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Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart by Russ Ramsey

Nov21

Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart; What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive by Russ Ramsey. Zondervan, 2024.

Russ Ramsey’s first book about art and the life it portrays and reflects and illuminates, Rembrandt Is in the Wind, was and is one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. This second book is just as good and thought-provoking as the first one, and I highly recommend both books even if you are not an art aficionado, and even if you are not a Christian.

Both books are about art and artists and the Christian life. Both books are accessible and enjoyable to art lovers and philistines (like me), to Christians and to unbelievers. I would call these chapters “sermons in art”–Mr. Ramsey is, after all, a pastor– but that might give those who are not fond of sermons reason to skip the book. That would be a mistake.

What Russ Ramsey offers up in these two books, but especially in this second volume, is a compassionate and broad vision for what art can show us about how to live our our lives through times of joy and wonder as well as through periods of suffering and injustice. The chapters in Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart tell stories about the artists Gustave Dore, Leonardo DaVinci, Rembrandt, Artemisia Gentileschi, Joseph Turner, the artists of the Hudson River School, Norman Rockwell, Paul Gauguin, Norman Rockwell, Edgar Degas, Jimmy Abegg, and others. Each artist’s story illustrates some aspect of life’s journey and some way of seeing that life that is found in the art of those who sacrificed something for the art’s sake.

Charlotte Mason educators talk a lot about “narration”, a practice of telling back what the student sees in a painting or reads in a book or hears in a well told story. These books seem to me to be Russ Ramsey’s narrations of the paintings and the artists’ lives that have taught him to see certain ideas and stories in a new light, that have clarified concepts, both theological and philosophical, for him as he studies the art and artists that have spoken truth into his life.

The books are also just a gentle introduction to and invitation into the world of fine art. Art doesn’t have to intimidating and elitist. It’s for everyone. The appendices to the book are invaluable in this regard. In Appendix 1, I Don’t Like Donatello, and You Can Too, Mr. Ramsey explains what we can do when we “don’t like a work of art or an artist or even an entire style of art.” In short, it’s fine to have a personal taste in art, but it might surprise you to try to figure out why and how to appreciate even that which you don’t much like. Appendix 2 is a Beginner’s Guide to Symbols in Art, also quite helpful. Appendix 3 is a list of Lost, Stolen, and Recovered Art, some selected, famous works of art that have been stolen over the years. (Maybe you’ll find one of these in your attic?) There are also color pictures of some of the artworks featured in the book in a center section.

Recommended for older teens and adults. The two books, Rembrandt Is in the Wind and Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart, by Russ Ramsey are available for checkout from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar

Oct17

Across So Many Seas, the story of four twelve year old Sephardic Jewish girls from different time periods, felt very . . . educational. I didn’t mind the didactic tone of the story, and I was somewhat fascinated by the saga of the Sephardic Jewish experience from Spain to Turkey to Cuba to the United States (Miami). We tend to know and read more about Ashkenazi, Eastern European Jews and Judaism than we do about the Sephardic Jewish people, who came from Spain after the 1492 expulsion of the Jews under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (yes, Columbus’s sponsors). These Sephardic Jews spoke a Spanish-derived language called Ladino and either became conversos (converts to Catholicism) under threat of death, or left Spain as refugees, going to Italy and Turkey and other places to find freedom to practice their Jewish faith.

The first story in Across So Many Seas features Benvenida, a Jewish girl living in Toledo, Spain in 1492, during the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews. Benvenida’s family is forced to leave Spain, and they end up living in Turkey where the sultan has promised them freedom of religion. Again the story feels as if the author has a lesson to teach: “Here’s a story, children, to teach you about your history and heritage. Listen, while I make it into a tale for your edification.” Benvenida, who speaks and thinks like a miniature adult, never seems like a real person, only a vehicle for the teaching of history. But still, I was interested enough in the history to keep reading.

The other three girls in the story are Reina (Turkey, 1921), Alegra (Cuba, 1961), and Paloma (Miami, FL, 2003). These three are grandmother, mother, and daughter, and their tales are full of more displacement and emigration, as each girl experiences her own story of travel across the seas. Only Paloma seems to have a stable home where she can make free choices for herself without having to labor under the prejudice of others and the expectations that her family has for proper Jewish girls.

