Wicked Bugs

Besides wicked, other words that come to mind describing this book are gross, candid, entrancing, vile – I could go on. For those who like a bit of horror in their lives, for those fed up with fluff, for those who want the real scoop on what tiny varmints do, this is the book. Wicked Bugs: The Meanest, Deadliest, Grossest Bugs on Earth by Amy Stewart is a young readers adaptation of her bestselling book for adult readers. 

Each entry has pictures, entomology, habitat, size, distribution, and bug relatives, making it a good resource for looking at the science of these beasties. Other information ranges from serious to just for fun: a glossary, a list of phobias by bug title, a range of pain created by entomologist Justin Schmidt who did personal research with more than 150 insect stings. In addition, a cautionary tale winds through the book on the dangers of importing nonnative species.

Some bugs are weird as well as wicked. Monkeys in Venezuela search for millipedes whose secretions they rub into their fur to keep the mosquitoes away. There are zombie bugs that inhabit other bugs and force them to do harm. Others have strange life cycles dependent on striking it right with the life cycles of the animals they inhabit. Some provide solutions to big problems like the phorid fly that injects its eggs into the fire ant with the larvae eating the ant’s brains until its head falls off.

A nod to literature is the quote from Poe’s story of “The Tell-Tale Heart” with “a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” as he describes the death-watch beetle – a bug the author describes as an omen of death. In a different relationship with death, there are insects used in forensics to pinpoint  death’s time and place.

The book is entertaining, intriguing, and informative. It is also as engrossing as a scab that calls you back to pick a little more – just the thing for a reluctant reader.

Hope Deferred

When I took the surprise out of the package, I thought of a two-part proverb. The first part had been my experience for a number of years, “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” Well, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but this all started many years ago when our oldest son turned out beautiful calligraphy that won praise in his high school art class. When he completed an impressive rendition of Robert Frost’s poem, “Fire and Ice,” I requested that he make a similar one for my favorite quote. He quickly and easily agreed – as soon as he “got around to it.”

Since you’ve read the first half of the proverb, you can probably guess the gist of what happened next. There was college, early career, marriage to a good wife who came with a bonus of three-year-old twin daughters, and a son a few years later. Work and family occupied his time. Off and on, I reminded him of his promise. “Yeah, yeah,” he would say. But his interest in calligraphy faded and the hope deferred eventually made me give up the art as a lost cause.

This spring the now middle-aged son hinted that a surprise package was on its way. When it came, I tore into it and experienced the second half of the proverb, “but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” (Also, a bit dramatic) Not in calligraphy, but in a new art form that he has mastered, there was my favorite quote. Etched into a piece of wood, polished and finished in a painstaking process that he explained to me in our recent visit – he had completed it now when he has a son the age he was when he first made the promise.  

My desire fulfilled, I found it a special place. Centered on a shelf above my writing place, I look up and see Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s words from Aurora Leigh,

“Earth’s crammed with heaven

and every common bush afire with God,

but only those who see take off their shoes.

The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.”

Added to my love of the quote is my satisfaction in a promise kept and the enduring desire fulfilled.

Journeys: Young Readers Letters

One of my favorite activities to do with junior high students came from the Library of Congress Center for the Book. Each year, in a Letters About Literature contest, students wrote to an author, living or dead, telling him or her how the author’s book had changed or influenced their lives. The challenge often lay in convincing students not to write a book report but to chat with the author, reacting to words that were meaningful to them. Once they understood the object, the authors they chose and personal applications were wide-ranging and extremely interesting to their teacher.

Now Candlewick has produced a book, Journeys: Young Readers Letters to Authors Who Have Changed Their Lives, with selections from the contest’s national winners in three age categories – upper elementary, middle school, and high school, grouped by ages and within those ages by stages of a journey – destination, realization, and return home. Student selections range from classic writers like Robert Frost and Anne Frank to modern writers like J. K. Rowling and Laurie Halse Anderson. Just in case the reader is not familiar with the work the student references, a short passage about the work and author come before each reader’s letter. Editors did minimal editing in order to retain the student writer’s voice.  

