nonfiction – Peaceful Reader

Fall Books

I love when you finish a book and you hug it and want to start over again. When this happens I go through the rolodex in my brain and imagine who would also love this story. Recently this happened when I finished read Jeff Zentner’s The Serpent King, a story about three teenagers struggling to survive in their small Tennessee town. Zentner created such interesting characters in Dill, Lydia, and Travis with their own idiosyncrasies and some very unfortunate family situations. It was an amazing read.

Jason Reynolds was at the library conference in St Louis last month and he was a great speaker. He mentioned two things about his life that stuck with me. 1. He takes a bath everyday to relax and soak away all his anxiety/troubles. He holds a lot of heartfelt energy from writing and the kids that he meets in school visits. 2. He wrote something years ago that later was produced into Soundtrack, an only-audio book that is scripted. I put it on hold while I was sitting in the conference and was it arrived I was amazed at the brilliant writing; it was a great listening experience. Listen to this NPR interview with Jason. He is so open and honest. Love his books.

High Tide in Tucson : Essays from Now or Never by Barbara Kingsolver was such an interesting read. It was written in 1996 and talks a lot about George Bush and the Iraqi war. Her essays are vibrant and I was happy to learn more about her life. So much of what she talks about is still very relevant today.

The Anxious Generation : How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt took me a long time to read because I’m not a strong nonfiction reader BUT I powered through. One of my big complaints about nonfiction or books with studies/graphs, etc is that they are too long and that is true of this one. I did learn a great deal and was already in the “computers are not helping us as much as we think” camp especially where social media is concerned. We spend far much time buried into technology. Last night my husband and I went out to dinner and we sat near a table of 6 college aged females and until their food arrived their faces were glued to their phones; no chatting or sharing going on.

I’m headed off on a fun vacation to San Diego with my daughter over the next week and I’m very much looking forward to the sun. I had two books packed and two books ready on my kindle and I realized that might be overkill so I unpacked The Seven Year Slip and will read that later.

Caste: the origins of our discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

I finished this after 4 months. It just wasn’t a book I could rush and I needed to take a break after sections to think about it ALL because there is so much in here. I very much enjoyed her writing style. At almost 400 pages and seven sections long the book dissects all that you would ever need to know about the social construct of the caste system in these United States, Nazi Germany, and India. I only want to present a few highlights that stood out to me. I encourage anyone interested in understanding better how the conquering men stole the land, crushing the original inhabitants, and built this country up using enslaved people from the continent of Africa.

“Colonial laws herded European workers and African workers into separate and unequal queues and set in motion the caste system that would become the cornerstone of the social, political, and economic system in America. …triggering the deadliest war on U.S. soil, lead to the ritual killings of thousands of subordinate-caste people in lynchings, and become the source of inequalities that becloud and destabilize the country to this day.” (41)

For slavery to have existed here in the “land of the free” is horrid enough but after the Civil War was fought collectively people and our government should have stood up for actual freedom. Civil War generals should have been put on trial in the North and been tried for treason instead of celebrated. Freed slaves should have been offered education and training instead of sharecropping. Even as they fled north they were given minimal opportunities. Jim Crow laws continued this mindset and paved the way for the equity issues we struggle with today.

Wilkerson shares many personal stories of racism from her own life and of others that help to shine a light on the difficulties black and brown people experience daily. People from the dominate caste feel they have the right to dictate, bully and get involved in situations that have nothing to do with them. She shares a story of her encounter with a plumber who isn’t interested in helping her find the source of her wet basement until she humanizes the situation for him and about airline attendants who doubt her first class status.

I read each word, each sentence, each chapter slowly as to fully absorb the emotion and meaning I often had to walk away from the book to regain some composure. While it is brutal and often left me chilled; this book is a must read for anyone seeking enlightenment on how we got here. Understanding the why is important. We have got to do better. My biggest take away is that we have to step in and say something as these situations happen both on a grand scale for racist policies and on a more personal scale to the Karens we encounter.

