Movies Based on Books, Upcoming

51dxiVSpLwL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_Of course, the big news this week is the new Hunger Games movie, Catching Fire. One of my urchins wants to go to the midnight premiere on Thursday. However, there are other movies coming down the pike for November/December release:

The Christmas Candle, based on the novel by Max Lucado.

A movie called Tar, based on a book of poems by poet C.K. Willams and on the life of the poet, is set to release on December 1st.

From IMDB: “Based on the beloved bestselling book, The Book Thief tells the story of a spirited and courageous young girl who transforms the lives of everyone around her when she is sent to live with a foster family in World War II Germany.” I didn’t really care for the book, but I actually think the movie may be better.

The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug opens December 13th. I can hardly wait.

51ZWVmpx8uL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_Saving Mr. Banks tells the story of the collaboration of Walt Disney and P.L. Travers to make Mary Poppins a household name. Starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as Travers, it opens December 20th.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a remake of the 1947 movie with Danny Kaye, this time starring Ben Stiller, It’s about a man who lives in his imagination, and it’s based on the short story “The Secret World of Walter Mitty” by cartoonist James Thurber.

Ender’s Game, based on the book by Orson Scott Card, and How I Live Now, from the YA novel by Meg Rosoff, are already in theaters. Anybody seen them? Anybody planning to make the midnight showing of Catching Fire?

Charlotte Zolotow, b.1915, d.2013

Children’s author and book editor Charlotte Zolotow died yesterday at the age of 98. She wrote and published over seventy picture books for young children, including Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, William’s Doll, Big Sister Little Sister, and Over and Over. As an editor for Harper and Row, she was instrumental in publishing such authors as ME Kerr, Paul Zindel, Kara Kuskin, and Patricia MacLachlan, whose lovely book Sarah Plain and Tall won the Newbery Award.

Some of my favorite books by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrated by many of the picture book world’s most gifted illustrators:

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Here at Semicolon, I wrote a birthday celebration post for Ms. Zolotow a few years ago, and there’s a linky there. I’ve moved it here so that if you want to link to your post about Charlotte Zolotow and her legacy, you can. I’m adding links myself to the tributes I find so that I can go back and read them again when I want to remember. Or I can just read her books. The books will last.

A Girl Called Problem by Katie Quirk

51zSfrFm2DL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_I have a thing about books set in other countries, especially African countries. Africa fascinates me for some reason. A Girl Called Problem is set in Tanzania in the early 1970’s when President Julius Nyerere encouraged Tanzanians to participate in his program of ujamaa, a socialist strategy emphasizing family and collective farming, to improve the economy and the living conditions of Tanzania’s poor and rural tribal peoples.

Wikipedia is not complimentary about the implementation and results of ujamaa:

“Collectivization was accelerated in 1971. Because the population resisted collectivisation, Nyerere used his police and military forces to forcibly transfer much of the population into collective farms. Houses were set on fire or demolished, sometimes with the family’s pre-Ujamaa property inside. The regime denied food to those who resisted. A substantial amount of the country’s wealth in the form of built structures and improved land (fields, fruit trees, fences) was destroyed or forcibly abandoned. Livestock was stolen, lost, fell ill, or died.
In 1975, the Tanzanian government issued the “ujamaa program” to send the Sonjo in northern Tanzania from compact sites with less water to flatter lands with more fertility and water; new villages were created to reap crops and raise livestock easier.”

In A Girl Called Problem the picture of ujamaa is much rosier. In the book the people of the fictional village Litongo move to a new place to participate in President Nyerere’s utopian project. Thirteen year old Shida (whose name means “problem”) believes that she and her mother have been cursed because her father died when Shida was born, but she knows that in the new village she will have a chance to go to school and to learn from the district nurse the thing she wants most to learn, how to be a healer.

