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Ode to Grapefruit by Kari Lavelle

Jan25

Lavelle, Kari. Ode to Grapefruit: How James Earl Jones Found His Voice. Illustrated by Bryan Collier. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

The things you can learn from picture books! I had no idea that James Earl Jones/Darth Vader was a stutterer. Ode to a Grapefruit by speech pathologist Kari Lavelle tells the story of Mr. Jones’ childhood and young adulthood and his struggles in learning to work with and through his stuttering.

James Earl Jones grew up in Michigan, and according to this picture book biography, he felt such shame and fear about his stuttering that he decided to remain silent in public for the first eight years of his school career. In high school, James Earl, who never received speech therapy as a child, found something that helped him to speak: poetry. The rhythm and cadence of poetry and memorized lines in plays made it easier for James Earl to speak clearly and fluently. With encouragement from a teacher mentor, James Earl began to speak in class and on stage, and he learned to use his resonant voice and overcome his stutter. Even so, he still considered himself a stutterer as an adult, with occasional lapses in fluency.

I had a good friend in college, Gail, who was a stutterer. Gail taught me a lot about stuttering and how it works and how speech therapists teach people to deal with stuttering. This book felt true to what Gail experienced and what she told me long ago about her journey with stuttering. As I was reading the book, I noticed that not much has changed in regard to the advice that is given to people who stutter and to their family and friends.

To those who stutter: “There are no miracle cures for stuttering. But there are many ways to help people who stutter.” To friends: “Be kind. Be patient. Listen to their message. Don’t try to offer word suggestions if they get stuck.”

And what do stuttering and James Earl Jones have to do with grapefruit? Well, that’s something you’ll have to read about in the book. This biography was published in 2024, and James Earl Jones died in September, 2024. It couldn’t have been planned, but the coincidental publication of the book in the same year of Mr. Jones’ death seems like a fitting tribute to the great actor with a great voice.

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.

The Swedish Nightingale: Jenny Lind by Elisabeth Kyle

Dec12

Published in 1964. Biographical novelist Elisabeth Kyle published two books in 1964: Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Brontë, which I read and reviewed earlier this year, and this novel about the life of nineteenth century singer and celebrity Jenny Lind. Kyle also wrote several other “biographical novels,” including works about Joan of Arc, Mary Stuart, Mary of Orange, Queen Victoria, Clara and Robert Schumann, Edvard and Nina Grieg, and Charles Dickens, as well as numerous regular novels for both adults and children. If anyone has read any of her other books, I’d love to hear your thoughts. These two that I read were quite engaging and would be well-suited for voracious teen readers looking for clean, absorbing stories about real people.

As for Jenny Lind, the movie The Greatest Showman did her a great disservice. If she were still alive, I would advise her to sue for defamation of character. The real Jenny Lind was a deeply devout Christian who would never have tried to seduce P.T. Barnum, as the film implied. She was known for her “golden voice” by all who heard her sing, and she was a celebrity in the modern sense—hounded by fans and people eager to exploit her talent, including Barnum himself. Over the course of her career, Jenny Lind made a significant amount of money, most of which she generously gave away to family and charity.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Kyle’s biography of Jenny Lind. In this portrayal, Jenny is depicted as strong-willed (her friends even use reverse psychology to guide her decisions), yet also kind and generous. Her childhood was tumultuous, with parents who were both neglectful and overbearing , yet after her career takes off, Jenny supports them by buying them a house. Though she initially resists leaving Sweden, she eventually travels to France for singing lessons, and later performs in England and America, including on the famous P.T. Barnum tour.

Jenny Lind herself was a fascinating mix of contradictions: talented yet shy, a child prodigy who almost lost her ability to sing in her early twenties, confident on stage but plagued by stage fright before every performance. She was plain in appearance but transformed by her voice into a beautiful star who attracted numerous admirers, including Hans Christian Andersen and Felix Mendelssohn. Over time, she reconciled all of these contradictions, eventually giving up her singing career to marry and settle in England with her husband and children.

Though Kyle only briefly mentions it, Jenny’s strong Christian faith seemed to be a key factor in preventing her from becoming a spoiled diva. It’s a shame the filmmakers behind The Greatest Showman either didn’t see—or chose to ignore—this aspect of Jenny Lind’s life and character. Jenny Bicks, one of the screenwriters for The Greatest Showman (and a writer for Sex and the City), was likely part of the reason the film’s portrayal of Jenny Lind strayed so far from reality.

