The Rains Have Come

And with October comes the Cybils Nominations! Time to start reading. And punching in my library holds. The excitement is real!

This is the last week to nominate your favorite kidlit for the Cybils awards! I think it ends on Oct 15. Go to the Cybils page and nominate your favorite recent kids' books, paying special 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.

There were several rounds of online gaming, an aborted walk in the park because of rain (and general laziness from both participants) and an online book club to discuss the Merry Wrath series (consensus: Bonkers but fun and good pandemic reading because the ex-spy is such a disaster as an adult but is good hearted about it.) 

I only cooked one thing: egg and potatoes. The recipe from the New York times called it some Spanish name and wanted me to fry the potatoes and onions and then do elaborate flippy moves with the egg, but that seemed like a lot of work so I sauteed them with garlic, added the eggs, through in some cheddar cheese because why not?, stirred for a while and then finished it off under the broiler. Served with salsa. My niece showed up for her last home cooked meal, which was a shame since she doesn't like baked eggs and every other meal I've cooked in the past three weeks I made with her in mind but she missed them all. But I liked it. And they were farmers' market potatoes from last week so I felt virtuous.

My currently reading continues at an ungainly 28 with all the books left over from false starts on the Bingo card, plus some other poor choices, and now all my Cybils reading. Eventually I'll start finishing things and the numbers will come down. This week I hope to finish something from the Bingo card, maybe Jubilee.

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

Can You Hear the Trees Talking?, Peter Wohlleben. Cybils finalist. 

Honeybee, Naomi Shihab Nye. Cybils finalist.

Free Lunch, Rex Ogle. Cybils finalist.

You Call This Democracy, Elizabeth Rusch. 2020 Cybils nominee.

All Boys Aren't Blue, George M. Johnson. 2020 Cybils nominee.

Completed

Fly Like a Girl, Mary Jennings Hegar. 2020 Cybils nominee. Very engaging memoir of a short military career. Hegar starts with her understanding of her father's abuse, then moves through her athletic, competitive youth and into her military career. She's a gung-ho enlistee, who loves the service except for the prejudiced people who dismiss her for being a woman. This is a thread throughout her life -- most people are willing to accept her on her merits, but some men are jerks, starting with her abusive biological dad, moving onto to a lying teacher who pretends to encourage her but fakes a non-recommendation because he doesn't think women belong in the armed forces, and then on to some superiors and colleagues who belittle her accomplishments, and even a few actual abusers. Hegar doesn't generalize these people, but she also doesn't pretend they don't have influence; when decided whether to reenlist she is at a banquet in honor of top performers and she sees that another honoree is an officer known to have committed sexual assaults. She leaves. 

The combat chapters are exciting. The descriptions of the different bases with their own cultures and rhythms bring them to life, and the story of the final flight in which their helicopter is forced to land and there's a suspenseful air rescue where the rules of combat let her get some shots in was gripping reading. The final chapters where she's out of the army and becomes part of a legal battle to make the army safer for women was a fitting conclusion to her military career. I liked the pace and the story arc and found her voice a strong one.

We Are Power, Todd Hasak-Lowy. 2020 Cybils nominee. This is a history of nonviolent resistance movements, from Gandhi (both in South Africa and then in India) and the American women's suffrage movement through the civil rights movement in the US and the Czechoslovakian rebellion with Havel. It ends with Greta Thomberg's work around climate change, but we don't know the results of that yet. I liked how the book trusted the readers with the philosophy behind the movements, teaching words like satyagraha, and also was frank about the costs of their ideas. People are jailed, beaten, and sometimes killed, and the result is rarely a clean victory but a compromise that moves the status quo closer to the desired outcome. I thought it was a good clear book.

Marshmallow S'More Murder, Leslie Langtry. Book club book. It turned out that the entire book club read this book (the series was our topic for next month) and most of us didn't read this month's book, so we officially swapped the dates. The Merry Worth mystery series is a good pandemic read -- bonkers enough to be amusing, but not so much that you want to throw the book down. Our hero wanders about  haplessly trying to be an adult in front of her girl scout troop (they are not fooled) but is able to take down any crime lords that come for their cookies. There's a escaped vulture the girls want as a mascot, and fellow chaperone who has her own agenda, and a fun cop boyfriend who doesn't let pesky things like the law bother their happiness. 

