Minji’s Salon by Eun-hee Choung

Jul29

Picture Book Around the World: Reading Through Korea I’m working hard on my Picture Book Around the World sequel to Picture Book Preschool, my preschool read aloud curriculum for homeschooling your preschooler or kindergartner. This week at Semicolon, we’re going to continue to visit Korea through the medium of a treasure trove of picture books featuring that country and its children.

As Minji plays hairdresser with her pet dog as the subject of hair-styling efforts, things get a little messy. This one reminded me of The Cat in the Hat, or even better, one of my favorite picture books of all time, Peter Spier’s Oh, Were They Ever Happy!

Minji’s attempts at styling (and coloring) her dog’s hair are shown opposite pictures of a lady at a real hair salon, also getting her hair done. Minji’s hairdressing experiments with the dog somehow mirror the actions that the salon hairdresser is taking with the lady’s hair. The ending surprised and delighted me, and I predict that children will feel the same.

Author Eun-hee Choung also did the illustrations, and I’ll admit that the pictures are a little too fuzzy and indistinct for my tastes. I would have preferred more sharpness and detail, but each to his own. Actually, as I compare the covers, the illustrations are similar in style to the Peter Spier illustrations in Oh, Were They Ever Happy. You may love the illustrations. I also think the dog could have used a name, if only for the purposes of my review.

Even with those minor caveats, Minji’s Salon is one my favorites of all the Korean picture books that I’ve reviewed so far. If you have girls (or boys) who like to play dress-up and hair salon, this book would hit just the right spot.

Saturday Review of Books: July 27, 2013

Jul27

“It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. They impress us with the conviction, that one nature wrote and the same reads… There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is there an author, dead or still living, that you perceive to be your “kindred spirit”? I think Madeleine L’Engle and I could have been friends, had we been born closer together in age. I also think I would have enjoyed knowing and conversing with the Bronte sisters, and perhaps Jane Austen. I would at least love to listen to these ladies as they talked with each other.

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Hereâ€™s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesnâ€™t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. the Ink Slinger (Irene Iddesleigh)
2. the Ink Slinger (On the Bookshelf XX)
3. Barbara H. (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Hidden Gallery)
4. Annette (Finding God in the Land of Narnia)
5. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Brotherhood Conspiracy)
6. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Blood And Bone)
7. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Trial And Terror)
8. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Prayer Box)
9. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Elisha’s Bones)
10. Darshanna (10 Books for New Kindergarteners)
11. Katie (Just Grace and the Trouble with Cupcakes)
12. Elizabeth Bird @Fuse#8 (The Center of Everything)
13. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (The Diamond Age)
14. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Seasons of a Mother’s Heart)
15. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (July Nightstand)
16. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (The Teacher’s Funeral quote)
17. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (The Fields of Home)
18. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (he Fields of Home)
19. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (July Read Aloud Thursday)
20. Thoughts of Joy (Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock)
21. Thoughts of Joy (The Never List)

22. Thoughts of Joy (The Story of Beautiful Girl)
23. Janet (The Eighty Dollar Champion)
24. Lazygal (The Chaos of Stars)
25. Lazygal (Collected Ghost Stories)
26. Lazygal (Rogue)
27. Lazygal (Chickens in the Road)
28. Hope (In Search of Balance – Swenson)
29. Lazygal (The Twins)
30. a barmy bookworm (Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited)
31. Becky (A Promise to Love)
32. Becky (The Measure of Katie Calloway)
33. Becky (The Sunroom)
34. Becky (The Cherry Cola Book Club)
35. Becky (Ladies in Waiting)
36. Becky (William Shakespeare’s Star Wars)
37. Becky (Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library)
38. Becky (12 Board Books)
39. Becky (The White Princess)
40. Becky (The WAter Castle)
41. Becky (Mary Poppins)
42. Reading World (The Art of Fielding)

43. Reading World (Passion)
44. Reading World (The Ides of April)
45. Girl Detective (Dirt Music)
46. Girl Detective (Buddha)
47. Susanne~LivingToTell (Unwritten)
48. Carol in Oregon (Nightstand post)
49. Brenda (Seagulls Don’t Eat Pickles: Fish Finneli)
50. Katy Manck @BooksYALove (A Girl Called Problem)
51. Girl Detective (Siddhartha)
52. Girl Detective (Fairest GN: The Hidden Kingdom)
53. Glynn Young (Shadowlands)
54. Glynn Young (Litany of Secrets)
55. CREATE WITH JOY (The Radical Practice Of Loving Everyone)
56. CREATE WITH JOY (A Big Year For Lily Lapp)
57. CREATE WITH JOY (A List Of Offences)
58. CREATE WITH JOY (The Brotherhood Conspiracy)
59. CREATE WITH JOY (Rosemary Cottage)
60. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Tea With Emma)
61. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (A Pemberley Medley)

Poetry Friday

Jul26

I’ve been both ill and busy, and I forgot all about Poetry Friday–which is supposed to be HERE today! Have you ever invited people over and then forgotten that they are coming? That’s how I’m feeling–an embarrassed hostess!

