Welcome readers! 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. Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers host the kidlit rendition. These are fabulous places to start your search for what to read next.
This post I'm sharing a couple of weeks reading. I had no internet or technology when I was camping this last while, so I ended up writing out my thoughts in pencil on paper. It was a strangely liberating experience. Ideas seem to write themselves. Although I did have to edit these perceptions, I noticed that I ended up producing more. So this got me wondering, is it too much? What do people prefer to read - in depth reflections or just a one sentence blurb? I definitely prefer to read something about the books you have been reading - the more the better.
This article, The Problem with Female Protagonists, came up in my Facebook memories a couple of weeks ago. I reread it and wondered about my own reading life. Do I read mostly about women? men?
I went and looked at the data for this year so far. I wish I had included a category for queer characters and gender of author, but will leave that for another time. Here are my results. Let me know if you want to copy the form for your own use.
Abdul finds that telling stories is easy, but writing them down is hard. He has trouble forming letters and spelling words correctly. He is about to give up writing when an author who looks much like him visits their classroom. He tells a story about a community very much like Abdul's. Mr Muhammad encourages the children to write their own stories. When he sees how disheartened Abdul is about his messy paper, he shows him his own messy notebook. This gives Abdul the courage to continue on with his own writing.
This is a wonderful book. I love the multicultural classroom and community portrayed in the pages. I love that it provides an overview of what the writing process looks like. I especially appreciate that it shows how attempting to get everything perfect the first time round interferes with eventually creating a brilliant story. That's an important message for all of us.
Slightly slapstick, this book is loaded with rhyming ridiculousness.
Mr. Watson and his partner, Mr. Nelson, start out with three chickens. Their life becomes pure chaos as those three chickens reproduce to become 456 birds. They had:
Chickens in the sink,
chickens on the bed,
chickens in the bread box,
chickens on their heads!
It isn't until Mr. Nelson threatens to move out into the coop out back - alone, that Mr. Watson finally comes up with a plan for what to do with all those chickens.
I appreciate much about this one: in particular, the gay couple just being a couple; the humour; and the illustrations so loaded with detail, readers can spend hours poring over them. Thanks to Linda Bai for the introduction to this.
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| 4 stars |
Rosa's Song by Helena Ku Rhee & Pascal Campion (Illustrations) June 14, 2022
Jae and his family have moved into an apartment building in a new city in a new country. He mopes about their suite missing home. After his mother sends him off to make new friends, he knocks on a door and meets Rosa and her parrot, Pollito. They become fast friends. Rosa and Pollito teach Jae the song, When I fly Away, My Heart Stays Here.
One day, without warning, Rosa is gone. She left Pollito behind for Jae who is heartbroken. Eventually two new children knock on his door.
In her author's note, Helena Ku Rhee talks about growing up in an apartment much like this one. Like Jae, friendships were often "disrupted just as they are forming."
I like the multicultural community portrayed in Pascal Campion's illustrations.
Africa decides to join a Double Dutch Competition. She has never double dutched before, but her grandmother was a champion, so Africa is certain she has it in her too. She has one week to be ready for it. At first she tries to learn on her own. Then she gets her friends to help her. They might not do double dutch, but they teach her how to dance; step in rhythm; clap and sing; and double cartwheel, back flip, and summersault.
On the day of the competition, Africa uses the skills her friends taught her to double dutch even better than her grandmother used to.
The artwork in this book is glorious! Anna Cunha's illustration are vibrant and sing with action.
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| 4 stars |
The Queen of Kindergarten by Derrick Barnes &Vanessa Brantley-Newton (Illustrator)
A young girl's mother sends her off to her first day of kindergarten with a tiara and rules for how to be a queen. The rules are: 1.Brighten any room you enter; 2. Be caring and kind; and 3. Be helpful to others. These are good rules for people of any age and gender.
If I was still working I would have ordered this book for the library in a heartbeat. I just wish this book and The King of Kindergarten had been titled with A as in A Queen of Kindergarten, rather than the.
MG NOVELS
I finished this, and then started it all over again.
It is the second in Pratchett's Bromeliad series.
The nomes (four inch tall people) now live in buildings in an abandoned quarry. Life is much harder than it was in their department store lives in Truckers. It is winter, already a hard time, when a notice goes up that the quarry is going to opened again.
A small crew head out on a scouting mission to the nearby airport while Grimma, (a budding feminist) and the rest of the leadership come up with a plan to make the humans go away. Believing that humans always obey signs, they create some badly spelled ones warning them to keep out. They lock the gate with a heavy chain and padlock. They spike the tires of a lorry that tries to enter. The humans keep coming.
Eventually they capture a night security guard.
Knowing that more humans will arrive with the dawn, the Nomes climb aboard JCB (Jecub) an abandoned digger they have refurbished with parts taken from the decommissioned lorry. Will they be captured and forced to make shoes, do housework, and paint flowers in exchange for bowls of milk? You will have to read the book and find out.
The important thing about Pratchett's work is that while we are laughing, he provides a mirror for us to see ourselves with clarity and compassion. I can't help but wonder if Nomes really are smarter than humans.
I love this series about a group of teenage spies. With each story, the drama of their mission is counterbalanced by the social and emotional development of their characters.To succeed in their new mission, Paris has to up his chess game so he can participate in chess prodigy tournaments in Moscow and Beijing.
