Gifts from the Garbage Truck by Andrew Larsen

Jan16

Gifts from the Garbage Truck: A True Story About the Things We (Don’t) Throw Away by Andrew Larsen. Foreword by Nelson Molina. Illustrated by Oriol Vidal. Sourcebooks, 2024.

I have mixed feelings about this picture book biography of sanitation worker, Nelson Molina, a collector of throwaway items. I liked the basic story of Mr. Molina and his Treasures in the Trash Museum. Stories about ordinary people who have extraordinary hobbies and adventures are the best. The letter at the beginning of the book, written by Nelson Molina himself, was great. In fact, that letter, in which Mr. Molina tells about how he came to be a collector, reuser, recycler, and up-cycler of other people’s trash, could have been a much better text for the picture book.

Instead, author Andrew Larson retells Nelson Molina’s story, and the text is rather pedestrian. In addition, the illustrations are flat and uninteresting.

“Nelson Molina collected things. He collected all kinds of things.”

“Nelson brought the objects he found back to the sanitation garage. He displayed them in the locker room so everyone at work could see them. There were toys and teapots. Yo-yos and photos. There were knick-knacks and thingamajigs and whatchamacallits. People throw away the most extraordinary things.”

Then, at the end of the story, someone decided to add a didactic and unnecessary information page that reiterates what the story has been telling us, in case we’re too dense to get it. “The 4 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rethink”–with a definition and explanation for each “R” as well as ideas about how to up-cycle junk that’s headed for the garbage truck.

I was fascinated by Nelson Molina’s story of collecting, repairing, and recycling things from the New York City garbage. It reminded me a little bit of my work, rescuing books. But I wish Mr. Molina could have had a better picture book profile. And a few more photographs of the whatchamacallits and thingamajigs in the museum would have been nice. (There are a few photos in the back of the book.)

This picture book is worth checking out from the library just because of the story. But one time through the book should be enough for most kids and grownups, too.

Evidence! by Deborah Hopkinson

Jan13

Evidence! How Dr. John Snow Solved the Mystery of Cholera by Deborah Hopkinson. Illustrated by Nik Henderson. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

I read an adult nonfiction book called Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, about Dr. John Snow and the 19th century London cholera outbreak associated with the Broad Street water pump. So, I knew the basic outlines of this picture book story by noted author Deborah Hopkinson. Still, it was good to be reminded that the solution of medical mysteries has always required dogged work and investigation to find evidence that will pinpoint the source of diseases and lead to treatments and a cure.

When cholera came to Broad Street and surrounding areas in London in 1854, the prevailing theory was that the disease was caused and spread by “bad air.” Dr. Snow, who had already been researching the disease of cholera for some time, believed that cholera was spread by sewage-contaminated water. This book tells the story of exactly how Dr. Snow proves his hypothesis and stops the Broad Street cholera epidemic from continuing to kill London’s tenement dwellers..

The text of this story is simple but detailed enough to make the story clear to young readers. Step-by-step, Ms. Hopkinson leads us through the thought processes of Dr. Snow as he asks questions and interviews people to test his hypothesis and to eventually show the people of the Broad Street neighborhood what they must do to stop the cholera outbreak.

The illustrations in the book by Nik Henderson are adequate, depicting a foggy, Dickensian London with Dr. Snow moving quickly and confidently through each picture on a quest to find the answers to the cholera problem. The appendices include a brief restating of “the case against the Broad Street pump”, a short biographical sketch of Dr. Snow, a list of major infectious diseases and their causes, and a list of books and internet resources for adults and children about cholera and other infectious disease epidemics.

This post here at Semicolon, called Epidemic, Pandemic, Plague and Disease in Children’s Books, could be helpful for those who want to pursue the subject further.

Orris and Timble: The Beginning by Kate DiCamillo

Jan11

Kate diCamillo is one of my favorite contemporary authors, and she has had a great year. Ferris was probably my favorite middle grade novel of 2024, and now Orris and Timble:The Beginning is set to be my favorite new easy reader of 2024, and maybe my favorite series, if the other two books in the projected trilogy are as good as this first one.

“The old barn was abandoned. Only Orris lived there.” So the story begins. Orris is a rat, a solitary soul who has made a nest for himself and filled it with his favorite recycled treasures. He’s happy and seemingly self-satisfied.

But Orris is a rat with a conscience, personified in the picture of a king on a sardine can who looks Orris in the eye and reminds him to “make the good and noble choice.” And when a snowy owl, Timble, is caught in a trap and begs for help, Orris has a choice to make. Will he make the good and noble choice? Or will he stay safe in his own little nest and ignore the needs, and the danger, of the world outside?

