Lazarus, Come Forth!

Rewriting Daddy’s old pun of “When the Lord told Noah to gopher wood, what kind of wood did he tell him to gopher?” takes me to “When OLLI members take a trip to gopher a lesson on endangered frogs, what kind of frogs do they gopher?”

We gathered at the Nature Conversancy building on the edge of Camp Shelby where the agents work closely with the Army in a way that augments the military mission while conserving species that have been endangered by loss of longleaf pine habitat. One of these is the dusky gopher frog.

Lest you think I’m through with nonsense vaguely related to the Bible, the dusky gopher frog we observed was named Lazarus. Already interested in this species, I hovered over his home before the presentation started. I saw his name on the glass and finally found him crouched under the white moss. I tried calling, “Lazarus, come forth!” with no results.

I didn’t have long to wait. The agent pulled Lazarus out of his home, gave instructions on how to hold him, and passed him around to those of us who wanted a closer relationship. He explained that one of their missions is growing the frogs which were down to one population area. The grown frogs are released back into natural habitats.

The agent told us the frog’s story and the reason for his name. He had appeared to be dead and came back to life. Lazarus, indeed. While they normally liberate to the environment the frogs they grow from eggs through tadpoles to adults, this one will remain with them. Their excuse is using him for public education. He certainly fits that bill, but I think they’re keeping him because they just like him.

By coincidence, I came home and started work on the Sunday school lesson I will teach this Sunday. It’s the story of Lazarus. I’m not sure how I’m going to work a dusky gopher frog into the story, but I’ll bet I find a way.

The Book that Made Me

Thirty-one authors with essays on the books that made them who they are sounded too enticing to pass up. The Book that Made Me with these essays collected by children’s literature expert Judith Ridge was published first in September in Australia and this month by Candlewick in America. While the writer names from New Zealand and Australia were largely unfamiliar to me, their ideas and passions rang a recognizable tune. 

The concept was for the authors to name the one book that was the greatest inspiration in their life or their work. James Roy summarizes the theme in his essay, “Everyone knows that often the best books are the ones that speak to us, the ones we truly relate to. The ones that make us go, ‘I know that feeling.’ ”

As you might guess with thirty-one writers, variety ensued. Some seemed not to understand the concept of one book and gave a list. Some leaned more to what formed them as writers and some to how the book(s) had changed them as people. One cited oral lore from the Palyku people of western Australia rather than a book. One leads into a long paragraph of general parenting advice.

Writers got these cherished childhood books from a variety of places – their library, their family bookshelves, or as gifts. One was pretty sure she stole hers. Expected titles of Chronicles of Narnia, a variety of Dr. Seuss titles, Nancy Drew, and The Book Thief were interspersed with Australian and New Zealand titles unknown to me.

Shaun Tan’s cartoons threading their way through the book along with photographs of the authors in their youth added fun and charm. I enjoyed comparing their choices and the ways they were influenced with my own relationships with books. (In case you are wondering, I would have chosen Little Women.)

I would agree with a line from Ambelin Kwaymullina’s essay, and I think those writers would, too. “Every story matters, and we all have the power to influence the future.”  

Berry Good

I thought I’d heard all the stories. My 88-year-old Aunt Ruth pulled me aside to look at the picture of the family home where she grew up and where all the family gatherings were held. “You remember Grandma Berry?”

Of course, I did. Until she died when I was fifteen, one stop of any part of a trip to my grandfather’s house was to pay homage to her. We would find this long-widowed grandmother in the home of one of her children or grandchildren as they passed her around. Dressed in modest high-necked dresses with sleeves at least three-quarter length, she lived an uncomfortable life in the Mississippi heat where some of her granddaughters ran around in short shorts. A small person, now stooped even further with osteoporosis, I remembered her mostly as old. Mama never failed to tell me I should have known her when she was younger.

Aunt Ruth pointed to the porch in the picture. “When I was engaged and brought your Uncle Leo Berry home to meet the family, Grandma Berry took me around to the back of the house.” Her finger traced their path heading for their private meeting.

I tried to figure what this unusual confidential meeting could have meant. Grandma Berry had graduated from eighth grade, as far as she could go at the time in their small community, and married Grandpa Berry at sixteen. Aunt Ruth had one year of college behind her and was marrying soon after her nineteenth birthday. Would Grandma Berry question her age? As young as it seems now, neither was unusual for their time.

