#IMWAYR November 12, 2018

#IMWAYR time again, when readers share what they have been reading and find out what others have been up to in the past week. 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. Whatever you are looking forward to in your next great read, these are fabulous places to start your search.

BTW, I've followed the lead of Shaye at The Miller Memo, so if you clink on the title link for each book, it will take you to the GoodReads page for that book. 

We are at our Oliver house this weekend. We just wanted to get away, and also to attend the Remembrance Day Ceremony at our home town. When the names on the roll call are familiar ones, the intimacy of it brings a heightened understanding of what war takes away from us. 

It's been relaxing and sort of productive. I've gotten a lot of reading in and accomplished a bit of knitting, but haven't touched the fabric I planned to cut up while here. Maybe I'll get to it Monday afternoon after reading all your blog posts?

PICTURE BOOKS

5 stars

I Lost My Tooth! (Unlimited Squirrels) by Mo Willems

This book is fun, factual, and fabulous!

The front end covers show us all the characters in this book. (I’m fond of Flappy Squirrel myself)

The book has one big story that’s loaded with Mo Willems classic puns and nonsense. It’s delightful. Then there are joke and information sections. The layout reminds me of Ben Clanton’s Narwhal and Jelly books.

Every primary classroom needs this. (And Clanton’s series as well)

5 stars

I'm Sad by Michael Ian Black & Debbie Ridpath Ohi (Illustrator)

I am in awe of Michael Ian Black & Debbie Ridpath Ohi. Their characters, a little girl, a potato, and a flamingo, reveal to us, in 40 pages, important truths about what it means to be human. Sometimes we are sad. Each one of us gets over it in different ways. We don't love each other less because of this. Laughing together helps.

4 stars

How to Knit a Monster by Annemarie van Haeringen

As a reader and a knitter, it is inevitable that I would enjoy this book. My knitting, thankfully, has never gotten nearly this out of control. Greta the Goat ends up getting carried away with her knitting and her emotions. In the process, she creates a few monsters.  It's a close call before she figures out how to unravel them all.

4 stars

The Cat and the Wizard by Dennis Lee & Gillian Johnson (Illustrator)

About a year or so ago I was called in to evaluate papers written by grade seven students. They had been given the first part of this rhyming poem and were asked to analyze it. I have been itching to read the rest of the poem ever since. So when I discovered this picture book on display, I had to have it.

It begins with a description of an elderly, gifted wizard, travelling around in search of welcome. This section is all the students saw.

The poem is so much more. There's a lonely sociable cat. Eventually the two characters meet and end up becoming best of friends. Gillian Johnson's magical illustrations bring their shenanigans to life. 

GRAPHIC

4 stars

Honor Girl: A Graphic Memoir by Maggie Thrash

While Maggie is away at an all girls’ summer camp, she becomes infatuated with one of the camp counsellors. It appears that her feelings might be reciprocated. It’s Maggie’s first awareness that she is queer, and it’s not an easy revelation. She finds solace in her unexpected giftedness at the rifle range, but that relief is disrupted by antagonism from the other young woman in competition with her.

I enjoyed this coming of age memoir. I appreciated the brutal honesty. While I don’t generally appreciate teen angst, it fits into this story because of its authenticity. My only quibble is that while I like the simplicity of the artwork, there are a lot of characters with complex personalities, and I had difficulty sorting them all out. I suspect that additional details would have helped with that.

CHAPTER BOOKS

5 stars

The Princess in Black and the Science Fair Scare by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale & LeUyen Pham (Illustrator)

This might be my favourite title in the series so far. Princess Magnolia sets off to a science fair. While she is there a monster pops out of a volcano. She changes into the Princess in Black and together with the Princess in Blankets, they attempt to subdue the monster, who is only looking for a home and something to eat. Eventually the two heroes and three other Princesses band together to take it where it can live.

I like the science focus here, but I love that these princesses work together to find a solution that works for everyone, including the monster. The ending, that suggests that all princesses can be heroes, is the best! 

NOVELS

4 stars

Making Bombs for Hitler (WW2) by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

I forget how much I love Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s writing until I finish another book by her. She writes historical fiction imbued with the truth of impeccable research. Not only that, she writes characters that you can’t help but connect with and care for.

Making Bombs for Hitler tells the story of Lida, a young Ukrainian girl, who was taken by the Germans during WW2 to be a slave labourer.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch reminds us that war has many victims. Yes we need to remember the 25 million fallen soldiers, but up to 80 million civilians died in the Second World War and its aftermath. I’m thankful to Skrypuch, and writers like her, who tell their stories.
I also highly recommend Dance of the Banished, another of Skrypuch's historical novels 

4 stars

A Long Line of Cakes by Deborah Wiles

Another Aurora County novel from Deborah Wiles is cause to celebrate! This is especially true given that I had thought the series was complete with the publication of The Aurora County All-Stars, (my favourite so far)

The Cake family, with five boys, one girl, and their parents, arrive in Aurora County in the middle of the night. This itinerant baking family travels around from place to place baking cakes and helping people out until it is time to move again. They are a delightful crew who work together as a team when it is time to bake, but those boys can be raucous when the work is done and it’s time to play.