The author, Ruth Behar, comes from both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish ancestry. The book is based in part on the story of Ms. Behar’s Abuela, her paternal grandmother, who came to the United States via Turkey and Cuba and who was of Sephardic heritage. It’s a lovely tribute to Ms. Behar’s heritage and to her grandmother, and I enjoyed learning more about this stream of history. But be warned that the book is heavy on the history and light on believable characterization, dialogue, and plot.

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko

Oct7

When I first started reading The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, I thought, “Oh, no! Not another condescending middle grade fiction book full of bathroom humor!” On the very first page, we find out that eleven year old Hank, who is trying to potty train his little sister, Boo, would prefer his sister called him “Superman”. Instead, her affectionate nickname for her beloved older brother is “Pooperman.” However, Boo’s nickname for Hank turns out to be about the only “potty humor” in the book, and precocious little Boo is a delightful breath of freshness and innocence in a book that otherwise deals with some heavy subjects.

A week ago, Hank’s single mom left him in charge of Boo in an apartment with very little food or money. Hank has taken care of himself and Boo so far with no major errors, but now they are completely out of food and money. And the apartment manager is threatening to evict them. With no family to turn to and no idea where his mom could be, Hank takes Boo across town to the home of a stranger that his mom once mentioned. It may be a level 10 mistake, but what else can he do?

The stranger, Lou Ann Adler, turns out to be an old friend of Hank’s dead grandmother, and she takes them in–for now. But Hank has to find his mom, figure out why she abandoned them, and decide whether or not he can trust her to take of him and Boo in the future. Hank is a good kid, hyper-responsible, and deeply afraid of making a mistake that will ruin their lives. I won’t spoil the story, but there is a positive, hopeful ending, after a lot of trauma, anxiety, and dangerous situations have been resolved.

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman reminded me a bit of Gary B. Schmidt’s novels Okay for Now and Just Like That. All three of these books show good kids thrown into situations that are way too hard for their maturity levels. And in all three books the kids, the boys, are desperately trying to figure out what to do about their situation and which adults to trust. I’m not sure Choldenko is quite as good as Schmidt at showing the nuances and complexities of the situation, but she’s not bad. Hank Hooperman is a good, believable character, and I really, really sympathized with his plight and his desire to avoid both small and catastrophic mistakes.

Cautions: There’s an ongoing thread about Boo’s potty training, including the words “crap” and “poop”. Hank engages in a major deception, for what seem like good reasons at the time, and he pays the consequences. A female friend at Hank’s new school wants to be his girlfriend, and his male friends tease him about the possibility of kissing her.

I would recommend this one for sixth grade and up. The story portrays positive models of compassionate adult behavior as well as the fact that not all adults are trustworthy. Hank himself is a character to root for, even though he does make mistakes and wrong choices.

“Why doesn’t someone invent a way to know if you’re about to make a mistake? A Mistake-a-nator that would light up red if you’re about to mess up. I could use one of those.”

Sparrow Being Sparrow by Gail Donovan

Oct6

Sparrow Robinson is a nine year old Dennis the Menace or Ramona Quimby. She likes to dance and move and leap and play. She loves all of the cats that belong to Mrs. LaRose next door. Sparrow and her parents have just moved to a new house in a new town, and she has lots to say and lots of questions to ask. And she sometimes “gets carried away”, as her parents put it.

When Sparrow and Mrs. LaRose get carried way, dancing like butterflies, and Mrs. LaRose falls and breaks her hip, Sparrow is sure that it’s all her fault. The only thing she can do to try to make up for the fall is to take care of Mrs. LaRose’s cats, as she promised. But taking care of the cats, seven of them in all, leads to more complications, a few accidents, and even a big lie. How can Sparrow learn to control her actions and her tongue and make friends in this new place?

If you’re looking for stories for yourself or for your children about perfectly behaved little boys and and girls who would never tell a lie or an exaggeration, who always think before they act, and who never, ever argue with their parents, this book is not the right book for you. Sparrow is a normal nine year old, maybe a little over-active (no diagnoses, please!) And the other characters in the book are refreshingly ordinary, too. Sparrow’s parents are practitioners of “positive parenting”, but as with any parenting technique, the positive doesn’t always stay so positive. When Sparrow sincerely apologizes for one of the mishaps she gets into, her new friend Paloma doesn’t immediately forgive and forget, although she does come around eventually. Some neighbors invite Sparrow and her parents to go to church with them, and they go–to a normal, somewhat boring (for Sparrow) church service and a decent little Sunday School class. It’s good to read about regular kids and parents and neighbors doing regular stuff in an ordinary community.