In any case, Elisabeth Kyle does a much more faithful job of novelizing Jenny Lind’s story. I wonder how she would have portrayed P.T. Barnum if she had written a book about him?

Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God by Christopher Yuan

Jun3

I’ve wanted to read Christopher Yuan’s conversion story for a while, but just recently managed to get hold of a copy. I think it was a bit anticlimactic for me because I already heard most of the outlines and some of the details of Mr. Yuan’s story. But for someone coming to the story with fresh eyes, this book would be a very powerful testimony to the saving power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for both wayward sons and their unredeemed parents.

Christopher Yuan is the younger of two sons in a traditional Chinese American family. His parents were immigrants to the United States from Taiwan who struggled but made good in a new country with lots of hard work and determination–the familiar American immigrant success story. Christopher’s father earned a doctorate and a DDS in dentistry and with his wife, Christopher’s mother, Angela’s help, established a thriving dental practice in Chicago. Their two boys grew up in a strict but loving Chinese American family with a somewhat distant father and a proud and deeply attached mother. The book begins with Christopher’s “coming out” story: he tells his parents about his homosexuality, which has been the center of his life for several years before this confession. “It’s not something I can choose. I was born this way. . . I am gay.” The remainder of the book tells how Christopher’s life became more and more chaotic and dysfunctional, with drugs, sex, and illicit money featured prominently until Christopher finally ends up in prison.

In the meantime, Angela goes from suicidal and irreligious to persevering prayer warrior after she relinquishes control of her life and of Christopher’s life to God and begins to know Him as her ever present help in a years long vigil and prayer for the salvation of her son. Both Angela and Christopher eventually learn that their only hope is found in Christ.

“Years of heartbreak, confusion, and prayer followed before the Yuans found a place of complete surrender, which is God’s desire for all families. Their amazing story, told from the perspectives of both mother and son, offers hope for anyone affected by homosexuality. God calls all who are lost to come home to him. Casting a compelling vision for holy sexuality, Out of a Far Country speaks to prodigals, parents of prodigals, and those wanting to minister to the gay community.”

Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Bronte by Elisabeth Kyle

Mar29

“This being Charlotte Bronte’s story and not her biography, I have taken a few liberties. Some minor happenings have been transposed in time, other omitted or invented. . . . But this is Charlotte’s story. I have written it in the hope of awakening interest in a remarkable girl who wrote remarkable books.”

~Afterword by Elisabeth Kyle

I can’t decide whether it would be best to have read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre before reading this fictionalized biography or whether Jane Eyre might flow even better if the reader were to know something about the life and times of its author. Either way, Girl With a Pen is a book not to be missed by Bronte fans. Making the story of Charlotte’s life into a fictional narrative while keeping the broad outlines and many of the details was a good choice on the part of a good author herself, Elisabeth Kyle. Ms. Kyle writes vividly and fluidly of Charlotte’s young adulthood and her rise to fame, telling the story of Charlotte Bronte’s growth as a person and as an author with understanding and an affinity for Charlotte and her sisters.

I’ve read several books about the Brontes, fiction and nonfiction. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. This one emphasizes Charlotte’s life in the parsonage at Haworth as a young adult, covers her time as a student in Brussels, and shows us her rocky, yet triumphant road to becoming a celebrated novelist, all without speculating about modern obsessions with Charlotte’s love life or her relationship with her father. Mr. Bronte is this book, is a typical Victorian father, rather over-protective of his daughters by modern standards, but loving and beloved by those same daughters. And Charlotte goes to Brussels to learn French and to teach English and does not indulge in any love affairs whilst there.

This biographical fiction novel is especially appropriate for junior high and younger high school readers who are interested in learning more about Charlotte Bronte’s life since the author omits the more sordid details of Branwell Bronte’s life and death with Branwell appearing only as a minor character in the story. The book also ends before the deaths of Emily and Anne, thereby avoiding those twin tragedies as well.

And Charlotte herself is indeed the focus of the narrative. Ms. Kyle tells Charlotte’s story vividly and memorably. In this book, Charlotte Bronte, who thought of herself as a rather nondescript and even ugly young lady, is is bright and personable and full of life. I would recommend this fictionalized biography to any teens who are readers, introverts, or aspiring writers. And adults like me, librarian-types, should find it fascinating as well.

