Exciting Links To Read

I Found My Biological Parents, And Wish I Hadn't

I am a big fan of Lisa Lutz, and find her confession of distance towards her families interesting, seeing as her greatest success has come from a series of novels (The Spellman Files) about a family that is entirely too far up into each others' business sometimes.

Her Magic Touch by Sable Hunter

So over at Dear Author, they have a guest reviewer who has found a series of the worst self-published erotic romance novels of all times and is reading them and having her head explode. The misogyny. Tebow Ranch. Ridiculous tropes and scary cliches. The only reason to read is to write stunning critiques, and the only reason to read the reviews is to laugh your ass off.

All my friends/family with children, why are your children not old enough for this? Penguin Threads, which is a line of Penguin Classics with beautiful embroidery-inspired cover, would make a great gift. Oh well, these classics adapted for board books might have to do.

Meanwhile, The Billfold's Logan Sachon realized buying things for babies is kid of dumb.
. The auntie who has started to bring her little kin their tribute in the form of library books agrees.

Miranda's Kittens--John set up a webcam to show off his foster kittens, and now they are INTERNET STARS. Maybe Peaches would like to watch this, but I think she feels cuddling kittens is better.

McSweeney's Internet Failure Map.. I am about 2/3rds there! Wherever that is!

The Billfold takes on the risk of saving no money with backyard chickens And not just that, but now you have to find humane homes for retired chickens? Ugh, people--if you can home farm Novella Carpenter style, don't do it at all.

Look! A recipe for DIY Biore strips!

Tight Times--Barbara Shook Hazan

In honor of Our Upcoming Economic Collapse, I wanted to draw some attention to this book from 1979. It's got a good little applicable message --the 5 year old narrator tries to understand why his mom and dad are so tense, he can't have a dog, and why he has to eat lima bean things as the family pulls together when they're broke.

What really makes the book is Trina Schart Hyman's pencil drawings and how they convey the delightful 1970's-ness of the story. They're done in b&w with nice detail, and they really do look like what I remember my childhood seeming.

I mean, on the first page Mommy's on the bed in her bra sewing a button on her blouse before going to work, and Mommy's got little rolls of fat. Mommy also has huge glasses. After Daddy loses his job, "Then Daddy fixed us both special drinks" and it's obvious that Daddy's drink comes from the economy sized bottle vodka behind him. Shades of Sesame Street, Mommy and Daddy send their boy out onto the stoop to wait while they talk about their troubles. When's the last time you saw any of this in media aimed at kids?

A good book for kids, but one that GenX might also get a kick out of.

Blitzkreig Book Reviews: The Children Are Manipulative Little Shits Edition

A quick round up of some cool books I've turned up in the course of the weeding project. I've got two presentations to set up based on the books I've encountered--one for good books for book report and another titled "I Read This When I Was Young!" with selections from all the staff.

Junie B. Jones Loves Handsome Warren by Barbara Park--I don't get the parents who are up in arms about Junie's boisterous nature and poor grammar. It's all good fun, people. Even little kids deserve some escapism in their reading. However, check out the smoothest piece of friendship manipulation since Frances got her tea set back from Thelma as Junie convinces Lucille that mutual crush Warren could not possibly be interested in a clod like her. Miss M. and I both like Junie as we were bouncy, goofy girls when we were young.

Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Koingsburg--Apparently, when you're the new kid in town it's the best time to be all mysterious and find someone to bend to your will. Elizabeth is a good girl who encounters Jennifer, new girl who claims witchcraft powers. She's certainly mysterious and spooky, and she offers to train Elizabeth, thereby setting up a fun series of challenges as she leads the credulous Elizabeth through hell. Elizabeth is slow on the uptake, but when she finally figures shit out and calls Jennifer on her bullshit, it is great. And then makes her be her friend.

The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald--I loved this series as a kid, and I was laughing out loud rereading this at the Diner on Clifton. I got involved in a huge discussion with an old lady about it. J.D. is the youngest boy in a Catholic family in Mormon dominated Utah. His older brother Tom, aka The Great Brain, is the sort of kid we call pure Irish in my family--always got the angles covered, living a bit outside the rules, looking to make a buck. He's the craftiest kid in town but doesn't do too bad by others as he embarks on his schemes, which range from selling chances to check out the first indoor toilet in town, giving the crippled kid his self-esteem back and the ability to do all his chores, and saving kids lost in a cave. Tom's hero status is always tarnished by his venial nature and his willingness to exploit the easily duped J.D. Ha! I love a bad boy!

Blitzkreig Book Reviews: The Please Don't Yell At Me Edition

One thing that fascinates me about the children's collection is how many books we have on emotions and dealing with them. And sensitive family issues. We did not have these when I was little.

Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry by Bebe Moore Campbell, illustrated by E.B. Lewis--Oh, this book is sad and upsetting. When you have to hide from Mommy and call Grandma because while you went school Mommy cycled through her mania and is now screaming and picking fights with the neighbors, and you have to stay out of her way and take care of yourself, it is not good or healthy no matter how Bebe Moore Campbell tries to put a positive spin on it. It's just wrong, but no one will save you.

Why Are You So Sad? by Beth Andrews, illustrated by Nicole Wong--This is a nonfiction coping book about what to do and how to handle it when your parent is depressed. It goes through all the symptoms, worse case scenarios and offers solid tips and strategies for coping. An excellent resource for parents and children in only 32 pages.

Book News

Okay, so I was reading Publisher's Weekly at the Ref Desk last month and saw that the American Girls series has a new character--Julie, a girl growing up in 1976 San Franscisco. I about died and felt so very old that the 1970's are now historical, even thought I was a toddler in 1976. Miss G., who's a bit older than me, was charmed and wants the whole set. She has the Little Miss G(s) to think of.