December thoughts

I recently finished an amazing book, The Overstory by Richard Powers. I completely understand why it was a NYT bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for 2019. The book is startling good, crisp literature. It was intriguing to follow nine distinct characters all in their own stories to find how they all connect in some way or another. I love trees, am a known tree hugger, and get riled up by people who don’t care about simple things like one use items that just get tossed away so this book spoke to me on the level that all our actions should lead us toward a greater good. I’m not a fan of paper napkins, paper towels, cardboard coffee cups, and small plastic beverage containers even though some of this is recyclable or composts naturally as paper does but why buy consumables that are just to be thrown away? It’s just me, I get it, most people don’t think about these things at all. I believe that in certain areas of the country clear cutting forests for profit may be changing as public opinion, research, and natural disasters like mudslides show how groves of trees benefit our habitat as well as animals. Richard Powers does an amazing job of helping us to see the connection between trees and other living beings. “They stand under the circle of camouflaged Platanus, that most resigned of eastern trees, on the spot where the island was sold, by people who listened to trees, to people who cleared them.” (451) I will remember and treasure the message in the book for a long long time.

I’m also one and a half chapters away from finishing Ibram X. Kendi’s NYT’s bestselling book, How to be an Antiracist, which I began way back last February. I’m not good with nonfiction. I started reading it with a teacher group through Facebook but I slacked off about chapter 12 and then I was invited to join another book group with two friends and that motivated me to push me through to (nearly) the end. I appreciate Kendi’s writing and his willingness to share his own story with mistakes and racist ideas. It’s a lot of unpacking and deep thinking and probably a book I will refer back to as I continue to understand our journey better.

Now as I stay up past my bedtime to write I am mindful of my sleep issues. For eight long years I have struggled with insomnia and waking up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep. I don’t feel stressed, I’m in good overall health, and I practice meditation and yoga, drink tea, and generally am not on screens at night. Recently a writer on Twitter that I follow mentioned her own struggles with sleep during menopause and I literally heard an Hallelujah choir sing as I read her comments and others over this issue. I’ve battled this for so long without real understanding from the medical community and found no similar experiences when I discussed it with other female friends! In just one small social media post I felt relief to know that I was not the only one. Thank you Jo Knowles; your simple statement gave me relief, still no solution, but maybe that’s somewhere close at hand as well. Life affirming changes happen through books and even small snippets on social media!

2019 books in review

I’ve read an amazing amount of great literature this year. It was a treat to look back and reminisce about each book on my GoodReads account and it is my hope that I can inspire one reader to pick up at least one of these fabulous books. I prefer fiction over nonfiction so I surprised myself with three fantastic memoirs this year. Leonard Pitts has an excellent article “This is the Year of Reading Women” in order to push himself to read more works by women. I am glad to say looking through my lists women authors continue to take a lead for me.

Nonfiction:

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Becoming by Michelle Obama

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Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg

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Educated by Tara Westover

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The gifts of imperfection by Brene Brown

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Better than carrots or sticks; restorative practices for positive classroom management by Dominique Smith

Fiction:

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Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Where the crawdads sing by Delia Owens

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Salvage the bones by Jesmyn Ward

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Heads of the colored people by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

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The Bar Harbor retirement home for Famous Writers (and their muses) by Terri-Lynne DeFino

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The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg

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Helen Hoang’s book’s The Kiss Quotient and The Bride Test

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Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Conversations with friends

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Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Young Adult/Children’s Fiction:

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Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky

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Front Desk by Kelly Yang

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Scar Island by Dan Gemeinhart

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Louisiana’s Way home by Kate DiCamillo

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Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds

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Summoner Series by Taran Matharu

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Wishtree by Katherine Applegate

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Here Lies the librarian by Richard Peck

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Walking with Miss Millie by Tamara Bundt

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Aru Shah and the end of time by Roshani Chokshi

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Amina’s voice by Hena Khan

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Merci Suarez changes gears by Meg Medina

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Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed

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Ban this book by Alan Gratz

I’m so gratefully to work in a field where I enjoy the homework very much. There are so many fantastic diverse authors out there now and I loved what I read in Amal Unbound, Are Shah, and Merci Suarez, Amina’s Voice, Ami Polonsky for Grayson, and Kelly Yang! I hope 2020 brings as much joy reading.

Talents

This week at school we had two mornings filled with our talent show. It was amazing and as I watched I was overwhelmed by all the talent we have in our school. We had dancers, very funny comedy routines, dynamic singers, piano players, tiny musicians, and one young man who solved his Rubic’s Cube while jumping on a pogo stick.