Shida’s grandfather, Babu the village elder, tells the people that they should move to the new village, Nija Panda, for the sake of all Tanzania, and most of them do, although some are reluctant and fearful of the ancestors’ curse. This book is largely about reconciling the old ways with the new, what to keep and what to throw out. and about the sources of fear and strategies for confronting that fear. Shida listens to her elders, especially her mother and Babu, but she also respects and wants to learn from her schoolteacher and from the village nurse.

The book tells a good story about a girl coming of age in a time of change and stress, but two things bothered me about the context and setting. First of all, the author strategically ends her story before the failure of the ujamaa villages, a failure which was stark and catastrophic: “Tanzania, which had been the largest exporter of food in Africa, and also had always been able to feed its people, became the largest importer of food in Africa. Many sectors of the economy collapsed. There was a virtual breakdown in transportation. . . . Nyerere left Tanzania as one of the poorest, least developed, and most foreign aid-dependent countries in the world.”

In addition to glossing over the political situation, the author indicates that Shida’s mother is suffering from what appears to be mental illness, and again, as in two other middle grade fiction books that I read within the last month, the mother makes a quick and sudden recovery as a result of no intervention or therapy or anything. She simply decides not to be depressed anymore? If it were that easy, then no one would ever suffer from what we call clinical depression. Maybe Shida’s mom was just being a stubborn, self-centered old lady when she spent two weeks in the darkness, lying on her cot and refusing to move to Nija Panda. However, whatever the issue, sin or mental illness or both, she certainly makes a brilliant turnaround when the story comes to its climax and Mother Shida (women are called by the name of their oldest child) is needed to tie the loose ends together and make the story turn out well.

I enjoyed reading A Girl Called Problem myself, but I wouldn’t recommend it for impressionable middle grade readers who might get the wrong idea about the glorious efficacy of socialism and about the cure and treatment for mental illness and fear and selfishness. Julius Nyerere, who retired from government in 1985 and died in 1999, is still quite popular and even idolized in Tanzania, by the way, and in 2005 a Catholic diocese in Tanzania recommended the beatification of Nyerere, who was said to be a devout Catholic.

Suggestions for the Book Club

Camille who blogs at BookMoot was at KidLitCon in Austin last weekend, and I finally got to meet her after all these years! I found out that not only does she help facilitate and advocate for books and reading among the younger set, as a substitute librarian and all-round book recommender, but she also leads a book club for seniors at her church in which they discuss the faith aspects, in particular, of the books they read together. She told me some of the books they’ve read for the book club, which includes at least one member who is over ninety years of age.

They read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel over the summer. I applaud their persistence. I tried to read Wolf Hall when it first came out, and I don’t think I made it to the end. I found myself skimming, trying to just get through it, and I don’t remember a single thing about its portrayal of Thomas Cromwell–except that I couldn’t tell who was talking or thinking half the time, nor when it was, nor where the scene was set. Camille said the key is to listen to it (audiobook), and that the narrator changes voices to indicate who is speaking.

Anyway, after reading Wolf Hall, Camille and the ladies thought they needed something a little lighter, so they read The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, a book I am going to read very soon. I loved Schmidt’s Okay for Now, and I’m pretty sure I’ll fall for The Wednesday Wars, too. They’ve also read The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (another book on my TBR list), and The End of Your Life Book Club, I think. But Camille said she was working hard to figure out what the books for the spring of 2014 should be. So I jumped in and said I’d send her some recommendations.

So, here are my book club recommendations:

Nonfiction:
Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me by Karen Prior. My mom, my sister , and I are reading this nonfiction literary memoir right now.
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas.
Unbroken by Lara Hillebrand. (If they haven’t already read it. It seems everyone has and loved it just as much as I did.)

Adult Fiction:
Peace Like A River by Leif Enger.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell.
Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin.
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns.
The Love Letters or The Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle.
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry. Russell Moore on why you should read Hannah Coulter.

Young Adult and Children’s Fiction:
The Hawk and the Dove by Penelope Wilcock.
My Hands Came Away Red by Lisa McKay.