However, I could use some poetry today. So leave your link in the linky and we’ll forget all about the dilatory and unprepared hostess.

1. New Hampshire Rock Garden
2. Becky Shillington (Charleston Nights)
3. Florian Cafe
4. Michelle H. Barnes (Inside the Mind’s Eye)
5. Robyn Hood Black (Margarita Engle interview)
6. Father Goose (The Couplet as Metaphor)
7. Jeff@NCTeacherStuff (Horizon)
8. Margaret at Reflection on the Teche (The Lake)
9. Catherine Johnson (Two Left Feet)
10. Keri Collins Lewis (Tabatha’s tritina & more)
11. Irene Latham (Poems about pocket treasures)
12. Random Noodling (The Last Laugh)
13. Tabatha (Still)

14. Kurious Kitty (Cocoon)
15. Kurious K (the wild mind)
16. Teacher Dance (The Vacation)
17. Elizabeth Steinglass (Sunflower)
18. Mary Lee Hahn (The Speed of Time)
19. Joy Acey (Modern Haiku)
20. Tabatha Yeatts (Still)
21. Charles Ghigna (Father Goose) – “The Couplet as Metaphor”
22. Linda (I Will Remember You)
23. Little Willow (from Hamlet by Shakespeare)
24. Violet N (Bullied Abecedarium)
25. The Poem Farm (Building and Visitors!)
26. Joy Acey (Gravitational Force)

27. Catherine (A Splot, Buildings, and a Windmill)
28. Karen Edmisten (Midsummer, Robert Fitzgerald)
29. Anastasia @ Poet!Poet! (Hacked)
30. Donna (Mainely Write – Remember when I made that cake…)
31. Cathy (A New Me)
32. Carol (Harrowing)
33. Janet Squires (A Fire in my Hands)
34. Betsy (Sun Night Light)
35. Iphigene @ GatheringBooks (A Widow’s Reply)
36. Fats @ GatheringBooks (Grave of the Fireflies)
37. Holly Thompson

Matt Forest at Radio Rythm and Rhyme very kindly put up a post with links when he saw that I was AWOL, so you can leave links here or there–or both places. The more poetry, the better.

I found this poem picture at Wylio, my contribution to the party.

Buried in a Bog by Sheila Connolly

Jul25

Bostonian Maura Donovan is determined to honor her recently deceased grandmother’s wishes and visit the small Irish village of Leap in County Cork where Gran was born. But she gets more than a tourist’s introduction to Ireland, with friendly Irish people who may or may not be related to her grandmother, an Irish pub that could have been lifted from the nineteenth century, a job offer at that same pub, and unfortunately, death, possibly murder, in the sleepy Irish village where Maura just wanted to visit and lay to rest her grandmother’s memory.

Sheila Connolly has written two other mystery series: the Orchard Mysteries, set in western Massachusetts, and the Museum Mysteries, which take place in and among the museums of Philadelphia. Buried in a Bog, published in February 2013, is the beginning of a new series, called the County Cork Mysteries. Ms. Connolly has done her research, so anyone who’s interested in Ireland, its history and contemporary culture, would probably enjoy Buried in a Bog and its sequels when they come out.

I found the protagonist, Maura, a little sharp and prickly and prone to jump to conclusions. She’s trying to be an independent woman and prove that she can take care of herself, but the attitude feels unnecessarily confrontational in contrast to the ore easy-going Irishmen and women she meets in Leap. Maybe it’s an “ugly AMerican ” thing. I did like the fact that Maura is from the lower middle class in Boston. She doesn’t take her financial situation for granted; she worries about money enough to pay for basics, food and clothes and a place to live. I found this refreshingly realistic in contrast to most amateur gumshoes in books and on TV who seem to be able to finance most any journey or whim without any visible means of support. Or else they’re independently wealthy. Maura is able to go to Ireland because of a small sum of money that her grandmother saved for that purpose, and when she gets there she is careful with her funds and aware of the necessity of making plans for her future self-support.

