August 7th: National Lighthouse Day

Aug7

'Lighthouse' photo (c) 2006, snowgen - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/On August 7, 1789 The U.S. Congress approved an act for “the establishment and support of lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and public piers.” Then, the first federal lighthouse was constructed at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.

“Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.” ~E.P. Whipple.

“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine.” ~Dwight L. Moody.

“A good book is a lighthouse; a wise man is a lighthouse; conscience is a lighthouse; compassion is a lighthouse; science is a lighthouse! They all show us the true path! Keep them in your life to remain safe in the rocky and dark waters of life!” ~Mehmet Murat ildan.

A handful of picture books set in lighthouses:
The Lighthouse, the Cat and the Sea by Leigh W. Rutledge. Reviewed at Puss Reboots.
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter by Ariel North Olson.
The Lighthouse Cat by Sue Stainton.
Who Sees the Lighthouse? by Sue Fearrington.
Abbie Against the Storm: The True Story of a Young Heroine and a Lighthouse by Marcia K. Vaughan.
Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Peter Roop.
Lighthouse Seeds by Pamela Love.
The Storm by Cynthia Rylant.
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward.

Other related books and fun facts:
The Lighthouse Mystery is number eight in The Boxcar Children mysteries.

There’s a book in the For Kids series called Lighthouses for Kids: History, Science, and Lore with 21 Activities by Katherine L. House. One could easily put together a unit study on lighthouses using this book and others on this list.

Who’s read To the Lighthouse by Virginia Wolf? Does it have anything to do with an actual lighthouse?

The Bolivar Point lighthouse survived the Great Hurricane of 1900 which devastated nearby Galveston, Texas.

Sisters Day

Aug4

The first Sunday in August is Sisters Day. How can you celebrate your sister or help your children celebrate sisterhood?

Read a picture book.
Big Sister and Little Sister by Charlotte Zolotow.
A Baby Sister for Frances by Russell Hoban.
A Birthday for Frances by Russell Hoban.
Flicka, Ricka, Dicka Bake a Cake by Maj Lindman.
One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey.
Big Sister, Little Sister by Leuyen Pham.

Give your sister a book.
Some fiction books that feature sisters and their lovingly complicated relationships are: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, With a Name Like Love by Tess Hilmo, All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor, The Other Half of my Heart by Sundee Frazier, Shanghai Girls by Lisa See, Beautiful by Cindy Martinusen-Coloma, Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Sense and Sensibiity by Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Losing Faith by Denise Jaden, Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary, Cranford by Mrs. Gaskell.

Call your sister. Send her a letter. Do something together if you can.

Book Tag: Do you have any favorite “sister books” to suggest? The Book Tag rules are:

In this game, readers suggest a good book in the category given, then let somebody else be ‘it’ before they offer another suggestion. There is no limit to the number of books a person may suggest, but they need to politely wait their turn with only one book suggestion per comment.

The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr

Aug3

I really liked Sara Zarr’s YA novels Once Was Lost and How to Save a Life. I thought her Sweethearts was O.K. but nothing to write home about. I haven’t read Story of a Girl, a National Book Award finalist in 2007, because I’m wary of the subject matter, a girl who gets a bad reputation and can’t live it down. This latest one from Ms. Zarr (2013), The Lucy Variations, was a good read, but a little odd in some ways.

The characters and their actions and reactions reminded me of Madeleine L’Engle’s young adult fiction. Her young protagonists are usually oddly grown-up and mature and at the same time naive, getting themselves into situations that went too deep, too soon. It’s an atmosphere and characterization that I can identify with:

Lucy Beck-Moreau once had a promising future as a concert pianist. The right people knew her name, her performances were booked months in advance, and her future seemed certain.

That was all before she turned fourteen.

Now, at sixteen, it’s over. A death, and a betrayal, led her to walk away. That leaves her talented ten-year-old brother, Gus, to shoulder the full weight of the Beck-Moreau family expectations. Then Gus gets a newpiano teacher who is young, kind, and interested in helping Lucy rekindle her love of piano—on her own terms. But when you’re used to performing for sold-out audiences and world-famous critics, can you ever learn to play just for yourself?

Not that I was ever a promising concert pianist or any other kind of prodigy, but I was a reader and somewhat mature for my age—in some ways. I knew about “stuff” from books just as Lucy knows about the adult world from being immersed in world of concert piano competitions from an early age. But that narrow, once-removed experience of adulthood doesn’t really prepare one for acting as an adult at age sixteen. Even if people expect maturity from an accomplished concert pianist.

So The Lucy Variations is about growing up when certain people expect you to be all grown up already.

And now that I’ve written all I have to say about this novel, I refer you to Liz Burns’ review at A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy in which she says what I think about this book.

Saturday Review of Books: August 3, 2013

Aug2

“Two questions I can’t really answer about fiction are (1) where it comes from, and (2) why we need it. But that we do create it and also crave it is beyond dispute.” ~Marilynne Robinson

Where it comes from is certainly beyond my ken. Ultimately, the true stories come from God himself, I suppose. But why do you read fiction? Why do you crave stories, if you do? For me, stories clothe and make sense of bare facts. Don’t tell me that five plus four equals nine. Tell me a story about five apples and four oranges, chopped into bite-sized pieces and combined to make a lovely fruit salad. I prefer the story of the salad, even if it doesn’t equate to good arithmetic.

