer's Almanac:

It was 75 years ago today, in 1937, that Amelia Earhart was last heard from, somewhere over the Pacific. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, had set off in May from Miami to fly around the world in a Lockheed Electra. She said, "I have a feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this trip is it." 

They had completed all but about 7,000 miles of the trip when they landed in New Guinea. Maps of this part of the Pacific were inaccurate, and U.S. Coast Guard ships were in place to help guide them to their next stop, the tiny Howland Island. The weather was cloudy and rainy when they left New Guinea. At 7:42 a.m., Earhart communicated to the Coast Guard Cutter Itasca: "We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet." Her last transmission, about an hour later, was "We are running north and south." 

Franklin Roosevelt sent nine ships and 66 aircraft to search for the downed plane, to no avail. 

This month, 75 years after Earhart's disappearance, a new search team will use robotic submarines to comb the area where they think the Electra went down.

Cosmic, eh?

This is the kind of longer nonfiction I can imagine reading aloud to fourth grade and up. Fleming does an excellent job maintaining tension, even though we pretty much know the story. She does this by alternating between chapters about Earhart's disappearance and the search that was conducted for her, and chapters that tell her life story.

My next #bookaday/#paredownthetbrpile book will be The Good, The Bad, and the Barbie. At first glance, it might seem to be a ironic choice. But I'm interested to see what kind of overlap there is between Amelia, the legendary/mythic/iconic role model for women/girls, and the much-maligned toy role model/monster/psychological destroyer know as Barbie.

Cosmic Again

Last book was TWICE TOLD, short stories inspired by original art. I just finished Elizabeth Winthrop's new book, COUNTING ON GRACE, which is historical fiction about a twelve-year-old girl in the early 18th century who doffs bobbins in a cotton mill in Vermont. And what was Elizabeth Winthrop's inspiration for this book? A Lewis Hine photograph in his collection which documented child labor in the early 1900's!! (There's also a one room school in this one. This is just getting too weird.)

I'm probably going to have to twist the arms of my literature circle group to read this -- they are avid NON-readers of historical fiction -- but they read both CASTLE IN THE ATTIC and BATTLE FOR THE CASTLE last year and vowed that they wanted Elizabeth Winthrop to write a new book. Well, this isn't quite what they had in mind, but I think they'll fall in love. Grace is a likeable character, contrary down to her stubborn left-handedness and her inability to sit still or concentrate. It seems that she'll fall into the trap of a lifetime of work at the mill, but because of the influences of Grace's teacher, a visit from Mr. Hine, her best friend Arthur's deliberate mangling of his hand to escape mill work, and her mother (as much of a sharp-edged, contrary character as Grace is), Grace winds up, at age 12, the substitute teacher in the mill school when her teacher is fired for her work with Mr. Hine against child labor. GREAT characters. SUPERB writing. EXCELLENT end notes about Louis Hine and the photograph that inspired Elizabeth Winthrop.