Proper Training

Phina (on the right at the head of the table) read, “The End,” and received a lengthy round of applause. Our MS/LA SCBWI critique group meets monthly in New Orleans and celebrates any progress. We had listened for years as she read chapters or bits of chapters, sometimes repeating a rewritten chapter, and feeling a little cheated at meetings when she brought nothing to read from her middle grade novel. After applause subsided, we asked when she started the book. Her answer of “1993” brings to mind that you can’t rush perfection.

Her ten-year-old protagonist is also named Phina and based rather closely on her own personality and life. She had suggested to a professional editor, who gave her a review, that she might avoid confusion if her own name was not the same as the protagonist. The editor responded that she could change her own name if she chose, but she needed to leave her character’s name alone. We agreed, and I will avoid that confusion by using Josephine for the writer and Phina for her protagonist.  

While still working fulltime as a librarian, Josephine had begun the book Proper Training and worked on it when she could find time. Her oral readings during this time were spasmodic, but they became regular when Josephine retired and began writing in earnest. We loved the spunky Phina from the minute she tried to help the lady waiting beside her and her mother in the dentist office. The lady shared a picture of Elizabeth Taylor with her mother and wondered how a woman could look like that. Phina helpfully suggested to the lady, who was spilling over into her chair, that she could try a girdle.

The story, set in New Orleans during the days of desegregation, has Phina with both a heart and a mouth that are sometimes are too big and get her into trouble as she tries to make sense of the world that puts her Italian immigrant grandparents outside the mainstream and her black friend Ernestine out even farther. Thank goodness her grandmother buys her Devil’s Food Cookie Squares at Kress on shopping trips, bringing a bit of relief from the messes in the world and the ones Phina makes herself.

More celebrations have followed. An employee of a book publisher that Josephine became friends with as a librarian asked to read the manuscript. Celebration !!! That friend asked if she could pass it along to another friend who is an agent. Celebration !!!!! And now we wait with Josephine, hoping for the big celebration !!!!!!! when Phina makes her way into the book stores.

I was honored to be a beta reader of the finished manuscript, and now I must apologize that I can’t tell you where to run out and buy the book. I hope that time will come in a year or two!

M & M Reading

My book club friend Janet answered another member in an apologetic tone, “No, I’ve been reading a Louise Penny book.” At our Mississippi book club, we have set ourselves a goal of reading from the state’s writers. They are abundant with a lot of variety. Mississippi may lag in many areas, but we have a disproportionate number of excellent writers. We’ve done the well-known classics and the rising young authors who’ve won recognition in the literary world – Eudora Welty, Margaret Walker, and Jesmyn Ward – and a few men who measured up.

The discussions have been lively since most of the authors have drawn heavily on their Mississippi roots for their stories and have given clear, but not always flattering, pictures of the state and its characters. The questioner was asking about a book written by one of these lights in our literary sky. Since Janet has read all our previous choices, I likened her Louise Penny book to eating healthy nearly all the time but occasionally having a need for some M & M’s.

Janet’s answer took me back to another conversation long ago with the chaplain’s wife for whom Al worked. Knowing we shared a love of books, she asked me what I was reading. I was enjoying a biography of a woman doctor pioneering in a place of great need. She responded by saying she didn’t read anything that counted and introduced me to Agatha Christie.

Just as I would hate to be confined to a steady diet of roast and potatoes, or even catfish, I enjoy a variety of books that by turns make me think, pull at my soul, or furnish a relaxing interlude. You may also enjoy an assortment, or you want to be like Mrs. Coleman and never read anything that counts. If so, go right ahead and read your M & M’s. Even if you only read Agatha and Louise, I don’t think you can become a book diabetic.

Freedom in Congo Square

In preparation for the Kaigler Children’s Book Festival, I sometimes find pleasant surprises in the books I like to read ahead that are written by the presenters. I seldom find as many as I did in Freedom in Congo Square, a historical picture book written by Carole Boston Weatherford who will be presenting at the general session on Friday, April 13^th.

I will acknowledge a preconceived anxiety about the book when I first saw it mentioned when it came out a couple of years ago. I knew that my good friend Freddi Williams Evans, author of A Bus of Our Own, had done extensive research and become an expert on Congo Square. I also admit wondering if someone had edged into her territory – hence my first surprise. The first double-page spread is a foreword by Freddi, giving a history of Congo Square that will help parents and teachers who read the book to children.

