Nine year old Ryan Hart may have “a name that a lot of boys have” and she’s not so excited about the new (old) house that she and her family are moving into, but Ryan is a girl who knows how to make the best of the situation and find some joy wherever she goes. Ways to Make Sunshine is acclaimed YA author Renee Watson’s “own version of Ramona Quimby, one starring a Black girl and her family.” Ryan is a little more bland and blame-shifting than Ramona, but not too bratty so as to make the book unendurable. (I don’t like bratty protagonists like Eloise and Judy Moody. I do like childlike characters like Ramona and Clementine who err out of innocence and curiosity rather than pure selfishness.)

The scenes in the book are set up to showcase the particular joys and problems of growing up Black, but the story should be enjoyable for all kids, person of color or not. And Ryan is growing up in Portland, Oregon, just like Ramona Quimby, only about 50+ years later. It’s fun to see a different view of essentially the same setting.

At one point in the ARC I read, Ryan’s dad criticizes Ryan’s mixed race friend for living in a “white” neighborhood, a criticism that I thought was jarring and unnecessary. Maybe that minor bobble will get edited out of the final version. Otherwise, there’s a lot of wisdom in the book coming from Ryan’s parents and extended family, and even Ryan herself learns a few things over the course of the story and drops a few nuggets of wisdom.

Grandma turns me around to face her. ‘Baby girl, you are beautiful. Not just your hair or your clothes. But who you are. Your kindness makes you beautiful and the way you’re always willing to offer help makes you beautiful,’ Grandma tells me. ‘And how creative you are with your recipes. That’s what makes you a beautiful girl.’ Grandma turns me back to face the mirror. We both look into the glass, staring at my brown skin, my round face, my long straight hair. ‘How you wear your hair is your choice and no matter what you choose, it’s not going to determine if you’re beautiful or not. The only thing that will determine that is how you treat others. If you are mean to people, if you act ugly toward them, that’s what takes your beauty away.’

Ways to Make Sunshine, p. 59

Children ages seven to ten who enjoy Beverly Cleary, Carolyn Haywood, and Sara Pennypacker will now have a new series to read with a slightly different point of view. I’m adding this one to my library, and I recommend it. Coming April 28, 2020.

So Governor Abbott of Texas laid out a kinda, sorta plan today for Texas to return to the land of the living. He says the first steps will be for hospitals to resume other procedures and surgeries, for the state parks to re-open with social distancing and face masks, and for all businesses to be allowed to sell stuff via curbside deliveries and home deliveries. He also said that all of the schools will remain closed through the end of the school year. Then he made some very, very tentative suggestions about further “opening” up in May or even June, if all goes well between now and then.

I am interested to see how this all works out, but the guidelines and tentative plans don’t even begin to answer my personal burning questions, nor those of many others I know and love. I honestly don’t much care about state parks and curbside deliveries (that were already happening anyway). My questions are, again, more personal and harder to answer. When can I feel relatively safe about having my rather large family come to visit? When can I hug my grandchildren? And can I convince my adult children at some point that I’m willing, at age 62, to run the risk of contracting the virus? And if I am willing to run that risk, is my husband, who is 67 years old and has Parkinson’s? If my three adult children who live with me are called back to work, will/should they go–since the main reason they have stayed home is to protect me and Engineer Husband? Are the elderly (not that I usually apply that term to myself) and the immunocompromised expected to stay home until there’s a vaccine, which may very well be a year or more from now? Do we have any idea even now what the actual death rate among different age groups is for this “novel” virus? What percentage death rate is an acceptable risk, and what is unacceptable? These are questions that we are going to have to answer each one for ourselves. No president or governor will be able to make these decisions for us. And I am not looking forward to trying to decide these things for myself and to some extent for other people.

In other news, I have spent some of the time of coronavirus social distancing, like almost everyone else, watching television. I watched the series The English Game and thoroughly enjoyed it. If I told you it was about the history of competitive soccer in Britain, I feel that would sell the story short. So, instead I’ll say it’s a period piece by Julian Fellowes, the same producer who gave us Downton Abbey. And The English Game, although it’s no Downton Abbey, is a credit to the Fellowes brand. It tells a great story about working class players who began in the late nineteenth century to break into the game of football (soccer) which had been a game for the wealthy elite young men of Eton and Harrow and other British “public schools”.

I’m not sure how to end today’s coronavirus musings. I daresay you all have thought about these questions, too, as they relate to your own family and family situation. And I daresay you’ve spent some time watching TV or reading or doing something else to take your mind off the questions that really don’t have definitive answers right now—but must be answered eventually nevertheless.