Anyway, it’s a good story, and the series promises to be a hit for fans of everything Irish.

Running the Books by Avi Steinberg

Jul24

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg.

I’m willing to read almost anything that focuses on books and libraries, written by a librarian, even if the setting is a prison and even if the librarian is a lapsed, formerly Orthodox Jewish, now agnostic, Harvard graduate. Mr. Steinberg is hip, cool, humble, lost, aimless, and somewhat annoying. Anyone who can afford to wander around taking crummy jobs whilst he wonders what to do with his life after graduating from HARVARD, is annoying.

Mr. Steinberg has a friend who becomes an anthropologist, studying leftover hippies somewhere in the Midwest or Colorado or something. Steinberg himself comes across as an anthropologist who is studying the tribal customs of that esoteric and mysterious tribal group, the American felons. He opens his library to pimps and prostitutes and con artists and drug dealers while pondering that age-old question, “What is the purpose of the library anyway?” To provide books, education, access to information? He is soon disabused of such a quaint notion by his prison clientele who generally use the library for more practical purposes: socialization, communication, and sometimes criminality. The criminal pursuits of these, well, criminals, shouldn’t be a complete surprise, but Mr. Steinberg seems to keep forgetting that he works inside a prison.

And, of course, there are the one or two inmates who are the exceptions that prove the rule:
Jessica, who comes to writing class to catch glimpses of her son, also incarcerated, through the window of the classroom. Her story ends tragically.
Chudney, whose ambition is to have his own cooking show called Thug Sizzle. His story also ends tragically.

I was never sure of the point of all of these stories of lost, violent, victimized, and tragic people, compiled with commentary by the narrator, who was sometimes lost, sometimes victimized, sometimes even a little bit violent in response to all of the violence around him. Maybe that was the point: all of our stories are tragic. We observe and tell each other’s tragic stories. But coming from a Harvard graduate, the moral of the story sounds a little hollow. Avi Steinberg is in prison (as a librarian) for a couple of years, but he doesn’t have to be there. He can get a real job, write a book, get a life. And eventually, by the end of the story, he does.

I first heard about this book on NPR. It’s an NPR-ish kind of book.

Being Henry David by Cal Armistead

Jul23

Cal Armistead lives near Concord, Massachusetts, where most of this story is set, and of course, since it’s Concord, the “Henry David” of the title refer to Henry David Thoreau, Concord’s most famous former resident. This YA novel, however, is set in current times, and it’s an amnesia novel, just so you know going in.

Amnesia, the kind where you forget your own name and everything about your past, is not very common, but it’s really useful in creating a suspenseful, roller coaster plot with and identity, who-am-I theme. Being Henry David is strong in terms of plot. Unexpected events give the story credibility and draw the reader into the plot. I wanted to keep reading to find out who Henry David, or Hank as he calls himself in the book, really was and what would happen to him. I was fairly sure that he was not, as one minor character suggested, a reincarnation of Henry David Thoreau, even though Thoreau does appear in Hank’s dreams and give him advice.

The characterization in this novel, on the other hand, is just O.K., not bad, but also not exciting. I never really felt as if I knew Hank or completely understood his motivations, even after he remembered who he was. And the other characters are stereotypical: the love interest with a silky, sultry voice, the kindly research librarian, the absentee parents, a couple of abused teen runaways, and the scary drug dealer. These are all characters who could exist, but I never totally bought in to any of them.

So Being Henry David has a good plot, OK characters, recognizable themes of guilt, remembrance, and identity. It was an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.

Joni and Ken by Ken and Joni Eareckson Tada

Jul22

Even the title and cover picture says it: there are issues related to being married to a famous Christian author, artist, speaker and quadriplegic who heads a world-wide ministry to disabled persons. Whose name (and ministry) comes first? Ken Tada knew about some of the difficulties when he married Joni, but the “daily-ness” of Joni’s physical needs plus the annoyance of always living life in Joni’s shadow was enough to wear down Ken’s dedication to Joni and to their life together and transform their marriage into a series of tasks that had to be done instead of a joyful journey.

In case you don’t know, Joni Eareckson Tada is the founder and CEO of Joni and Friends, an organization that provides practical support and spiritual help to special needs families worldwide, and equips thousands of churches in developing disability ministry. Joni is the author of numerous best-selling books, including When God Weeps, The God I Love, Heaven: Your Real Home, Joni, and A Step Further. Ken Tada recently retired from thirty-two years of teaching school. He and Joni have been married for over 30 years.