Jayanth responds to Sharon Draper’s book Out of My Mind by describing how the book helped her understand the survival instinct of her brother who has a form of autism causing difficulty expressing himself.   Anna takes on several levels of understanding from Shel Silvestein’s poem “Hug o’War,” – first when she was seven and it brought a reminder of a lost tooth in a tug of war with her brother, second when she was nine for the camaraderie she felt as she shared it in a class recitation and the idea of being kinder to each other came through, and finally as a current eleven-year-old with a greater message for the world at large. Becky, who lost her mother to cancer a month before she wrote the letter, finds comfort in remembering her mother’s voice as she picks up an old favorite, Dr. Seuss’s One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

I recommend the book to students and teachers who participate in the contest each year for models of responses to authors. Beyond that, the variety makes a good read for anyone looking for ways books change readers or for those seeking book selections for themselves or as gifts for young people in upper elementary through high school.

Before I leave this review entirely, I must say I was extremely proud the year one of my students placed third in the Louisiana contest and had an event at the local library where a representative of the Louisiana State Libraries presented her award.

About that Eulogy

Is life conspiring to tell me something about death? Our recent two-week trip to see national parks out west began with a visit to a long-time friend who had recently lost her husband. While on the trip, we received three notices of deaths among friends or their families. Shortly after we arrived at home, we learned that one of Al’s classmates had died.

As if this wasn’t enough to get my attention, I opened my most recent Poets and Writers magazine to find an article “The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story” by Edwidge Danticat taken from her book by the same name. In the article, she focuses on her own mother’s death. She brings up the possibility of writing one’s own eulogy while one is healthy and death is still an abstraction and suggests that writing or talking about one’s death makes one an active participant in one’s own life.

In her take, Death is not always the enemy, nor was it the adversary in all the messages we received. Sorrow was a presence in all of them sandwiched as they were before, during, and after our trip, but some were also merciful releases from pain and suffering. I didn’t apply any of these deaths to myself, however, until I read the article.

Obviously, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that I write a variety of things. However, my eulogy is not going to be one of them. As I’ve mulled this over, I’ve come up with a plan which I will suggest for your consideration if should you outlive me – not that I expect this to happen any time soon. Skip the eulogy, and throw a party. Discuss a few books we’ve shared. Talk about the good times we had together. Laugh at my human frailties, applying forgiveness where needed.

Edwidge closes her article with a Haitian expression that means “over the water” and can mean someone has traveled abroad or has died. If I’m where I expect to be once this life has ended, I’ll look down from over the water and enjoy the celebration.

Poe: Stories and Poems

When I began to think how to review Gareth Hinds’s unusual rendition of Poe: Stories and Poems, I thought of the old bridal tradition of something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

The old was obvious since Hinds takes the classic poems and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe for his graphic representations. Poe lived from 1809-1849 so there’s no question that these creations written more than a hundred years ago are aged.

The new is what he does with them. As he adds new graphic art to these seven old treasures, I was a bit skeptical about whether a visual would enhance Poe’s work, but convincing me didn’t take long. Before the stories and poems even start, the Raven sits on a spiky fence with an ominous tree branch behind him crossing the moon. I could almost hear him calling, “Nevermore.”

I would have thought “The Pit and the Pendulum” could not get any more terrifying than when I first read it, but as the sharp steel crescent of the pendulum grazes the protagonist’s chest in Hind’s picture, I found myself gasping. Other graphics for other works are equally impressive.

Something borrowed? These are Edgar Allan Poe’s works after all.

And blue? Maybe it’s not the use found in the bridal rhyme, but “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” conjure up feelings of being blue in their original state. Gareth Hinds turns that blue so dark it becomes navy with his rendition of the Raven atop Poe’s tombstone in the cemetery and in the series of pictures to make Annabel’s grave in the sea.

Poe and Hinds turn out a happy marriage, if I may carry the metaphor so far. If you love Poe, don’t miss this!

Historic notes at the end are interesting to any reader, but especially helpful for the teacher or librarian who wants to use this book with a class.

Tunnel!