This book can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

Other Bronte books I can recommend:

Proud Prisoner by Walter Havighurst

Feb25

This narrative history/biography book is for older middle school to high school students and adults who are interested in a different perspective on the American Revolution, particularly the war in the Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan territories west of the Appalachian Mountains. The “proud prisoner” of the title is Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton, British Governor of Detroit, aka “Hair Buyer”. As the war between the independence-declaring Americans and the mighty ruling British was raging in the east, the illegal settlers in Kentucky and Ohio were experiencing their own war. The British paid Native American allies, led by British officers, to raid the settlements and isolated homesteads of these settlers, who were mostly from Virginia and considered themselves Americans and Virginians, not subject to the British law that said they couldn’t settle in the land beyond the Cumberland Gap.

Henry Hamilton gained the epithet “Hair Buyer” among the Virginians because he was accused of paying the Native Americans for scalps but not for for live prisoners and of encouraging them to massacre men, women, and children. This book makes the case that Hamilton was falsely accused by a couple of unreliable witnesses with an ax to grind. However, the author also states very plainly that Hamilton gave the natives many “presents” (mostly rum), including knives specifically called scalping knives. And when the raiders brought in scalps, including those obviously taken from children, Hamilton gave them praise and more gifts. If that’s not paying for scalps, I’m not sure what it is.

So I wasn’t convinced that Governor Hamilton was an “honest and honorable man whom history has cast in a villain’s role.” Maybe the best you can say is that he was no worse than many of his compatriots as well as many of the Virginians who were also enlisting the natives to fight for them. Anyway, it was fascinating to read about this side of the War for Independence. I don’t remember learning in American history class much about George Rogers Clark, the Virginian sent by Governor Patrick Henry to capture the British outposts in the west and stop the marauding British and natives from their raids on American settlements. Nor do I remember anything at all about the governor of Detroit and the battle between his forces and the Virginia militiamen at Vincennes that ended in the capture and imprisonment of Governor Hamilton.

I thought this story, by a scholar and university professor, was well written, engaging, and well researched. Governor Hamilton left behind many papers, letters, and a diary which means the author had many sources from which to draw in telling the history of this possibly unfairly stigmatized, possibly justly hated, man. Either way, Hamilton’s life was one I knew nothing about, and I’m glad I read about him in Proud Prisoner.

This book can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts

Sep4

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts

One of my fascinations is journey stories: Peter Jenkins’ A Walk Across America and The Walk West, Robin Graham’s The Boy Who Sailed ‘Round the World (aka Dove), Walking to Listen by Andrew Forsthoefel, Bold Spirit by Linda Lawrence Hunt, just to name a few that I’ve read and enjoyed. The Ride of Her Life is another entry in the “journey across America” genre, this time by horse.

Annie was 62 years old in 1954 when she decided to leave her Maine hometown of Minot and travel by horseback to California. She didn’t know where she was going in California; nor did she have a route picked out for getting there. She didn’t have a roadmap. She didn’t have a plan for what she would do when she got to California either. She had very little money, and her horse, a Maine trotter gelding named Tarzan, was at least as old (as horses age) as Annie herself. Annie Wilkins also had no family, no children, and no real ties to the town of Minot where she spent most of her life up until the age of 62. Her farm had just been taken from her in lieu of back taxes.

So she decided to ride Tarzan across the country to California and figured that by the time she reached the Pacific she would be almost old enough to draw from that new government program, Social Security, if she didn’t die on the way. Her Maine doctor had found a spot on her lungs that might have been cancer or tuberculosis, and he figured she had only a couple years to live. What better way to spend those years than as a tramp, which is what Annie decided to call herself, “The Last of the Saddle Tramps” or “The Tramp of Fate.”

I liked this book partly because Annie was about my age when she set out on her journey. I could never ride or walk across the country. I can barely walk around the block without stumbling or breathing hard, and I’ve never ridden a horse. But I do admire Annie’s tenacious spirit, and I would like to emulate her in some ways.

I also enjoyed all the extra information added by the author, Elizabeth Letts. Ms. Letts did a phenomenal amount of research writing this book. A lot of the book is based on Annie’s memoir, written with co-author Mina Titus Sawyer, called Last of the Saddle Tramps. However, Ms. Letts also traveled to all of the places where Annie stopped, found the newspaper articles that were written about her ride in local and national newspapers, and interviewed the few people who are still living and remember Annie coming through or staying in their neighborhoods and homes.

