I will not put Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (published 1851) on my favorite books list because it’s simply not a favorite novel (I shudder at each description of whale blubber).  And yet, I must give Moby-Dick a solid five stars out of five for the rich reading experience it provides. I simply loved reading it. Much as other great works in world literature, such as War and Peace and Hamlet or (maybe) even East of Eden, Moby Dick gives innovative depth and breadth to a majestic subject, creating a universal epic of good and evil in the guise of a novel about something that may otherwise seem insignificant.

Moby-Dick is about much more than a whaling ship’s voyage, the biology of a whale, or even an insane whale-ship captain’s revenge on a whale. Reading Moby-Dick is a cultural experience, and the novel itself is a marvel in the detail Melville provides to create a composite picture of the mid-nineteenth century America. In addition, despite the clear setting (it could not be the same story without the whale hunting and whale fact digressions), the story is a universal one: fate versus choice, good versus evil, sanity versus insanity, God versus man. Continue reading »

Raisin and I enjoyed learning about Australia for our school time this month. Since he was born there, I have a special place in my heart for the country, even though we really only saw a smidgen of the country: a few scenic places within five hours of where we lived in Melbourne.

We began our study of Australia by coloring a map with the geographic features (mountains and land with vegetation as opposed to the desert). Then I copied Small World at Home’s idea and we made a giant cookie in the shape of Australia. We added frosting and green sprinkles for the coastal/forested lands, chocolate chips for the mountains, and gel for the major cities. Then we cut it up into the various states and ate it! Raisin loved this project. He was excited to tell his friend, “Guess what? We ate Queensland this afternoon!” He thought it was so funny. Given his age, I’m not surprised that he’s forgotten the names of the states and cities. But weeks after the fact, he still can find the city he was born in (Melbourne) and he remembers about Uluru, which we talked about briefly.

One picture book we enjoyed helped us appreciate the size of the country and the various scenery. Are we There Yet? by Alison Lester was a child’s perspective of a month-long road trip around Australia. Raisin enjoyed learning about the various landmarks and began to understand the vast scope of the country since the road trip lasted so long for their family. He liked following their progress on the map. It was also fun to show him our family picture in the Victorian mountains (he was two months old) and a picture of him with me by The Twelve Apostles when he was about six months old. (We compared our picture  to the illustration of the family by the Twelve Apostles that was in the book!).

We also spent about a week learning about the Great Barrier Reef. We watched a National Geographic video about it (it was geared towards adults, so I sat with him and we talked through the entire movie, and even then he barely made it through it.). We watched Finding Nemo, of course, and make a food chain chart using images from that movie to talk about which animals were predators to whom. We made another board game, The Finding Nemo Game, which rehashed some of the facts about reef creatures, but we didn’t play it nearly as much as we played our Earth Game so Raisin has forgotten a lot of what we discussed. In general, though, he remembers the Great Barrier Reef is a cool thing off the coast of Australia, and he knows what a “predator” is, so I consider that success for us!

Raisin did not show immense interest in learning much about Australia: neither the people (I loved the Dreamtime stories, but I could not get him interested), the history, nor the landmarks interested him. Our unit study ended up being mostly about the animals of Australia, which was fun too. Koala Lou by Mem Fox told of a koala who wanted to impress her mother, so she entered a gumtree climbing contest. I loved the illustrations, which featured all the various animals of the Australian outback. Wombat Stew by Marcia Vaughan was a silly tale of various animals getting the dingo to add icky things to his soup in order to trick him in to not eating the wombat. Although Raisin insisted he didn’t like this story, I caught him singing the Wombat Stew song after we read this book!  Snap! by Marcia Vaughan told the story of some young Australian animals playing nearby the crocodile. They use their wisdom to avoid being eaten. And finally, the ridiculous My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch by Graeme Base is about a woman who adopts the animals of the bush. Told in poetry, the book gets more and more amusing as grandma’s pet animals fill the pages.