Logically, I know I'm in my thirties, but I so do not want to believe it.

The JT Leroy scandal ends and we should all feel so very sorry for its fucked up perpetrator. Um, no. It was fraud--it's one thing to have an alias and a writing persona, but it crosses the line when the character of the author and the spectacle she creates and uses to sell the books eclipses the quality of the writing.

Slate's take on the Alvarez book is much like mine, but a little harsher.

And no one reads. The few of us who do read, read a lot, in order to make up for the rest of you. Isn't there a WPA-like program for that, subsidizing us great readers so we can benefit the rest of you?

Carlotta's Kittens And The Club of Mysteries--Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

I am so glad I pulled this off the shelves down in Children's. It's a wonderful book. I've been mostly disappointed in our offerings--and face it, everyone just wants the crack cocaine of internet games, WWE, Disney Channel, Bratz, et al. But still, it's hard to push books on them when what we've got are dull series books for easy readers. If Cam Jansen were my kid, I'd beat the photographic memory right out of her--she's so annoying.

This is a wonderful chapter book, featuring excellent characterization and an easy to follow storyline, and elegant prose. It's a good bedtime read aloud book.

The Club of Mysteries is a group of cats lead by the old, battered tom Texas Jake and composed of brothers Marco (the smart one) and Polo (the dumb one), Boots, and Elvis. And the beautiful calico Carlotta, who has gone off to have kittens. The boy cats are awaiting her return, because they all want to play daddy to Carlotta's kittens and win her favor. But the club realizes they have a very serious task at hand helping to raise these little kittens and keep them safe from all the dangers of the neighborhood.

(Okay, let's remember we're reading a children's book about anthropomorphized animals, and forget what activities lead to kittens and what Carlotta did. There's no neck biting and mounting in this book! The Club of Mysteries is composed of perfect gentleman bachelor kitties.)

Naylor's strengths are her characterization--she really gets the cat viewpoint of the world down--and gentle humor. I much enjoyed this soothing read.

Emma Tupper's Diary--Peter Dickinson

This is one of my favorite childhood books. I was thrilled to find the same edition I read as a kid in a thrift several years ago, and it is one of the keepers from the huge book stash. Published in 1971, its themes and plot have come around again, and a smart production company should scoop it up for a film adaptation. Update the story slightly, transplant the setting to the Finger Lakes, Michigan's Upper Peninsula or Minnesota, and you will have a hit.

Emma Tupper has grown up in Botswana, and now at 14 she's a student at an English boarding school. Her father has arranged for her to spend her summer break with distant cousins she's never met, the McAndrews, in the Scottish Highlands at the ancestral family home. Emma's goal is have an interesting summer that she can chronicle it in her diary and win a school prize (I was a student at an American boarding school, and I can tell you that even in the 1990s we did weird shit like this). Emma's got a cool intellectual independence that makes her a great foil for the McAndrews--imperious and bossy Andy, removed Finn, and rebellious Roddy. The McAndrews start the summer on a low note with news that the family liniment company is failing, and it seems like it will be a quiet summer of sailing, sun and nature walks when inspiration hits.

Since the loch is said to hold a monster like Loch Ness, and since there's a Victorian era mini submarine in the shed that would be usable with a little rehab, and since Andy got dumped by a tv journalist who didn't think he was all that grand, and since they have nothing else pressing to do, why not concoct a con by decking the sub out as a sea creature, inviting the journalist up, and see what happens? And that's what they do. And it would have been great fun, had Roddy and Emma not taken the sub out at night and discovered that there is something special about the loch.

So we have an awesomely outrageous adventure tale with ecological themes, and very snarky British humor. I love this bit where Andy instructs Emma on the family history:

"You see, Cousin Emma," said Andy, "there was this Russian prince who fell in love with your grandmother when he spied her from afar at a Highland Gathering at Balmoral. Instantly, he insinuated himself into the bosom of the family, disguised as a --"

"Labrador retriever?" said Emma, seizing the moment when Andy was slopping a spoonful of fruit into his mouth. She had noticed all the McAndrews using the pauses of eating as a method of thinking up their next lie without seeming to hesitate.

"Shut up. You have no soul, you beastly Saxon. Romance means nothing to you. He disguised himself as a second under-footman, so great was the sacrifice he was prepared to make for love. He paid secret court to your grandmother, poor foolish girl. Her heart was won. The night was fixed. The carriage was ordered, with muffled wheels. A sloop waited at Mallaig, ready to whisk them back to the splendors of the imperial Court. With a beating heart she waited at her window. Came the rattle of hooves on the bridge. Head high, she walked into the dark and climbed up beside the driver. One kiss, then the whip cracked and they were away."

"How super," sighed Miss Newcombe.

"It wasn't as super as all that, actually. Her clock was fast and she'd climbed up beside a travelling trouser salesman called Tupper, who hadn't been having much luck in the Highlands because of our preference for the kilt. He only stopped to ask the way, but after that kiss--"

Andy made the mistake of stopping for another mouthful. Emma, who normally lived in a world of facts, suddenly felt that she could do it too.

"Let me guess the rest," she said. "Everybody in the house rushed wildly in pursuit and was never seen again. The Russian had gone away to prepare for the elopement, and now when he arrived at the right time he found the house empty. So he just waited. He waited for years, and in the end he married and had two boys and a girl. He's still alive, but he has to pretend to be interested in beetles so he can go away to Geneva when anybody comes who might notice his Russian accent. Why don't you all go back to Moscow and claim the throne of the Czars? I'm going to have a double helping of my cream. Will you please tell me the real story some time, Mary?" (54-55)