Joni and Ken is a great “anatomy of a marriage” kind of memoir that probes deep into what it means to love someone consistently, daily, and sacrificially. Ken knew what he was getting into when he married Joni. She was already a bestselling author and a quadriplegic when the two of them met, began dating, and eventually married, believing that they could serve God together better than apart. Ken knew, in a sense that he would have to take care of Joni physically for the rest of their lives, that there would be difficulties in their marriage that able-bodied spouses can only imagine. He knew, but mostly on an intellectual level. He didn’t know how exhausting the quotidian tasks of caring for Joni, supporting her emotionally, and following behind her in her calling would become. After many years, Ken seems to have done what many spouses who are in difficult marriages do, both men and women: he checked out emotionally. He And in response to his distancing himself from her, Joni began to pull back, too. It happens in many (most?) relationships, even those with far fewer challenges than Joni’s and Ken’s marriage.

This book would be a good read for someone who is caregiver for a disabled spouse or parent or child. The narrative could have been improved with a more chronological organization of the story and with more information from Ken’s point of view about the couple’s struggles. However, the lack of particulars about how Ken was feeling and what he was thinking may come from a difference in the personalities of the two people involved. I get the idea that Ken tends to keep his thoughts and feelings more hidden and unspoken whereas Joni comes across as the more emotive and dramatic of the pair.

Marriage is an endlessly fascinating subject. How do two people get married and stay married? What makes a good marriage? Do all marriages go through seasons of aridity and apathy? How does a married couple go about renewing their passion and love for one another? Where does the ardor for a lifetime of mutual submission and servanthood and love come from?

The answer to that last question: the Holy Spirit himself who is the Maker and Sustainer of any marriage, even, I believe, non Christian marriages. But no one ever said it was going to be easy. Worthwhile, yes, but not easy.

No Dark Valley by Jamie Langston Turner

Jul21

Jamie Langston Turner is one of my “go-to” authors for Christian-themed fiction. So when I saw a copy of a novel by Ms. Turner that I hadn’t yet read while I was perusing the shelves at Half-Price Books, I bought it without a second thought. And I’m glad I did.

No Dark Valley is a little more “religious” than some of Ms. Turner’s other novels, although all of them are about how ordinary people find redemption and strength through faith in Jesus. Nevertheless, just like the characters in her other books, the characters in No Dark Valley are real. I can imagine meeting these people, talking to them, understanding them. There are no pasteboard saints in this story, although Ms. Turner does indulge in a meta-fiction thread that runs through the novel about how Celia, the protagonist, imagines that her life and the people in it would never be believable as fiction:

“Another reason her life would make a bad novel, Celia had decided, was that the characters would seem so stereotyped. Nobody would believe that one person could have so many rigidly religious relatives, all stuck in the rut of such predictable, countrified ways of viewing life, all trekking to church several times a week, all so unaware that the twentieth century had come and gone. You could get by with one or two characters like that in a book, for quirky splashes of color, but not dozens and dozens of them. The whole thing would turn into a farce.”

Of course, the funny thing about No Dark Valley was that I found the characters to be quite plausible and true to life–my life in the South, in the Bible Belt. I’m not sure if Ms. Turner was actually worried that readers would find her Christian characters stereotypical and so wrote her concerns into the book, or if she was simply having fun with Celia and her own rigid ways of thinking. (Celia is a champion at projecting her own rigidity and prejudice onto her relatives and others.) Either way, Celia’s interior monologue, and later in the novel when the point of view switches to Celia’s neighbor, Bruce Healy, his thoughts, are both relatable and authentic.

No Dark Valley is both a romance story and a conversion story. Jamie Langston Turner’s prose is intelligent, vivid, and sometimes crosses over into the poetic. I really enjoy Ms. Turner’s novels. If they can be classified as “Christian chicklit”, it’s excellent, smart Christian chick lit.

Jamie Langston Turner’s other books:
Suncatchers
Some Wildflower in My Heart (1998)
By the Light of a Thousand Stars (1999)
A Garden to Keep (2001)
Winter Birds (2006)
Sometimes a Light Surprises (2009)

And if you like a series of novels with recurring and overlapping characters, Ms Turner’s novels, like those of another of my favorite writers, Madeleine L’Engle, have characters from one novel that reappear in later books. In No Dark Valley, Eldeen Rafferty from Suncatchers makes a (loud) appearance. Margaret Tuttle, from Some Wildflower in My Heart, is the friend of a friend. And Elizabeth Landis from A Garden to Keep becomes a friend and mentor to Celia as the two women play on a tennis team together.