The second surprise came in the colorful illustrations by R. Gregory Christie that match the mood and the culture of the weekday work and the Sunday celebrations in Congo Square.

The third surprise came in a text that enforces learning of the days of the week and counting down to Sunday with poetic descriptions of each day’s work. For instance,

Tuesdays, there were cows to feed,

Fields to plow and rows to seed.

A moment without work was rare.

Five more days to Congo Square.

Not a surprise at all, since I am familiar with Carolyn’s work, is the personal touch of history that she gives to the heroes of her story. I checked this book out so it will need to be returned to the library, but the festival book store will be remiss if they don’t carry this 2017 Charlotte Zolotow Award winner (for outstanding writing of a children’s picture book in the US). I’m already virtually standing in line to get a copy signed for a couple of grandsons.

A-changin' Times

Time’s they are a-changin’. I got the notice via Facebook from a friend who put my name to an appeal from someone I didn’t know with the added comment, “Virginia McGee Butler, are you available?”

While the request came in a new manner, I related quickly. Oak Grove Lower Elementary needed judges for their science fair. Remembering days of having to think of likely suspects and make individual phone calls when I needed adult volunteers, I had to admire this new method of notifying one person who could quickly pass on the request to somebody outside their school data base.

Turns out I was available for one of the three days they needed judges, and I still love school things. The science fair itself held little that was different.

• ·         Like always, it was held in the gym.
• ·         Kids came waddling in with boards almost as big as they were. (Did I mention I got to judge my favorite second-graders?)
• ·         Some boards were polished down to the finest detail while others lacked periods at the ends of sentences or held uncorrected editing marks above words.
• ·         Some children could barely be heard as they forced themselves to answer questions about their work while others could hardly wait to get started explaining every detail and how they accomplished their experiment. Those eager faces lingered until my partner and I said, “Thanks. You can go back to your room now.”
• ·         Some took the guidelines they were given seriously and had each component labeled so the judges couldn’t miss it, while others seemed to think the instructions were a list of possible options.

Their consistent use of the scientific method was impressive and indicative of good teaching. Some of the hypotheses the kids addressed were quite interesting and reflected an awareness that things are a-changin’ for them. One tested which fruits would be most likely to conduct electricity.

My favorite answer to a question about why the student chose his project of testing electrolytes in various beverages was, “I wanted to see if my soccer coach was right when he was telling us what to drink.” His explanation included the difference between winter and summer, which causes one to lose more electrolytes, and which drinks are better with which season. You might not be surprised that this one needed notice that time to go back to class had come.

I still love school and schoolkids so I had a nice morning with no lessons to plan and no tests to grade. I left my card in case they need me again without having to go through the Facebook chain.

The Great Alone

Kristin Hannah takes you to hard places in her books which I experienced first in The Nightingale. Her new book, The Great Alone, is no exception. It begins in 1974, with thirteen-year-old Leni coping with a father who is a former POW home from Vietnam afflicted with PTSD in a time when little was said or done about it, and a mother who is drawn back to his volatile abusive behavior. The book pictures vividly the mindsets of the abuser and the victim who keeps returning for more. The setting moves from Seattle to the wilds of Alaska to add yet another difficulty to her life.

Early on, Leni seems to be the most adult member of this dysfunctional family as she questions “How was Mama’s unshakable belief in Dad any different than his fear of Armageddon? Did adults just look at the world and see what they wanted to see, think what they wanted to think? Did evidence and experience mean nothing?” The question looms often of how many ways are there are to die in Alaska. In a bit of balance, the unique Alaskans who have carved out a life in this unforgiving land add color and helpfulness to the newcomers.

Tempted to close the book as one difficulty piles on the next, I really couldn’t but needed to turn yet another page since I couldn’t leave Leni in that chapter’s trouble. Also, there was a love interest as she grew up. Surely, something good would come of that.

I’m glad I stayed for the resolution, though Kristin Hannah took her own good time in coming to it.  This thought-provoking book kept me turning pages, but I’ll need recovery. I think I’ll have time before she gets another one on the market.