As teachers we put together a synchronized routine following these two routines from YouTube. We did a good job of and had lots of teachers involved.

I started thinking about my own talents that I could share and came up with a very short list:

I am a very good reader

I can mix a great drink

I am an adequate cook

None of these are talent show worthy. Long ago I was in a small town beauty contest (not my idea) and had to come up with an act. I wrote an interesting parody about friendship and read it aloud; people laughed and I won third place. Not bad for a brunette. My talents will have to remain low-key.

I am ready for the year to end but it is always bittersweet; this group of 6th graders were in 2nd grade when I became the librarian at Hansen. There are more than a few of them that I will miss a great deal.

In other talented news I made this dish, Mediterranean Chickpea Salad, this morning for a picnic and it was delicious. I’m reading two books right now; The Inquisition by Taran Matharu (the 2nd in the series) and Eat to beat disease by William Li. Recently my husband and daughter watched his excellent TedTalk, Can we eat to starve cancer?, and I watched What the Health on Netflix one afternoon. I was pretty disgusted how major health organizations are sponsored by meat/diary/fast food companies. If you have a chance both of these videos are worth your time.

Happy June!

What DID I read in April?

Not much is the answer. It was a busy month and my lowest reading in history. I read 2 (two) books in all those 30 days. It was a month of starting books. Hopefully more free time in May will help me clean up my record.

I started:

The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow: This is the book club pick for May. I’ve read the first 5 chapters and I don’t know if I’m going to continue. It was recommended by our oldest member, Jean, who diid this year. We are reading it in memory of her so I would like to finish it but I’m not drawn to the story or the character of Gertie.

Girl at War by Sara Novic`: I won a copy of this book by responding to a tweet from David Ebershoff from Random House. Girl at War is a story from Croatia, 1991, when the war is just beginning and Ana’s childhood is a changed forever. Ten years later Ana is in NYC for school and is haunted by memories of war. I like this one and plan to read more this week now that I’ve made the choice to let The Dollmaker go for awhile.

Dreamsleeves by Coleen Murtagh Paratore: Groovy Girl and I started this one a few days ago. I’m lucky she hasn’t gone back to “I don’t want to read with you” shenanigans (read all about that here) because it is the best way to end our day together. Spunky main character, Aislinn, has a lot going on with her 4 younger siblings and an alcoholic father. They are saving money for a dream house in the country and her mother is pregnant again. Groovy Girl and I feel this is not going to end well.

The life-changing magic of tidying up; the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing by Marie Kondo: I read an article about this book and ordered it from the library (I already have enough books clutterin up my house) I like her advice and am in the process of rethinking objects in my house.

The Organically Clean Home by Becky Rapinchuk (from cleanmama.net): Healthy recipes for cleaning. Also ordered from the library. Recommended by V and a topic of conversation while in Arkansas.

The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney: Recommended to me by a neighbor friend who happens to be a counselor. One of my two kids at home right now is withdrawn and I’m trying to learn more. This book is helpful and makes me realize why I’m socially awkward at times.

This is what I finished:

Nest by Ester Ehrlich: Marvelous tale of Chirp who loves birds, nature, and playing outside. Her mother is diagnosed with MS and Chirp, her sister, and father have to watch as she struggles to deal with this new reality. Her family sets her apart in school as well, they are Jewish and her father is a psychologist. Luckily they are surrounded by nature on Cape Cod and this serves as a healing force for Chirp.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart: Crazy story of four orphans ready to save the world from mass brainwashing. Mr. Benedict places an advertisement looking for gifted children and once they pass all of his tests they are rushed off to save the world. Read for 6th grade book club and it was just exciting enough to take their minds off of Legend series for a just a bit. Our last book for the year is Champion by Marie Lu.

Elementary Non-fiction love

One of my goals for this school year is to up-date our nonfiction selections. This will be a challenge for me as I prefer fiction. I need to get over this though as I read great reviews and found lots of cool nonfiction on the shelves of the public library, where I go for all my hands-on research. Nonfiction has so much more pizazz than it used to; my general feeling of NF is droll pages of way too much information with not enough pictures. Not so with nonfiction of today; it is bright, lively, and perfect for a read aloud.

