Last of the Name by Roseanne Parry

Oct18

I really enjoyed Roseanne Parry’s middle grade novel, Heart of a Shepherd. I said at the time that Heart of a Shepherd was very Catholic, and so is this historical fiction story set in 1863 about Irish immigrants, Danny and Kathleen O’Carolan. Kathleen is the older sister, fiercely protective of her younger brother, Danny. Danny is something of a scamp and prone to trouble, as he proves when just off the ship from Ireland, he is almost inveigled into joining the Union Army as a drummer boy.

The book is a coming of age novel about immigrants and identity and perseverance and trust and holding onto one’s faith and respect for different groups of people. That’s a lot of thematic elements to pack into one story, but Ms. Parry writes well. Danny’s and Kathleen’s adventures in the New World of New York City are embedded in a realistic and vivid picture of the Civil War times, and yet the two protagonists are easy to identify with in today’s world of immigrants and identity politics and questions of whom or what to trust or hold on to.

I look forward to reading Roseanne Parry’s other middle grade novel published this year, A Wolf Called Wander, and I will look for other novels by the same author. Historical fiction isn’t always as popular these days as it used to be, but this novel might a good one to try out if you or your middle grade reader is inclined in that direction or is studying immigration or the Civil War era.

Sky Chasers by Emma Carroll

Oct17

The Montgolfier brothers, Etienne and Joseph, were eighteenth century French paper manufacturers who became known for their invention and flight of the first piloted hot air balloon.

On 19 September 1783, the Aérostat Réveillon was flown with the first living beings in a basket attached to the balloon: a sheep called Montauciel (“Climb-to-the-sky”), a duck and a rooster. The sheep was believed to have a reasonable approximation of human physiology. The duck was expected to be unharmed by being lifted and was included as a control for effects created by the aircraft rather than the altitude. The rooster was included as a further control as it was a bird that did not fly at high altitudes. The demonstration was performed at the royal palace in Versailles, before King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette and a crowd. The flight lasted approximately eight minutes, covered two miles (3 km), and obtained an altitude of about 1,500 feet (460 m). The craft landed safely after flying.

Sky Chasers is a fictional account of this wonderful accomplishment of the Montgolfiers, featuring a young thief called Magpie who manages to help the Montgolfiers with their invention despite her low social class and her female gender. Girls and orphaned, homeless pickpockets were not expected to be of much use or intelligence in eighteenth century France, just as they are not very respected in this day and time. Perhaps the gulf between classes and between boys and girls was much wider back in the 1700’s than it is today, but Ms. Carroll is writing a story for middle grade readers, not for adults. In this story Magpie finds a home and finds success and respect in spite of all the obstacles that are stacked against her.

I found this book to be an engaging and informative piece of historical fiction about a little known incident and time of history. Almost all I know about Louis XVI and Marie Antionette is their ignominious end, so it was interesting to see them in a different setting, before the revolution while they were still giddy and gay and pompous and entitled. Magpie learns whom to trust and whom to distrust and how to take advantage of the God-given abilities that she has been blessed to enjoy. Particularly if you’re interested in the history of flight or of hot air balloons or of invention or of eighteenth century France, this novel would be a light-hearted but thoughtful addition to your reading life.

Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson: Reading Mentors

Oct14

Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson.

Book Girl Discussion Question #11: What mentors fostered a love of reading for you? To whom are you passing along the gift of reading?

My reading mentors:

My mom, of course.

Two children’s librarians at Tom Green County library in San Angelo, Texas: Ms. Karen Vavricka and Ms. Carolyn ?. Both of them would patiently work with me each time I came to the library, recommending books that I might like until I got to my limit of ten books to check out and read. They saved books especially for me, and they knew me and my reading preferences. I later got to work with Karen in the reference section of that same library, and I consider her my librarian mentor, too.

It seems as if there might be a teacher or two that I would consider my reading mentors, but I mostly remember sneaking in reading in classes that were devoted to boring stuff like math or science. I had to hide my books behind the math book or the geography book or hide them in my lap and hope the teacher wouldn’t notice. I had to smuggle books out onto the playground where we were supposed to play, not read.

And to whom am I passing along the gift of reading?

To my children. To the patrons of my library. To anyone who will listen. To anyone who reads my blog.

What about you? Who were your reading mentors? With whom are you sharing the joy of reading?