Waiting for CBF 2018

Three months away and plans are underway for the fifty-first Children’s Book Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi on April 11 – 13. I got my invitation to volunteer this week with the promised pay of major fatigue at the end. I can’t wait. It’s the best tired I know.

On pretty good authority, the winner of this year’s Southern Miss Medallion for his body of work in children’s literature spent a good part of his school days in the hall outside the classroom. In fact, he is said to have created his Captain Underpants in his drawings out there. Sorry to say, that opportunity would have passed for Dave Pilkey if he had been my student. I would not have trusted a dyslexic hyperactive child in the hall even when he caused major disruptions in my class. He would have been in a desk in the back in the most unobtrusive place in the room – probably with my student who drew pictures back there and has become a professional graphic artist. I’m guessing Dave could have invented the popular captain even if the hall was not in my list of options.

Other special guests that are high in my anticipation include Carole Boston Weatherford who puts the past and forgotten stories into her writing. I’m really looking forward to the Ezra Jack Keats lecture and hearing the granddaughter of Madeleine L'Engle talk about her grandmother who wrote A Wrinkle in Time. I think that is especially appropriate since Madeleine won the Newbery Award for that book in the same year that Ezra won the Caldecott for The Snowy Day. The banquet picture for the occasion shows Keats with a smug look in his white jacket with L'Engle rising several inches above him in height.

There are also the awards for the new and rising stars in the children’s book world as the Ezra Jack Keats Awards for new writers and illustrators are presented and a big celebration held for them. So many of these from years past have gone on to be bright stars in the children’s book world, and it’s fun to meet them at the beginning of their careers.

Other guest writers, who might be your favorites, can be found on the website along with information about registering for the time of your life at www.usm.edu/childrens-book-festival. You’re still in time for the early bird rate, but only if you hurry. That price ends today, February 9. It will still be a bargain at tomorrow’s rate.

Votes for Women

Acknowledging that many people know how the story ends with American women who have had the right to vote for nearly a hundred years and how it began in a women’s rights meeting in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848, Winifred Conkling sets out to fill out the in-between. Her book, Votes for Women, came out on February 2.

In a book that is much more entertaining than either its title or its subject matter would suggest, Winifred paints complicated portraits of the women who led the way in seeking equal rights. Though she focuses on the right to vote, much more is at stake in the world where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony begin, where women can’t own property, where children automatically belong to the father in the event of a divorce, where any wages they earn belong to their husbands or fathers, where they can’t enter into contracts or sign legal documents. They couldn’t serve on juries or testify in court, and their husbands or fathers could legally beat them if they used a whip no thicker than a thumb.  

Besides these names that we recognize from history, there’s Victoria Clafin Woodhull whose life story had more twists and turns than a mountain road. She ran for President forty years before women could vote on a platform of an eight-hour workday, graduated income tax, and reformed divorce laws.

After this first wave of activists, came a second wave. The two-part history has smart women finding loopholes and clever interpretations of the law and adding other social justice issues, such as temperance and abolition, to their agenda. Not qualifying any of these women for angel wings, Winifred reveals their abundant warts and their dissention among themselves. Hardships and terrifying episodes precede the ratification that finally occurred in 1920.

The fact that the book is published by Algonquin Books for Young Readers shouldn’t influence your decision to read it. If your heart is young, or even if it isn’t, as long as you love a well-told true story, get to a bookstore or talk your local librarian into ordering one since they really need it on the checkout shelf. The book could be described as timely history.

Wunderkammer

Every now and then, a new challenge appeals to me. As I mentioned in Monday’s blog, I have read writing helps and prompts by Beth Ann Fennelley. In a recent article in The Writer magazine she talked about writing what amounted to miniature memoirs. She used the word “wunderkammer,” taking the idea of a cabinet of curiosities and applying it to unique personal stories. She challenged her readers to write a memory that told a story in less than two hundred words. Here is my response to her challenge – all 183 words of it.

I glance at Mama’s shopping list and see the first item “show polish.” Why this sense of foreboding with a simple grocery list, other than the fact that military members are the only people I know who still consider shoe-polishing an art?