Aunt Ruth continued the story she wanted me to know. “When we got to the back of the house by ourselves, Grandma Berry told me she hoped my Berry would be as good as her Berry.” She ended her story with a rather smug smile. I hadn’t known Grandpa Berry who died before I was born, but I have known Uncle Leo for the almost seventy years they have been married. Aunt Ruth, now the age that I remembered Grandma Berry, knew I would see that her Berry had met the standard.

Mysterious Patterns

To be honest, I had observed the phenomenon but didn’t know the word “fractal” until I read Sarah Campbell’s picture book, Mysterious Patterns: Finding Fractals in Nature (2014). Sarah explains that the term did not exist until 1975. In the author’s note at the end, she adds an intriguing story of Benoit Mandelbrot, the overlooked scientist who studied and named them.

A fractal shape has smaller parts that look like the whole. Trees form a good example in their shapes against the sky. Smaller versions of limbs with twigs join together to make the larger tree that repeats the same basic shape. Broccoli makes a hands-on version familiar to children that is easy for them to take apart one floret at a time to see how it repeats the pattern of the stalk.

Sarah and her photographer husband and writing partner Richard add several other natural fractals like Queen Anne’s lace, rivers, and even the airways in human lungs. My favorite fractals to observe, at least for the moment, are the trees bare against the blue sky all winter, transforming but holding the pattern as they push out green leaves at the tops of their shapes.

I love the way Sarah and Richard combine science, photographic art, and child friendly activities. Previous books Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator (2008) and Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Patterns in Nature (2010) follow their own similar pattern and have won many awards in the children’s book world.  Adults who reads the Campbells’ books aloud to children get a bonus in their own enjoyment of the photographs and maybe learn a thing or two themselves. Rumor has it that another book is in the works. I’ll be waiting. 

In Memory

Except for my annual Christmas post, I don’t do many reruns on my blog, but I’ve lost a faithful blog follower and feel a need to remember. We’ll celebrate the 94 years of Moran Pope’s life at University Baptist Church tomorrow where preparations are already in place for the expected overflow crowd. Here’s the blog I wrote for Valentine’s Day in 2014.

WWII Love Story

Valentine’s Day would be a waste without a good love story, and one of my favorites comes from World War II. Six decades after it happened, Yvonne Pope’s eyes shone every time I heard her tell it. Her husband Moran could entertain with his own version – and with a matching twinkle in his eye.

Small town Newton, Mississippi girls’ wedding expectations included a white dress extending into a long train before a bank of flowers and candelabra with lifelong friends standing up for the couple as bridesmaids and ushers. World War II brought on adjustments. Moran learned he would be shipped out to the South Pacific upon completion of his officer training at Colombia University in New York City. Yvonne left her original wedding plans behind and boarded a train. They were married in Manhattan’s Riverside Church – #38 of 54 Navy couples on the same afternoon. They would be separated for most of the next two years.

After the war, she and Moran settled in Hattiesburg, MS where they raised their son and daughter. He served as mayor and practiced law. She served as gracious hostess. Both were active in community and church activities.

Yvonne’s story was fed by the abundant love songs of the era, and she passed along her love for the music to her daughter. Yvonne played the piano while Melinda sang along. The passion was contagious.

In recent years, as Yvonne’s health failed, Melinda DeRocker made what she describes as a homemade recording for her mother, picking their favorites to share. After Yvonne’s death, with encouragement and support from her husband Rob, the other member of her own love story, Melinda produced a professional album of those songs dedicated to her parents. I listen as I write, “Gibraltar may crumble – Our love is here to stay,” and picture Yvonne and Moran, both storytellers, recounting their versions of the story. While their young love makes for an exciting story, the better part is that the end of it was nowhere in sight with Yvonne’s death sixty-eight years later.

Still forever young at 94, Moran read my blogs on Facebook and often offered a comment. I was in an OLLI class with him a couple of weeks before his death where he still relished learning something new. He savored life until, like the grandfather’s clock in the song, his heart stopped short on March 2 never to go again. My own heart is grateful for the smiles he brought with his stories and for the example he set of how to live and how to die.

Piper Perish - Challenge # 1

The new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Gene Luen Yang, has issued three challenges for readers. He calls the gauntlet he has thrown down "Reading Without Walls." I had just begun the debut novel Piper Perish by Kayla Cagan and was considering leaving it and moving on to another book when I read about his list in The Horn Book Magazine.