Brian, our national parks tour guide, caught himself halfway through the word “tunnel” and moved on to describe the rest of our morning, but I heard. I’m assuming he’s had those on other trips who were fearful of tunnels. In this case, the only way into Zion National Park was through what he called a “practice tunnel” and then a longer one. His plan seemed to involve not letting us know until we were trapped and moving on the bus. By that time, the tunnel could not be escaped.

I used my new tricube pattern to describe it. (In case you need a reminder, it is 3 syllables per line x 3 lines per stanza x 3 stanzas = 1 tricube.)

Dark tunnel

Up ahead

Frightening

Black as night

How far through?

Proceed in.

Facing fear

Quickest way

To the light.

Truth is Brian was just having a little fun with his travelers. He went on to point out occasional small windows to peer outside or take a picture as we passed through the darkness.

Should we have chosen to let our fear win out, what could we have missed? Only this:

Pieces of Happiness

Can life begin again from a new perspective for five old high school friends after the age of sixty? Newly widowed Kat sends an invitation to Sina, Maya, Ingrid, and Lisbeth to join her in Fiji and find out. Each accepts and brings a lifetime, with roots in their early years, in need of sorting out together. Pieces of Happiness by Anne Ostby follows the women as they look to answer the question.

There is single mother Sina with the son she chose to keep over her mother’s objections after a teenage pregnancy, a son now 50 years old and still expecting financial bailout from his mother. Maya comes as early onset Alzheimer’s Disease begins its destruction of her mind and body. Ingrid arrives with her less inhibited alter ego seeking to emerge. Lisbeth, who seemingly has had it all, needs to find out who she really is now that youthful beauty becomes harder to maintain. And Kat herself, who has lived the maverick lifestyle in the interim and issues the invitation, has unresolved secrets. Will renewing the old friendships give them a new lease on life? Do they want to stay and start a chocolate business together? 

The story line rotates among the friends and a secondary character Ateca, Kat’s housekeeper. Ateca sees and understands each of the group and the dynamics of their interaction together and may be my favorite character. Speaking her wisdom periodically through prayer, she mingles her concern for the women with her own hopes that her son Vilivo can find work and start a family. “Calm Madam Sina’s worries for her child, dear Lord. And calm my worries for Vilivo. Let him find work, so he can support himself, become an adult, and start a family. In Jesus holy name. Emeni.”  

The author, Norwegian Anne Ostby, is a world citizen herself having lived in several countries and writes often on themes of finding identity in a country not one’s own. The book publication is international with the English translation done by her daughter Marie.

Pieces of Happiness is a good read that can be appropriately enhanced by pairing it with some fine chocolate.

Tricube

Airplane recreation came with a new-to-me poetic form in a catchup read of the September 2016 Writer’s Digest. The form, tricube, adds some “not much ‘rithmetic” that I mention in my blog title. 3 syllables per line x 3 lines per stanza x 3 stanzas = 1 tricube.

Butterfly

seeks passion

flower vine

knowing her

picky babes

only eat

its green leaves

chewing from

outside in.

This tricube violates my writerly need to be specific about the Gulf Fritillary variety of butterfly, but you can see that “fritillary” has four syllables. My “passion,” if you will pardon my pun, of watching the stages from egg to butterfly and seeing the caterpillars (also an unusable four syllables) devour my passion flower (AKA maypop) vine through July and August sometimes plays havoc with my writing time.

Oh, and not to worry about the vines. They look stripped by the time the flock of Gulf Fritillaries feeds on my lantana bushes, but the maypop vines will pop up again in the spring and only fail to invade the yard because Al mows regularly.

LISTEN!

A few years ago, I sat at lunch with Leda Schubert at the Kaigler Book Festival and listened to her dream of a book about Pete Seeger. She had bravely faced her fear of flying to come down for the occasion. We Hattiesburgers (no joke, that’s officially what we are called) claim a close relationship with Pete. He was one of the movers and shakers of the Hattiesburg Freedom School during Freedom Summer. I’ve been waiting impatiently for Leda’s book ever since. It’s here and appropriately named LISTEN.