America At War, Lee Bennett Hopkins (editor). 2008 Cybils poetry finalist. Each chapter has poems inspired by an American war, from the Revolution to the Iraq invasion. Although all wars have grief and loss, the earlier wars have less cynicism in the poems. I wish there had been more racial diversity in the poems and/or illustrations; the only time I noticed non-whites before Vietnam was in reference to slavery. Even in the civil war their role was victim rather than agent. There were some old favorites ("In Flanders Field") but I didn't find anything to keep in the later chapters. 

Can You Hear the Trees Talking?, Peter Wohlleben. 2019 Cybils middle grade nonfiction finalist. This was a lot of fun! And probably much shorter than the adult book it's based on. In short sections, organized by page and within short chapters, many surprising abilities of trees and other forest creatures (plant, animal and lichen) are explained. To keep the reader on their toes there are quizes and quick experiments, none of which I could do since I read this inside on my couch instead of out in the woods. I enjoyed stretching the limits of what I thought plants could do, and I felt the approving voice of Braiding Sweetgrass as Wohlleben taught how ecosystems work together with many pieces all providing bits of a giant living puzzle.

 You Call This Democracy, Elizabeth Rusch. 2020 Cybils nominee. This was a great read, and amazingly non-partisan. I think. I still get tripped up a bit by what is partisan, and didn't some Republican just announced that they didn't want people voting? Anyway, the book is all in for everyone voting, and each chapter looks at what is keeping American votes from getting counted and then after stomping around with well documented curmudgeonly aggravation on this latest departure from better democracy it moves on to how the reader can help push the world towards more voting -- whether to make the presidential vote direct (without a constitutional amendment) or fix gerrymandering or oppose voter suppression or move the voting age to sixteen or --. I found it a refreshing approach that assumes that people can and do make changes.

We'll Always Have Parrots, Donna Andrews. This was a lot of fun. I've gone to (and volunteered at) some SF conventions, so I recognized many of the fan stereotypes, as well as the interactions between convention staff and hotel, which made watching Meg deal with them even better. And the monkeys and parrots as well as her parents are always amusing. I didn't really care about the mystery, but I enjoyed Meg's sleuthing and her feelings for both the dog and the tiger. I like reading these and I especially enjoy paying no attention to the series order and just picking the up by the color or whatever.

Slippery Creatures, K J Charles. Another delight from Charles. The spying is very grim, our hero is very stubborn, our hero's boyfriend is a disaster with many talents, and the side characters are charming and I hope they get more page space next book. And I want the next book. Very much.

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan. 11/12 discs. I have completed the antepenultimate disk! Urda plays with fire and burns her fingers. 

Uncompromising Honor 33/??, David Weber. Baen Free Radio Hour's serial. The battle continues. 

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. Aftermath of war is even less pretty in the prehistoric times.

Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Spiders learn war.

Jubilee, Margaret Walker. Replaced pick for debut over 50 in SPL Summer bingo. I have the ebook and the audio so I am making progress. No whispersync so I have to keep track on my own.

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. Onto the next chapter!

Skylark and Wallpaper, Anne O'Brien Carelli. Cybils finalist. The post-Sandy New York stuff is OK, but I'm really into the grandmother's youth in the French Resistance. 

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton. I like the time the book takes with each character. 

Someplace To Be Flying, Charles de Lint. I'd better hurry since we'll probably get a new book on Tuesday.

The Bone Witch, Rin Chupeco. For KCLS 10 to Try -- recommended by staff. Great world building. 

By Immortal Honor Bound, Danielle Ancona. Clearly a first novel. 

The Bourne Supremacy, Robert Ludlum. Thank goodness they spent some time reminding me what the first book was about; it's pretty vague and seeing some of the movies doesn't help.

Trash, Andy Mulligan. Book from my shelves. This will be grim. 

The Gown, Jennifer Robson. Ack -- this is due on Tuesday! Must make progress!

Picture Books / Short Stories:

 

Madame Saqui: Revolutionary Rope Dancer, Lisa Robinson. 2020 Cybils nominee. Biography of Napoleon's favorite acrobat. I really like how many "final" performances she held; she just couldn't stay off the hire wire. Good historical background as her career went from King to revolution to Napoleon. (I read this last week as an ebook but wanted to see how the pictures looked in person.) The shape of the book is well chosen -- tall and thin so you are looking up at the acrobatics.

