#IMWAYR October 7, 2024

Welcome! It's #IMWAYR time again, when bloggers share what they have been reading and find out what others have been up to. Kathryn hosts the adult version of this meme at Book Date. Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers host the kidlit rendition. These are fabulous places to start your search for what to read next!

We are hosting a birthday party for my uncle Monday night. Even though I prepped a lot of dinner in advance, the day will be a bit crazy since I start out with a meeting. I probably won't get round to reading your posts til Tuesday, but I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone is up to.

Titles with a 🍁 indicate this is a Canadian or Indigenous Canadian Author and or Illustrator.
Clicking on the title will take you to the Goodreads page of the book.

This is the story of a boy who struggles to become a reader. The words on the page just don't make sense to him so he doesn't like to read. When his teacher asks the students to bring in their favourite book, he's in trouble. A librarian tries to help him find one. A bookseller tries to help him. He comes home dejected. Luckily his mom comes up with an idea and he ends up writing a book about himself. 
This book reminded me of when I first started teaching. Part of how we taught reading was through the key word method. Students would pick their word of the day. I would print it on a strip of card stock. The student would then print and illustrate the word. We did a lot of teaching with those words!


When Lia and her family arrive in Montreal, she can only speak Romanian. She ends up in a class with other students from around the world who are in a similar predicament. As they learn French together they become friends. Slowly, Lia's language and grades improve. Her artistic talent gets her on the staff of the school magazine.
I love a lot about this book.
I appreciate how supportive the group of friends are. I like that the misunderstanding that arises between Lia and another girl are eventually resolved without excessive drama. While romance plays a roll here, it's not the most important part of the story. I adored the fashions that the girls in the story are wearing even if they don't jive with the technology of the day!
I appreciate that Lia's period, and the problems she has with them, are dealt with in a realistic, ordinary way. I like that Lia's parents are supportive and understanding. The interactions between Lia and her brother are authentic as is the way her parents deal with them.
I like that the book is populated with a multicultural cast of characters. I appreciated that most of the older characters are shown in different body shapes and sizes. I just wish there had been more of this in the friend group.
I'm looking forward to the next book in this series!

Ent
ADULT/YA NON FICTION


I wasn't as gobsmacked by this book by Jen Gunter as I was by her most recent title, Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation, but I still think it's brilliant. She is less vociferous in her condemnation of the snake oil salesmen who try to make women feel bad about their bodies, but it's there. I appreciate all her advice about looking after our vagina and vulva, while not obsessing over it's 'purity'.
I want Jen Gunter to write a book for middle grade children. By the time women are old enough to to read this, they will already have been sucked into the misinformation social media circus.

"I Am Woman represents my personal struggle with womanhood, culture, traditional spiritual beliefs and political sovereignty, written during a time when that struggle was not over. My original intention was to empower Native women to take to heart their own personal struggle for Native feminist being. It remains my attempt to present a Native woman's sociological perspective on the impacts of colonialism on us, as women, and on my self personally."

It took me a while to take in these essays and poetry. Lee Maracle's words need time to steep. Sometimes I would read one essay before setting it aside. Other times I only read a few pages, or just a poem. I copied out a lot of quotes.
Maracle's honest perspective is brutal at times - whether she's talking about colonization, racism, internalized racism, the American Indian Movement, Native government, Native men, white men, white women, Native women, or herself.
It was originally published in 1988. I wonder how her perspective had changed by the time she died in 2021. I found that the terrifying thing about many of these essays, is not that they are a snapshot of the times, but rather that, given the move towards the right these days, still relevant.
I leave you with a few quotes that I found relevant:
 
"The one thing about human beings we can all be sure of, besides death, is imperfection. We don’t need to go to each other to screw up. We do it naturally."

"Loving children is one of the most difficult of life’s tasks. It is one of the things that is very hard to do well. Procreation, pure and simple is natural. But loving children is work, work for which there is no reward.… Love is what drives you to rise in the early hours of the morning, feed and clothe the kids and get them off to school before you go to work. Love stops you from beating the Jeezus out of the monster when she kicks her sister off the porch, pisses in the yard or paints the wall with a pen. Liking them takes much more work. It is hard to like a person as outrageous as that."

In the following video Lee Maracle is delivering the Margaret Lawrence Lecture.  It is 38 minutes long and worth every minute. 


CURRENTLY 

The Book of More Delights by Ross Gay September 19, 2023

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange February 27, 2024

Into the Bright Open by Cheri Dimaline September 5, 2023 🍁

A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver January 1, 1994

UP NEXT (MAYBE)

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman September 17, 2024

Weyward by Emilia Hart, Aysha Kala (Narrator), Helen Keeley (Narrator) & Nell Barlow (Narrator) February 2, 2023

READING GOALS 

#MustRead2024 16/25 one on the go

NonFiction 25/24 one on the go

Canadian Authors 58/50 three on the go

Indigenous Authors 26/25 one on the go

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 168/200    

Posted by 16 comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

FIRST FRIDAY POETRY OCTOBER 2024

I'm joining Beverly A Baird & Linda Schueler in a "year long poetry practice – on the first Friday of each Month," when we, and anyone else who joins, writes a poem and pairs it up with a photo relating to it.