Mama’s past flashes through my mind as I take a longer look at her misspelled word. This teacher taught first-graders to read, to write, to spell – the more challenging the child from lack of opportunity or discipline, the greater her joy in their success. This mother couldn’t handle her oldest child’s illiteracy when she turned five years old. In the days when Mississippi had no kindergarten, she plotted to get me into school under the wire. When her continued efforts failed, she did what she had to do and taught me to read at home. My innate sense of how to spell came before I started to school.

I avert my eyes from her error, knowing that “show” for “shoe” presages all that is to come. We’ve heard another word from her doctor. Because of her, I can spell it. “A-L-Z-H-E-I-M-E-R-S.”

The Tilted World

Some of the mysteries are in the crime novel itself, The Tilted World, by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. Set in the great Mississippi Delta flood of 1927, there are the questions of what happened to two revenuers and what to do with the abandoned baby at the crime scene. Federal agents Ted Ingersoll and Ham Johnson place the baby with Dixie Clay Holliver, unaware that she is the savviest bootlegger in the area. Other questions are whether Dixie Clay will be caught with the Tolliver still and what her husband Jesse is doing now that his interest in the whiskey has waned in favor of something going on in New Orleans.

The novel switches smoothly between backstory and the time of constant rain, between the federal agents and the Hollivers, and the rains keep coming. Any student of Mississippi Delta history knows the disaster’s imminent while the novel holds the impending flood at bay until the climax. These mysteries keep the reader tense with wonder at who will survive, but there was an extra mystery to me.

The novel is written by a husband and wife team. I had read and enjoyed both before – Tom in a good crime novel and Beth Ann in more literary pieces and writer advice. Both are part of the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. I enjoyed the book and thought I saw Tom’s crime novel construction pattern and then Beth Ann’s way with words in passages like: “He passed the hardware store where a sign warned, WE HAVE NO MORE UMBRELLAS, RAIN PONCHOS, OR GALOSHES. And underneath that, in a different hand: OR CARBIDE LAMPS, OR LANTERN FUEL.  And underneath that, in yet a different hand, OR HOPE.”

I can’t get my head around how to write with somebody else, especially a spouse. I could see major marriage problems arising. I spoke to Al about it, and he assured me it would never happen here. He makes a good first reader and is quite content with that role.

Read Aloud Day

Don’t settle just for the obvious when you read the title of this post. February 1 is Read Aloud Day, and I’m giving you a bit of advance warning so you can be ready. The obvious solution of finding a preschooler is fine and is a lot of fun. That would be a good way to celebrate, but if you don’t have one of those close by, don’t let that stop you.

In an “if I knew then what I know now” instance in my life, I would not have stopped reading aloud to my oldest son when he learned to read. I did better with the younger two, reading aloud until they completely lost interest – the last one in junior high. In fact, in that last book we read together, Mark taught me something I used later with my students when I moved to that same school to teach. We read A Tale of Two Cities, and he decided to keep a list in his notebook of the multitude of Dickens’ characters. When old Jerry who seems in chapter fourteen, Book the Second, to be nothing more than a colorful character who robs graves to sell to the medical profession turns up again in chapter eight, Book the Third, Mark’s notes verified that Jerry had good reason to know that the spy Roger Cly had escaped his own burial. I learned from him to keep a running list of characters with my students when I read aloud for writers like Dickens who put enough people in their books to populate a small country.

Moving on up in age, I think about the annual parish spring teachers’ meetings with required attendance where those in charge spent a chunk of money to bring in an inspirational or entertaining speaker. Most fell far short of their cost and I, now that I assume the statute of limitations has run out, admit that the occasions often gave me a refreshing nap to begin my spring holiday. That did not happen the year the speaker came prepared to read aloud to us. One never gets too old to enjoy a well-read story.

And what if you are alone and can’t find an agreeable listener? Be my guest and read a poem, a story, an essay aloud to yourself. You deserve some pleasure in your life.

Need to Know

If you like mysteries (and I do) and you see recommendations from some of your favorite mystery writers (Louise Penny, Lee Child, and John Grisham) for a debut novel called Need to Know by Karen Cleveland on Net Galley’s advance reading copy offerings (and I did), you have a tendency to take their word for it and add it to your Kindle reading queue, and maybe start reading as a lead-in to a good night's rest.