Leda emphasizes two themes in the book – LISTEN and SING.

Listen.
There was nobody like Pete Seeger.
Wherever he went, he got people singing.
With his head thrown back
and his Adam’s apple bouncing,
picking his long-necked banjo
or strumming his twelve-string guitar,
Pete sang old songs,
new songs,
new words to old songs,
and songs he made up.

The singing comes up as she strews those songs he sang throughout her narrative of his fight against social injustice. She recounts his popular concerts as well as his difficulties with the McCarthy era witch hunts. The beautiful illustrations by Raul Colon match her gift of story-telling.

Since I wanted my book signed for two special little boys and since I love supporting local independent book stores, I ordered it from her local Bear Pond Books. After it arrived, I suggested to those boys that I would read it to them after lunch. Benjamin said, “Oh, you can read it to us while we eat.” He didn’t want to wait to LISTEN. And I found myself wanting to SING when I came to a list of Pete’s song selections,

“If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning . . . ”

Don’t miss it – not the listening, not the nostalgic illustrations, not the reading, and not the singing.

Enjoy the Journey

Ideally, one starts with anticipation, but the To-Do List left me little time for that before our trip to visit our son’s family in Phoenix followed by a tour of the western national parks. The list did serve as a carrot, encouraging me to stay on task so I could enjoy the vacation without the guilt of uncompleted tasks. (I finished. Yes, I did!)

I can’t say I was overjoyed when the alarm went off at 2:30 AM on Thursday morning – at least half an hour earlier than necessary – but my travel agent is Al and that’s his schedule. With a good book already started on Kindle, pleasure began in the hour drive to the airport. (Al is also the chauffeur, giving me reading time.)

Al and I settled in to seats on the plane with leg room, pillows, and blankets. He was now forgiven for the early start since he had arranged for expedited check-in and a bargain upgrade to first class. Delta personnel from the first person who checked our ID’s through the cabin attendants all appeared to be morning people like me with their cheerfulness and helpful attitudes.

The hour to Atlanta included a gorgeous sunrise and my newest issue of Thema Magazine, enjoyed with offerings of roasted California almonds lightly dusted with sea salt and fresh hot coffee. Rising higher as day broke, we rode in the clear blue sky looking down on clouds reminiscent of discarded lumps of stuffing from an old couch. I even liked the view when we got to the Atlanta airport with the all-important words on the sign for our next leg – “On Time.”

In a cozy niche for the lengthy leg to Phoenix, I varied my activities. There was lunch before a nap. (Remember I got up at 2:30 AM.) Playing with words, I wrote a couple of blogs – including this one – before I began amusing myself with a new poem form – putting words in, taking them out, rearranging them. These will all be here for your reading pleasure in days to come.

Landing in Phoenix right on time seemed to complete a perfect trip until the announcement came over the intercom, “Phoenix temperature is 108.” As they say, nothing is perfect.

Almost Paradise

The first clue that Almost Paradise would qualify for a good Southern yarn came when I saw the author’s name, Corabel Shofner, on the Net Galley offering for an advance reading copy. She did, indeed, grow up in the Mississippi Delta with a long line of Southern ancestors. The second clue came in Corabel’s workshop at the Faye B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival when she recounted growing up among eccentric relatives. By this time, I had her book downloaded on my Kindle ready to read when it came up in the queue.

It’s a good thing I didn’t know just how entertaining it would be or my queue would have been completely messed up. There are problems aplenty for protagonist Ruby Clyde (also a Southern name) – a father who died before she was born, a mean grandmother, an estranged aunt. And these are before her mother’s boyfriend takes her and her mother on a trip where they steal/rescue a pig from a show and the boyfriend commits armed robbery. When her mother is falsely accused of abetting the crime and is put in jail, Ruby Clyde must rely on others to help her find the estranged aunt who turns out to have secrets of her own.

Spunk and humor lace into Ruby Clyde’s search for home and vindication for her mother. Those who do her harm are balanced by others who genuinely care for her. Even as the author brings rescuers into Ruby Clyde’s life, she pokes fun at the icons of Southern culture. “Mr. Gaylord Lewis had gone to court and told the judge he would watch after my mother until trial. And since Mr. Lewis was so big and important with football and money and God, the judge couldn’t say no.”