I also tried to give my son a very basic introduction to Aborigines and culture, but, as I said, it didn’t go over so well. He did like Big Rain Coming by Katrina Germein, which had Aborigine style artwork. I liked the subtle way the book introduced the young reader to the Aboriginal sensitivity to the land. Together, Raisin and I looked at the boomerangs we purchased when we lived in Australia and we talked about how the art of dots and lines created symbols. He didn’t want to try his own hand at art (he’s just not into crafts most of the time). We did read a very silly folktale called Whale’s Canoe which is supposedly based on a Dreamtime tradition. Joanna Troughton‘s retelling was perfect for Raisin’s age (4).

Whew! It was fun to focus on Australia for two months. It’s hard to believe that I was moving there five years ago. It feels like yesterday at the same time that it feels like a lifetime ago.

We also found a few other wonderful picture books in the past few weeks, but I’ll have to save those for another day!

What great picture books have you read about Australia?

Wise Women of the Dreamtime: Aboriginal Tales of the Ancestral Power (Inner Traditions International, 1993) is a fascinating collection of tales from Australian Aboriginal woman as dictated to a Western woman in the late 1800s. Editor Joanna Lambert expands upon these tales by providing commentary and discussion after each tale, focusing on the various folkloric traditions around the globe and emphasizing both the uniqueness of the Aboriginal tales and the similarities the Aboriginal folklore has with other cultures. Given the thousands of years in which Aboriginal traditions flourished essentially unaltered, I found it fascinating to read the folklore.

Kate Langloh Parker was fascinated by the Aboriginal traditions as a child, and as an adult, she collected the stories the women told her. Tragically, in her day, such folkloric anthropological research was not appreciated in Australia. In the past century, Aboriginal traditions have been overshadowed by the Western traditions entering into the territory and the 60,000 year old culture is losing it’s solidarity.

Ms Lambert’s volume reintroduces Ms Parker’s anthology of collected stories with sensitivity into a world that may be better equipped to appreciate the culture of the Aborigines. Although I am not an anthropologist, I greatly enjoyed Ms Lambert’s commentary. The stories of Dreamtime are a fascinating look at an ancient culture and religious tradition. I only wished Ms Lambert and Ms Parker had more folklore collected to share with me!

I’ve been looking forward to rereading Herman Melville’s masterpiece, Moby-Dick, since I first read it about a decade ago. Alas, my book club meets in two weeks and I’m struggling to get time to read the marvelous epic!

Before I picked it up, I decided to read Nathaniel Philbrick’s small tribute to the novel, appropriately titled Why Read Moby-Dick? (published 2011, Viking). I loved reading of Phillbrick’s personal experience with the novel! Part literary criticism, part author biography, and part personal tribute to a favorite novel, Why Read Moby-Dick? certainly reinforced to my mind the many ways that Melville’s epic surpasses expectations and extends beyond its contemporary era into our own.

I enjoyed reading Philbrick’s manifesto as I began reading the novel myself. It was a reminder that the complexities of Moby Dick are best appreciated when encountered slowly.

A few examples of some concepts and quotes I loved from Philbrick:

The first wave of critics to appreciate Melville’s novel, which was not until after World War I, were impressed that Melville “conveyed the specifics of a past world even as he luxuriated in the flagrant and erratic impulses of his own creative process.” (page 7)

After quoting from the chapter on Nantucket (which ends with a tribute to the sperm whale), Philbrick writes:

And so it ends, this little sidebar of miraculous prose, one of many that Melville scatters like speed bumps throughout the book as he purposely slow the pace of his mighty novel to a magisterial crawl. (page 21)

There is an inevitable tendency to grow impatient with the novel, to want to rush and even skip over what may seem like yet another extraneous section and find out what, if anything, is going to happen next to Ahab and the Pequod. Indeed, as the plot is left to languish and entire groups of characters vanish without a trace, you might begin to think that the book is nothing more than a sloppy, self-indulgent jumble. But Melville is conveying the quirky artlessness of life through his ramshackle art. “Careful disorderliness,” Ishmael assures us, “is the true method.”