I have Facebook friends in New York and Detroit who are posting about the devastation that this virus has brought to their cities, friends, and families. They know health care workers who are infected or who are living away from their families and haven’t seen them in over a month. They know people who have died from the effects of the virus. They have church families who have lost loved ones or who are still fighting the virus.

I live in Houston, TX. Major suburbia. In Harris County, the county that is Houston, we’ve had 3700 some odd confirmed cases and 46 deaths. That’s out of a population of 4.7 million. I know of one family in Kansas (they moved from here) and one family nearby who very probably had the virus in early March, but neither was tested because tests weren’t available at the time unless you were hospitalized. I know of no one who is hospitalized for Covid-19 nor do I know anyone who is having Covid symptoms and staying at home. I think most people here are like me. Despite my concern for people in other places, it is hard to grasp that the numbers mean death and suffering for real people. And that it could come here eventually.

And so in the rest of the country, the not-so-infected (yet), the natives are getting restless. There was a protest gathering in the state capital, Austin, yesterday where people were yelling for Governor Abbott to rescind the stay at home orders and let Texans go back to work. On the one hand, we see the pictures and read the news reports, but until it happens to us, to someone we know, it’s just not Real. Many people here in Texas are still saying it’s overblown, too many restrictions, crazy government overreach. Then, others say they won’t be leaving the house until there’s a vaccine. I fear that there is no good way to emerge from this crisis and that our political and regional differences will be exacerbated rather than healed because the suffering really isn’t “shared” in the sense of every region and people group suffering the same effects.

I wish I had been writing here daily about my own impressions, adventures, and thoughts in this Time of the Plague. Not that I have anything definitive to add to the conversation, but nevertheless, it would be good to have a record.

A record of March 15th, the last time we went to church before everything shut down. Our children didn’t want us to go, but we observed social distancing and worshipped together with our church community at Trinity Fellowship in Friendswood. I’m glad we did.

A record of the day, about March 16th or sometime that week, when I put out the free books for people to take and enjoy. Unfortunately, I’ve had only a few takers.

There’s a record on Facebook of the music my son and daughter-in-law shared with us, but it doesn’t transfer to this blog where I control the content.

And the poems I shared and the helpful or funny memes are all on Facebook. I’d rather have them here.

As a family we started out Zooming, then switched to Google Hangouts, and now we’re mostly leaving each other video messages on Marco Polo. I like the Marco Polo messages the best. Video plus convenience.

The feelings have gone from peace to frustration to claustrophobia to resignation to joy and thankfulness that we are all healthy and able to keep in touch via phones and computers and even snail mail.

My eight adult children are all home, socially distancing. Some of them have lost their jobs entirely. Others are furloughed indefinitely. One is working from home, and another is going in to work at the clothing store she manages, filling mail orders.

The three youngest are here with us, and the young people do all of the necessary errands. They don’t want me or Engineer Husband to leave the house. Said Husband misses his almost-daily trips to Home Depot. I miss people coming over to borrow books from my library, but I am still lending. Porch pick-up.

We’ve completed one and a half jigsaw puzzles. My youngest is working on an embroidery kit. The next youngest has been painting every day: pictures, bookmarks, and other lovely artwork. You can see some of her work at her instagram account, @analemmacreations.

Today we mark the beginning of the second half of April. It’s already been a long month. But again, we are healthy and solvent. Praise the Lord.

I’m posting this message again and again on Facebook and here because I’m seeing a lot of unnecessary anguish and anxiety surrounding school at home. You don’t have to duplicate what your child would be doing in school. Dare I say it: you DON’T have to do all the work the public school is sending you for your child to complete.

Just read books, listen to books, play games, make music and art, enjoy being a family. Education will happen if you spend the time doing things that educate and enrich you and your children. Not worksheets. Not computer quizzes. Just read good books. This quarantine can be the best time of your family’s lives together. Don’t let the stress of trying to keep up with the Jones School plan ruin it for you.

Some links that might help you think about this time of crisis schooling (not more stuff for you to do):

AmblesideOnline Helping Hand Emergency Learning Plan

Exploring Homeschool Facebook Group with Allison Morrow.

Biblioguides: Heartwarming Stories to Read Aloud.

Coronavirus Turned Us Into Homeschoolers: Now What?