I’ll miss Ruby Clyde now that I’ve closed the last page of the book. It’s available for purchase on July 25.

I would suggest pairing this book written by a descendant of Delta landowners with Midnight Without a Moon, written by a descendant of sharecroppers, that I reviewed on June 16. The authors met in a coincidence as their books came out and have become friends.

Sermon in a Stone

A friend gave me an unusual gift – an agate geode with quartz crystals. I’ll give the short version of what it is with the little trick I played on my four-year-old grandson. You can find more detail and other pictures on an Internet search.

I held it like the picture that begins this blog and asked Benjamin what he saw. He looked at me like I was a befuddled grandmother and said, “A rock.” Then I turned it over so that it’s inner crystals caught the sunlight. His matter-of-fact answer quickly turned into an “Ooooh!”

Perhaps it’s the preacher’s daughter in me that saw a sermon in the stone. I thought of a story Daddy loved to tell about one of his rural church members that I will call Mr. Smith. When he came to church, he wore his dress overalls and shoes. That was the peak of his style. It wasn’t that this successful farmer could not afford better, just that he dressed to please himself.

One day, Mr. Smith decided he needed a new car and took himself to the dealership in town. A young salesman came out to talk to him and condescendingly began to talk about a used car and payment plans. Fortunately, the dealer who knew Mr. Smith saw him come onto the lot and intervened quickly.

When their business was finished, the dealer took the young man aside and admonished him about going with his first impression.  “Mr. Smith,” he said, “could have written you a check for any car on this lot.”

I keep the geode next to my computer where it catches the light from the lamp and keeps the sermon in sight that what looks like a rock might hide quartz crystals, and one does not know what wealth of either money or character hides beneath a person’s outward appearance. 

Lost and Found Cat

There are two issues at work in this book that make it a bit ironic that I’m reviewing it. First, the star is a cat. Now, I have very good friends who are cat people and have brought me to an understanding of how important these animals can be. They have not convinced me to be a cat person. Second, the book was shared with me by another friend who knows I already own more books than I can read in a lifetime even though I’ve read fast since my youth – not to mention that I continue to acquire more books on a regular basis and visit the library often.

That said, I must recommend Lost and Found Cat by Doug Kuntz and Amy Shrodes, both volunteers with refugees who were involved in this true story. It follows a family of a mother and four children being smuggled out of Mosul in Iraq who are intent on keeping their cat named Kunkush hidden from the smugglers. They safely pass from one place to another through a Kurdish village and Istanbul. After a treacherous boat ride to the Greek Island of Lesbos, Kunkush escapes though a break in its carrier. No amount of searching finds the cat, and the brokenhearted family must move on without him.

The rest of the story has volunteers and the modern wonder of Facebook bringing a happy ending. The beautiful illustrations of Sue Cornelison enhance the story, particularly her ability to express the many different feelings of the family and their fellow travelers in their facial expressions. I recommend sharing this read and a discussion afterwards with a child in your life. 

Sixteen Years - Sixteen Happys

My cursor says “Happys” is not a word, but what does it know? Sixteen years ago today we drove into Hattiesburg having chosen it as our home. To tell the truth, this was not my idea. I was perfectly happy where we were in Leesville, Louisiana, but Al had always wanted to return to his home state for retirement. Since he picked the state, I picked the city – not that we actually reasoned it out. 

I’m listing sixteen things I’ve found to like in honor of the anniversary.

1.      We start with a 70s ranch house with enough windows that I feel like I’m outside even when I’m inside taking advantage of the air-conditioning.

2.      The yard has something blooming year-round.

3.      The population of that yard includes rabbits, turtles, a fox, armadillos, lizards, scads of butterflies, bumblebees, and birds. (The snakes aren’t happys.)