We had the grandkids again last weekend. One of the younger girls came out of the bedroom, naked and slathered with slime. Her father was not impressed. I, on the other hand, was delighted. Of course, I didn't have to clean up the mess. 

I am in awe of this child's creativity, independence, and fearlessness. She is the one who leads the rest of the grandkids in magical adventures - even when they include mud bathing. Today's poem is for her.


this is our darling girl

a warrior princess in training
poised as a disney prima donna
pondering which superpower
to accessorize with today

she’s a wild beast
(even Max couldn’t tame her)
rumpusing naked round house and garden
decorated in mud, paint or slime

she’s a befriender of the unfriended
not one whit intimidated by
dinosaurs, monsters or spiders

wolves frighten her 
but she is only four,
give her time
she'll be leading the pack
Posted by 4 comments:

IMWAYR September 30, 2024

Welcome! It's #IMWAYR time again, when bloggers share what they have been reading and find out what others have been up to. Kathryn hosts the adult version of this meme at Book Date. Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers host the kidlit rendition. These are fabulous places to start your search for what to read next!


Last week is one I will be happy to forget. I did something to my back - somehow one of my ribs got dislocated. It was excruciatingly painful. I couldn't move without causing myself pain. My sweet husband had to help me get in and out of bed. Thankfully, a visit to the chiropractor helped get it back in place. It's still uncomfortable, but I'm able to function on my own.

Weather wise, we had two days of lovely hot summer weather before Autumn, quite literally, blew itself in with a storm of epic wildness. We had left the dining room window open, and it blew my fig tree over. By the time I got home from work, my guy had already cleaned up the mess.
 
The grandkids arrived Thursday night and will leave for home Monday morning. It looks like a small hurricane tore through our house, but we love the wildness. All too soon it will be quiet, clean, and boring again around here. The two older ones are now serious readers. I introduced Ada, who is seven, to Zita the Space Girl, and she became an instant fan. I now plan to get her that series, and Everett, also seven, Ben Hatke's Jack series as Christmas gifts.

Titles with a 🍁 indicate this is a Canadian or Indigenous Canadian Author and or Illustrator.

Clicking on the title will take you to the Goodreads page of the book.


I love Nancy Vo's picture books and think I've just turned my two four year old granddaughters into fans as well. This one is all about boobies of course: who has them, how many they have, what they look like, and what they are for. When I asked the girls how many stars they would give this book, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, they responded, 100, and 100 million. 


Jack Wong's book is a celebration of the freedom water affords us when we learn to swim. It presents worlds only available to us after we master that skill. 
I read this first by myself, and then with the grandkids. I asked them to pretend they were professional readers so they could give me feedback. The two four year olds thought the book made them want to become swimmers. The eldest, already swimmers, wanted to explore some of the places here. Their reactions to the illustrations were mixed. They all loved the pictures of water, but were less enthusiastic about the faces. I noted that a multicultural cast of characters fill these pages. Everett noticed that one swimmer had a prothetic leg. None of the children commented on the lyrical text, that for me at least, read like free verse poetry. 
Their final starred evaluations were; 3/5, 4/5, and the two youngest gave it 100 million stars. 

YA/ADULT GRAPHIC NOVELS


I wasn't sure about this at first because it is a man writing about a woman's experience. Then when I got into it, I was reminded of a friend who was involved in the art scene in Vancouver while I was in the process of raising children and teaching. Wendy's stories, even if they are from a younger generation, could well have been hers. 
Wendy is a wanna be artist surrounded by other wanna be artists. There's a raw honesty to this collection of stories about her and others in the scene. I suspect that many of us could say we know people like this. Maybe we've even been Wendy at some time in our lives. She's young and makes all kinds of mistakes, but through all the satire, Walter Scott shows us her humanity and has us rooting for her. Near the end there are glimmers that she will be ok. I especially loved her conversation with her grandmother. 
I picked this up because I read an interesting review about the most recently published Wendy novel. I decided to read the earlier books while waiting for it. I now can't wait to find out how she gets on.

ADULT/YA FICTION


This is the story of a Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia who travel to Maine every year to pick berries. In 1962, their four year old daughter, Ruthie, vanishes. A massive search reveals nothing. Her six year old brother, Joe, was the last to see her. He carries his feelings of responsibility and trauma with him into adulthood. 
The story is told from the two children's perspectives just after Ruthie's disappearance. 
I know about, and know Sixties Scoop survivors. What I especially appreciate about this book is that we learn about what life was like for them and their families after they were gone.

CURRENTLY 

A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver 

The Vagina Bible by Jen Gunter 🍁

The Book of More Delights by Ross Gay 

I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism by Lee Maracle (2nd edition September 1, 1996) 🍁

Weyward by Emilia Hart, Aysha Kala (Narrator), Helen Keeley (Narrator) & Nell Barlow (Narrator)

UP NEXT (MAYBE)

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

The New Girl by Casandra Calin  🍁

READING GOALS 

#MustRead2024 16/25 one on the go

NonFiction 23/24 one on the go

Canadian Authors 55/50 three on the go

Indigenous Authors 25/25 one on the go

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 164/200   

Posted by 11 comments:
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)