There’s nothing profound here–just Sparrow being Sparrow, lots of cats, a bit of trouble over broken cups and an inadvertent lie, making new friends, and learning to deal with the ups and downs of life. Kids who are fans of Ramona and Clementine and Clarice Bean will enjoy Sparrow Robinson. And it’s short, clocking in at 178 pages, and new, published in 2024. I loved it.

Ratty by Suzanne Selfors

Sep2

Ratty Barclay isn’t supposed to be a four foot tall rodent. He was born a boy, but something, maybe the Barclay Curse, turned him into a rat soon after his birth. And now Ratty wants to come out of hiding and somehow break the curse. He’s in hiding because people generally hate rats, especially human-sized talking rats. And his uncle Max has protected Ratty from the world of rat-hating humans for almost thirteen years, but Ratty thinks he can break the curse if he can return to Fairweather Island and the Barclay family estate where it all began.

What Ratty doesn’t know is that on Fairweather Island, indeed on the Barclay Estate itself, lives Edweena Gup, granddaughter of the manor’s groundskeeper and Ratcatcher Extraordinaire. Edweena is obsessed with rats, even though the island has no rats and she herself has never had the opportunity to catch or kill one. She has certainly studied them, gathered the tools for exterminating them, and considers herself the heir of her great-great-great grandmother’s legacy and skill at rat-catching.

Will Ratty be able to break the Barclay Curse? Will Edweena find Ratty and trap him before he can? Will something catastrophic happen to Uncle Max on Fairweather Island? What is the Barclay Curse? Why have so many Barclays died in mysterious circumstances? Why is Edweena so afraid of rats? Why is Ratty a rat when he was born a boy to human parents?

Here’s where the spoilers come into this review. If you don’t want to know the answers to the above questions, or at least some of the answers, don’t read any further. It’s a good little story, entertaining and clever and clean of everything except rats, lots of rats, and I recommend it for those who enjoy quirky. If you don’t mind introducing the idea of a family curse (it’s fiction, guys!), Ratty is good, wholesome reading for nine to twelve year olds who enjoy odd little stories about unusual characters and events, with a little humor thrown into the mix.

However as an adult, living in the 2024 world of gender dysphoria and identity confusion, I couldn’t help looking for signs that this simple story had a hidden meaning. Is Ratty’s discomfort with his rat body an allegory for body dysmorphia? Does Ratty’s desire to break the curse and change back into a human boy with a human body mirror the desires of many young people nowadays to change their bodies and to become something they are not? I don’t think kids will read any of this into the story, but I’m not a child. And I’ve seen too many children’s books lately that have a barely hidden agenda.

Well, long story short, here’s the spoiler: at the end of the book, Ratty decides that the Barclay Curse is not what made him a rat, and he accepts the body he has and his rat habits. He stays a rat, albeit a really large and somewhat human-like rat (R.O.U.S?). We never find out how or why Ratty became a rat. So, if the book was intended to support in some way the gender confusion of this decade, it doesn’t work that way. I think it’s just a quirky story, reminiscent of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins in its inexplicable mysteriousness, about a rat and a family curse and an island and a girl who learns that friendship and firsthand knowledge can overcome fear.

Ferris by Kate diCamillo

Jun19

“It was the summer before Emma Phineas Wilkey (who everyone called Ferris) went into the fifth grade.

It was the summer that the ghost appeared to Charisse, the summer that Ferris’s sister, Pinky Wilkey, devoted herself to becoming an outlaw, and the summer that Uncle Ted left Aunt Shirley and moved into the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world.

It was the summer that Ferris’s best friend, Billy Jackson, played a song called ‘Mysterious Barricades’ over and over again on the piano.”

Ferris is a summer book. It’s filled with quirky, caricature characters. The theme line repeated throughout the book is: “Every story is a love story. Every good story is a love story.” And this story embodies that theme. 

