Book Review: Fairy Tale Feasts

I stumbled on this book at the library last week: Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook for Young Readers and Eaters. What a fantastic book! The premise is to pair a recipe with a fairy tale or folk story. For example, "The Little Mermaid" is followed by recipes for Seaweed Stuffed Shells and Tomato Sauce; "Hodja Borrows a Pot" is followed by Hodja's Kebabs and Cucumber Yogurt Salad. This week Laurel made--completely by herself!--Runaway Pancakes (to go along with the story by the same title) and fruit salad (to go with "The Fox and the Grapes"). Next on our list are Cinderella's pumpkin tartlets and sweet chocolate mousse from "Seven Hills of Sweet."

I love that nearly every page in this book contains an extensive sidebar giving further information about both the story itself and the foods. In the recipe Perfect Porridge, for example (which follows "The Magic Pot of Porridge"), the sidebar lists such facts as "In the old days, porridge was eaten by a wooden spoon, because..." and "Scottish porridge makers use a 'spurtle...'" etc. etc. Really fun book!

Book Review: Hitty: Her First Hundred Years

July 10, 2006


We're finally done! I've been reading this book by Rachel Field outloud to Laurel for months. I can't even remember when we started; it's been so long! We kept losing it, finding it, reading other books in between....but at long last, we're finished.

Laurel says, "I didn't love this book, but it was really good." Hitty traces the life of a handmade wooden doll through 100 years and a dozen or more owners. She travels from Maine to India back to the U.S. and all sorts of places in between. The book presents, through Hitty's eyes, a unique look at culture through several generations. I think much of it was a little bit above Laurel's head (she's 8). I think the book is better suited for 10-12 year olds. This would be great to incorporate into an American History study, 1800s-1930s.

July 9, 2006: Book Review: The Solace of Leaving Early

This second book by Haven Kimmel is just fabulous. (If you haven't read her first, the memoir A Girl Called Zippy, run to the nearest library and check it out immediately!) The story features two ridiculously obsessive and much too philosophical characters who are forced together because of a small-town crisis. I absolutely despised the annoying character of Langston for much of the book, but she is ultimately redeemed in her role as foster mother to two little girls. A heavy read at times--and much flawed religious thought--but well worth it.

Book Reviews: Ladies #1 Detective Series

June 23, 2006

I have finished three more books in The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Series by Alexander McCall Smith, and I have to say I just love these books. I asked a friend of mine recently if she'd read these, and she said she'd read the first one and it was "Cute." Wow. That had to have been a surface-level read, because this series is so far from being "cute." There is wonderful language in each novel, and this beautiful river of tradition flows through every chapter. To only read this as a plot book--a fun summer beach novel--is a shame. So much is missed by skimming. Mma Ramotswe is a wonderful character, and Botswana comes to life under McCall's Smith poetic writing. Read it as "cute" if you wish, or read deeper and be mesmerized by the theme of people, family, and country.

Book Review: Brave Enemies

June 10, 2006

I loved this southern novel by Robert Morgan, also the author of Gap Creek, another of my favorites. This is a fascinating story of a young mountain woman during the Revolutionary War who, after a series of extremely unfortunate events, decides that her best chance for survival is to pretend she’s a boy. What happens in the hills between the rebels and the loyalists and those suspected of being a spy or seditionist on either side is pitiful and shocking. Ultimately Josie unintentionally joins the militia and fights at the fateful battle at Cowpens in January 1781. This is a fast-paced read. I’m glad to know Robert Morgan has several other novels I’ve not yet read!

Book Review: Monster

June 9, 2006

Frank Peretti's Monster is a good summer read. I remember Peretti's other novels as being much more visual and spiritually impacting. This novel is just a satisfying "Sasquatch" read, for those of us who have been fascinated with Sasquatch since watching the Six Million Dollar Man face off with the critter. This book goes on my list as a good plot read, but the writing itself is lacking and the dialogue is stilted. He also got quite preachy at several points; in fact, my eyes started glazing over at times. That said, if you've always had an interest in Bigfoot, this is a fun read.

Book Review: Storming Heaven

I’ve experienced the “you can’t judge a book by its cover” syndrome. Since I am currently blacklisted at the library until I pay my rather hefty fees, my friends have been supplying me with books. Amy loaned me Denise Giardina’s Storming Heaven. When I looked at it, I thought: “A romance novel? How weird for Amy!” The cover looked all sunset-like and pink. (It wasn’t until I was a quarter of the way through the book that I realized this cover was actually a rendering of a coal-mining town.) Au contraire—this is not a fluffy book in any fashion. In fact, it reminds me a lot of one of my all-time favorite books, Richard Llewelynn’s How Green Was My Valley. Storming Heaven is the story of people whose way of life was altered forever when the coal company came in, taking their land and robbing the mountains—people who fought back ultimately by trying to organize a union. It is just hard to even comprehend the events that took place on Blair Mountain in West Virginia, when the U.S. Army was called into “disband” the pro-union miners with guns, bombs, and poison gas.

Reading this book is for me like going to the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge and reading about the families whose farms were ripped out from under them when the Secret City was built. It’s just all so heartbreaking. Mountains stripped; old home places tossed aside like scraps of lumber; family farms buried under asphalt.