And with October comes the Cybils Nominations! Time to start reading. And punching in my library holds. The excitement is real!
Also, everyone should go to the Cybils page and nominate their favorite recent kids' books, paying especial attention to nonfiction (elementary, middle grade, and old reader) since those are the ones I'll be reading as a Round 1 Judge. Go on! I'll wait.
In the meantime I've had some fun social times, all in the privacy of my own house. I went to two gaming events, once for the Steve Jackson game Tribes that my brother is automating, and once for a Foolscap hosting CodeNames. So far I am undefeated!
I also hauled my running shoes out from under the bed and strapped them on because I had promised myself I would try to run a 5K on my dad's birthday. He had always been a jogger until he got too frail at the end, and I think he would have been proud of me. After he got done making fun of my pace, of course. This was very exciting because I don't think I have ever run that far before, in my life.
On the cooking front, I went to the last farmer's market and bought everything that looked good. Then I ordered out for dinner. Oops. But on Friday I made a nice End of Summer pasta thing with a bunch of veggies, and then presented some blueberry muffins for dessert. My son also had a birthday, and I remember to call him to celebrate it. He had already eaten all the cookies I had sent him to commemorate the occasion, but I promised to send more as soon as his voting ballot arrived. I would have started baking but as I was going to bed on Friday I noticed that in addition to being sore from the run, I had a nagging headache and probably a sore throat. It was hard to tell what with my body not being as impressed with my running as I was. So I had to cancel seeing a friend in the park on Saturday and spent the next day lying around in bed and proclaiming that I was in isolation, which apparently meant I couldn't do housework. My cat's heartily approved as long as I kept the kibbles running.
My currently reading continues at an ungainly 30 with all the books left over from false starts on the Bingo card, plus some other poor choices. Eventually I'll start finishing things and the numbers will come down.
The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, or have read each week called "It's Monday! What Are You Reading" so I'll sign up there. Ditto for the children's lit version at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers. I will be eligible there for the next few months for sure!
Started
This Book Is Anti-Racist, Tiffany Jewel. 2020 Cybils nominee.
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi. 2020 Cybils nominee.
Marshmallow S'More Murder, Leslie Langtry. Book club book. For next month. Oops.
On the Horizon, Lois Lowry. 2020 Cybils nominee.
We Are Power, Todd Hasak-Lowy, 2020 Cybils nominee.
America At War, ed by Lee Bennett Hopkins. Pre-2020 Cybils finalist.
Fly Like a Girl, Mary Jennings Hegar. 2020 Cybils nominee.
Trash, Andy Mulligan. Book from my shelves.
The Gown, Jennifer Robson. Was supposed to be the August pick for a book club on hiatus because of the pandemic.
Completed
Clap When You Land, Elizabeth Acevedo. I'm not a huge fan of verse novels, so I found the free verse narratives distracting. But the voices and personalities of the two sisters were powerful enough that I wanted to keep reading. The girls are realistic in their flaws, but they still have the decency to treat each other with respect and to try to keep anger pointed at the correct people. This is hard because the correct person is mostly their dad, and it was his death that brought them together. The power and grace shown by the girls really puts the adults in their lives to shame, but I felt they weren't put on pedestals but were just regular people trying to do their best. The title was interesting -- apparently the Dominican Republic is another place where returnees tend to break into applause when a plane lands safely and Acevedo found this very evocative. I've heard the clapping in other places as well (Athens) but I think she really gets the emotions involved.
This Book Is Anti-Racist, Tiffany Jewel. 2020 Cybils nominee. I'm very torn on this book. I love the message and the format. The author is willing to share her history and use her experience as an example, which works well as the book builds from the personal definition and experience of race and racism to societal institutions and structures and how everyone, even kids, can work as an anti-racist. It covers the automatic centering of whiteness and European culture and works against that but still includes readers of all colors and ethnicity in the audience. So all that is great.
On the other hand, the facts behind the enthusiasm seem a bit haphazard. There seems to be a general sense of specific events but a shaky understanding of any individual example. References to the fire in the apartment fire in England are links back to early speculation instead of more substantive reports, for example. I would have wanted more solid references in the notes, and they shouldn't be hard to get. Details like saying the 1814 residential schools in New Zealand were built on the model of the 1870's schools for Native Americans in American. Wait, how? I also found the use of "folx" rather distracting, perhaps because I associate it with queerness but there was little interest in queer issues in the book.
So, great intentions, but I thought there were some missteps in execution. I'm happy to see kids reading this, but I hope there are also other options. There's lots of room!
Deadly Sexy, Beverly Jenkins. For my Cloudy book club. This was a lot of fun! I'm was a bit leery going in because I'm often disappointed in contemporary romance, but I know I like other books by Jenkins. It's a little dated (2007) in terms of technology, but I really liked the two main characters and I had a lot of fun with their super successful lives. And I enjoyed the Black culture that the book swam in, which has it's own dialogue beats and expectations, so that made it different from my own life and enhanced the fantasy aspect of the best romances. But I bet people who don't get the distance also enjoy this. The bad guy is bad to the bone, but the good guys are complex and adult and have mature reasons to hesitate over parts of their romance, and the family around them are fun and I hope I can chase down more books chronically their own adventures.