The book is just fascinating. Annie travelled through snow and ice and heat and desert and mountains and over rivers. And she found plenty of friendly strangers who cared for her along the way. She met Andrew Wyeth, Governor Robert Smylie of Idaho, Art Linkletter, and countless less famous folks who were all treated with the same friendly, unassuming, appreciative air by Annie, The Last of the Saddle Tramps.

Napoleon and the Battle of Waterloo by Frances Winwar

Jul21

I read the Landmark book about Adolf Hitler earlier this year, and I couldn’t help comparing as I read this Landmark book about another would-be conqueror, Napoleon. The author of Napoleon and the Battle of Waterloo has the advantage, and the disadvantage, of distance from her subject. Maybe the havoc and death that resulted from Napoleon’s ambition over two hundred years ago just doesn’t feel as bad as Hitler’s evil deeds that are only seventy-five or so years in the past. Or maybe Napoleon, unlike Hitler, did have his good side.

Anyway, Winwar tells the story of Napoleon well, and with the semblance of objectivity. She goes through the events of his life from his birth in 1769 to a Corsican rebel lieutenant and his wife to his defeat at Waterloo and his exile and death on another island, St. Helena. Napoleon’s father was a rebel against the French occupation of the island of Corsica, and Napoleon himself became the personification of French identity and patriotism. I learned some facts about Napoleon and his empire, built and lost. And Winwar’s summary at the end of her book seems fair:

“Napoleon, however, left behind him a legend and a moral lesson. He showed what a man can accomplish through strength of purpose, courage, and imagination. He destroyed the last remnants of feudalism in Europe and abolished the Inquisition in Spain. He helped to build the modern code of laws. He encouraged art and science and education.

But once he gained power he paired it with his colossal ambition. The two, like fiery steeds driven recklessly for his own glory, plunged him and his empire to destruction. So great was his fall at Waterloo that since then all defeat has been known by its name.”

I can’t quite imagine a similar recitation of Hitler’s legendary feats and his fall. And yet Napoleon’s ambition and egomania was responsible for a great deal of suffering and death for the French people and for the other peoples of Europe. His colossal ambition was just as disproportionate and damaging as Hitler’s was, but without the tanks, sophisticated and deadly weaponry, and death camps. I wonder if the people of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who were closer to the results of Napoleon’s reign would have given him credit for “strength of purpose, courage and imagination.” Distance in time can give us perspective, but is it an accurate and truthful perspective?

Growing Up Dakota by Charles Alexander Eastman

Jul19

Growing Up Dakota by Charles Alexander Eastman, edited and illustrated by Charlene Notgrass. From Indian Child Life and Indian Boyhood, both by Charles Alexander Eastman.

Charles Eastman was an amazing Native American voice and man. After reading about him in the linked article, I am surprised that I had never heard of him before now. With all of the emphasis on “own voices” and the authentic Native American experience these days, Mr. Eastman’s writing and perspective would seem to be particularly valuable to children who are learning about American history and about Native American life. And yet, only one of his many books is available in print from my large city library system, and none of his work is available in an edition meant for children, even though much of Mr. Eastman’s original writing was intended for children and young adults.

Growing Up Dakota its an edited version of two of Eastman’s books, Indian Child Life and Indian Boyhood, a sort of “youth edition” of Eastman’s stories. Charlene Notgrass, the editor, summarizes some parts of Eastman’s text with her own words in italics. But she writes in her foreword, “All of the words in Growing Up Dakota are the original words of Charles Eastman, except when you see lines typed like this: the italicized words between the lines are mine. . . . I have not changed the words that Eastman chose because I want you to be able to read this story in the words of the real Dakota man who wrote them.”

Mr. Eastman tells his story in roughly chronological order, but it’s also a rambling sort of story that reminds one of an old man reciting his memories of his boyhood, stories that others told to him, and other anecdotal accounts as they occur to him. The author begins with the story that was told to him of his birth and his name, “Hakadah” meaning Pitiful Last. He was given this name because he was the last of five children, and his mother died soon after he was born. Hakadah, who later received the more pleasant name Ohiyesa, which means Winner, was raised by his grandmother and his uncle. Ohiyesa’s father was presumed dead when the family was separated during the Dakota Wars of 1862.