In a very slight spoiler, the first chapter ends with CIA analyst Vivian Miller finding her husband’s face on the file she opens of a Russian sleeper cell. You might guess that I did not turn over and go to sleep. The trouble was that each chapter after that kept me in suspense as CIA investigations, family anxiety, and questions of who Vivian can trust leaves something hanging at the end. Then there is the question that recurs about her own ethics beginning with her deletion of that file and her loyalties to country, family, and colleagues. The ending, which I will not give away, had me returning to read it again and asking, “Really?”

The author’s authenticity comes from her own background in eight years as a CIA analyst focusing on counterterrorism which brings to mind the old and sometimes reliable saying that one should write what she knows. 

The release date for the Need to Know is Tuesday, January 23, but I was not at all surprised to see that movie rights are already in the works. In the meantime, if you are looking for a nice quiet book to lull you to sleep at night, this is not it.

Inventory - 2017

The new year starts for me without any resolutions. Dealing with things that fragile and likely to break makes me nervous, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have new year habits for January. Some of you have been with me long enough to have seen one of them – my annual reading inventory for the preceding year.

I read 82 books in 2017, not counting those requested by the two nearby grandsons who need a book read before nap, after nap, while they are eating lunch, or just because. Forty were for adults, thirty-two were for middle grade or young adult, and ten were for young children. The books were 71% fiction and 29% nonfiction. A protagonist that fit somewhere in the category of diversity made up 34% of the books.

I thought I might give some shout-outs to the top and bottom of my list for the year. The best pairing of books that were for different ages was the adult book The Radium Girls, a nonfiction account by Kate Moore, and Glow, a young adult fictional account by Megan E. Bryant, of one of those girls as her life might have been lived. I read Glow first, but knowing what I know now, I would have reversed the order. Either way is fine, but I do recommend both.

The best sequel set in my list for this year belongs to Linda Williams Jackson with Midnight Without a Moon and A Sky Full of Stars. The pair fit as nicely together as their titles with hints of the night sky. They are also the books that most left me wanting more, which makes me happy that a trilogy is possible.

The very worst book was The White Rose of Memphis by Wm. C. (Clarke) Falkner. Out of curiosity aroused by its mention in Myself and My World, an excellent biography by Robert Hamblin of his famous grandson William Faulkner, I thought I’d see how the grandfather wrote. That was one wasted bit of curiosity.

Along with my inventory, I have also tried to look back to see what worked for me and what did not in 2017 and look forward to how to make it better in the coming year. A big part of that search is to find a way to work more books into my schedule. My “read soon” stack is getting out of hand.

Dixie

Curtis Wilkie’s book Dixie, chosen by a member of our Mississippi writer’s book group in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (lovingly called OLLI), became a trip down memory lane for me. Covering the second half of the twentieth century, the book is part memoir, part Mississippi political history, and entirely interesting.

I made personal connections early as the book began with his ancestry in Toccopola, where my father once served as pastor of the Baptist church, and the author’s own childhood upbringing in Summit – not that far from where I live today in Hattiesburg. Threaded throughout are Mississippi governors’ races where his family voted with mine for candidates classified as “moderates,” his attendance at Ole Miss one year behind me, and even a mention of his friendship with a high school classmate of my sister’s.

After his graduation, he returned to the Delta as a journalist and became involved with many leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Eventually, he became disenchanted with the progress of Mississippi toward equality and moved away to continue his journalism in what seemed to be a more inviting environment, intending never to return. The draw of Mississippi with all its flaws, was strong for Curtis Wilkie, as it has been for many of her children who thought themselves ready to leave for good. The story of how he wandered and how he returned home is filled with a myriad of emotions in a readable account of the history of the period.

I recommend the book for its accurate view from a personal standpoint at this time in the recent past even if you have no connections to Mississippi – and especially if you do.

One Wish at Eighteen

Sometimes a book takes me into my own “What if?” like As You Wish in my last blog. The premise of having one wish on an eighteenth birthday that would be permanent intrigued me and kept me going back to what I would have wished for on my eighteenth birthday.