This book, with short chapters, and very few words on each page, reminded me of the Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel. The story itself is simple and straightforward, a mirroring of the story of Androcles and the Lion, but there’s a subtext that speaks to adults as well as children. It’s a story and a subtext about friendship and adventure and choices and risk taking, but I won’t go much farther than that. You and your children can pull your own ideas and images from the book.

The illustrations by Carmen Mok are adequate, but not spectacular. The charm is in the story. The vocabulary in the book is not controlled, and the author uses some moderately difficult words. Early readers will gain confidence after sounding out words such as “windowsill” and “disappeared” and “butterscotch”. The story itself should carry readers who are beginning to enjoy chapter books right along to the ending, which is lovely in its “openendedness”.

“Orris?” says the owl.

“Yes?” says the rat.

“Are we friends?” says the owl.

“Yes, Timble,” says the rat after a long silence, “we’re friends.”

“But that’s not the end of the story,” says Timble.

“No,” says Orris, “it’s the beginning.”

The Contender by Robert Lipsyte

Jan10

Some bad ideas just keep coming back to haunt and hinder human flourishing all over again. In this book, published in 1967, Alfred Brooks, a black seventeen year old high school drop out who lives and works in Harlem, hears all the same taunts and race baiting remarks that are common on the internet nowadays.

“You just a slave,” sneered Major. “You was born a slave. You gonna die a slave.”

“You come on, Alfred,” said James softly. “Whitey been stealing from us for three hundred years. We just going to take some back.”

It’s the appeal to enslave oneself to bitterness and resentment that keeps coming back to capture impressionable young minds. Alfred, who lives with his aunt and her daughters in an apartment and works at a local Jewish-owned store, isn’t interested in the siren call of crime and drugs that his tormentors are offering and that his best friend James is yielding to. But Alfred doesn’t really know what he does want to pursue, what his true adventure might be, until he steps over the threshold of Donatelli’s Gym and commits himself to training to become a boxer.

The Contender is a book for older teens and adults, especially for those young men who are considering what it means to become a man. It’s about boxing and drug abuse and the temptations that come with racial hatred and poverty and aimlessness. But it’s mostly about coming of age through struggle and discipline and perseverance to find the person you want to become.

The novel is gritty for 1967. There’s the violence of the boxing ring and of the streets, and the desperation of heroin addiction (Alfred’s friend, James). The bullies, also black teens, who taunt and try to take revenge on Alfred for something he didn’t do, make use of the n-word twice to tell Alfred what a loser he is. But the words and the violence are there for a reason, and by today’s standards, they’re mild. No sexual content other than a few references to young men looking for Friday night girls to date.

Robert Lipsyte is a sports journalist as well as a writer of nonfiction sports biography and memoir and young adult fiction. He was awarded the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for his contribution to young adult literature in 2001. The citation for the award noted that, “The Contender and its sequels, The Brave and The Chief transformed the sports novel to authentic literature with their gritty depiction of the boxing world. An ongoing theme is the struggle of their protagonists to seek personal victory by their continuing efforts towards a better life despite defeats.”

I haven’t read The Brave or The Chief, but I did find The Contender to be thought-provoking. I know a young man who might get a lot out of the story if I could get him to read it.

Kadooboo by Shruthi Rao

Jan9

Kadooboo: A Silly South Indian Folktale by Shruthi Rao. Illustrated by Darshika Varma. Page Street Kids, 2024.

The word “silly” in the subtitle signals to the reader not to expect anything too profound from this adapted South Indian folktale, but the fact that it’s a folktale, passed down from grandmother to granddaughter, means that the story certainly has some significance and meaning. And it’s fun. Fun is not twaddle, and comedy is not useless. Therefore, classify this one as a humble living book.

Anya’s Appa (dad) is making kadooboo, “pouches of dough filled with sugar and grated coconut.” (Yes, there’s a recipe in the back of the book.) Anya’s friend Kabir is asked to take some home to his Amma (mom). As he runs home, hurrying to beat the impending rainstorm, Kabir collects other friends who come along to share the kadooboo and to get in out of the rain. But Kabir also becomes more and more confused about the name of the treat he is carrying. Is it bookoodoo? Dubookoo? Duckooboo?

This picture book just tells a sweet little story. Yes, silly, but the wordplay and the multiethnic cast of friends elevate the story into more than a simple misunderstanding or joke. The illustrations and the names of the children that Kabir meets show that this is set in South India where all kinds of ethnicities share the same Indian subcontinent, but there’s nothing in the story that preaches “diversity”. It’s just a show-and tell story with funny words that children will repeat and try to remember themselves. The pictured children remind me of Dora the Explorer, so it’s a colorful, 21st century sort of picture book.