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi. 2020 Cybils nominee. Having read the adult version of this with a book club, where we paused to poke at each chapter, I went into this book already trusting the information. As the cover says, this is a "remix" of Ibram X Kendi's Stamped From the Beginning, and it's a great effort. Aimed at a younger crowd, it sheds much of the structure of Kendi's work. There's no attempt to tie each section to an individual; instead Reynolds addresses the reader directly as he marches through the timeline, comparing the history related to things the reader would recognize. Despite claiming not to be a history book, Reynolds carries us along the same sweep that Kendi laid out but it's not the history of wars but of racism so there's justification for the claim. Just as Kendi does, but without the dry academic tone Reynolds defines what is meant by racist, assimilationist, and anti-racist, and uses these terms to describe people and events throughout the book. There's no question that antiracism is the only humane position.
I like how this book is written looking directly at Black kids, expecting the reader to recognize racist attacks both gross and small. It doesn't berate any White person reading the book, but the default assumption of the reader is someone who looks like the authors and shares their experiences with racism. Most history books take the opposite position, centering a reader who sees this from the outside. And I like how much of the book is reserved for references, both notes for the chapter and suggestions for further reading. Since I listened to the audio of [book:Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America|25898216] I couldn't browse that, so I was doubly happy to see this here.
This is a supremely readable history of racism in America that combines a fresh voice with solid historical sources. A great team-up.
On the Horizon, Lois Lowry. 2020 Cybils nominee. Poetry and history work together really well! This is a powerful book about WWII, war, the interconnection of people and events, and the common humanity that binds us all together. Working from an old family movie that shows Lowry playing on the beach as the ship Arizona sails by, and realizing that the movie was taken shortly before it sank in World War II, Lowry starts her set of poems with insightful pieces about innocence and loss, moving from the image on the horizon to details about the people lost or injured on the ship.
Then she moves to the end of the war, with the dropping of Fat Boy on Hiroshima and images of people, mostly children, caught up in that tragedy. And then she ends with poems about her memories of post-war Japan as a child, mixed up with the lives of Japanese people including Allen Say, who she almost met when her child self watched a school yard that included his child self watching the little blond girl on the bicycle. It really works to place both the history of WWII in context and also give space to think about the human loss involved in all war. It's a great way to understand history from all perspectives, and how actions have consequences that ripple beyond their first impact point.
I read the ebook but I want to see the hardback to get a better sense of how the images and poems line up.
Your Own, Sylvia, Stephanie Hemphill. 2007 Cybils poetry finalist. This is a great concept -- a history of a poet using poems about her life, based on her own poems. Sadly, I missed a lot of the resonances because I've barely read any of Plath's work. This is a huge gap in my English major background, and I've always felt bad about it. So my enjoyment was reduced by my inner disapproving finger as I read through these. But I think it's a great idea to encourage teens to seek out the real poems and it works as both a poetic lens and a biography. Good job, Cybils judges, finding me interesting books that would have gone completely under my radar.
This Promise of Change, Jo Ann Allen Boyce. 2019 Cybils poetry finalist. A history of the integration of a Tennessee high school, one of the early schools to comply with Brown vs. Board of Education, written as a poetic memoir by one of the students involved and a co-author. In Tennessee the official attitude was: We hate it, but we follow the law, but grudging acceptance moved to more vicious attacks under the influence of racist agitators than came from outside. Boyce remembers the initial hope and nervousness leaning towards optimism, with a variety of poetic forms setting the stage with descriptions of her childhood and the understanding between the races, how Whites tolerated Blacks as long as the social codes were followed. White neighbors in the mostly Black neighborhood were happy to borrow sugar from Black families, but didn't expect to see their kids in classes with non-White peers.
At first wary tolerance seems to be the norm -- Black children aren't accepted into sports teams or clubs, but learning goes on and the students support their principal. But then, urged on by outside agitators, things get grimmer and then more violent, both inside and outside the school State troops were sent in to protect the kids. I learned all this from the book -- I hadn't heard of this episode of history, and in the backmatter the authors consider why the common narrative of school desegregation skips over Clinton and conclude that the issues were more complex there. Boyce writes about both the events and the sense of betrayal when neighbors are willingly led into such hatred and ugliness, going so far as to attack a White minister who escorts the kids to school.
This memoir is told in verse, and it works really well to convey the emotions and situations Jo Ann remembers from that semester she spent at her local school (instead of the segregated one she'd been bussed to for the first years of high school). This is a great history book.
Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan. 10/12 discs. All three are settling into the real world with its collection of good and awful people.
Uncompromising Honor 32/??, David Weber. Baen Free Radio Hour's serial. The battle continues. The are about to make Honor mad, and feeling bad about it won't pacify her, I'm guessing.
Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling. I'm listening to celebrities read this to me.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James. Sword and Laser pick. I refuse to give up! Not just because I'm stubborn but also because it's a good book.
A Long Time Until Now, Michael Z Williamson. Finally a battle scene. Williamson is back to his strengths.
Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Humanity is not doing well on its own either.
Slippery Creatures, K J Charles. Complications with the hot stranger!
Jubilee, Margaret Walker. Replaced pick for debut over 50 in SPL Summer bingo. Making progress.
A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, Ellen Oh (editor). Replaced pick for retellings in SPL Summer bingo. Enjoyed a few more stories.
The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein, Farah Mendelson. Hugo finalist. Overview of his career is done.
Skylark and Wallpaper, Anne O'Brien Carelli. Cybils finalist. I've finally met Skylark!
The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton. I suspect that by reading it among so many other books I have doomed any hope I had of noticing clues to the mystery. But I'll enjoy the characters and setting anyway.
Someplace To Be Flying, Charles de Lint. One of the books I've been claiming to read, and here I am, reading it!
The Bone Witch, Rin Chupeco. For KCLS 10 to Try -- recommended by staff. I want to finish this challenge!
By Immortal Honor Bound, Danielle Ancona. An ARC from the author! I found a typo so I have to restrain myself from telling her, since she probably already found it.
The Bourne Supremacy, Robert Ludlum. This seems like a violent book.
We'll Always Have Parrots, Donna Andrews. Meg is great.
Picture Books / Short Stories:
Αλφαβητάρι με γλωσσοδέτες, Eugene Trivizas. I finished! This book had pages made out of paper, and paragraphs (short paragraphs, but they had multiple sentences). I am clearly clawing back my proficiency in Greek, almost back to my heights of achieving almost the ability of a 3 year old child.
The Undefeated, Kwame Alexander. 2019 Cybils picture book finalist (reread). I got a copy of the paper version because picture books don't seem real to me on screen. The illustrations are even more glowing on paper, and I enjoyed browsing the end notes and flipping back to look at the pictures with their names and details more clearly in my mind.
Saturdays Are For Stella, Candy Wellins. Happiness, grief, and love are the themes of this book. I liked how George's glasses chart his emotions, from the days playing with his grandmother, to his grief at her death, to his joy sharing the games with his sister. And I liked the portrayal of family as a solid resource that both gives solace and that requires effort. I tossed this to the Cybils team as my picture book pick this year.
Yusra Swims, Julie Abery. 2020 Cybils nominee. In 2016, a group of athletes competed in the Rio de Janeiro Olympic games on the Team of Refugees, giving displaced athletes a chance to perform dispite the chaos in their home countries. On of these athletes was Syrian Yusra Mardini, and this picture book documents in short, evocative rhymes her journey from swimming at home in Syria to her escape from the war and chance to train again in Germany. The pictures and words tell the story simply but powerfully, with details like the sinking glasses showing the dangers she faced along the way. I liked learning about this (I had no idea!) and it's presented at a kids' eye level with some endnote material for the reader.
America At War, (ed) Lee Bennett Hopkins. Previous Cybils finalist. I like this kind of anthology, although I'm much more aware this year that I'm not seeing much non-White representation, even in the Civil War section.
Palate Cleansers
These books I'm barely reading; I use them as palate cleansers between books I'm actually reading.
The Educated Child, William Bennett.
Give All to Love, Patricia Veryan.
Wool, Hugh Howey. What has she found? And who back home will know?
The Wind Gourd of La'amaomao, Moses Nakuima.
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho. Shenanigans at the girl school.
Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca. Different types of diversity and how they affect reading instruction.
Reading Challenges
- Cybils 2017. None. I just need 3 YA books to be done. But I'm reading all the short books from all the years.
- Cybils 2018. Working on Skylark and Wallcreeper.
- Cybils 2019. Finished This Promise of Change.
- Early Cybils: Read some poetry.
- Reading My Library. Haven't started the next one yet.
- Ten to Try. At 9/10. I'm working on the last one #10.
- Where Am I Reading: 26/51 states. 25 Countries. .
- Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. I'm done.
I'm putting this at the end because I suspect it's complete fiction, but seeing as I've just grown my currently-reading pile by a LOT and I'm days away from diving into Cybils reading, I feel I should attempt some structure.
I am reading:
- Book I own: Trash . Up Next: Return of the Thief (I hope!)
- Library Book: The Gown. Up Next: Can You Hear the Trees Talking
- Ebook I own: Slippery Creatures. Up Next: One Man
- Library Ebook: Skylark and Wallcreeper. Up Next: an extra. Maybe We'll Always Have Parrots
- Book Club Book: Merry Wrath. Up Next: Paladin's Grace
- Tuesday Book Club Book: from the archives: Somewhere to Be Flying. Next: ??
- Review Book: By Immortal Honor Bound. Up Next: I think this category will switch to 2020 Cybils.
- Hugo Book: The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein. Next: Joanna Russ.
2 comments:
I hope you feeling better. I meant to bake banana muffins this afternoon but then I forgot until I read about your blueberry muffins. Check out what I read last week.
I love the idea of running a 5K on your dad's birthday! I have been wanting to read On the Horizon and I hope I won't be on the wait list for too long. Sounds like you're already enjoying your CYBILS reads. Thanks for the shares, Beth!
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