Looking back, I am quite sure what that wish would have been. Having skipped second grade, I entered college the month of my seventeenth birthday in the community college on a school bus route that ran on the highway right in front of my house. The choice was economic. I planned to get two years before transferring to a nursing program at a four-year institution.

If I had known I had one wish on the following birthday, it would have been for a full scholarship to a university with a prestigious nursing program, but nobody handed out magical wishes in the Furrs community in Pontotoc County, Mississippi.

If the wish had been offered and taken, I would have missed a few things:

• The boy with the red-and-white Buick hardtop convertible who took his afternoon work break from his family’s country store shortly after my bus arrived from school.
• Logically with my schooling paid for, the marriage that took place in my eighteenth summer would have been delayed at least and, with distance not always making the heart grow fonder, might never have happened at all. Truthfully, I don’t even want to consider what that would have entailed with a strange and totally different family. I truly like the one I’ve got.
• Nor would I really want to consider what I would have lost in the life of a military family when that boy, now my husband, was drafted into the Army with ensuing homes in New Jersey, New York, France, Belgium, Kentucky, Texas, Germany, Louisiana, and now back to Mississippi.
• As for the nursing program, by the time the two years of community college was complete, I’d made a decision to marry that boy and change majors to education. I continued my new degree goal by commuting to Ole Miss to major in English with plans to become a high school teacher. Over time, I got a Master’s in Early Childhood Education and became certified to teach K-12. I loved the six years I taught kindergarten, the fourteen years I taught second grade, and felt like I’d hit the jackpot when I spent my last seven years teaching a two-hour block of language arts to gifted junior high students.

I have a great deal of appreciation for nurses and may have adapted happily to that life, but there has always been a teacher in me craving to get out. At this point, I’m grateful that economics and that boy with the red Buick determined my future instead of a wish which might have been nice, but would certainly have been second best. There’s an old warning about being careful what you wish for, perhaps because life has something better in store.

As You Wish

In Madison, a small town lost in the Mojave Desert, Eldon counts down the last twenty-five days to his eighteenth birthday in As You Wish by Chelsea Sedoti, published on January 1. Lest they learn the secret perk of living in Madison, outsiders who stop for gas are sent on through as quickly as possible when they travel to Rachel where the UFO hunters congregate. Citizens get to make a wish on their eighteenth birthday that will come true with few restrictions (nothing that will affect the world outside Madison, for instance). Eldon faces the secret blessing – or curse – of being able to make his wish. After Chapter One sets up the situation and the idea that the seventeenth year is besieged with brooding about the contemplation that becomes more intense as the day nears, the book moves to “Chapter Two Countdown: 25 Days” and builds tension as each chapter continues the next daily count.

Not only his own happiness but relationships around him depend on Eldon’s choice and, having already seen enough results of other people’s wishes to know that not everybody has chosen one that brought happiness, he follows a suggestion to research past experiences. A telling comment comes from Othello, the artist who seems to be the only one to forego his wish. “Accomplishment comes from toil,” he says and ends with, “But it’s also the journey. A finished piece is nothing without the labor and emotion of the artist behind it.”

The feel of the book reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” with an air of unreality even while keeping the reader engaged and wondering how any decision Eldon makes  will not bring disaster somewhere. I would have been happy if they had followed the advice of Penelope, one of the characters, and stayed with cleaner language but the book raises questions worth considering.

Early in 2017, I reviewed Chelsea Sedoti’s book The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett. The only connection I make between the two books is Chelsea’s grasp of the workings of young minds and emotions. Both books in different ways lend themselves to thought-provoking discussion of issues that don’t always have clear-cut answers.

Since I could not keep from considering what I would have wished for when I was turning eighteen, I will follow up with a blog about those thoughts on Friday.

Letter to My Tenant

Dear Unknown Mama Bird,

Wherever you are now, if you are characterizing me as a cruel landlord for razing your fine home, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on. (I know, you have two. It’s a figure of speech.) We had no contract. Indeed, I did not know you had built your home in the front door wreath until I got ready to replace it. You may have noticed that door is frequented only by solicitors and dim-witted delivery people. The wreath, having seen better days, really has to go.

I admit it was clever of you to hide your nest behind the once bright red bow, blending into the natural burlap of the body of the wreath. I have to wonder how many babies you raised and why I never noticed your comings and goings.