The de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection comes in for several items:

4.      I found a story to write for Highlights Magazine for Children there.

5.      They selected me as the researcher for the 50^th anniversary edition of The Snowy Day.

6.      I wrote the script and selected the pictures to be used for the video on the 100^th anniversary of Ezra Jack Keats’s birth at the book festival’s Keats Awards Day.

Likewise, I have several items from the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival:

7.      The pure joy of attending for sixteen years counts for one, especially when I can be the volunteer driver for book people guests who come.

8.      I wrote the script for the formation of the story-telling event named for Colleen Salley, chuckling often as I wrote. How could you do otherwise if you knew Colleen?

The community has many other offerings:

9.      OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) has classes to take and teach, field trips, and friendships.

10.  I’ve taught creative writing to elementary and middle school students at the Frances Karnes Center for Gifted Studies.

11.  In less than two hours, my writer friends and I can be in New Orleans for the monthly critique meetings of the LA/MS branch of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

12.  I am a friend of two libraries and can check out books in either!

13.  The music department at the University of Southern Mississippi has more excellent symphony, faculty, and student performances than one can take in – many free!

14.  The Carey Dinner Theatre hosts a couple of light-hearted performances every summer with home-cooked meals.

15.  There’s University Baptist Church that welcomes everybody and has given us opportunities to worship, serve, and form fast friendships.

16.  Our newest happy in Hattiesburg is our youngest son’s family with two preschoolers who pop in and out and three big kids who come to visit from college. 

Truthfully, I could go on, but I will just say the promising portent I saw as we drove into town sixteen years ago with a triple rainbow ahead of us was an accurate omen. Should you be looking for a good place to live, come on down!

Hazel Brannon Smith

In his book, Hazel Brannon Smith, Jeffrey B. Howell reveals the complicated status of one moderate white woman during the Civil Rights Era. His secondary title, “The Female Crusading Scalawag,” accurately portrays her life both before and after the apex of the period.

Born in 1914, Hazel fit the pattern of the time to become a beautiful wife and hostess to some successful business man or politician, but she was having none of that. Instead, she did the unthinkable and bought first one and then several local newspapers in rural Holmes County, MS and its surroundings. Her first journalistic crusades sought out bootleggers and corrupt politicians. For almost fifty years she wrote an editorial column “From Hazel Eyes,” in addition to carrying local news with more attention to the black community than was normal for this area.

The book pictures her own personal growth from a strong supporter of Jim Crow segregation to becoming an ally in the black struggle for social justice. In doing this, it also brings light to the spectrum of both white and black views of the Civil Rights movement, to the change that often occurred as people gained insight into the issues, and to how people like Hazel often found themselves on the wrong side with intense advocates from both groups.

Howell quotes her toward the end with a philosophy that kept her in the business long after she had put herself in impossible debt trying to hang on, “There are already too many jellyfish in the world. We don’t need any more in the form of editors. But if the whole world turns against you, and sometimes it may, you still have your own self-respect.” She died in 1994, having lost her property to her lenders and her memory to Alzheimer’s Disease, but with her self-respect still intact.

The book is a good read for those who enjoy biography and an enlightening read for those who are interested in seeing that neither white nor black people in the Civil Rights Era can be painted with one swipe of a single brush.

Claiming Kin

One of the things I like about the South is how quickly we can find a reason to claim kin with people. Mama excelled in this to the point that Daddy said if she found out that your grandfather’s dog crossed her grandfather’s cotton patch, that was sufficient to make you relatives.

I “take after” her which has caused me to renew interest this past week in the Miss Mississippi pageant. I probably haven’t bothered to watch for ten years, but this year I’ve claimed kin to one of the contestants, Miss Southern Magnolia. She is my daughter-in-law’s second cousin or first cousin once removed, depending on which count you use. Obviously, I’m kinfolk since that’s much closer than dogs crossing cotton patches.

Her double name, evidently as much a requirement as a drawl to enter the Mississippi pageant, is Mary Margaret. “Mary,” like “Ann” in my Virginia Ann substitutes in Southern culture nicely as the equivalent of “junior” for sons. Her mother is Margaret, as mine was Virginia.