The Literary Life Podcast: Reading in a Time of Crisis

Read Aloud Revival Podcast

Author Georgia Hunter did not know about her family history, not even that she was one quarter Jewish and that her extended family members, including her beloved grandfather, were survivors of the Holocaust. But at a long-delayed family reunion, Ms. Hunter learned the truth and heard some of the stories, stories that her grandfather before his death had never shared. She later began a decade long research project in which the traveled all over the world to ask questions and learn as much as she could about her family’s history and survival in World War II Poland.

All of that history and those many stories became the nucleus of this fascinating novel, We Were the Lucky Ones. The title comes from an observation made by Georgia’s mother’s cousin, Felicia: “Our family, we shouldn’t have survived. Not so many of us, at least. It’s a miracle in many ways. We were the lucky ones.”

Of course, not everyone in the book does survive, but the stories that this book tells are something of a miracle. Not many Polish Jews did survive. Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, and even the tiny little Radom where the story of the Kurc family begins, were all destroyed by the war, and their Jewish populations were not just decimated, but rather practically annihilated.The story of how some of those Polish Jews survived is amazing, and yes, miraculous.

It makes me wonder why, a question I realize can never be answered. Still, why this family and not so many others? Were they more resourceful and quick-witted than others, or were they just lucky? Did God preserve them for a reason? I have no idea. But I certainly believe that God was there in the Holocaust, in the living and in the dying and in the suffering and the deliverance, that in His mercy He allowed some to die and some to live to tell the story.

I highly recommend this book for adult readers. What does reading about such evil and suffering do for a person? It should make us more compassionate and more prepared to recognize and fight against the evil that is still present in our own world.

Originally published at Breakpoint.org, April 3, 2012

Sara Zarr’s 2010 young adult novel, Once Was Lost, features Samara, a PK (preacher’s kid) who thinks she has faith all figured out until her dysfunctional family falls apart and her quiet hometown experiences a tragedy. Then, Samara must learn to love and accept imperfect parents and an imperfect and questioning self. I loved the way the novel dealt with faith questions without over-simplifying or stereotyping the Christian characters.

I wondered if Zarr might continue with the explicitly Christian characters in her latest YA novel, How To Save a Life, but she doesn’t. Two girls, Mandy and Jill, tell the story in alternating chapters, and that first-person/two-narrators technique works well for a story that’s essentially about two people from very different backgrounds coming to trust, love, and understand each other.

Jill is an upper-middle-class, pierced-to-the-hilt child of privilege whose mother is a liberal career woman do-gooder with a heart for giving to others. As the book opens, Jill and her mother, Robin, are grieving the fairly recent death of Jill’s father, Mac, and Robin has made a momentous decision: to participate in an open adoption and give a home to a child in need. Mandy, the unmarried teen mother, will be coming to live at Jill’s house to complete the last few weeks of her pregnancy. Jill thinks her mom is insane, and she really misses her dad’s level-headed, curmudgeonly ways right about now.

When Mandy arrives on the scene, the story continues in Mandy’s voice for a while, and we learn that while Mandy may not fit Jill’s preconceived stereotypes, she certainly has some growing up of her own to do. Jill’s abrasiveness is a function of heredity (taking after her dad) and grief (for her dad), while Mandy has learned the art of passive resistance from interacting with her verbally abusive mother.

The two girls’ personalities mix like oil and water, and there’s also the new baby to think about. Does Jill have the ability to overcome her misgivings about the adoption and become a loving older sister? Does Mandy really want to give up the only thing that has ever been completely hers, her own baby?

The issues the story raises about adoption, trust, differences in socioeconomic backgrounds, parenting, and grieving are all well-integrated into the narrative and thought-provoking. I especially liked the depictions of the differences in Mandy’s and Jill’s economic expectations. Jill tells Mandy at one point in the book, “Money’s never been a problem in this family.” But for Mandy, money has been and is a big problem. It’s a cultural gap that is only partially bridged by the end of the novel, but it was good to see teens working through something that is rarely explored in YA novels.

On the other hand, I hated the fact that Jill and her boyfriend just had to fall into bed together as an expected and natural part of their reconciliation, about a third of the way through the novel. I’m not saying it’s not realistic for them to do so in today’s culture, and the sex scene isn’t explicit nor is it a big part of the story. But I hate giving young adult readers the unspoken message that “everybody does it” and it’s no big deal.

Since I read in a blog interview with Zarr that she is a Christian and that most of what [she writes] does not directly incorporate faith, but all of it is written from [her] Christian worldview, I expected to see that worldview in How To Save a Life. And I did. Although the dual narrators, Jill and Mandy, are explicitly non-religious, each of them comes to a place of change in her life that seems almost impossible apart from the hand of God. It’s as if, similar to the Book of Esther, God is at work in the background even though none of the characters in the book acknowledges Him or overtly calls on Him. Or maybe I’m just reading that sense of divine intervention into the narrative, since I was looking for it all along.