Emma, the only daughter, has had enough of moving and leaving friends behind. She is determined to harden her emotions and not develop any close relationships this time. Luckily, she is no match for Ruby Lavender, the protagonist from the first book in the series. Together the two of them hatch a plan to force the Cake family to stay.

I’m pretty sure I gained weight reading about all the cakes, cookies and muffins the family prepares. I kept wondering and hoping if there would be recipes at the end. You will be happy to know that there is, but you will have to read the book to find out what kind!

NONFICTION

4 stars

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, Will Patton (Narrator), Ann Marie Lee (Narrator),Danny Campbell (Narrator)

I was worried that this book was going to be a thriller that would scare the bejeezus out of me. It’s terrifying all right, but not for those reasons. It's truth, not fiction.

In the early 1910’s, when oil was discovered on their land, the Osage Nation became wealthy. Each member received a share, known as their headright, of the proceeds.

Unfortunately Indians were not considered competent to look after their own money and so guardians were appointed to monitor their spending. What ensued among the whites in the area of was a culture of corruption and murder. Not only were the Osage taken advantage of through price gouging and embezzlement, David Grant ends up concluding that between 1910 and the 1930’s around a hundred Osage people were murdered by white people for their headrights. Few of these murderers were ever brought to justice. It ended only when the Osage were able to handle their own money, and laws were put in place so that individuals had to be at least 1/2 Osage to inherit these rights. 

This book focuses primarily on the role Bill Hale and his compatriots played in this reign of terror, and how their apprehension led to the consolidation of the FBI.

What terrified me and continues to distress me is the magnitude of prejudice and corruption in these circumstances. I can’t help but make connections to the many murdered and missing indigenous women in North America today and contemplate that much of this is connected to law enforcement officers and others in power being blinded by their own racism. It’s left me wondering, how much graft we would find if we scratched the surface of political influence today.

Many thanks to my cousin Rhoda Peters, Sue Jackson at Book By Book and and others who encouraged me to read this book.

If it isn't on your must read list, it should be.

CURRENTLY

I've started listening to Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City by Tanya Talaga. I'm reading, with my eyes, We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices. 

UP NEXT

I'm planning on getting to When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore. I'm also hoping to get to Willa of the Wood by Robert Beatty. Truthfully I've got a pile of riches from the library and I want to read all of them!

PROGRESS ON MY READING GOALS

It seems that I am making headway here! I might even accomplish my goals this year, and early to boot!

#MustReadIn2018 23/25

#MustReadNFIn2018 11/12

25 Books by Canadian Indigenous Authors 22/25 1 in progress

Goodreads Reading Challenge 385/333

#MustReadIn2018 Fall Update

Carrie Gelson at There's a Book for That, hosts #MustRead. I have been joining in for the past couple of years. If you have a "want to read" list on Goodreads (or somewhere else) that goes on forever, then you might be interested in joining. All you have to do is choose any number of specific books on that list, and do your best to read them all. A few times a year Carrie reminds us that it's time to be accountable and post an update of how we are doing. It's a good thing for me since knowing these times are coming up reminds me to focus regularly on reading from my lists.

This year I created a number of different reading goals from my never ending and always expanding want to read list on Goodreads. My goals were to read at least a specific number of books from different lists including some general fiction, some nonfiction, and some from Canadian Indigenous authors. You can see my original goals here.

As I was putting this together I realized that a number of the books I have read in the last few months are included in at least two of my categories here. I hope this isn't cheating.

MUST READ IN 2018

I identified fifty fiction titles of which I planned to read twenty five. I've completed another eleven since April, which puts me at twenty-one. I might actually meet my goal this year!

Here is what I finished so far.

The ones I most enjoyed reading include:

Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi

I adored this book. I think it inspired me to write more honest poetry during poetry month. On the other hand, Bao Phi’s writing intimidated the heck out of me.
I have lines and phrases from this book scribbled on bits of paper and in the notes app on my ipad.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This beautifully written book is intense, but worth every page. Historical fiction has much to teach us about who we are, and what we don’t know about the world. I was a young teenager when this novel takes place. The only thing I knew from western media was about the starving Biafrans and how I better eat my vegetables. This book shows us, through the stories of three connected characters, how Biafra came to be, what it was like to live through the war, and how it was lost.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

I'll fall into any kind of fantastical world that Neil Gaiman creates. As usual he has spun a tale that sucked me completely into it. Richard Mayhew is an ordinary businessman who, by doing a kindness for a stranger, ends up in a strange and dangerous world under London. The book reminded me a bit of the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch. I hope there will be a sequel to this, but given that it was first published in 1996, I doubt it.

MUST READ IN 2018

I've cheated a bit with my nonfiction goal. My goal was to read 12 books from a collection, but my purpose was to ensure that I read at least one information book a month so I've added new books to that list. So far I've completed 6 books since our last update, and started another.