Pay Attention, Carter Jones by Gary Schmidt

Oct11

This book is not as good as the author’s Okay for Now, which I still maintain should have won the Newbery Medal, or at least an honor, but Pay Attention, Carter Jones is still a good story about a boy with father issues growing into a young man who knows his own mind and his own strength. With help of an English butler, August Paul Bowles-Fitzpatrick and the game of cricket, Carter Jones learns to “make good decisions and remember who you are.”

Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick is the perfect British gentleman’s gentleman and counterpart to Mary Poppins, only with a cricket bat instead of a parrot-headed umbrella. (Actually, Mr.Bowles Fitzpatrick has an umbrella, too, “an umbrella as big as a satellite disk.”) Carter Jones, whose father has not yet returned from his army deployment in Germany, is a typical American sixth grade boy trying to take care of his mom, his dog, and his two sisters while dad is away. When the former, Mr. Bowles Fitzpatrick, shows up on the doorstep of the latter, Carter, and says he’s been sent to serve the family while dad is deployed, Carter is grateful, but confused. Not only does the butler speak in a manner that is befitting a British gentleman (“you say everything like you want it to smell good”), but Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick just doesn’t seem to understand that he’s in the United States of America now, not Britain. He serves tea snd cookies for an afternoon snack. He has a different on the Boston Tea Party, and indeed on the entire war that Americans call the Revolution. And he wants Carter to learn to play cricket.

Unfortunately for me, I got lost toward the end of the book when Carter finally reconnects with his mostly-absent father on a father-son trip to Australia. I lost the thread of the story with the trip back to Australia and the dad and the clouds, and I just zoned out. I guess I need to re-read and pay attention! But I had to return the book to the library.

Final verdict: good characters, good themes of honor and forgiveness, lots of cricket, and a British accent. Recommended.

The Borrowed House by Hilda van Stockum

Oct10

Janna is proud of her membership in the Hitler Youth. She’s proud of her parents, famous actors, who have left Janna in Germany while they tour and entertain the troops of the Reich. Janna is also proud of having been chosen to play Brunhilde in the upcoming play that her youth group is going to perform, the story of Siegfried and Brunhilde from Hitler’s favorite opera by Wagner. Most of all, Janna is proud to be German and Aryan, and not a member of those inferior Jewish or Slavic races.

The Borrowed House is a young adult story, not because it’s about a teenager; Janna is only twelve years old in the book. And it’s not YA because of explicit sex or even violence, although there is some of the latter as the author describes the violence against Jews and others in Holland where Janna goes to join her parents. The Borrowed House is YA because it deals with mature themes of racism and indoctrination and trust and adultery in a way that is nuanced and complicated and respectful of the maturity of its audience. Janna is an unusual twelve year old, and she sees and understands things that most twelve year olds wouldn’t even think about. And there is a developing romance between twelve year old Janna and an older resident of the borrowed house that Janna and her parents live in. Nothing explicit or illicit, but the romantic subtext is there.

Maybe you should read this one yourself before handing it to your child, because first of all, it won’t be the right book for every young person. And secondly, The Borrowed House is one of those rare novels that adults can appreciate just as well as teens can. The book gives a lot insight into the way the German civilians looked at the war and at Herr Hitler as well as the privations and persecution and courage of the Dutch and Jewish people in Holland during World War II.

Republished by Purple House Press in 2016, this World War II novel is an excellent story and a definite discussion starter. Just think carefully about who would appreciate it properly and at what age.The writing and subject matter and characterization remind me a little bit of Madeleine L’Engle’s young adult novels. If you’ve read and enjoyed A Winter’s Love or The Small Rain by L’Engle, then The Borrowed House has about the same maturity level with some similar themes.

Firestorm by Robb White

Oct9

Robb White was the son of Episcopalian missionaries, but his stories are stories of adventure and war and survival. Mr. White is listed in Jan Bloom’s book, Who Should We Then Read?, A Busy Reader’s Concise Guide to the Best Authors of Living Books, Volume 2, and well he should be. I have read three or four of Robb White’s novels, and I was absorbed by each one of the ones that I have been able to find.

Firestorm is about a forest fire. It’s a short book, only 111 pages, but it’s perfect for reluctant but intelligent readers. The plot and characters and the ending are all surprising and give the reader food for thought. I was especially moved to think about what I would do in similar circumstances, as a boy and the forest ranger who believes him to be an arsonist are trapped together in a ring of fire that threatens to kill both of them.

I gave this book to Engineer Husband to read, and he was fascinated, too. I can’t tell much more, no spoilers, but this brief story reads like an excellent short story or novella with the same punch you would find in a well-written short story. I highly recommend.

