Library Matters: #Women'sHealth

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.

RECENT BLOG POST

FIRST FRIDAY POETRY OCTOBER 2024

PICTURE BOOKS

4 stars

My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World by Malcolm Mitchell & Michael Robertson (Illustrator) December 29, 2020

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!

MG/YA/ADULT GRAPHIC NOVELS

4 stars

The New Girl by Cassandra Calin June 4, 2024 🍁

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

5 stars

The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina—Separating the Myth from the Medicine by Jen Gunter August 27, 2019 🍁

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.

5 stars

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

"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.