Now, back to that nonexistent contract, residents like you have sometimes been labelled “squatters,” a term with derogatory overtones. Considering your contribution to my life, since I am a person with a generous nature, I’m giving you some credit. I’ve loved your birdsong, especially when its wakeup call supplanted the raucous alarm clock.  I’m also assuming you have rid my yard of numerous mosquitos, so I’m willing to call it an even deal for the present.

In the future, we can continue without a contract and work from a friendly mutual understanding. Help yourself to the materials you seem to love and which I have in abundance – pine straw, oak leaves, and dryer lint. I would suggest that you find a safer place to rebuild in one of the many trees surrounding the house or under the eaves of one of the buildings out back. Your wakeup song will do nicely for rent, and I hope you enjoy your feast on those mosquitos.

Best regards,

Virginia McGee Butler

Landlord, Corner of Greenwood Drive and Oak Grove Road

A Sky Full of Stars

I ended my review of Midnight Without a Moon, “With any luck, I may get the sequel ahead of time. If I do, I’ll be sure to share another review.” Well, there’s luck and there’s just plain old begging. Linda Williams Jackson responded to my review of Midnight, and I responded to her by saying the book made me want to sit and talk to the author. First thing you know we are Facebook friends and then real face-to-face friends, connecting when she came to Hattiesburg for a book event. I happened to mention that I was having a hard time waiting for the sequel. Maybe I mentioned it at length. I knew trouble had to come from Rose Lee Carter’s decision to stay in Mississippi after the Civil Rights Movement began to pick up steam. Linda brought me an advance copy of the new book (which will come out tomorrow on January 2) when she came to pick up her daughter at the University of Southern Mississippi for the holidays. We did talk and have coffee.

I saved the book for a car trip the next week, knowing I would not want to be interrupted after Chapter One; Monday, November 1. Rose Lee begins “My grandpa, Papa, used to say that gratitude was the key to happiness. If that was true, I would never be happy.” When Thanksgiving dinner comes, and Rose Lee goes blank and can’t recall a thankful scripture even though the younger children at the table are able to rattle one off, her grandpa’s prediction appears to be correct.

Listening to the news of violence, overheard coffee klatch conversations touting separate but equal schools, and arguments among friends who can’t agree whether violence or nonviolence is the answer to their problems leave Rosa, the name her mother gave her that she now prefers, in a quandary. A reason for gratitude will come eventually from an unusual corner. The titles, Midnight Without a Moon followed by A Sky Full of Stars, bring satisfaction but with a hankering to know where Rose will go from here. Now, I’m waiting for book number three!

In my review of Midnight, I compared Linda’s work with Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a longtime favorite. As I read A Sky Full of Stars, I realized a difference in perspective that gives even greater authenticity to these two books. Mildred Taylor used her father’s detailed account of growing up in Mississippi to bring reality to her books while Linda’s experience is first hand.

My recommendation, even though each book stands alone, is to read both of them in order, and don’t let it bother you that they are labelled for middle grade. Those kids shouldn’t have all the fun

If You Don't Have a Dream . . .

A surprise worth sharing came in a piece of Christmas mail, but first I need to give a bit of background. Back in the day when I married the youngest of the four Butler boys (Allen), my sister-in-law who had married the oldest (James) commuted from Pontotoc, MS about thirty miles north to take a class or two at Blue Mountain College. Married her senior year in high school to the young high school assistant coach, Bettye’s college aspirations would continue by fits and starts, interrupted by three children and eventually by her hostess duties when James moved on to become the Alumni Secretary and then Alumni Director at Ole Miss. She continued to take classes now and then at Ole Miss.

Years of Butler dinners, common family stories, and shared joys and sorrows including one long night standing watch with her, keeping an eye on her infant daughter in the hospital, and just the kaleidoscope of life have brought the “Sister” of this relationship into prominence and forgetfulness to its “-in-law” ending.

Often, Bettye has paid more attention to encouraging others to finish degrees than to working on her own. As I commuted to Ole Miss to finish my last two years, we had a standing arrangement for a once-a-week lunch. I picked up their oldest daughter at elementary school, and we hurried to the good meal we knew Bettye had prepared – often including my favorite asparagus casserole. She also provided a haven when I got stranded one night by my carpool.