This story would be perfect for reading aloud, but the read aloud-er might want to check the ending before attempting the final word in the story. And of course, the story cries out for some homemade kadooboo as an after-story time treat. The ingredients are not too exotic or hard to find, and the recipe instructions a fairly straightforward, although adult help and supervision is required (kadooboo pies are fried in oil).

“The story is a modern retelling of a South Indian folktale my grandmother used to tell me when I was a child. In the original story, a man eats kadooboo at a feast. He hurries home, excited to tell his wife about, and repeats the word over and over so as not to forget it. . . . The kadooboo in this story is a fried dumpling.” ~Author’s Note

The Best Adult and Young Adult Fiction I Read in 2024

Jan7

If it’s good for young adults (older teens) it’s probably good for adults, too, and vice-versa. So, these are the adult fiction books I really enjoyed in 2024. (Links are to reviews here at Semicolon)

  • Joy in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse. I read this one for Cindy Rollins’ summer course. Wodehouse is always good and funny and just all-around delightful.
  • Flambards, The Edge of the Cloud, and Flambards in Summer by K.M. Peyton. I’ve wanted to re-read these British young adult romance/horse books for a long time, and I finally found copies this year and read them. Just about as good as I remembered them to be.
  • The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope. I read a lot of Trollope in 2024, and I’m reading another book by Trollope now in the first days of 2025. Almost as good as Dickens and Thackeray.
  • Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope.
  • Stateless by Elizabeth Wein. Pair this book about the early days of aviation with the Flambards trilogy. They are all good.
  • The Swedish Nightingale: Jenny Lind by Elisabeth Kyle. A lightly fictionalized biography of the famous singer.
  • Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Bronte by Elisabeth Kyle. Another fictionalized biography, but mostly factual. And clean. And not iconoclastic or deconstructionist.
  • Pastures of the Blue Crane by H.F. Brinsmead. An Australian classic.

That’s it. I read a lot of thrillers by Ruth Ware and by Susan Hill (Simon Serraillier series) and by Ann Cleves and by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike series), but I can’t really recommend any of them. They were all to some extent gritty with bad language and horrific crimes and bad language. I think it’s time I gave up on that genre.

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

Jan3

My eldest daughter saw this book on my bedside table and asked to take it home and read it. So she read Leif Enger’s newest novel before I even opened it. When she brought it back I asked her how it was, and she said, “Well, it’s good, but it’s rather dark.”

Dark indeed. I Cheerfully Refuse is the story of a man, Rainy, who becomes a fugitive, innocent of any crime, but pursued by a villainous lawman in a dystopian world that has traded law and order for despotism and chaos. It was unclear to me whether nuclear war or climate change or something else or a combination of things made the setting, in and around Lake Superior in Michigan and Canada, so degraded and oppressive. However, something happened to the country and then something else to Rainy in particular, and Rainy is caught in a hellish predicament, not of his own making. So he sets sail in a dilapidated old sailboat to escape the bad guys and find the good.

It is a doomed quest, but Rainy doesn’t give up. He meets with people and situations both good and evil in his journey. And (SPOILER ALERT), he does, after much suffering, win through to a semi-hopeful ending. There’s a bit of magical realism and some futuristic dystopian fantasy as the story winds through the islands and shores of Lake Superior. The plot, however, is not the best part of the book. It’s the words. Mr. Enger is a master at manipulating and communicating with words. He verbs a few of the nouns, and nouns some adjectives and verbs, and mixes up the syntax and casually drops in the metaphors and similes just enough to keep a reader on her toes, reading carefully and slowly, and going back to savor and make sure I didn’t miss something along the journey.

Enger in this book writes lovely sentences like these:

“You’re a man who stops and listens. If that’s not the definition of friendship, it’s close enough for now.”

“Words are one way we leave tracks in the world, Sol. Maybe one day you will write a book, like Olaus did, or Molly Thorn. And people will read it, like I’ve been reading to you. And they will know that you were here, and a little about what you were like.”

“. . . our job always and forever was to refuse Apocalypse in all its forms and work cheerfully against it.”

“[I]t began to resemble what I once imagined church might be like, a church you could bear, where people laughed and enjoyed each other and did not care if they were right all the time or if other people were wrong.”

“One shelf became two. Then a wall. Then eight-foot rolling racks from a shut library in Hayward, Wisconsin. Maudie suggested changing the shop name to reflect its inventory. Bread and Books. Loaves and Lit. Pulp and Provender. Lark laughed off the idea. She said all of it was bread.”