I felt family pride in her platform of organ/tissue donation in honor of her mother and in memory of her grandmother who set the example in being a donor and a recipient. The donation gave her grandmother several extra years of life.

Social media and my daughter-in-law kept me up on the preliminary events all week as Mary Margaret enjoyed each segment and didn’t blink an eye during her talent segment but kept right on playing the piano and singing while the faulty microphones were fixed by little guys hovering across the stage about midway through her performance. In the final, Saturday night on TV, she was easy to spot as the only contestant with her hair up so we could say, “There she is!”

Mary Margaret didn’t win, but we were proud of her enthusiasm all week and her graciousness at the end. And there’s always next year. Right, cousin?

Ruined Stones

Ruined Stones by Eric Reed will do little to educate your mind or edify your soul, but it will take you away for an adventure to another time and place for a little while. Now and again – just what you need. 

The book is set during the 1941 Blitz with mysteries to be solved first of the death of an unidentifiable woman which leaves much speculation for a motive and then another of a man hated by enough people to create a cast of suspects. Both bodies are left in a backwards swastika formation. Are they related or is there a copycat in place?

Grace Baxter, new constable for Newcastle-on-Tyne, gets assignments that reflect the dismissive attitudes of her superiors toward a new rookie – and a woman at that – until she takes it on herself to start following leads.

Plenty of possibilities for the perpetrator exist with one man who is Dutch (or is he German?), one who works outside under cover of night while the rest of the village observes the blackout inside, and any of the group of people who are interested in the spirit world. The setting with a ruined Roman temple and a church in close proximity adds to the tension. Grace questions whether her own ability to sense the spirits of the dead, inherited from her grandmother, will help her find the culprit and wrestles with whether the murderer is the same for both victims.

I received this adventure that will be published on July 4 in an ARC from Net Galley and enjoyed a trip away and back in time. One helpful hint: Flip to the back matter before you begin reading to get an explanation of the Geordie dialect and definitions. While Reed writes with enough context to figure out the words he uses, knowing the terms will save some time and distraction.

The Morphing Wedding Dress

Ah, June! Anniversaries abound, including mine. Pictures of events from various decades posted on Facebook bring on an urge to tell the story of THE wedding dress.

Fortunately, its origin was in an era of the fullest skirts imaginable. I made the original version with twenty-five (yes, 25) yards of lace. The trick to getting all that fabric into the skirt was to take huge darts at the top and then gather the rest as tight as possible. I loved the dress as well as the guy I was marrying.

I didn’t get to see the next two versions since the Army had us too far away (New York City and Paris) to get back to Mississippi in days before one just hopped a plane for any occasion. Mama took the skirt off with plenty of fabric to play with and turned out two different versions for the next two sisters, Beth and Gwyn.

Being a little nearer (Fort Knox, KY) and with sheer determination not to miss all my sisters’ weddings, I made the last one. Mama transformed what looked like the last pieces of the lace once again for Ruth, the final sister. We were amused when news reports and pictures of Julie Nixon’s wedding dress came out shortly after the wedding and showed a version from some big-name designer. Mama could have sued for copying Ruth’s dress.  

The dress was not the only thing we had in common. Daddy performed all four ceremonies, and Papaw, the only grandparent we ever knew, gave us all away. The marriages, none of them perfect, all took. (My sisters are free to correct this assessment if they feel the need.) Two lasted more than four decades before completing the “until death do us part” promise, and the other two have passed their golden wedding anniversaries.

There were a few scraps from the wedding dress, passed on to me as the family hoarder. When our daughter began to plan her wedding, I asked the sisters for permission to use the last of the lace. They readily agreed, and I scrounged enough of the still beautifully white fabric to cover the bodice of her wedding dress and enhance the train and sleeves.

The one thing lacking in this tale is a good set of pictures. Three of us had photography issues. The best I can do is this offering of my picture where you can see the full skirt, taken by a cousin’s new black-and-white camera they had just bought for the bank where he worked; one of my daughter in her dress with the final relics of the lace, and a picture of the final version for the youngest sister hanging on my closet door, passed along once again to the family hoarder.

