The Way the Crow Flies

This happens at least a couple of times each year: I severely chastise myself for spending days--in this case 10 days--reading a terrible book. This book by Ann-Marie Macdonald was just such a book for me. Nevermind that amazon.com reviewers consistently give it a 5-star rating; I thought it was dreadful. Macdonald's writing is fine; she's a good storyteller. But the subject matters are horrible (child murder, abuse, war crimes, etc.) and kept getting worse and worse throughout the novel. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

I thought I loved her book Fall on Your Knees, but when I looked back to read my review, I saw that I also likened this previous novel to a train wreck! I hope I remember, next time I see an Ann-marie Macdonald novel that gets a good review, that we simply don't mesh.

Sign of the Beaver

My kids love The Sign of the Beaver almost as much as The Witch of Blackbird Pond, both by Elizabeth George Speare. This book fits in perfectly with any study of the colonial period in American History. The story centers on Matt, a 12-year-old boy who must fend for himself for a few months in the Maine wilderness while his father returns to bring back the rest of the family. Actually, Matt does not have to fend for himself; if the Indian boy Attean and his grandfather hadn't helped, Matt surely would have died in the wilderness. With the help of Attean and Saknis, Matt learns survival skills and gains an appreciation and love for the Indians.

After reading the book aloud, we watched the movie by the same name. While the movie was very enjoyable, there was much deviation from the book. My kids enjoy this and expect it, however, and we always have a good discussion after watching the movie version of a book.

I read this to my 1st and 5th graders, and both loved it. My 5th grader could certainly have read this on her own, but it is a great book to share.

Booking Through Thursday: Vocabulary

April 17, 2008

This week's Booking Through Thursday asks:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response at the link above to BTT.

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To answer this question, I'll have to tell a story from the Year I Homeschooled Myself:

So about six weeks into my six-month stay in Germany during junior year of high school (my father was a Fulbright Scholar), I finished all the work that had been assigned to me for the year. The next 5 months I/we did three things extensively: traveled, shopped, and read. We lived near an army base in Giessen, W. Germany (which it was called back then, remember?), and for some reason they let us use the base library (perhaps because my father was a veteran?). We all (my mother, father, and I) checked out stacks of books each week.

Well, being finished with my public school work for the year, I had to come up with my own educational plan, and part of this involved Vocabulary. I had a notebook. I had books. And I had words that I didn't know. So I began my Vocabulary Study, which involved keeping a notebook by my side while I read, writing down all words I didn't know, and then writing the definition. Well, and then I also, of course, needed to use those words in my everyday speech in order to truly understand them, right?

That worked fine with my parents, who could appreciate and share my love of words. But that doesn't work so well when you are writing letters to your friends back home in the States, who are trapped in their little world of steel lockers, fluorescent lights, and football games while you are out visiting the Louvre. I distinctly remember one "friend," Anne, giving me the news by airmail (gleefully, I might add), that my boyfriend-before-I-left had asked some other girl to the fall dance, and they were madly in love. (She wasn't a very good friend ever, which makes me wonder: why was I writing to her?) Well, I can't remember the whole letter, but I do remember a line that included: "I don't care that they are going to the dance together. He is minutiae to me now."

Minutiae. It took me years to live that one down. Because of course, Anne had to share that letter with everyone in school. Even years later during a college Christmas break, when this boy and I sat talking, he asked me: "Did you really say I was minutiae?"

Is there a moral to this story? Probably not. But I do know that I tempered my vocabulary usage after that incident, always conscious of my audience. Fortunately I married a man who loves words, too, and so the big red dictionary is always accessible.

The Five Love Languages of Teenagers

This is one of the books I've been meaning to read for years. My first teen is nearly 15 and I've finally gotten around to reading it. I have a great deal of appreciation for the five love languages as presented by Dr. Gary Chapman. Randy and I have explored this from both a marriage point-of-view and from a parenting point-of-view as we've taught a couple of parenting classes at our church in the past few years. I think the whole concept if phenomenal and can effect a positive life-change in relationships of all sorts, from marriage to parenting to friendships.

Being quite familiar with the five love languages, I admit I skimmed a great deal; however, I'd recommend taking notes and taking your time on this if the concept is relatively new. I am surprised that Dr. Chapman doesn't include a "test" to see what your/your teen's love language is. I found several online. This one and this one are abbreviated on-line versions of the test. At this site, you can download the extended tests, here called TouchPoints of Love (one is for adults and one for children). If you've never done this with your spouse or your kids, I'd highly recommend it. You may confirm what you always knew ("My son loves gifts!") or you might be surprised. I always assumed my primary love language was words of encouragement, but I was wrong.