No monkeys, no chocolate by Melissa Stewart, Allen Young and Nicole Wong (2013); Told in a backwards format I learned how the rainforest eco-system helps cocoa beans thrive and grow. Students will love knowing that maggots, lizards, and aphids all help the cocoa bean tree grow. Luckily we have a special store downtown that sells truly good rainforest fair trade chocolate because this book made me hungry for good quality chocolate not that waxy stuff that will fill Halloween buckets next week. This wonderful nonfiction is a must order for my new library and if you have curious ones at home this would make a perfect purchase. Excellent Melissa Stewart website.

S is for Sea Glass; a beach alphabet by Richard Michelson and Doris Ettlinger (2014); This is an alphabet book filled with wonderful poetry and lovely illustrations. A wide variety of poetry styles are featured and this book will be loved by both students and teachers. My favorite poem:

Q is for Quiet

The sun as it’s rising

The drift of a cloud

Spiders spinning webs

Crabs scuttling

Across the ocean floor

The swimming of fishes

The wishing of wishes

The opening of a door

The thoughts in my head

These are things I can hear

When it’s quiet

As I lie here in bed.

My second favorite is from a dog’s point of view as he runs along the beach. What joy! This book pulls me back to our family beach vacations and makes me feel happy. We definitely need this one for our poetry collection; it holds a mini vacation between the cover.

Animal Teachers by Janet Halfmann and Katy Hudson (2014); This book is exactly why I take my research seriously. This is an amazingly fresh look on animal behavior. The illustrations are gorgeous! Who knew I could find such joy over a nonfiction title. Groovy Girl loved the cover and came near to read this one with me. Each animal has something unique it learns from its parent and then Ms. Halfmann asks the reader to put it in their terms. For example the chicken teaches the chick to peck for seeds specifically and then the question is posed “who taught you what’s good to eat?” “Did you ever try to bite your toes?” Other animals included are otters, dolphins, kangaroos, beavers, elephants, and cheetahs; just to name a few! A huge list in the back of the book provides even more unusual facts for us to marvel over. We were astounded that “beavers have a set of see-through eyelids that work like goggles underwater.” Yes, yes I will order this one as well and can’t wait to hand it off to a teacher when animal books are requested. After years of doing animal research with students this one motivated me!

Prairie picture book shares great knowledge.

Plant a Pocket of Prairie

Phyllis Root and Betsy Bowen

2014

University of Minnesota Press

This is a gorgeous book. Every elementary school needs a copy of this bright and colorful work of art. It begins…

“Once prairie stretched for thousands of miles an ocean of flowers and grasses, a sea of sky, home for bison and elk, prairie chickens, burrowing owls, five-lined skinks, Plains garter snakes, and Ottoe skipper butterflies.”

The book challenges us to think about prairie and its disappearance in our world and challenges us the reader to plant a prairie be it big or small and if we were to cultivate a prairie, what would come and share in that bit of space? A ruby-throated hummingbird, monarch butterfly, or Dakota skippers might show up…

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The last four pages give full descriptions of prairie history, how to actually plant one, and animals that thrive in a prairie eco-system. This book can be used as a read-aloud or a starting point for research or the beginning of a major project. Use it, read it, love it. Betsy Bowen and Phyllis Root: can you add to this title and make it an ecosystem series?

Weekend Cooking; Salt Sugar Fat

Those are definitely three ingredients you use in cooking but I want to discuss the book by Michael Moss. I listen to this book back and forth from school on my phone. I often make faces in my car as I listen and I’m sure that I crack up my fellow drivers. The information in the book really disgusts me. I generally think that food has been ravaged more recently but the book relays how long this “manufacturing” of food has been going on.

I’ve heard all the big hitter names, Kellogg’s, General Mills, Post, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Unilever, and Cargill have all been mentioned and I’m only half finished with the book. Let me preface this with I know they are just trying to make money because they are a company but my answer back is do they have to make money on the backs of others (that would be us the guinea pigs). How much is too much money for CEOs and this goes for many businesses today.