Ocean Speaks: Marie Tharp and the Map the Moved the Earth, Jess Keating. 2020 Cybils nominee. I love picture books that tell me about something (someone) that I didn't know about. Marie Tharp's work in oceanography and cartography helped establish plate tectonics are a solid theory. And she did it while also pushing the boundaries of what jobs women could fill. I really like the way the illustrations and the text work together, so that the passion and imagination Tharp brought to bear on her maps becomes visible as the illustrations show her going through her maps into the ocean itself. It's a good way to have the combination be greater than the sum of the parts. 

Wood, Wire, Wings: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane, Kirsten W. Lawson. 2020 Cybils nominee. Biography of an early aviation designer (she did something with ailerons) who was a tinkerer from childhood. I really liked the theme of failure as a part of design; from childhood through adulthood Todd is shown as learning from failure rather than being discouraged by it.

Rescuing the Declaration of Independence, Anna Crowley Redding. 2020 Cybils nominee.The British are coming! But there's no Paul Revere, just a clerk and a determination to save the records from the invaders during the burning of Washington DC during the War of 1812. I like how the background characters are a mix of races even though the speaking roles have to go to historically accurate white men. I like the background material, especially the anecdote about Redding learning this story in a lighthouse; Stephen Pleasonton, the clerk who frantically shoved all the documents into borrowed wagons as the British marched was rewarded with a job as a bigwig in the lighthouse department. This would be a good book to help elementary kids remember that this war happened at all.

Packs: Strength in Numbers, Hannah Salyer. Absolutely gorgeous artwork that teems with energy, showing animals that band together for advantage. It's a great picture book with much to admire in the illustrations, and then science to learn from the text. Small kids can just enjoy the pictures and maybe learn some collective nouns; older children can appreciate why the animals work together. Parents can read the backmatter for more details. This would be a great book for a family and also a good one to start a discussion in a science class.

The Voice that Won the Vote, Elisa Boxer. 2020 Cybils nominee. A picture book that looks at a fun corner of women's suffrage.  When Tennessee surprised itself and the nation by ratifying the 19th Amendment (which made it part of the constitution) it was because of one flipped vote. And that vote was apparently because the young state congressman's mom had written him and told him to vote for women's suffrage, so he changed his position and broke the tie. The book starts with the mom, showing her as an obviously competent citizen, and then shifts with her letter to the son, who votes his conscience and then expects to lose by it. But then after a tough next election he is returned the state legislature, so the book draws the obvious moral about doing what's right even if you think it will cost you, because maybe it won't! But do it anyway.

The Superlative A., Eileen R. Meyer. 2020 Cybils nominee. Grammar, poetry and history! The book starts with a definition of superlatives, and then gives a series of poems showing where Lincoln exceeded expectations, with cheerful illustrations to help convey the message and a bit of context on the bottom to keep the timeline in order. It's stays positive so there's no time for nuance about Lincoln's position on African American rights but also avoids the assassination, instead ending with a look at the tallest President (Lincoln) and Most Admired (Lincoln again! It's ALWAYS Lincoln.). The backmatter talks about the making of the book, encourages readers to find their own superlatives, and gives both more reading for kids and the bibliography for the book.

The Next President, Kate Messner. 2020 Cybils nominee. A great way to look at the full list of American Presidents, with illustrations that encourage the reader to keep going and to pay a bit of attention. Do kids still have to memorize the names of all the Presidents? I remember having to be able to  regurgitate them on command in fourth or fifth grade. This would be a great way to actually put some context to that. The concept is to illustrate a presidential inauguration (started with George Washington) with a look at what the other living future presidents were doing right then -- serving in the government? Starting a career? Helping with chores on the family farm? Learning to walk? Then a break for a fun thought (best Presidential pets?) and onto the inauguration of the next unmentioned president. You only need a few inaugurations to get through all of American history, although it's a bit of a cheat with Obama because he wasn't actual born as Kennedy was sworn in. And then the book looks at where our next president might be, with emphasis on the ones who might be kids right now, who might be reading this book right now. It also discusses the legal qualification of presidency, and how although all the ones in this book are men (mostly white men) that's not a rule so dream big! The illustration of the kids and adults who might be future presidents are more diverse. The book steers clear of making guesses about 2020 -- it's written with 2016 as the last known election. Hillary Clinton is mentioned as proof that women can run, though. 

On a Snow-Melting Day, Buffy Silverman. 2020 Cybils nominee. The star in this book is the photographs of nature waking up to spring, both flora and fauna. The words are delicious and evocative, with phrases and sounds painting a picture that the photos display: "on a drip-droppy, slip-sloppy, snow-melting day." Back matter gives context and names to the animals and processes shown in the images, so the book can be a springboard to understanding the science behind spring, but the book works well as a lovely piece of art as well.