However, the story also gives readers some outlandish, exaggerated characters who showcase the difficulties and barriers to that love in the real world. Ferris, the main character, is a ten year old rule follower and observer. Her little sister, Pinky, is a six year old thief and would-be outlaw bank robber. Seriously, among other unbelievable and laugh-out-loud escapades, Pinky tries to rob a bank to get her name and picture on a wanted poster. Ferris’s and Pinky’s parents are inept at best, but loving and involved even when they can’t do anything about Pinky’s mayhem or the raccoons in the attic. Charisse, Ferris’s grandmother, has a heart condition and sees a ghost who wants someone to light the chandelier in the dining room with forty candles, a chandelier that has never been lit before. Uncle Ted is called to paint a history of the entire world on the basement walls, but all he can do is paint a blob that is supposed to be a foot. 

It all sounds prosaic and weird when I tell it, but when Kate DiCamillo takes over and tells the story it becomes poetic, a love story. I think the basic idea is that we love people even in their weirdness and unfathomability. Love them even when we don’t understand and when their behavior is out of control (like Pinky), and when they see demanding ghosts that we can’t see. Or when they feel a calling that we don’t understand. Love them despite the “mysterious barricades” that attempt to come between us and those that we love.

Vocabulary, language, and words are a big part of this book, too. Ferris’s and Billy’s former teacher, Mrs. Mielk, taught them a lot of words, and that vocabulary is woven into the story of the children and their summer adventures. I loved all of the vocabulary that filled the story with the joy of language.

I’ll close with a few quotes to give you a flavor of the book. It’s definitely odd and unusually humorous and endearing, while dealing with serious subjects such as aging, broken relationships, reconciliation, and death. Ferris is a great narrator, childlike and unknowingly insightful at the same time, and Pinky is amazing in her incorrigible delinquency.

“Pinky was six years old, and even though Ferris was her older sister, she did not understand Pinky on a cellular level. Pinky was a fearsome mystery.”

“Monomaniacal. That was another Mielk vocabulary word. It described Pinky perfectly. She was only interested in one thing: being an outlaw.”

“You are too much of a rule follower, Ferris,” Charisse had said to her once. “You have to insist on being yourself. Do not let the world tell you who you are. Rather, tell the world who you are. Pinky understands this. She takes it to an extreme, of course.”

“These people,” he said, “are afraid to love. Loving someone takes a whole lot of courage. Some people just aren’t up to the task.”

“The dogs bark but the caravan passes by.” (Ferris’s dad’s favorite maxim)

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

The Secret Language of Birds by Lynne Kelly

Jun12

For some reason that is never really spelled out in the story, Nina has trouble making friends. She’s twelve years old, perhaps a little bit over-enthusiastic about her special interest, birds, and otherwise seemingly normal and likable. But she hasn’t yet found her “tribe”.

Nevertheless, as an amateur birdwatcher and collector of bird facts, Nina is feeling almost at home at her aunt’s summer camp in Bee Holler, TX. Her new camp friends, who call themselves The Oddballs, make Nina part of the group, and when the four girls discover two huge white birds nesting near the old infirmary at camp, they also discover a group mission: protect the birds!

There are mysteries to be solved in this nature fiction story. Are these birds rare, endangered whooping cranes? If so, why are they in Texas, not their natural habitat? Who is the female bird of the pair, and where did she come from? Is there an egg in the nest? Will it hatch? When? How can the girls watch over the birds without alerting the public to their whereabouts?

The story also involves some rule-breaking on the part of The Oddballs, but there are consequences for their disobedience.Everything is resolved satisfactorily by the end of the book. And there are a few mentions of evolutionary theory (“Did y’all know that birds evolved from dinosaurs?”), but most of the science-y information in the book is accurate as far as I could tell. Give this one to nature lovers, bird lovers in particular, and to twelve year olds who are thinking about where they belong in the world and how to fit in without losing themselves. It’s not too preachy, but the story does deal with those issues in an understated and helpful way.

The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Jun11

I’ve read and reviewed a few other books by contemporary middle grade and young adult author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley:

I’ve also read, but not reviewed, The War That Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won. Ms. Bradley tends to write about several topics and settings: World War II Europe, France in particular, Catholicism and religion, abused children, children with disabilities. The Night War is a Jewish Holocaust story set in France, 1942. When Miri (Miriam), a twelve year old Jewish girl, and her parents are routed from their apartment in Paris by the French police and herded onto buses to be taken to the Velodrome d’Hiver, Miri becomes separated from her family but she given the responsibility of escaping with and caring for her two year old neighbor, Nora Rosenbaum. Mrs. Rosenbaum tells Miri to run, to take Nora, and to somehow try to get to Switzerland. And Miri is faced with a choice, the first of many impossible choices: will she try to find her parents in the Velodrome or escape with Nora?