Sydney, acting as a junior reporter, follows a billionaire's daughter around the world to uncover his role in soviet missiles.
Brooklyn is stuck in summer school where she connects with Charlotte, a previous member of the team. Together they manage to crack an important to code that enables the success of the operation.
The goal this time is to recruit a young North Korean chess prodigy, Dae-Jung, and his nuclear scientist father, Park Jin-Sun, before Umbra can kidnap them.
Luckily their adopted father, (code named Mother,) is there to support the team through their all their challenges.
Now I have to wait til next February for the next instalment.
If Ellis Earl (Earl) was a real person, he would be two years my junior. The same historic events would have reverberated across both our lives. That's where the similarities end. My family endured a short stint of abject poverty, but was a choice made by my parents in hopes of a better life to follow. Earl's poverty is a permanent fixture, a grind brought about because of the colour of his skin. Those events were significantly more profound for him and his family than I could have begun to imagine.
The conditions Earl and his family have to live in are horrific. He lives with his widowed mother and a large number of siblings. Then they end up looking after three of this brother's children while their mom is having another baby. In addition to the constant gnawing hunger, they live in an already crowded three room shack that leaks when it rains and floods the only way out.
Of course Earl loves school. School is his salvation and a potential way out of his misery. He has a fantastic teacher who cares for the educational, physical, emotional and social well being of students under his care. It's because of him that the circumstances of Earl and his family eventually improves. Mr. Foster gives Earl a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a gift. Earl was a struggling reader until he became engaged in Charlie's story. He noted their similar circumstances and hopes to someday win his own kind of golden ticket. This is a book about making connections and looking forward. It's about the power of one important teacher in a child's life. It is still a hard read.
I hope that all those real children Earl represents did manage to find their way into a better life.
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| 4 stars |
Me (Moth) by Amber McBride (Author and Narrator) August 17, 2021
I listened to this book. I'm not sure it was the ideal medium for the story. While I appreciated the language, I think reading with my eyes would have had a more profound impact.
It's a book that deals with grief, isolation and abandonment. It's about first love.
Moth lost her entire family in a car accident. Sani sees ghosts. The two help each other find their way from their past into their futures.
I'm not going to spoil this book for you, but part of it was a huge surprise for me. It was a necessary revelation that enabled the two youth to move forward, but it still shocked me.
In 2017, women in Korea earned 63¢ for every dollar their male counterparts made. In 2021 it is still the lowest ratio in OPEC countries.
Kim Jiyoung, a symbolic character, epitomizes this story of gender inequality in Korea. She represents the experiences of Korean women, especially those with a career who are married with children.
The book is supposed to be a clinical assessment of a married woman with one child. Her husband sent her to see him after she began to behave peculiar.
"In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist—a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her—from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child—to put them first."
At the end, the psychiatrist acknowledges that he would not be aware of women's reality without having met Kim Jiyoung, but he still doesn't make connections from her to the women in his own life.
Those of us from other parts of the world will find ourselves reflected in Kim Jiyoung's reality and in turn, see our own culture through new eyes.
This book leads us to ask all kinds of questions. What is it like for women in other parts of the world? Will/Did this book bring about change for women in Korea?
Here in Canada how many women stay home because child care is either not available or so expensive as to make continuing to work financially ridiculous? Even when women continue working following childbirth, they end up taking on a majority of the work at home. While they are at least spared the disdain of stay at home moms in Korea, we still don't acknowledge the value of their unpaid labour.
I am left contemplating my Korean daughter in law's experiences here in Canada. She has a master's degree in translation work. Before she was married, she lost or couldn't get jobs because of her gender. In Canada her options are limited because her qualifications are not recognized here. Like many married woman in Korea, she is a stay at home mom with two children and does contract work from home. I wondered how different her life is here compared to there. She tells me it is much better.
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| 4.5 stars |
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers & Emmett Grosland (Narrator) July 13, 2021
This book is a kind of blessing - a promise of a better world to come.
Eons before the story begins, human beings built robots to do their work. One day robots awoke to consciousness and eventually an agreement was made between themselves and humans to live separate lives. It was a catalyst that changed human beings and their environments for the better.
This is the the story of Sibling Dex, a nongendered city monk who longs for more. They want to listen to the sound of crickets in the evening after working. They want a more meaningful purpose to their life.
After a few initial mishaps, Sibling Dex ends up with a successful tea cart, travelling through rural areas helping others get through the tribulations of their days. But there are no crickets. It still isn't enough. They decide to go in search of true wilderness.
On the way Sibling Dex meets up with Mosscap, a sentient robot. Mosscap is on a mission to find out what humans want. As they travel together, learning more about one another, a heartwarming friendship blossoms between the two of them.
I will definitely be reading more of Becky Chambers' words.
CURRENTLY
Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi March 2, 2021
Barry Squires, Full Tilt by Heather Smith 🍁
Cub by Cynthia L. Copeland,
READING GOALS
#MustReadFiction 17/24
#MustReadNonFiction 13/18
Canadian Authors 49/100
Canada Reads shortlist 5/5
Indigenous Authors 12/25
2022 Big Book Summer Challenge 7
Goodreads Reading Challenge: 193/250