His first challenge was to read a book about a character unlike yourself. I realized this first challenge was the reason I was thinking about putting the book down. I had little in common with Piper. (1) In this coming-of-age story, Piper looks to finish high school and pursue an art education. You could put all my art ability in a thimble and still have room for my finger. (2) She lives in the city of Houston, with the ambition of moving on to New York City to pursue her art. I’m stretching my urban comfort zone to live just outside the city limits of Hattiesburg, MS (population – less than 50,000). (3) Her teen years are filled with risky behaviors and coarse language. My teenage environment as the daughter of a rural pastor was sheltered.

Piper’s intensity as she and her two friends work toward making it to New York together hits pitfalls as each of them encounters obstacles. Piper’s close-knit family deals with her sister’s pregnancy that intensifies the rivalry between them and with the reality that the art school she wants to attend is beyond their budget.

I soon found myself pulling for Piper, turning pages to see how she and her friends would handle their difficulties, and enjoying the quotes that kept her inspired. (“As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it.” – Andy Warhol)

I’m glad I accepted this first challenge from Gene. I’ll be doing the others as well, and reporting here before his year is up. If you’d like to join the fun, you can find his challenge at:  http://geneyang.com/the-reading-without-walls-challenge. Piper Perish makes a good place to start.

Perspective

When your husband comes in from outside early in the morning and says, “It’s bitter cold out there,” you might want to consider where he grew up and where he lives. The temperature was 37 degrees. He grew up in North Mississippi where slightly below freezing temperatures are normal for winter and now lives in South Mississippi where they sometimes put in a brief appearance. The same day, news reports had one wave of snow and far below freezing weather following another in northern states. I thought I had the beginning of the blog on perspective, but I recently got a much better one.

When we got the two youngest grandsons for babysitting one afternoon while their parents had dinner out, they headed straight for this much beloved sandbox. Somehow, I tripped and fell as I approached and took the far end on my face right across my nose. Before you worry, I am fine. However, much trauma and nose-bleeding occurred with a couple of little boys standing in quiet awe.

Once we got the bleeding stopped and an ice pack applied, the boys relaxed and four-year-old Benjamin said, “Grandma, you were very brave.”

Feeling a bit proud of myself and of him for his encouragement, I told his mother the next day what he had said. She laughed and said, “That’s not how Owen told it. He gave a full account of the excitement and finished by saying that Grandma was very clumsy.”

I could say Owen is only three and what does he know, but I think it has more to do with perspective. Both boys could be right, and the cold was bitter to Al if not to a native of Vermont. I’m thinking it might serve us try looking at things more often from the other person’s perspective.

The Golden Key

The Golden Key by George MacDonald sets straight that no pot of gold, but a golden key, lies at the foot of the rainbow. First published in 1867, Eerdman’s Books for Young Readers has just released a new edition, exquisitely illustrated by Ruth Sanderson in black and white scratchboard.

On my first trip through the book, I found the Victorian fairy tale portrayed on the cover taking me back to my early bookworm days following a hero or heroine on a journey that always seemed to have one more enticement just beyond reach. Male and female protagonists, eventually called Mossy and Tangle, make their way through magical forests and rivers to find the key and then to discover what it unlocks.

I enjoyed the nostalgia all the way to the end, but then looked up to ask, “What have I just read?” Jane Yolen’s afterword and the illustrator’s note assured me that I was not alone in my reaction. The story can be taken as the fantasy it seems on the surface, a fairy tale laced with morality and religious overtones, or an extended metaphor about life and death. MacDonald scholar Dr. John Patrick Pazdziora wrote to Jane, “No one really knows what The Golden Key is about.” The multiple layers make it a book for all ages from those who enjoy a fantastical fairy tale to those who love to peel layers apart and analyze whether the three old men could stand for the Trinity.

MacDonald became a model for names we know better than his – Mark Twain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. In fact, C. S. Lewis said, “I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed, I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.”

I have no choice but to return to the beginning and see if I can find what the allegory is about.

March - National Poetry Month

I can’t remember when I didn’t love poetry. Somebody forgot to tell Mama about the hazards of reading above the heads of her four girls so I loved things like “and may there be no moaning at the bar when I put out to sea” and “nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul” without having a clue what they were talking about. I loved the music of the words long before I appreciated the meaning in “Crossing the Bar,” “Annabel Lee,” and their many cousins.