Either way, mature readers, both Christian and non-Christian, should see themselves in both Mandy and Jill as they struggle to change and trust each other across an economic and cultural gap that threatens to overwhelm their tentative and flawed attempts at understanding.

Texas Sunrise is two books in one, Massacre at Goliad and After the Bugles, set at the time of the 1836 Texas Revolution against Santa Anna and the Mexican government. Both books together tell the story of one Texas pioneer, Joshua Buckalew, a young man from Tennessee who comes to Texas to make his fortune and build a life. Joshua and his brother, Thomas, get a land grant from the Mexican government and set to work to build a cabin and plow the land and brand a few mavericks to start building a herd.

The Buckalews have several neighbors, and the book is as much about the relationships of those of Mexican descent and the new “norteamericanos” who practically invade the land, although they are there at the invitation of the Mexican government. Joshua becomes friends with his Hispanic neighbors, even falls in love with a Latina girl, but Thomas has nothing but distaste, even hatred, for the Mexicans. When war comes, the Buckalews and their neighbors, the Hernandez family, must choose sides, whether they want to or not. And those who decide to oppose Santa Anna and his dictatorial rule must put aside their own differences and fight together.

This book would be an excellent read for high school students who are studying or interested in Texas history (some violence and mild profanity are present in all of Kelton’s books). The portrayal of the Texians and the Mexicans who sided with Santa Anna and the Mexicans who fought with the newcomers from the United States is even-handed and fair: there are “good guys” and “bad guys” among all the groups. Only the Native Americans, mostly raiding Comanche, get short shrift, mostly because this book isn’t about them. It’s about those who settled the land in Texas to build farms and ranches, and they generally had only negative encounters with the Comanche and other Native Americans.

I like Elmer Kelton’s westerns better than any other western author I’ve tried. Maybe it’s because Kelton is from San Angelo like me, or maybe it’s because his characters are more rounded and believable than those of Louis L’Amour or Zane Grey or Larry McMurtry. At any rate, if you’re fan of westerns or of Texas history, I recommend Elmer Kelton’s books to your examination. Even if you’re not a western novel fan, The Time It Never Rained and The Day the Cowboys Quit are worth a try anyway. I think you’ll find something satisfying and engaging in Mr. Kelton’s work.

I am re-reading this spiritual autobiography of the well known Christian author, artist, and advocate for the disabled, Joni Eareckson Tada. Here’s what I wrote the first time I read the book:

The book is basically a re-telling of Joni’s life with more emphasis on her childhood and her life after the publication of her first, very successful, attempt at spiritual autobiography, Joni, written about 30 years ago. For those who haven’t been running in evangelical circles for as long as that, Joni Tada is a beautiful Christian author and artist; she is also a quadriplegic, injured in a diving accident when she was still a teenager. Joni writes about growing up as the youngest of four daughters in a home where her father was “bigger than life.” She also remembers horseback riding and playing the piano, travel and discovering family secrets, teenage rebellion and, of course, The Accident. She gives hope to those dealing with depression by telling about her own bouts with depression and anxiety.

Part 1 of The God I Love ends with Joni’s disillusionment with God at the age of eleven when she prayed that God would help her win a big race that she ran—-and He didn’t. Joni writes, “Yet what hurt most was, quite simply, my humiliating and resounding defeat. It made me very disappointed in God. . . . My request was so small, not very demanding. Why couldn’t he have lifted his little finger to push me across that finish line ahead of the others? . . . I ran home, leaving the church behind. As well as something of my childhood.”

I may chuckle a bit at an eleven year old expecting God to favor her in a race, but I’m not sure my expectations are much more in line with God’s purposes than hers. Nor are my questions that much different from Joni’s. Why doesn’t God heal that friend or family member that we prayed for so intently? Even more puzzling, why does He heal this one and not that one? If God can remove a cancerous tumor, why doesn’t He ever replace or regrow an amputated limb? Is either miracle too hard for Almighty God? Are we never supposed to pray for the favors we think we want, or is it O.K. to pray for good grades and test scores, winning games, career advancement, and physical healing, as long as we tack on an “if it is Your will” at the end of the prayer? Can we pray for physical healing but not for mental and spiritual healing (because: free will)? God can override the body gone wrong, but not the soul gone astray? Are we only supposed to pray about daily food, forgiveness, and God’s will be done, as in the Model Prayer, or is God bigger and interested in hearing from us about everything that concerns us? When I pray and talk to God over and over about the worries and heartaches that repeat themselves over and over in my heart and mind, am I just worrying and disguising my worry as prayer? Or does God want me to ask over and over again like the woman in the parable of the importunate widow (Luke 18:1-8). “We ought always to pray and not give up.”