If you like this one, you might also enjoy:

Up Periscope by Robb White.

Deathwatch by Robb White. Another survival story, this 1972 novel about a boy surviving in the desert while being hunted and hounded by a predatory criminal was both exciting and absorbing.

If you find any more Robb White books (he wrote quite a few), grab them, and if you don’t want them, then send them my way.

Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson: Book Empathy

Oct8

Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson.

Book Girl Discussion Question #6: In chapter 3, the author says ‘We understand our worlds through the words we are given.’ Can you think of a time when a passage from a book gave you empathy for or a deeper understanding of a person or situation in your life?

So many.

I recently read a couple of books by Western author Elmer Kelton, and although they are set back around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, they gave me an understanding of my own daddy and my grandfather that I didn’t have before, even though neither of them was a cowboy or anything like it. They were “good old boys” in their own way.

Hillbilly Elegy is another book that made me see my own family and upbringing and ancestry in a new way—I am a hillbilly from the flatlands of West Texas.

I also read The Borrowed House by Hilda van Stockum, bout a girl who is trained and educated as a Hitler Youth, and I was reminded of how difficult it is to transcend the limits of our childhood indoctrination and how we have to learn whom we can trust to tell the truth.

I understood the sharp pain of a prodigal son from my reading of Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, long before I experienced my own children growing older and making choices that I mourned and prayed over.

I understand a little of what it’s like to be a pastor in a small church from reading Jan Karon’s Mitford series and Bob DeGray’s We Never Stood Alone.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson gave me some insight into what it feels like to be an African American man in twenty-first century America.

Several books I’ve read, including those of Torey Hayden and Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin and Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, gave me some empathy and understanding of what it’s like to be autistic or to live with an autistic person.

Even though I didn’t get the pet-loving gene, I understand that some people do love their dogs and cats dearly because I’ve read James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small and other books about the bond between a pet-owner and his or her pet.

No Graven Image by Elizabeth Elliott gave me insight into the life of a missionary and made me realize that the missionaries I know are real people not cardboard saints.

I could go on, but obviously I’m a more understanding and sympathetic person because of the many lives I’ve explored through reading both fiction and nonfiction. What have you read that made you understand something or someone in your life better?

The Good Old Boys by Elmer Kelton

Oct7

The Good Old Boys by Elmer Kelton.
The Smiling Country by Elmer Kelton.

These books and others by San Angelo western writer Elmer Kelton embody the West Texas I knew growing up and the West Texas I heard about from my grandparents and others, far better than the hugely popular book, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I suppose comparisons are odious, but in this case I’ll make an exception. I thought the characters in Lonesome Dove were neither likable nor believable, but Hewey Calloway, although I certainly didn’t always agree with his decisions, was understandable and convincing and characteristic of the kind of men I saw and heard about in West Texas when I was growing up. Good old boys.

Hewey Calloway wants to stay a free and somewhat irresponsible cowboy. But life and changing times seem to be pushing him in another direction: settling down. Both of these books, The Good Old Boys and The Smiling Country, are about Hewey and his ongoing battle with himself and with the outside world to remain free and independent and also to make connections and conquer his own loneliness. Can he have love and family and also maintain his liberty and his allegiance to his own code of conduct?

At first, it seems that he cannot have both. Hewey must choose, and in The Good Old Boys, he does. Then, as happens to most of us, even the most independent and ornery, life and circumstances begin to narrow Hewey’s choices until it seems as if he can have neither the freewheeling life of a cowboy nor the comfort of home and family.In The Smiling Country, Hewey confronts his inability to stop time and change, and he realizes his own limitations and the isolation that his choices have imposed upon him. And yet, he also has made good choices that bring him friendship and support the he needs it the most.

Elmer Kelton was the farm-and-ranch editor for the San Angelo Standard-Times. Also, for five years he was editor of Sheep and Goat Raiser Magazine, and for another twenty-two years he was editor of Livestock Weekly. He wrote more than thirty western novels, set mostly in Texas, and he was awarded several Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America. In 1977, Kelton received an Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement, and in 1998, he received the first Lone Star Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas.

I highly recommend Elmer Kelton’s western novels if you are at all interested in the genre, and even if you are not. There’s a smattering of language, and the cowboys are not all pure, (but they are much more honorable than McMurtry’s Gus and Call and Jake and whoever else figures in that rather dis-honorable novel). I would suggest that you read both books together to get the whole story of good old by, Hewey Calloway.