I took a page from Mama’s book and read poetry, often just for pleasure rather than for teaching, with my children and students. Between them, my poem books are a bit the worse for wear.

In a bit of serendipity, since teachers in military communities seldom have the privilege of knowing what happened to their students, I recently ran into one of my long ago second graders here in the Pine Belt. She, now a creative award-winning teacher in the neighboring town of Petal, said what she remembered about my class was that we started with a poem every day. I’ll take that!

In recent years, I’ve become enamored with writers who create whole novels in verse. I’m not alone since the Newbery Committee has often chosen to award these books like Tranhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust, and Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover. My personal favorite authors for writing verse novels are Margarita Engle and Helen Frost. The words seem to flow in poetic form from their pens into exquisite stories. (Reality check: Any writing that appears to be that easy represents what Churchill would call “blood, tears, toil, and sweat.”)

So in this March poetry month, do yourself a favor. Reach back and reread one of those old loved poems that you understand better now that you are older, or grab a current novel in verse to give yourself a special treat. Margarita Engle and Helen Frost are a great place to start.

Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers by Andrea Spalding, first published in 1995, has come out in a new and updated edition. When I saw the blurb mentioning that the setting included the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, I knew I wanted to read the book. This World Heritage Site was a highlight of a trip my husband, my sister Ruth, and I took to Canada in 2011. The site guide said this area was operational long before the Great Wall of China or Machu Picchu.

As I began reading the book, I struggled at first with the two issues, dyslexia and honor for First Nations beliefs and traditions, trying to decide which was the important premise for the story. Gradually, they become interwoven like yin and yang. Danny Budzynski, challenged with dyslexia, is very bright but not good at school skills.  He finds an Indian lance head and new friends in Joshua Brokenhorn and his grandfather who are members of the Piikani Nation. Danny alternately grapples with his own learning disability and his conscience in deciding what to do with the ancient lance head, treasured by him in one way and his friends in another.

In the back matter, Andrea Spalding lists a number of resources for both the First Nations and the dyslexia strands of her story, including the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Center that we visited and hints at personal knowledge of dyslexia in her author’s notes as she thanks Dave for “untiring correction of my garbled spelling that baffles spellcheckers.”

Her glossary and author notes add authenticity to her understanding of the struggles of dyslexia and the importance of honoring the beliefs and traditions of the people of First Nations. Besides commending the book, I also recommend a trip to the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Center if you should find yourself in Alberta, Canada.  

Denzel Washington, Philosopher

On the January 18 CBS Morning Show, the great philosopher Denzel Washington explained his viewpoint to Gail King. His words to his children were, “Do what you have to do so you can do what you want to do.” Having just seen him in Fences, I watched the interview with interest but never expected to hear any words of real wisdom.

His statement lingered with me after the program was over. I thought of how it applied to a couple of preschool grandsons. They are frequently told they must put toys away before they can go to the library or playground or before they can have a treat.

I thought of their grown brother and cousin who are pursuing a career in the arts – one as an artist and the other as a photographer. Doing what they have to do to make that dream come true, they wait on diners and bus tables to pay their rent and buy groceries.

Then I began to think how that pattern extends into life. The gardener pulls a lot of weeds and turns a lot of sod before flowers can be trained up a lattice. A writer collects a bunch of rejection letters before she gets a starred review or writes a best seller. A cellist takes a lot of music lessons and puts in hours of practice before he plays at Carnegie Hall. Almost every want-to-do has some have-to-do that comes before it.

I’m guessing the process can be made more pleasant if joy can be found in what you “have to do.” Otherwise, keeping the goal of what you “want to do” in mind should ease the task of picking up toys, waiting tables, or pulling weeds.

And if the Oscar goes to Denzel for Fences on Sunday night, it’s fine with me. He’s put in his have-to-do.

Isaac the Alchemist

Remember that you heard it here first when they start giving out book honors and awards for nonfiction. Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton Revealed by Mary Losure begs for star reviews and stickers for its cover.  

Beautiful writing got my attention early. “It was like magic. It was also very much like alchemy. As he slept that night in the apothecary’s house, Isaac was not yet an alchemist and would not be for many years. But already the seeds of magic had been planted in his mind.”