I’m barely more wise or mature in the ways of prayer and the Holy Spirit and understanding God’s ways of speaking and answering than eleven year old Joni was when God disappointed her. I have prayers that God has not yet answered affirmatively or negatively, requests that I believe are much more important and more in line with His will than winning a footrace. I have requests that He has not yet granted despite my repeated and persistent begging. Nevertheless, I will not give up or quit asking, seeking, knocking. For yet, like Joni, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day.” I commit even my most cherished and desperate prayer requests to Him, trusting Him to do what is right and good and loving in all things.

Originally published at Breakpoint.org, August 29, 2011

In order to review Sarah Dessen’s latest Young Adult romantic adventure, I had to get hold of the copy that my young adult daughters were passing around among themselves. It was going to take a while to get to my turn, so while waiting, I decided to do some background research. I had read one book by Dessen (Along for the Ride) quite a while ago, and thought I’d read a couple more. At the library, I picked up Lock and Key and This Lullaby.

As I read my preliminary research books, and then again when I finally got my hands on What Happened to Goodbye, I felt a strong sense of deja  vu. Dessen changes the names, but her female protagonists have a lot in common. All of those I read about were older teen girls — sixteen or seventeen — in their last years of high school, considering going off to college, and dealing with difficult or dysfunctional mothers and sometimes absent fathers. Each of our heroines is to some extent emotionally closed and guarded, and afraid to love and be loved. Enter the cute, vulnerable, and longsuffering guy who breaks through her shell of self-protection and helps her to risk engaging in a meaningful relationship.

Mclean, the main character in What Happened to Goodbye, is angry with her mother because of the messy divorce that Mclean blames on her mother’s decision to go off with another man. The divorce and subsequent frequent moves with her father, who has a job that involves lots of travel, have given Mclean an identity crisis. Unsure of who she is, or what was real and what was fake about her pre-divorce family of origin, Mclean has been reinventing herself in every town where she and her father move.

But when they come to Lakeview, the fictional setting for all of the books that I read by Dessen, Mclean meets a boy, Dave, who will become an anchor for her free-floating identity, and she makes friends who want to know her as she really is.

So it’s chick lit for the high school set, and my girls devour it. I think Dessen’s books are so popular because they speak to issues and questions that teen girls, in particular, do grapple with and think about: Who am I really? Can I become a new person in a new setting, or am I doomed to make the same mistakes over and over? Is it better to have loved and lost? Is it worth the risk to commit oneself to a romantic relationship in this age of transience and uncertainty? Oh, and how do I deal with the newly realized fact that my parents, mom especially, are imperfect and maybe even seriously messed up?

I like the way Dessen’s books tackle these and other teen questions, with characters who don’t have it all together but who are trying. I don’t like the common assumptions that are perpetuated in the books: that all teens rebel and that all adult dating relationships and most teen ones eventually are consummated in a sexual relationship. There’s nothing explicit about teen sex in What Happened to Goodbye, but the assumption is there. It’s more overt in This Lullaby. In the latter book, promiscuity is rightly shown to be a poor defense mechanism for protecting oneself from true intimacy, but the assumption is still that if you love someone, you will eventually have sex as soon as you both get over all of your issues and hangups. Marriage, of course, is not even a blip on the horizon because, while these teens consider themselves old enough to have sex, they have college to attend, new places to explore, and lives to live before they even think of marriage.

I wish I could recommend some books similar to these but with a more Christian underlying worldview, and also with characters that were as engaging and real as Dessen’s. However, the “Christian” teen romances I’ve read are not nearly in the same league with these books as far as depth of characters and engagement with the real world. I don’t want the characters in Dessen’s books to all behave like sinless saints, a category of people I don’t believe exists this side of heaven, but I do wish there were someone in the novels who could exemplify or articulate a faith-based, or at least traditional, view of male/female and parent/child relationships, and even explore the vicissitudes of love and marriage and growing up from that perspective. Maybe I’m asking too much from a book that purports to be nothing more nor less than the latest in a series of highly acclaimed teen romance novels.

Content warnings: some mildly offensive language and discussion of premarital sexual situations, but no explicit sex or violence.