The book ends with Ohiyesa’s father reappearance when Ohiyesa was fifteen years old. His father had been imprisoned, then released, and had to search to find Ohiyesa and the rest of his tribe and family. Ohiyesa’s father, Jacob Eastman, had in the interim become a Christian, and he took Ohiyesa to live “like the white men” on a homestead in South Dakota. That’s when Ohiyesa took a “Christian name,” Charles Alexander Eastman. He went to school, graduated from Dartmouth College, and Boston University’s medical school, and became a doctor and an author.

In between are the memories of Ohiyesa/Eastman’s Indian boyhood: the customs and celebrations, hunts and courting rituals, feasts and training for manhood. All that the author remembers is described vividly and with respect for the Dakota (Sioux) way of life. This book would be fascinating for children to listen to if read aloud in brief pieces, Charlotte Mason-style, and would provide much food for discussion. Boys and girls who are interested in learning more about Native American culture should definitely be introduced to Ohiyesa’s story.

Growing Up Dakota is available for purchase from Notgrass History, a homeschool curriculum publisher and distributor.

The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler by William L. Shirer

Feb14

What would lead a person to read an entire book, even a children’s middle grade nonfiction book, that takes the reader inside the life and mind of Adolf Hitler, the arch-villain of the twentieth century? Well, there’s something rather fascinating about trying to understand how Hitler became Hitler, synonymous with the most evil, murderous, racist, anti-Semitic dictator and warmonger ever. William L. Shirer, author of the 1000+ page tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (for adults), was in a position to study this question and come to some kind of conclusions, if anyone from the Allied side of the war was. As an American correspondent in Berlin, Shirer actually met Hitler, listened to many of his spell-binding speeches, and observed him over the course of several years before and during World War II. The result of Shirer’s observations and his journalist’s eye for character and for a story is this book, written for children in the Landmark history series, but suited to readers of all ages.

Shirer begins his book with eleven year old Adolf, showing an independent streak even at that young age in aspiring to become an artist instead of the civil servant his father wanted him to be. I learned a lot about Hitler that I never knew before from this book, and I was reminded of a few “home truths” along the way. After his art career bombed because the art school wouldn’t let him in, said he had no talent, Herr Hitler became a tramp without a real job for several years, but a very well read tramp. He read and studied all the time while working very little. First lesson: readers may become leaders, but they may also become very bad leaders.

Chapter 7 of the book is called “Hitler Falls in Love,” and it tells a story I never knew or else had forgotten. In this chapter of the book and of Hitler’s life, he falls hard for his half-niece, the daughter of his half-sister. Her name was Gell Raubal, and Hitler declared after her death that she was the only woman he ever truly loved. You can read the story in Shirer’s book and decide for yourself whether or not “loved” is the right word to describe Hitler’s controlling obsession with a girl half his age. (The story of their brief “romance” is tastefully told, appropriate for middle grade and older children who will read the book, but icky nonetheless.)

After this personal interlude, the book moves on to Hitler’s political actions and aspirations and quickly into the war years. As he becomes more and more successful, in politics and in war, and gains more and more power, Hitler becomes more and more deranged. Shirer calls him “beyond any question a dangerous, irresponsible megalomaniac.” And yet (next paragraph) Hitler is able to maintain power, and be “so cool and cunning in his calculations and so bold in carrying them out that few could doubt that he well might be the military genius that he claimed to be.” This lead me to another unpleasant truth: a mentally ill egomaniacal murderer can act in a very lucid and intelligent manner for a long time. It is possible to be cunning, bold, and crazy.

Of course, this book chronicles the rise and fall of Hitler, so the craziness does come to an end. Shirer is to be commended for his ability to tell the story in a way that is appropriate for older children, but also truthful and candid in its presentation of Hitler’s horribly destructive life and actions. The book doesn’t completely explain the quandary of why the German people were so enamored of Herr Hitler or how he was able to fool so many people for so long into believing in his “genius”, but it does document in a very readable and engaging style, the rise and fall of a man who was “a power-drunk tyrant whom absolute power had corrupted absolutely.”

I recommend Shirer’s book for its insight and as a cautionary tale for those who would place their faith in any political leader. Hitler is dead, but it is still quite possible to be fooled by a seemingly lucid and benign leader who is actually a wolf in disguise.

Download a list of the entire Landmark history series in chronological order.