Mary Losure paints a picture of a disturbed lonely child who becomes a prickly adult more at home with puzzles about the workings of the universe and numbers than with people.  The book intrigues the reader who may know little more about the person Isaac Newton than the old legend of his discovering gravity when an apple falls on his head. (She clarifies that, too.)

The author explains how much he contributed to math and science as a forerunner to Einstein who built on his work and how much his discoveries are used today even though his original goal had more to do with alchemy. She quotes famous economist John Maynard Keynes saying Newton, “was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.”

Her back matter is only slightly less interesting than the book itself including some extra tidbits not found in the text, source materials, and a bibliography.

I read my copy on my Kindle, with gratitude to Net Galley and Candlewick Publishers for the ARC, and can’t wait for a preschool math-loving grandson to get old enough to read it. I do recommend buying it in hard copy, as I will before I put it aside for him to age a bit. The pictures deserve to be examined and seen on paper one can touch.

The Chester Drawers

I’ve been writing this blog for more than five years and for the first time have a topic request. Oddly, my youngest son Mark asked me to write about this chester drawers. I am aware that most people outside the South call it a chest of drawers. I did learn to spell it, if not say it, correctly at some point in my childhood. As I recall, the person who enlightened me also made a slightly ribald comment about Chester and his “drawers,” but I need to get to the point.

The history of this chest of drawers begins before my time. It came into our family about the time of my earliest memories. A church member, who was upgrading their family furniture, thought the struggling young pastor’s family could use it and passed it along. Periodically, there was a new layer of brown paint applied, but otherwise it got no care except for the dusting assigned to the four daughters. The hourglass turned through a number of years until four girls grew up and made lives of their own, until the pastor and his wife retired and settled in her family’s old home place, until his death and her eventual need to give up housekeeping.

At that point, the four sisters sorted out and took home things that had only sentimental value. The chest of drawers went to Birmingham with Beth, the most talented DIY sister. Sensing something better under the layers of paint, she stripped it to the bottom wood, refinished it, and replaced the cheap hardware. Her DIY husband shored up the underpinnings, and it made a pretty addition to a guest room in their house. That hourglass turned through another number of years before they decided to downsize and move closer to their two daughters.

After the daughters took what they needed from the downsizing, Beth sent out an email to her nieces and nephews with a list and pictures of leftover furniture items. She said they were up for grabs with the caveat of first come, first served. Timing was perfect for Mark who was moving his family back to Mississippi and finding a house. She got a quick return email with a list of selections from him, especially for the chest of drawers that he could place in his memory in the houses where he had visited his McGee grandparents.

Despite Beth’s and Don’s best efforts, the chester drawers still has only sentimental value – a value that has my son recalling good times with Pops and Grandma. As the hourglass continues to turn, it sits in the master bedroom at his new house in Hattiesburg and draws a request for a blog.     

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

Thanks to Net Galley, I have had the ARC of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir on my Kindle for some time. Jennifer Ryan’s novel sounded right down my alley when I requested it – historical fiction set in an English village in World War II. I had been anticipating its move to the top of my reading list.

The premise begins when the Vicar disbands the church choir because all the men have gone to war. The church ladies can’t be kept down long. They rally and reframe the choir for women only and so the thread of song winds through the novel. Diaries, letters, and journals tell the story of the village with intrigue, romance (not just for the young), and wartime life and death issues. There’s a conspiracy with the birth of two babies swapped by a midwife, the question of the real identity of the new guy in Chilbury where all the residents know each other, and the billeting of military. The members of the ladies’ choir have their hands full.  

I’ve tried to decide who to name as the protagonist and have come up with the community. The gossip and intrigue over large things and small will be familiar to anyone who has loved living in a village. While five ladies from the choir get the most attention, the men in the story are not to be ignored. In her first novel, Jennifer Ryan keeps her villains sympathetic and her heroes flawed.

The book is purely recreational reading and fulfills its purpose. The book release is tomorrow (February 14), and I’m hoping Jennifer Ryan has a second novel on the way.

Inventory - 2016

I am aware that this activity that I do at the end of each year may be of interest only to me, but just in case, I share it with you. Without a clock to punch or a sign-in sheet, I had to figure out a way to evaluate my own attention to task when I retired from teaching to write. I do that with a weekly calendar where I record both my writing and reading activities. (How good is it to be able to count reading as part of your work?)