The Buckskin Line by Elmer Kelton.

The Day the Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton.

The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton.

The Discoverer of Insulin: Dr. Frederick G. Banting by I.E. Levine

Oct2

I read this Messner published biography back in the summer, but I’m just now getting around to reviewing it. The dust jacket blurb says in a nutshell somethings of what I learned from the book:

“When Frederick Banting discovered insulin, he gave millions of doomed diabetics the gift of life. . . . Banting grew up on a farm in Canada. When his tomboy playmate Jane died at fourteen of diabetes, he was determined to one day find the cause of this mysterious disease. . . . Banting became a university instructor and researcher. He was still puzzled by the mysterious disease of diabetes. . . With Charles Best, his assistant, Banting sweated in a grimy attic laboratory, racing the time allotted him by Toronto University. Alternately sure of success and plunged into despair, they hung on grimly through a series of experiments. They succeeded in discovering Hormone X, but it took many, many months before they perfected the wonder drug—insulin.”

That’s the short version of the story. But I learned so much more about medical research and diabetes and early twentieth century medicine. Did you know:

* Until insulin, six out of every ten diabetics died of coma. And almost every juvenile diabetes sufferer died within a few years of diagnosis. Diabetes was a death sentence.

* Banting started out as an orthopedic surgeon, not an internal medicine doctor.

* Banting and Best killed a number of dogs in their experiments to isolate and produce what they called “isletin” (insulin), but they considered the dogs as “soldiers in the war against disease” and treated them as humanely as possible.

* Much of the research time they spent was unpaid. Banting and Best lived in poverty while they conducted their experiments to find the hormone that would control diabetes in those who were diagnosed with the “sugar sickness.”

* Banting received the Nobel Prize for his work on insulin, but instead of recognizing Charles Best as co-discoverer, the Nobel Prize committee named Dr. Macleod, the head researcher at Toronto University, who had been less than encouraging in the research of Banting and Best and not present for most of it.

As I have often said, I am interested in many things. This biography of a revolutionary doctor and medical researcher was an inspiration to persevere in the calling that I have been given, no matter how small. I’m not going to change the lives of millions of people with an incurable disease, but I am called to be faithful just as Banting was.

Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson: Books of Faith

Oct1

Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson.

Book Girl Discussion Question #9: In chapter 5, the author describes the role literature played in making her faith her own: ‘Tolkien’s story helped me to recognize Scripture as my story, the one in whose decisive battles I was caught, the narrative that drew me into the conflict, requiring me to decide what part I would play: heroine, coward, lover, or villain.’ What impact have books had on your faith and your discovery of self? Are there particular books or passages that have been especially meaningful to you on your spiritual journey?

Of course, The Book itself. I’m particularly drawn to the Psalms.

Definitely C.S. Lewis, both through his fiction and his nonfiction, has been a defining influence in my understanding of Christianity and of my relationship with God.

I’m also indebted to Christian authors such as Keith Miller, Bruce Larson, Elisabeth Elliot, Josh McDowell, G.K. Chesterton, Charles Colson, Corrie Ten Boom, Richard Foster, and Beth Moore.

Or to list it another way, here are a few of the Christian nonfiction books that have influenced and strengthened my faith:

The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. A small but wonderful book about praying without ceasing.

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. Absolutely formative. Everyone should read Lewis, starting with this book. (Well, maybe start with Narnia, then Mere Christianity.)

Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. This book introduced me to the idea of “spiritual disciplines” and why it’s important to observe them.

Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. I didn’t memorize all of the copious evidences that Mr. McDowell presents in this huge apologetic encyclopedia, but I did learn that there were answers to most intellectual questions about the Bible and Christianity.

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.

The Edge of Adventure: An Experiment in Faith by Keith Miller and Bruce Larson. This book did more to disciple me as a teenage Christian than any other book outside of the Bible. It might be somewhat dated now, but it was very helpful back in the day.

Keep a Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot. Straight talk, no nonsense devotional thoughts from Ms. Elliot’s newsletters and books.

Loving God by Charles W. Colson. I found this to be thought-provoking and inspiring, especially since I had already read Chuck Colson’s autobiographical memoir of his conversion during the Nixon years, Born Again.

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, Joni by Joni Eareckson, and God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew were all inspiring biographies that shaped my Christian walk as well. And I’m sure I missed some other books that were just as inspirational and formative. What books other than the Bible have shaped your thinking about God, Christ, and Christianity?