I’m about 25% finished with Melville’s novel. I’m entering the first of many treatises on cetaceans. While I know I must read a bit faster to finish in time for my book club, I’m still really hoping I can enjoy the methodical crawl Melville so carefully created in his tome — and I certainly am enjoying, once again, the parallels to today that Philbrick so wonderfully illuminated.

While I don’t think Philbrick is going to convince anyone that is decidedly against Moby-Dick, he may encourage the intimated reader to give it a try. And he certainly got me, an interested reader who enjoyed the book a decade ago, very excited to revisit it.

Because my son is so young, I’m just beginning to re-familiarize myself with middle grade fiction; I haven’t really read much since I was a youngster. I remember really loving the gentle rural setting of Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah, Plain and Tall when I was a young girl: it was one of my favorite books. When I saw a new book by Ms MacLachlan, I thought I’d give  it a try; the publisher, via LibraryThing Early Reviewers, sent me a copy for review consideration. I’m also delighted to see Ms MacLachlan has an extensive back list of titles to explore.

Patricia MacLachlan’s Kindred Souls (2012, Katherine Tegen Books) is set in a pleasant contemporary rural setting, a setting that I’m not familiar with as a suburban dweller myself. Young Jake treasures his friendship with his aging grandfather, Billy, who longs for the simplicity of his childhood. Jake and Billy visit the rundown sod house in which Billy was born and raised, and Billy challenges Jake to rebuild it. Although Jake does not feel he can do such a hard project, his love for his grandfather prompts him to try.They are “kindred souls,” afterall.

Kindred Souls is a story of inter-generational love, an inspirational story of a child who succeeds in doing a hard thing,  and a gentle reminder to enjoy life now, for life is fleeting. Parents should be away that the easy-to-read middle-grade novel addresses a tough issue, the obviously approaching death of the boy’s elderly grandfather. Not every child will be ready to consider mortality, but for those that are, Ms MacLachlan treats it with tenderness. I doubt children will be disturbed by any implications. The novel is a sweet reflection on a grandparent/child relationship, and the rural farm setting provides a unique perspective on life for a young reader.

I enjoyed Kindred Souls and I look forward to reading more middle-grade fiction as my son gets older.

It’s interesting how a year and a half changes one’s perspective. In the early fall of 2010, I read a wonderful nonfiction examination of how parents can help children embrace imagination. Revisiting Awakening Children’s Minds: How Parents and teachers Can Make a Difference by Laura Berk (2001, Oxford University Press) provided me with some necessary reminders in the how to’s and why’s behind parenting a young child that is becoming an intelligent and creative individual. Rereading the book gave me encouragement as a parent. I am immensely glad I revisited it: I see it from a new perspective. Continue reading »

Show Me a Story: Why Picture Books Matter (Candlewick, May 2012) is a collection of interviews conducted by Leonard S. Marcus with 21 different children’s illustrators over the past two decades. From Quentin Blake to Eric Carle, Helen Oxenbury, Peter Sis, William Steig, Mo Willems and many more, Mr Marcus covers a variety of backgrounds, childhoods, and inspirations.

I loved the peek in to the lives of illustrators. Each of them have such different styles of illustration, and the interviews helped me understand their motivations, inspirations, and especially the personalities behind their work. While the volume does not really attempt to explain why picture books matter, as the subtitle suggests, it does inspire the budding artist to follow his or her own style and dreams, and it helps the reader of children’s books, like myself, better appreciate the fine art that makes a picture book what it is.

The book contains brief introductions to each illustrations, the interviews, and a center section highlighting some examples of each illustrator’s work.

Note: I read a digital review copy from the publisher via netgalley for review consideration.

One of the first posts I have on this blog centered around one of my then-favorite authors, Alexander McCall Smith. Although I have since refocused my personal reading around classics (and Dickens, Eliot, and Wilkie Collins now vie for the favorite author designation), McCall Smith is still an author I have a special place for, even if I haven’t kept up with all of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency sequels.