SatReviewbutton

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’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 you’ve written your book review. Don’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 you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’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. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Secondhand Spirits)
2. the Ink Slinger (A Princess of Mars)
3. Barbara H. (The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis)
4. Barbara H. (The Wedding Dress)
5. Carol in Oregon (5 Great Endings)
6. Amy @ Hope is the Word (The Fields of Home)
7. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (Hell is Real But I Hate to Admit It)
8. Beth@Weavings (Hannah Coulter)
9. Beth@Weavings (Whose Body?)
10. Thoughts of Joy (The Silent Wife)
11. Hope (Books read in July)
12. Hope (Do you Keep a Book Log?)
13. Lazygal (Heartbeat)
14. Lazygal (The Lavender Garden)		 15. Lazygal (My Favorite Mistake)
16. Lazygal (Chocolates for Breakfast)
17. Lazygal (Chimera)
18. Lazygal (A Dual Inheritance)
19. Lazygal (The Whatnot)
20. Lazygal (The White Princess)
21. Glynn Young (Rapture’s Rain)
22. Glynn Young (Olde Mysterium)
23. Aloi @ Guiltless Reading (This is Pradise)
24. Becky (Anomaly)
25. Aloi @ Guiltless Reading (Godiva)
26. Aloi @ Guiltless Reading (Return to Cardamom)
27. Becky (The Quiet Gentleman)
28. Aloi @ Guiltless Reading (Persephone’s Torch)		 29. Becky (The Borgia Bride)
30. Aloi @ Guiltless Reading (The Mirrored World)
31. Becky (The Shade of the Moon)
32. Becky (Wool Omnibus)
33. Becky (The Grand Sophy)
34. Becky (The Magic Pudding)
35. SmallWorld Reads (And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini)
36. Beckie (The White Princess)
37. Chris (Gospel Call and True Conversion)
38. Joseph R. @ Zombie Parents Guide (Eifelheim by Mike Flynn)
39. Girl Detective (World Made by Hand)
40. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (The Language of the Fan)
41. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Winter in Wartime)
42. Harvee (Tahoe Chase)

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Poetry Friday: Tap Dancing on the Roof by Linda Sue Park

Aug2

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.

POCKETS

What’s in your pockets right now? I hope they’re not empty:
Empty pockets, unread books, lunches left on the bus–all a waste.
In mine: One horse chestnut. One gum wrapper. One dime. One hamster.

Linda Sue Park’s poem, POCKETS, is an example of a Korean sijo (see-szo or she-szo, with the j pronounced as the French pronounce Jacques), a three or six line poem with a fixed number of stressed syllables and an unexpected twist or joke at the end. Tap Dancing on the Roof is a book of sijo. These deceptively simple poems are a delight, but after reading over the end page, “Some Tips for Writing your own Sijo”, I am even more impressed with the difficulty inherent in writing a “simple” poem. Making it look easy isn’t easy.

Sijo were originally meant to be sung, and the songs “often praised the beauty of the seasons.” Yes, they’re similar to haiku, but whereas haiku are usually nature poems, sijo are about all kinds of subjects. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many sijo were written by women who were court singers. These sijo were often about love and romance. The poems in Tap Dancing on the Roof are about kid stuff nature, games, daily tasks, and family relationships.

I thought I might try writing my own sijo for this review, but after I read the poems in Tap Dancing on the Roof and thought about it some more, I decided that I’m not that talented as a poet. So here’s a poem I liked from the Sejong Cultural Society website:

The spring breeze melted snow on the hills, then quickly disappeared.
I wish I could borrow it briefly to blow over my hair
and melt away the aging frost forming now about my ears.
춘산(春山)에 눈 녹인 바람 건듯 불고 간듸업네
저근듯 비러다가 뿌리과저 머리우희
귀밋헤 해묵은 서리를 불녀볼까 하노라
U-Taek (1262-1342)

My Name Is Yoon by Helen Recorvits

Jul30

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 be visiting Korea through the medium of a treasure trove of picture books featuring that country and its children.

“I write my name in English now. It still means Shining Wisdom.”

Yoon, newly arrived in the United States with her family from Korea, doesn’t want to write her name in English letters with all their circles and lines and sharp cornersand lack of continuity. She wants her name to be written in Korean: “My name looks happy in Korean. The symbols dance together.”

'RSDigby_1628' photo (c) 2009, Robert S. Digby - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

She’s right. The Korean hangul do lend themselves to artistry, don’t they?

I think the take-away from this story of a Korean girl finding her place in a new country and culture is that we do give up some things when we cross cultures. Yoon learns to write her name in English. But she still knows that it means “Shining Wisdom”, and she still keeps her attachment to words and the way they sound and look. Yoon is something of a poet as she tries on the new English words to see how they fit her.

We give up some things and gain others. Yoon makes new friends, and she learns to understand her new teacher who smiles at her in the end.

Helen Recorvits and Gabi Swiatkowska have collaborated on two other books about Yoon: Yoon and the Christmas Mitten and Yoon and the Jade Bracelet. On the basis of this first book, the other two would be worth seeking out.

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.

SatReviewbutton

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’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 you’ve written your book review. Don’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 you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’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)

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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

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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.

'BETH'S POETRY TRAIL No 7. PHILIP LARKIN' photo (c) 2012, summonedbyfells - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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.