Miri chooses to run, and with the help of a French nun, she manages to get away from the Nazi roundup of Jews in Paris. Eventually, Miri, who takes the name of Marie, and Nora end up in Chenonceaux, near the castle of Chenonceau, which was long ago the dwelling of Diane de Poitiers and subsequently, Catherine de Medici. These women and their history become a significant part of Miri/Marie’s story. (SPOILER WARNING: Here be ghosts and ghost-like characters.)

And so do the nuns of Chenonceaux. Marie is hidden in a convent school, and she again is faced with choices. Does she stay in relative safety in the school, or does she attempt to take Nora and flee to Vichy France and then on to Switzerland? Is Nora safer with her foster family, or is she in danger of forgetting her family and her Jewish heritage? Can Miri pretend to be Catholic and still pray to God in her own Jewish way? And there are other choices to be made as Marie stumbles upon a secret resistance network and is asked to help smuggle others out of Nazi-controlled France.

This story with its emphasis on personal responsibility and making good choices, and the consequences of bad choices, is an excellent one for middle grade readers who are just waking up to their own responsibilities and moral choices in life. Recommended for readers age 10 and up, or as soon as you think your reader is ready for hard things about the Holocaust and the evil that people do. Not graphic.

Once a Queen by Sarah Arthur

Jun8

At first, I thought this 2024 middle grade/YA fantasy novel from Waterbrook Press was Narnia fan fiction, or perhaps a Narnia sequel, Susan’s Story: Once a Queen in Narnia or something like that. (“Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.”) That expectation was a disservice to the novel as it is. Sarah Arthur’s story certainly has strong echoes of Narnia, as well as being indebted to E. Nesbit, George MacDonald, Elizabeth Goudge, and Madeleine L’Engle, influences the author acknowledges in an author’s Q & A in the back of the book. So in my defense, I didn’t know, and the Narnia-love was there from the beginning.

I would advise readers to take Once a Queen on its own terms and NOT try to compare or find connections to any other stories or worlds until you get to the end. In this particular story, fourteen year old American Eva Joyce comes with her British mother to visit her estranged grandmother in the family manor of Carrick Hall in the West Midlands region of England. The year is 1995. Eva has been nurtured by the classic fantasy tales and children’s books, especially the Ternival tales of Mesterra by A.H.W. Clifton. She’s never actually experienced a magical portal to another world, however, even though this trip to England feels a bit like a fairy tale.

And the story does turn into a fairy tale, complete with magical worlds, an evil queen, secret gardens, fantastical creatures, and a quest to be completed. And secrets. Lots of secrets. Eva’s mum has secrets. Eva’s grandmother has secrets. Eva herself discovers so many wondrous secret things that she finds herself unable to keep all of the secrets straight. Who can be told about what, and when, and how? And what secrets are being withheld from Eva and why? This whole secret motif is the weakest part of the book: too many people keeping too many secrets for too little reason. Nevertheless, I resigned myself to getting bits of information doled out to me in each chapter –reluctantly and incompletely.

The novel itself alternates between strange occurrences in our world as Eva gets to know her grandmother and her grandmother’s tragic history and equally strange events in the world of Mesterra, woven by Magister, and ruled by a long line of kings and queens who built a a great kingdom called Ternival. Of course, there are doors between the worlds, hard to find and harder to open, but real. And Eva and her friend Frankie, the gardener’s grandson, are determined to find the way into the fantasy world that they have read about in books and somehow to solve the problems of their own world by doing so.

Once a Queen is a a lovely story with Christian worldview underpinnings, despite all of the secrets and slow revelations, and I highly recommend it to lovers of high fantasy and adventure stories. The novel is set up for a sequel, perhaps many sequels, and indeed there is a “sneak preview” of the next book in the series that is printed in the back of of this first book. The next book is to be called Once a Castle, and I look forward to its publication. (Once a Queen is complete in itself, and does not end in a cliffhanger.) Recommended for ages 12 and up.