Here is what I've finished since April.

The best of this lot are these:

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
This is one of those books I am recommending that everyone who wants to understand America should read. Coates' writing is powerful and profound. There are parts of it that were hard to listen to because it details the dystopian reality of being black in America and Canada too.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

This is an important, profound book. It has much to teach all of us about gratitude, sharing, and reciprocity. These are all critical things if we are going to ensure our existence upon the planet. Ultimately we must defeat the Wendigo of greed and selfishness that leaves us empty, and find a new way of democratically being in the world. It’s going to be hard for many of us to start thinking of all the plants and animals as our equals, but without it we are in serious trouble. (This book counts as both a nonfiction title and an indigenous one)

Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Robert Probst, Kylene Beers

This book provides a new way of looking at how we talk about our reading. While it's set in America against a backdrop of high stakes testing, much of this will be relevant to teachers here in Canada who want to ensure that children grow up to be social activists engaged in deep aspects of democracy.
A couple of things surprised me. First, although I knew the amount of reading a student did made a difference in their academic achievement, the numbers in vocabulary acquisition based on how much reading was going on stunned me. Second, although I would never want to spend more than a month reading a novel out loud, their suggestion that it shouldn't take more than a week was an aha moment for me.
I wish I had read this book while I was still teaching. I hope I can use these ideas if I end up substitute teaching in the coming year. At the very least I hope to be able to use the HBB model for book club conversations.
The most distressing thing for me is that we still need to assert the importance of free choice reading everyday for students.

INDIGENOUS LITERATURE

My other goal was to read at least 25 books by Indigenous authors. Although I'm focusing on Canadian, I included some American writers here. So far I have completed another ten, which brings my total here to seventeen.

Of these I adored:

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot

This book will wrench your guts out and break your heart. Terese Marie Mailhot’s memoir gave me insight into what it means to have a bipolar diagnosis. Her life has been filled with all kinds of horrors most of us can’t imagine. She seems to have come out the other side, and is a successful writer and teacher, but I still find myself worrying about her.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough!

Ravensong by Lee Maracle

This book is the prequel to Celia's Song, a book I read earlier this year. It was interesting in that many events that happened in this book, were referenced in that one. It is told from the perspective of Celia's older sister, Stacey who is attending her last year of white high school across the bridge from their village. She plans to go to UBC and become a teacher after graduation.
Like in Celia's Song, Maracle makes us aware of the differences between her people's way of seeing the world and our own. Both are important books.

A Day with Yayah by Nicola I. Campbell & Julie Flett

This book takes me back to the landscape of my youth and the times I went gathering wild plants with my family.
In this book a group of children go on a plant harvesting expedition with their Yayah (Grandmother) and other elders. Although I am familiar with many of these plants, I had no idea that some of them, like the arrowleaf balsamroot, are edible. The book integrates Nte?kepmxcin vocabulary into the story. There is a glossary with a pronunciation guide at the end of the book.

Eugenia Lincoln and the Unexpected Package By Kate DiCamillo & Chris Van Dusen (illustrator)

Oh Eugenia! My heart aches for you. Is there anything worse than having no joy in your life?

When Eugenia Lincoln receives an accordion from an anonymous benefactor, she is not impressed. At first she tries to return it to the manufacturer, but they do not take returns. When she puts an advert in the paper to sell it, a Monsieur Gaston LaTreaux arrives at her doorstep. Rather than purchasing the instrument, he has arrived to give Eugenia lessons.

The problem of course is that Eugenia is a no nonsense, seriously in control kind of person. Playing the accordion, especially given the feelings it triggers in her, is just too scary to deal with. After an evening of frivolity by everyone but her, Eugenia decides to get rid of the blasted accordion once and for all. Thankfully, she runs into Stella Endicot who shows her that playing the accordion is not such a terrible thing. 

By the end of the book the secret of who ordered the accordion is revealed, but I shall leave it for you to read and find out for yourself.

I read this book at least three times. I loved it. Chris Van Dusen's illustrations add joy and humour into the tale. Yet there was something niggling me, something disturbing that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Eventually I realized that I was finding bit of myself in Eugenia. It wasn't comfortable. I too am a bossy, responsible elder sibling. My two younger brothers and two younger sisters probably agree that is a good thing that we do not live together. Somewhere in storage I even have an accordian that someone gave me. I kept it hoping that my musical sons would play it. I have now come to realize its purpose. Unfortunately, I doubt a Monsieur Gaston LaTreaux will come along and magically teach me to play. I will just have to make sure that I keep on singing.

I suspect there is a bit of Eugenia in all of us.

Those of you who know of Kate DiCamilla's work understand that she writes important books for children. What you might not know is that under the guise of writing for children, she writes important books for adults. Her Deckawoo Drive stories show how our interactions with children ensures our own metamorphosis. Thank you Kate for showing us we are never to old to change and be the best we can be.

For more information about the series you can read about Baby Lincoln here, Francine Poulet here, and Leroy Ninkers here.