So, I Cheerfully Refuse is a good book, but dark. In times of chaos and uncertainty and change, it might be good to read a book about man living through similar (but much worse) times. Or it might not. I enjoyed the book, but your mileage and ability to stay cheerful may vary.

“I am always last to see the beauty I inhabit.”

The Best Nonfiction I Read in 2024

Jan2

I see that none of these nonfiction books is a biography, although a couple are memoirs and some are biographical, telling a part of the life of one or more persons. A couple of the books are rather controversial, but I found those to be readable and true to my own experience of life in these controversial and adversarial times. I recommend all of the above, but The Three Owls by New York City librarian Anne Carroll Moore was the most comforting and illuminating of the dozen books, taking me out of this time and place to a children’s literature culture of 100 years ago. If we can’t recapture or recreate those times and that culture, we can at least live in them for a little while by reading about the books of that era. The Three Owls: Third Book is a compilation of “contemporary criticism of children’s books, 1927-1930, written and edited by Anne Carroll Moore.” I would very much like to own books 1 and 2 as well.

Links are to reviews here at Semicolon or elsewhere. Starred books are available for library patrons to borrow from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The Best Middle Grade Fiction I read in 2024: A Baker’s Dozen

Jan1

My children’s fiction reading this year has been influenced a lot by two projects: my project to read and evaluate current day middle grade fiction published in 2024 and my other project to read and evaluate the middle grade fiction of 60 years ago, published in 1964. I found more gold in ’64 than I did in 2024, but there were a few good ones from this past year. I also spent a lot of time with one particular children’s author from the past who deserved all of the awards he received. Links are to reviews of the books here at Semicolon or at Plumfield and Paideia.

Indeed, it was the year of good books from 1964, and the year of Meindert DeJong. If you’ve not read any of DeJong’s award-winning books, and if you like animal stories, you should definitely try one of Mr. DeJong’s heart-warming tales.

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea

Dec27

Over the course of four years, actor and director Brendan O’Hea and his good friend, actress Judi Dench, met regularly to discuss the Shakespeare plays in which she had performed, as well as a few she had directed. This book, drawn from transcripts of those conversations, features Dame Judi Dench sharing stories, anecdotes, and some playful gossip—mostly at her own expense. While her humor often focuses on her own quirks and missteps, the primary focus of the book is on the plays themselves, the characters she portrayed, and the timeless poetry of Shakespeare—the man who, as Dench notes, has “paid the rent” for countless actors over the years.

If you are a fan of Shakespeare, whether you are familiar with all or just some of his plays, you will find much to love and ponder in this memoir. It reflects a lifetime spent interpreting and performing his works. While readers may choose either to overlook or enjoy Ms. Dench’s irreverent humor and occasional coarse language, it’s worth noting her irreverence and sexual frankness reflect that of Shakespeare himself. And Judi Dench displays a true belief in Shakespeare’s genius—his mastery of the English language and his ability to write plays that resonate across time and cultures.

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent is not your typical celebrity memoir. Rather, it serves as a thoughtful treatise on acting, especially when it comes to interpreting Shakespeare’s characters. Dench offers valuable insights into the intricacies of the roles she has played, demonstrating that she has deeply engaged with the text, carefully considering its meaning and its implications. The interviews also provide a rich personal history of British theater during the time Dench has been active (1957-2024), shedding light on the roles and productions that shaped her career. Her range as an actress is staggering, with memorable performances in both major and minor roles, including Ophelia in Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Katharine in Henry V, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Adriana in The Comedy of Errors, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, and many more.

The book is filled with humor, particularly when Dench recounts her onstage mishaps—like the many times she fell unexpectedly or almost came onstage without her skirt. There’s also the incident where she sneezed while playing Juliet, during a scene where she was supposed to be dead—or at least feigning death. But the memoir is also deeply poignant, as Dench reflects on, or rather refuses to discuss, her fear of death, and tells how Shakespeare’s works have helped her process the grief of losing her husband, actor Michael Williams, and other theater friends. Some of these friends even have trees planted in her garden in their honor.

Published in 2024, when Dench was 80 years old, the book captures her in her seventies, still actively working in theater and film. She mentions her struggles with failing eyesight, yet she refuses to let this or any other obstacle deter her from continuing her career and growing as an artist. It’s Dench’s perspective, a blend of maturity, childlike wonder, humor, gratitude, and deep love for Shakespeare, that makes this memoir such a joy to read.

This book is recommended for adults who love Shakespeare, theater, or Judi Dench’s remarkable acting career. I read the book in a hardcover edition from the public library, but it is also available as an audiobook, read by Brendan O’Hea and Barbara Flynn (as Judi Dench). Content considerations include some language, explicit sexual jokes, innuendo, and adult themes.