At an end-of-year inventory, I like to see how much and what I have read during the year. Let me say up front, one underreported part is the number of books for younger children. I’ve not written down the story before bedtime or nap or the stack of Winnie-the-Pooh books brought in by a four-year-old with a request to read.

With that explanation behind us, I have read 77 books this year. Twenty-seven were for adults, thirty-one were for middle grade or young adult, and nineteen were for young children. The books were 68% fiction and 32% nonfiction. A protagonist that fit in the category of diversity either by culture or some kind of physical challenge made up 22% of the books. Probably for the same number, the protagonist could have been from any culture since the book was generic or some kind of fantasy. Poetry formed an unusual part of this year’s list with seven younger children’s non-fiction books and one middle grade novel written as beautiful poems. 

You would think that all this reading would have lowered my to-be-read stack and cleared my Kindle. Not so. As the wise man in Ecclesiastes 12:12 said, “Of the making of many books there is no end,” and he wrote before the day of the printing press. So if you will excuse me, I’ve started my 2017 list and need to get back to some diaries and letters in a World War II novel. The blog for that one is coming soon. 

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

I liked Hawthorn from the beginning page when she compared her mother’s oatmeal to silly putty. My mother made oatmeal like that. This lighthearted opening for The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett by Chelsea Sedoti doesn’t stay lighthearted long.

Questions begin for Hawthorn as soon as word gets out that Lizzie Lovett has disappeared. Is she dead? Did her boyfriend kill her? Has she become a werewolf? And the big one, can Hawthorn find out what happened to her?

Relationships with her longtime best friend, her brother and his best friend Connor, the people at the diner where she works to keep her dilapidated car running, and Lizzie’s boyfriend round out the story of Hawthorn’s search. Then her mother’s long ago hippie friends show up to camp out in the back yard.

In an unapologetic spoiler, the book deals with bullying, social outcasts, and suicide. Hawthorn says it well, “The thing about high school is that you have to pretend you don’t care what people think, even though that’s all you care about.”

Hawthorn’s poor decisions sometimes had me wanting to yank a knot in her neck and questioning whether I would even use the book for a blog, but her frailties seemed so real and relevant that I began to come around. The final decision came when Hawthorn remembered and understood the significance of Connor’s words “about life looking different depending on where you were standing.”

This book is not an easy read but has relevance and would appeal to its intended audience of high schoolers.

Punxsutawney Phil Phails

He goes by the name of Punxsutawney Phil in Punxsutawney, PA; Chuck in Marion, OH, Staten Island, NY, and Los Angeles, CA; Pierre C. Shadeaux in New Iberia, LA; and Wiarton Willie in Ontario, Canada. Sometimes he’s called a whistle pig or a woodchuck, but on February 2, midway between the winter and spring solstice, he’s known as a groundhog. He finds his place on the news even in years with vast political shenanigans to answer an important question.

Will there be six more weeks of winter or will spring come early? The questionable answer comes in whether he most famously sees his shadow in the official town of Punxsutawney, PA. Crowds arrive rivaling those of big football games to observe what could be as accurately predicted in the toss of a coin since Phil has been right about fifty percent of the time.

Yesterday amidst a crowd singing and dancing, the men from the Groundhog Handlers’ Club coaxed Phil from the ground on Gobbler’s Knob, a couple of miles out of town. He immediately saw his shadow and supposedly returned to his burrow to finish his nap during another six weeks of winter.

Of course, in South Mississippi this year, the whole question is moot. Winter has yet to show its face with December and January temperatures most often reaching a daily high in the seventies. We still have February when it might turn up, but you can see that my azaleas and daffodils are already in bloom with the snowdrops just ready to burst open.

There are those who would call him Phil the Phailure, but I say give him some slack and let him sleep. He’s only a rodent doing the best he can.

The War That Saved My Life

Two things converged to move The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley to the top of my reading list. One was the insistence of a friend, who has never steered me wrong on a good book, and the second was the intriguing title. Make that three – it won a Newbery Honor and half a dozen other awards in 2016.

The book opens with a scene of nine-year-old Ada being reprimanded by her mother for saying hello to another child out the window. Her mother is too embarrassed by Ada’s deformed foot to let her outside. It would be a war in the summer of 1939 that would take Ada from London – make that – allow her to slip out of the city. Children were being sent away from the bombings to the country for safety where they were housed by volunteer families. Ada sneaks away when her brother Jamie is being sent to safety.