 

A Ride to Remember, Sharon Langley & Amy Nathan. Possible 2020 Cybils nominee. I learned more things! The carousel near the Lincoln memorial in D.C. was brought there because it's part of civil rights history -- nonviolent protests against a segregated amusement parks forced it to open for everyone the very day Dr King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The author is the tiny girl, not quite one year old, who was the first black child to legally ride the carousel, and the frame is her parents telling her about that day. Amy Nathan wrote a older book about the carousel, and they teamed up for this picture book version. It's a powerful way to show how protests worked, how unfair segregation was, and how people make a difference and how this affects everyone's lives.

How to Solve a Problem, Ashima Shiraishi. Possible 2020 Cybils nominee. Moving from history to awesome sports figures! Shiraishi is a young (I don't think she can drink yet) rock star who has been amazing people with her skill at solving problems (the technical term for a boulder) since she was six. She's the first woman to solve some V15 (?) rocks, and the second person to do it. She uses that obvious metaphor deliberately -- each failure is information on how to solve a problem. I also like how she uses bits of her life to map out the rock, and the illustrations go all in on this -- that jut of rock is like an elbow in a dance, those ripples like a pile of quilts from her grandmother. I did find the pace of the text a bit awkward, shifting between rhymes and prose, and the style of the pictures wasn't exactly to my taste. But a fun subject and I learned something about rock climbing as a sport as well as the approach of a rising star.

Muslim Girls Rise, Saira Mir. 2020 Cybils nominee. Mir presents a group of Muslim women who make a different, whether by starting a webpage, being a youtube makeup star, solving complex mathematical challenges, or winning the Nobel peace prize. Each page has a portrait showing the woman in action, a quote from her, and a short description of why she's amazing. Some wear hijab, some don't, some are young, others old, some seem Arab, others Japanese-British. It's a good way to show the variety of choices Muslim girls can aspire to. I would have liked to see some queer representation, and maybe some call outs to awesome moms (dads get several mentions) but those are quibbles.

Beatrix Potter, Scientist, Lindsay H. Metcalf. 2020 Cybils nominee. I hope all kids know about Beatrix Potter, author/illustrator, but most of them probably don't know that her first career choice was science! She honed her illustrative skills making sketches of the mushrooms and other natural objects she studied, and presented her work to the British science groups, who were not impressed because she was a woman. After many setbacks she finally got them to review her work (she did something with growing spores? which the head fungus guy hadn't been able to do until he tried her method) and they grudging read her paper only to return it with "needs work." (Not very useful critique.) And then she switched to writing kids books and the world lost a scientist. Unfortunately she didn't write an inspiring screed to tell us her reasons for quitting, so the book has a bit of an anticlimactic ending. That's the danger of writing history.

The Only Woman in the Photo, Katherine Krull. 2020 Cybils nominee. Frances Perkins basically invented worker safety in America, as well as social security and the right of labor to survive work (a radical concept in early 1900 America). She was the first female cabinet member (under Franklin Roosevelt) and a lot of the part of the New Deal that we remember fondly were run by her. I like that his biography is about her work -- how her early studies inspired it, how her time as a social worker gave her the tools and information that would inform her later public policy, how each time she was offered an opportunity she would walk through that door and make the most of it. It's not much about fighting misogyny, although that is a part of it because that affected her work.

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. He's dying! But what about love? I'm here for this.

Wool, Hugh Howey. Revolution is in the air.

The Wind Gourd of La'amaomao, Moses Nakuima. 

Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho.

Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca. Teachers have classes with a diversity of cultures, languages, and economic class, and have to reach all the kids.

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2017. None. I just need 3 YA books to be done. But I'm reading all the short books from all the years. 
2. Cybils 2018. Working on Skylark and Wallcreeper.
3. Cybils 2019. Working on Free Lunch.
4. Early Cybils: Read some poetry.
5. Reading My Library. Haven't started the next one yet. 
6. Ten to Try. At 9/10. I'm working on the last one #10. 
7. Where Am I Reading: 27/51 states. We'll Always Have Parrots was in Virginia. 25 Countries.
8. Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge.  I'm done.
   

Plans

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 (it came!)
• Library Book: The Gown. Up Next: Honeybee.
• Ebook I own: None. Up Next: One Man
• Library Ebook: Skylark and Wallcreeper. Up Next: an extra. Maybe Jubilee.
• Book Club Book: None. Up Next: Maybe Huntress?
• 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.