On a personal level, I alternated between two main emotions while reading this book: sheer terror at the awesome responsibility of being a parent and parenting a teen (with more to come), and relief/consolation that we seem to be doing a lot of things OK. Basically, I went between, "Oh no! We messed up!" and "Oh good! We do that!" I have made it a habit to read parenting books once-a-year or so. Even if much of the information is repetitive, just the reminders serve us well and force me reevaluate how I'm parenting. I think this is about the best book for parenting teens that I've read. Come to think about it, I think it's the only one; but I've read a lot of parenting books and this ranks right up there with the best!

Book Review: Stone Diaries

And the question arises: what is the story of a life? A chronicle of fact or a skillfully wrought impression? The bringing together of what she fears? Or the adding up of what has been off-handedly revealed, those tiny allotted increments of knowledge?

Daisy Goodwill is a woman "arbitrarily named" and "accidentally misplaced." This novel is the chronicle of her life, but in the telling, many life stories must be revealed. Stories that precede Daisy's and are touched by Daisy's. All the characters are given their own rich lives, and sometimes Daisy is just a meeting place.

Carol Shields is a strikingly perceptive writer. I found myself reading certain passages again and again. Like this one: "How did this happen? She's caught in a version of her life, pinned there." And this one I really loved because it so sums up childhood through 30 for me personally: "She is overwhelmed at times-- and this is one of those times -- with the wish to ask forgiveness." (Boy, am I glad I've been released from that. Mercy and grace are good things.)

The novel starts with Daisy's mother and father and travels through the lives of them, and her neighbors, children, grandchildren, and a cast of other characters. This sounds like a lot of people to keep track of, but it's not at all confusing. While I didn't necessarily love all the characters themselves, I loved the book and its bittersweet telling of a life. (This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995, back when I was in the oblivion of early motherhood.)

Book Review: Year of Wonders

The year is 1666, and the plague suddenly and unexpectedly infects the tiny village where Anna Frith, a young widow, lives with her two babies. Anna works as a maid for the minister, Michael Mompellion, and his gentle wife, Elinor, who teaches Anna to read. When the plague arrives in the village, Mompellion insists that the villagers close themselves off from the rest of the world so as to avoid spreading the plague. Only the village's noble family leaves; the rest of the community waits to see who the plague will take and who it will leave. The year that follows is one of constant death, horror, chaos, religious fervor, witch-hunting, heartbreak, and survival. In the midst of the horror, Anna turns from an illiterate servant to a skilled healer.

Geraldine Brooks has woven a superb tale in this novel, which is based on the true story of Eyam, a mountain village in England. I've always been fascinated by stories of the bubonic plague, and this one takes the reader right into the midst of it. Brooks' writing style is lyrical and haunting. The characters are richly developed, and the novel is vivid in its description of humanity and our ability to cope. While it's only January, I imagine this novel will make my 2008 Top Ten list.

Book Review: Peony in Love

"I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn, only regret."

For Peony, on the cusp of her 16th birthday when she''ll leave girlhood behind and be married, the words from the Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion feed her poetic spirit and her longing for love. In celebration of her birthday, her father arranges a special 3-night performance of the opera, during which Peony sneaks away and meets a young man in the garden. They fall madly in love but both are betrothed and realize they will be condemned to a life of misery without one another.

And the rest, I can't tell.

If you are going to read Lisa See's Peony in Love, you'll need to be prepared to suspend your disbelief for much of the novel. See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was one of my Top 10 Books for 2007, not only because she tells a riveting story with vivid characters, but because of her descriptions of life for Chinese women in seventeenth and eighteenth century China. Like this:

"Another lush and warm night. In our women's chambers we enjoyed a banquet that included beans dried in spring sunshine and then steamed with dried tangerine peel, and red seventh-month crabs, which were the size of hen's eggs and available from our local waters only at this time of year. Special ingredients were added to the married women's dishes to help them get pregnant, while others were left out for those who were or might be with child: rabbit meat, because everyone knows it can cause a hare lip, and lamb, because it can cause a baby to be born ill. But I wasn't hungry."

See's novels are positively packed with such details, and I thoroughly enjoy her writing style. This one wasn't as fantastic as Snow Flower, but it was a great read.