Jamie and Ada are last of their group of children to be placed. Their reluctant foster parent, Susan Smith, lets them know right away, “I don’t know a thing about taking care of children.” Ada claims that their last name is also Smith. Susan lets the lie slide. When Jamie explains that nice people hate Ada’s ugly foot, Susan responds, “You’re in luck then because I’m not a nice person at all.”

This not-nice person immediately bandages Ada’s foot, puts them in clean clothes, combs their hair, and scrambles a big pan of eggs. The adventure now begun will have wartime difficulties, including a time when most of the other children return home to London. A bigger difficulty arises when their mother figures out where they are, but I won’t spoil the story.

Now that I’ve finished reading the book, I must add a fourth attraction. This piece of historical fiction set in World War II falls into my favorite category, especially when the time and place is woven so skillfully into the story. If you have as long a reading list as mine, I recommend moving this up in the stack to be read soon!

Follow the Crowd

Adjustment comes in many forms. Our oldest son Murray had not found it easy to move from being a big-sophomore-fish-in-a-little-pond at Cole High School at Fort Sam Houston to overlooked-minnow-in-the-ocean status in Kaiserslautern American High School in Germany. But you can’t keep a prankster down long. 

Lacking an auditorium, the high school’s band and chorus were having their Christmas program at the post theater. He and his friend Buddy were the first to the building. They stationed themselves at the two doors in an important stance. A couple of seniors drifted up. Buddy and Murray told them, “I’m sorry, we can’t let you in yet.” A few more drifted up, and they repeated their apology.

Soon nobody had to be told as the first few passed the word to the next arrivals. Soon others just saw people waiting and joined the group, assuming they were waiting for a reason. When about three quarters of the crowd had assembled, one of them said to the other, “Do you think they’ve waited long enough?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Then to the crowd, “Okay, you can go in now.”

His peers’ chagrin and grudging admiration at having been hoodwinked didn’t turn the minnow into a whale, but it did show him there was fun to be had in the sea.

If I were Aesop, I would add a moral or two here, but I think you can figure out one of your own.

The Seventh Wish

I was introduced to Kate Messner’s book The Seventh Wish by its choice for our de Grummond Book Group for the January read. Almost simultaneously, a discussion arose among writer friends on Facebook about Kate being uninvited to a school as a guest author because of the book’s content. Of course, this added to my eagerness to read.

A light-hearted look at a magic fish as Charlie accompanies her friend Drew and his grandmother Mrs. McNeil on their ice-fishing excursions mingles with the serious problem of what is happening to her sister Abby. A freshman in college, Abby’s grades and health have taken a mysterious nose dive.

The first time Charlie pulls the tiny emerald-eyed fish from the hole in the ice, it promises to grant a wish in exchange for freedom. Starting easy, she asks for Roberto Sullivan to fall in love with her. Later she asks for Drew to be selected for the basketball team to live up to his father’s expectations. The fish lacks perfection since it is Bobby O’Sullivan who begins to pass her notes and Drew’s basketball playing segues into a mascot assignment. Her wishes come out close enough to keep her trying.

Other elements of her life are friendships with Catherine whose forgetfulness of her five-pound flour “baby” may ruin her grade and Dasha who needs to score high enough in her English language class to move into regular classes. The upcoming dance competitions and her science project complete a normal life until her parents get the phone call about Abby.

Abby has been caught. Her health and grade problems come from an addiction to opiate drugs. Charlie’s interests become secondary from this point with her parents’ focus and schedules shifted to Abby’s needs as she goes to a rehabilitation center. A realistic picture emerges in the effect the addiction has on the drug user and her family, the difficulties of becoming and staying clean, and the inability of those who love Abby, including Charlie, to fix her problem.    

In the end, Charlie realizes that she needs more than magic. She accepts the wisdom of her friend’s grandmother “We can wish on clovers and shooting stars and ice flowers all we want. But in the end, the only real magic is what’s inside us and the people we love.”

As for the discussion on the appropriateness of the book and author in schools, I see the empathy young readers will develop and the understanding that one can never become completely “cured” of an addiction as an effective cautionary tale. Not only would I recommend it for preteens and up, but I would recommend that parents and teachers read and discuss it with them.