Having passed more than its projected points of usefulness, the time has come for that morphing wedding dress to disappear into the sunset. This hoarder bids it a nostalgic goodbye.

In less than an hour from my post, I do have a correction from a sister, but not about the perfection of the marriages. Beth made her own modifications for her dress (which I should have known) and sewed a fragment of the lace into a handkerchief for her daughter's wedding.

Midnight Without a Moon

An intriguing title can pull a reader into parting with some money in the bookstore. When that title treads a theme throughout a story taking the reader back into another time, it feels like a promise kept. The title, Midnight Without a Moon and the story from Linda Williams Jackson’s debut novel, fulfills that promise. In an interview on her website, she cites conversations heard in her family followed by her own “what ifs?” as the beginning for her narrative.

Thirteen-year-old Rose Lee Carter can’t wait to get out of Mississippi and follow the Great Migration as her mother and aunt have done. Living with her sharecropping grandparents, she begins to hear adult arguments over the NAACP and voter rights. A wide spectrum from sharecroppers who want to play it safe and not muddy the waters to the activists who want to go door-to-door insisting on voter registration accurately portray the times and feelings within the community. Mixed with big issues of the adult world is Rose’s own discouraging image in the mirror of skin so dark it is like “midnight without the moon.” With tensions already at a peak, an African American boy named Emmitt Till is killed in the next village over, supposedly because he whistled at a white woman.

Linda Jackson’s ability to create multi-dimensional characters, portray an accurate historical time period, and give the spectrum of feelings and reactions to trouble in the air reminded me of Mildred Taylor’s series that includes Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

I didn’t want to close the book at the end, but Linda Jackson did skillfully what few authors do so well. She brought a satisfying close to the book while leaving a door wide open to the sequel, A Sky Full of Stars, scheduled for January 2018. I have it on my wish list for an ARC from Net Galley and am hoping that Jackson’s Carters will match the number of Taylor’s Logan family books. With any luck, I may get the sequel ahead of time. If I do, I’ll be sure to share another review.

Bookjoy!

Pat Mora coined the word “Bookjoy” and shared it with the audience at the 2017 Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival. I wished I had thought of it myself, but she gave me permission to use it. It fits an agenda important to me. Rather than giving kids rewards or points for reading as though it was something repulsive they have to be conned into doing, I would like to make the case that reading should be the reward. Bookjoy!

Pat’s word made me think of a picture in my stash sent by my daughter-in-law who heard someone reading as she did the laundry. With only a three-year-old and two-year-old in the house, she was puzzled. The picture shows the reader she discovered as Benjamin “read” the book he’d memorized because he loved it to his little brother – Wendell and Florence Minor’s If You Were a Penguin. Bookjoy!

I had a couple of methods of creating bookjoy as a parent and as a teacher. If a child got himself/herself off to bed on time without trauma, said child could leave the lamp on to read. I’ve taken many a book fallen on a child’s chest as he lost the sleep battle, put a bookmark in the place, and laid it aside for the next morning where it might be read again alongside breakfast cereal. And there was the summer night when my junior high mathematician son borrowed my book from my kiddie lit class. Finding a fellow math lover in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch kept him up all night. Bookjoy!

In a similar manner, my second-grade students who finished their work could read anything they chose for any time we were not involved in classwork. They brought their favorites, magazines, comic books, and hurried to be the first to read the treasures from my desk – Amelia Bedelia, Ramona, Stuart Little, All of a Kind Family . . . Bookjoy!

This week I had to close Midnight Without a Moon when the technician called me back for bloodwork at a routine doctor’s visit. She looked about the age to have a middle-schooler so I asked. She confirmed a daughter that age who shared her love of reading. I recommended the book and she put its name in her phone. “I’ll look for it,” she said, “I like to get her little ‘happies’ now and then.” Bookjoy!

Of course, my latest efforts are concentrated on a couple of grandsons. I just realized this second picture is also a Minor book, How to Be a Bigger Bunny. The boys have books from other authors, but Wendell and Florence are favorites with the preschool set.

I invite you to join Pat Mora and me in spreading Bookjoy!