I’m amazed at how all these food companies play with our food, adding more sugar, salt, and fat to appeal and pull us to buy their products repeatedly. It comes down to manufacturing the tastes that our body has adapted to crave because they’ve made you crave it. (crazy, yes) I’ve long been a consumer of a more organic and homegrown options and I don’t buy much processed food. My kids have long been taught how advertising works and to avoid believing even the most ordinary claims. They even know that the word “natural” does not really mean that anymore AT ALL.

But there is so much more to tell and it has a lot to do with psychology and how how our brain and our tastebuds work together. Food manufactured to taste like food. Makes you wonder why we don’t just let it be food. You know the fresh stuff that grows out of the ground and that we raise on farms. All in the name of progress; so women could work and get a meal on the table fast. The biggie food companies hired chemists to turn food into fast food. Jell-O, pudding, TV dinners, boxed mashed potatoes, anything that could be created anew and made quick. Progress.

I wish I knew how we could turn this back because we definitely have a problem with obesity in this country. Right about the time video games and other techno toys pulled kids to the sofa or bean bag chairs and grabbing quick and easy food from the kitchen to fuel their play they stopped playing outside and burning those calories.

My mom was a pretty healthy cook and we ate mostly homemade and homegrown. Going to McDonald’s was a huge treat and it did not happen very often. We had Kool-aid and popsicles in the summer time but we didn’t live on the stuff. Our evenings were spent playing kick-the-can, football, baseball, or other running around games. My mom even kicked us outside in the wintertime to “blow the stink” off us.

It’s a good book and I’m going to finish it as I begin my summer cleaning. I think we foodies have to band together to work toward change in this area.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts and recipes unlike this one which is really just a infomercial about the hazards of processed food. Stay tuned for fresh spring pesto, freezing leafy green veggies, and the rabbit that ate my garden.

3 Sweet Picture Books

Like many book lovers I adore the public library for many reasons one of which is it gives me the chance to preview books! I can fill my library bag up with all kinds of picture books from the new shelves, read them slowly at home, and then put my favorites on my order for our school library. If I could figure out how to make a button I would make a button flair for the public library.

Yes, I love buying books with the school’s money but with dwindling budgets every dollar is precious and I’m wary about ordering books at expensive prices before I’ve thumbed through them. There are many authors that I trust to give me a good product but I’ve had my share of bad order mistakes.

Groovy Girl, with her keen eye, has become a big help in this process. She weeds out the top few for me to focus on. I always page through to make sure she hasn’t overlooked something but she is generally right on about what students will like.

Here are our top four picks from last week’s library bag:

Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow? by Susan A. Shea and Tom Slaughter. (2011)

Love this book. Bright, beautiful paintings created by Slaughter showcase comparisons like if a duckling grows into a duck then does a car grow into a truck? The illustrations are big with pages that open and I can see a use for this on many different levels. As I lesson planned this past weekend I considered “borrowing” this book and using it as part of a lesson. I decided to wait until our own copy comes in as I will get excited about it all over again when it does and then students will actually be able to check it out.

Jane Brocket’s Clever Concepts; Spotty, Stripy, Swirly (What are patterns?). (2012)

Another brilliantly cool book and this one sits on the nonfiction shelf. The bold photographs make this stand out as the author explains the difference between chaos and order. When things are set in a specific order or repeated they form a pattern. We-and by we-I mean, kids like patterns and repetition and this book shares a huge variety of unique patterns; from knitted stocking caps to garden lettuce, everything can be put in order. Even the title, according to Groovy Girl, has a rhythmic funky pattern to it! As I browsed the author’s website I was intrigued by several of her other concept books like Ruby, Violet, Lime; a book about colors. I can see pre-k, kinder and 1st grade teachers using her books frequently.

ABC Dentist; healthy teeth from A to Z by Harriet Ziefert and Liz Murphy. (2008)

This book makes the dentist seem fun instead of the pain center it really is. This would make an excellent tool to talk about the visiting dentist that spends a day or two at our school. Alphabet books are wildly popular especially when we create them on the computer. We do a lot of comparing and contrasting of ABC texts. And who knows there might even be a kid or two, like Hermie, who want to be a dentist! I see on good reads this duo have another catchy title-ABC Doctor.

Take it from Groovy Girl and I these three titles are worth the bucks you would shell out to add them to your home or school library.