One morning this fall, after a 38-year hiatus from classes, Bettye decided to pick up the phone and see just how much she lacked having her own degree, thinking she was about six hours short. “I’m not a quitter,” she told the development officer. Within a few days, she received word that analysis of her records with current requirements for graduation made her eligible for graduation with no further classes, even with a few hours to spare – hence my Christmas surprise, a clipping from The Oxford Eagle with the headline, “Oxonian Bettye Butler Receives UM Diploma at 87” with pictures of her receiving the degree she earned supported by her three proud children, also Ole Miss graduates.

My first thought was the line from the old song, “If you don’t have a dream, how’re you gonna have a dream come true?” To say that I am proud of her is grossly understating the case.

The Flawed Manger Scene

Joseph has lost his staff. The moss on the manger roof is splotchy. The donkey has no ears and the cow only one of her horns. Since the nativity scene came from Sears and was inexpensive in the first place, why don’t we just replace it?

The answer is, “Too many memories.” Our children were small when we got it. They stood and gazed at the Baby Jesus, often rearranging the animals or the Magi. As they grew older, they found a prominent place to display it each Christmas. They loved setting it up and remembering in Texas, Germany, Louisiana – wherever the Army designated as home.

One memorable Christmas we lived in Germany atop a hill overlooking a snow-covered village centered by the church steeple. Right after Thanksgiving, we decorated our Christmas tree. The children chose the wide ledge in front of the picture window for the nativity. Since our German neighbors waited to trim their trees until Christmas Eve, we invited the community kindergarten children to come up to see our tree and have cookies and punch.

Their faces lit as they “Oohed” and “Aahed,” in wonder at the Christmas tree. They examined each ornament, but soon they moved to the window and our Sears manger scene – a poor match in my mind for the beautifully hand-carved nativity scenes found in their Christkindlmarkts. They drew us into their awe as they sat quietly on the floor around the crèche watching as though they waited for the baby to cry.

We have new nativities, nicer and in better shape including one from Bethlehem. Still, this defective one always takes the place of honor. Maybe it is appropriate after all. For didn’t the Christ Child come into humble surroundings for that which was imperfect – to heal the brokenhearted, to bind the wounds of the injured, to bring sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are captive?    

A Christmas Carol Fascination

My obsession with A Christmas Carol began when I was six years old in Hardy Station, Mississippi as I watched the play rehearsals with my father Bah-Humbugging in the role of Scrooge.

In the years when our children were growing up, the book became an annual read-aloud. Often that was on the long trip from Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio to North Mississippi to visit grandparents. I can say, with little expectation of disagreement, that I enjoyed this more than they did.

About the time the children grew up and could no longer serve as my victims listeners, I began to teach junior high where it became my December read-aloud. I loved watching my students’ recognition as the Ghost of Christmas Present threw Scrooge’s words in his face when he inquired whether Tiny Tim would live, responding that he “might as well die and decrease the surplus population.” 

No longer do I have a captive audience of children or students, but my librarian daughter continues to feed my passion by sending me yet another and another copy of the book to go with the cheap Scholastic version I read to my students. There have been a couple of beautifully illustrated copies. I thought she had finished the possibilities last year when she sent one with Dickens’s editing drafts on the opposing pages with handwriting that had to be indecipherable even to its owner. (It was comforting to know that even Charles Dickens scribbled upgrades on his rough copies!) However, after the Marshall Library book sale this year, she sent a well-worn volume with all his Christmas books and American Notes. I’ll enjoy my annual read from it this Christmas.

I also watch the movies, three this year, none altogether satisfactory. Those that follow the book the most accurately tend to have wooden characters playing the parts. One even had the audacity to forget that Scrooge’s young love was named Belle. Inevitably, they will leave out a favorite line or two since you can’t put everything in a movie that was in the book or add a superfluous scene as though they were better than old Charles. Nevertheless, they feed my passion begun in childhood and fulfill the wish that Dickens himself put at the beginning of the volume for his readers, “May it haunt their homes pleasantly.”

Should you ask how much of A Christmas Carol is too much, I would only reply, “There is no such thing, and may God bless us every one.”