What I really enjoyed about the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency was the African setting (I learned about Botswana by reading a novel) as well as the light mystery (I’m not generally a mystery reader) and the subtle humor and commentary in Mma Ramotswe’s ponderings. Imagine my delight when I saw a children’s middle grade book on display featuring a young Precious solving a mystery!

The Great Cake Mystery introduces young readers to the lovely setting of Botswana and a precocious young girl named Precious who likes to figure things out. Although she thinks it may be many years before she’ll have a mystery to solve, it turns out that someone in her school is eating people’s snacks and she may just be able to figure out who has done it. With her father’s encouragement and her own careful logic, a detective is born in Botswana.

The book is a quick and easy read. McCall Smith speaks directly to the reader on occasion, given the story a personal tone. Although there were a few moments in the book when it seemed the author forgot that this was her first case (such as “it took some time for her to drop off, as it often did when she was thinking about a mystery…”), meeting Precious as a child was delightful. She apparently always was a thoughtful, pleasant person. The mystery is a simple and rather predictable one for an adult reader, but young readers will enjoy the intrigue. The clever way Precious proves the solution to the mystery was likewise impressive and amusing.

Although I’m an adult, I look forward to reading more from Precious’ younger days. I suspect and hope that I also may interest my son in Botswana and Africa when we read this story together. The Great Cake Mystery is highly recommended for the young reader.

Regular readers of my blog know that I really enjoy a good Victorian novel. So I have to say I’ve struggled to pull together my thoughts on Erewhon by Samuel Butler (published 1872) simply because it’s not one of the good ones.

As a satirical look at Victorian society in the form of a dystopia, Erewhon fits in with the tradition of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (not Victorian, but one of the first), Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore, and Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott. But for me, the satire in Butler’s novel was overshadowed by dull prose and extensive explanations of the society. The result is a dull treatise barely worthy of the term “novel.”

As in the other dystopias, the narrator, who is searching for adventure, travels to a different land and finds a completely insulated society that has existed for thousands of years.

For me, finding an interest in the things Butler is satirizing is rather difficult. First, in Erewhon, machines are against the law because of a fear that they will become “smarter” than humans, a commentary on both Darwin’s survival of the fittest concept and the industrial era that Butler was well in the middle of. It’s hard to take the arguments seriously, and yet, from what I read (on Wikipedia) Butler actually was serious:

I regret that reviewers have in some cases been inclined to treat the chapters on Machines as an attempt to reduce Mr. Darwin’s theory to an absurdity. Nothing could be further from my intention, and few things would be more distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr. Darwin….

Besides the machinery issue, the society was also rather conflicted in it’s view of sin and criminality. Sickness was considered a crime and immoral behavior such as stealing or drinking was considered a complaint that must be treated with medicine. I found this an interesting concept to satire in Victorian society, although I struggle to pinpoint just what his implication was for society. Add to that concept a satire of religion (there are two different kinds of banks in Erewhon; people only use the “unofficial” money and make a show of visiting the official banks) and we have the complicated and strange world of the Erewhonians.

The chapters when there was action were somewhat interesting. Yet, for the majority of the book, the narrator quoted from a book of history or policies. These were dry as dry could be. Although Erewhon was a short volume, it dragged. I can’t say I liked it, although it certainly has an interesting place in context as a Victorian satire.

(Writing this post prompted me to demoted the book from two stars to one star on goodreads. Oh dear. The more I think of it, the less I like it!)

At any rate, despite the fact that I didn’t enjoy it, I’m willing to send on my used mass market paperback to an interested reader. If you want it, let me know in the comments. First to request it is the winner. I can send it somewhere in the USA. If no one wants it, it goes to the library book sale!

For poetry month, I knew I wanted to read poetry, and since I’ve also been eager to return to the Greek classics, I thought I’d take the chance to dive in with Sappho’s lyrics, as translated by Anne Carlson in If Not, Winter.

Because Sappho’s poetry remains for us only in fragments, reading through Ms Carlson’s translations was an enjoyable reminder of the essential building blocks of poetic thought: word choice, simplicity, and metaphor, for example. Continue reading »