And now I have to admit that Ms. Turner and I have a little bit of a mutual admiration society going here, and I am pleased to read that she has a new novel coming out in 2014.

Saturday Review of Books: July 20, 2013

Jul19

“He won’t read a book that contains love-making or death-beds.’Does anybody marry?’ ‘Does anybody die?’ are his first questions about a book, so naturally his reading is much restricted.” ~Anna Buchan

Are there any subjects that you just won’t read about at all? Any disqualifying question that you ask about a book before you start into it?

1. Girl Detective (Harriet the Spy)
2. Girl Detective (Around Beauty)
3. Girl Detective (A Matter of Life GN)
4. Girl Detective (Maddaddam)
5. Girl Detective (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
6. Hope (Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt)
7. Becky (All The Truth That Is In Me)
8. Becky (Death in the Clouds/Christie)
9. Becky (The Frog Who Croaked/Platypus Police Squad)
10. Becky (Second Fiddle)
11. Becky (Four Nonfiction PictureBook Biographies)
12. Becky (Half Magic/Eager)
13. Becky (By Grace Alone)
14. Becky (Cost of Discipleship)
15. Becky (Chosen by God)

16. Becky (A Big Year for Lily)
17. Susanne (Sherlock Holmes & the Needle’s Eye)
18. Beth@Weavings (Cordelia Underwood)
19. Beth@Weavings (Badge of Honor)
20. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Illusion by Frank Perretti)
21. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Hattie Ever After)
22. Carol in Oregon (Lark Rise to Candleford)
23. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Under the Dome)
24. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Hawkeye Vol. 1: My Life as a Weapon)
25. Thoughts of Joy (Let’s Take the Long Way Home)
26. Thoughts of Joy (Down to the Wire)
27. Thoughts of Joy (Killer Ambition)
28. Glynn Young (Dragonfyre)
29. Glynn Young (Significant Work)
30. Lazygal (In Falling Snow)

31. Lazygal (If I Ever Get Out of Here)
32. Lazygal (The Quarry)
33. Lazygal (The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic)
34. Reading World (The Golden Dice)
35. Beckie @ ByTheBook (A Big Year for Lily)
36. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Rosemary Cottage)
37. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Pretty Is As Pretty Does)
38. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Fright At The Museum)
39. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Soul’s Gate)
40. Silvia (Remains of the Day)
41. Danzel (Ozma of Oz)
42. Melissa (The Joy of Origami)
43. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Lord of the Flies)
44. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Letters From Skye)

Seeing Through the Fog by Ed Dobson

Jul19

I think that had I met Ed Dobson twenty years ago, we would have annoyed each other. That was before he was diagnosed with AML, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and before I had my own peculiar area of suffering and grief in my life. Wikipedia says that Ed Dobson, who used to work for Jerry Falwell and who used to be a leader in the Moral Majority, went on to pastor a large church in Michigan and became a mentor to Rob Bell, the Love Wins guy. I freely admit that I find aspects of the Moral Majority’s agenda and of Rob Bell’s teaching to be suspect and annoying.

Nevertheless, reading Mr. Dobson’s reflections on facing his own mortality and suffering, Seeing Through the Fog, was an encouraging, life-affirming, God-glorifying experience. This book is not Rob Bell speculating on things beyond his understanding (or mine). It’s not a legalist Christian giving a list of rules to be kept and sins to be repented. Seeing Through the Fog is the honest, painfully honest, meditations of a man who is facing a slow deterioration of his muscles and of his ability to care for himself and for others. And he’s not thankful for all the horrible, life-sucking symptoms and disabilities that manifest as AML. He’s not happy all the time, and he doesn’t know why God doesn’t heal him. However, Mr. Dobson’s memoir is an inspiration because he continues to embrace the life that God has given him, continues to serve others, and learns to accept the help and service of friends and family, with thanksgiving.

The book reminded me a somewhat of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher. Mr. Dobson pursues healing, too, like Ruthie did. His life gets smaller, and richer in some ways, as the disease progresses. He learns to appreciate his family, his wife in particular, in new ways as he must depend on her for help with daily tasks. And still the disease itself is not a good thing. No one has to feel as if reading this book will make them feel guilty for not embracing their own personal suffering as unqualified blessing. Instead, in Rod Dreher’s book about his sister and in Mr. Dobson’s essays on his experience with AML, we are called to see the suffering and disease as realities that may be used by God to teach us and mold us and even bring us into His presence.