As I was making this list, I came across Melissa Wiley’s post at Here in the Bonny Glen about her “imaginary book club” and the books she’d like to discuss with an imaginary group of like-minded readers. And some other bloggers chimed in with their Imaginary Book Club reading lists:

Sarah at Knitting the Wind.
Sashwee at Post-haste.

If you have a list, leave a comment here or at Melissa’s blog and I’ll add your link to the list. I love book lists, and maybe Camille will find something she can use here or there or somewhere. Camille is particularly looking for books that have some “faith aspect” or for children’s and YA books that are engaging for adults, and/or for books that would be challenging for senior adults and their season of life. However, some of the ladies asked Camille for a break from books about death and dying, since they’ve read several and many of them are dealing with the same issue in their own lives. I may also choose some of the books on someone’s list for our family book club, since I’ve actually read the ones in my list and would like to suggest books for the family book club that I haven’t read already.

Women of the Frontier by Brandon Marie Miller

51aDnzTnIKL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_Women of the Frontier: 16 Tales of Trailblazing Homesteaders, Entrepreneurs, and Rabble-Rousers by Brandon Marie Miller.

This collective biography/history was a fascinating book, although I found myself skimming the explanatory material at the beginning of each chapter to go directly to the stories of the women themselves. Some of the women I knew something about: Margret Reed, a survivor of the ill-fated Donner Party; Narcissa Whitman, missionary to Oregon; Carry Nation, prohibition campaigner; and Cynthia Ann Parker, captive of the Comanches and mother to Quanah Parker, famous Comanche chief.

Even about these women I learned new things:
According to the author, Narcissa Whitman grew to nearly despise the Native Americans she traveled to Oregon to minister to and convert.

After years of “smashing” saloons to protest the evils of alcohol, Carry Nation settled in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and opened a home for the (abused) wives of alcoholics. The home was called Hatchet Hall.

Indian captive Cynthia Ann Parker was taken back from the Comanches when her son Quanah was only twelve years old, and she thought he was dead. She did not know that he became a great warrior chief of the Comanche.

Then, there were the many seemingly ordinary, actually extraordinary, women who managed to survive a life of hardship and vicissitudes that would have put me into an early grave. Amelia Stewart Knight traversed the Oregon Trail, “out of one mud hole into another all day.” And she was four months pregnant when she and her husband and their seven children left Iowa to head for Oregon. Luzena Wilson learned that she could make more money by cooking and cleaning for the 49ers in the California gold fields than she or her husband could by mining. Then, she learned by experience with both that a fire or flood could destroy everything she had built and earned, and she learned to start all over again.

Mary Lease fought for government regulation of the railroads, the graduated income tax, the direct election of senators, and suffrage for women. She lived to see all of these things enshrined in law. Sarah Winnemucca and Susette La Flesche, on the other hand, both championed the rights of Native Americans, but lived to see most of the promises of the U.S. government to the Native peoples broken and the Native people themselves mistreated and disrespected.

I was inspired and a bit humbled by the stories of these ladies. Again, I’m not sure how I would have done, given their circumstances and faced with their choices. I’d like to say that I would have persevered and made a life despite the difficulties and adversities they faced, but I don’t really know.

Said one Kansas woman:

“It might seem a cheerless life, but there were many compensations: the thrill of conquering a new country; the wonderful atmosphere; the attraction of the prairie, which simply gets into your bloom and makes you dissatisfied away from it; the low-lying hills and the unobstructed view of the horizon; and the fleecy clouds driven by the never failing winds.”

Maybe those things, and more, were enough.

Yoko Ono, Collector of Skies by Nell Beram and Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky

51zA84zWYPL._SX258_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_I wouldn’t say that Yoko Ono would be someone I would be interested in reading about on my own, but since this biography was nominated for the YA Nonfiction Cybils award, I gave it a go. And I learned some interesting things.

First of all, I was confirmed in my preconceived opinions about so-called “rebels” and “nonconformists.” Yoko Ono was “sick and tired of that middle-class scene”—“the value system adopted by her parents.” So she turned to her avant-garde friends in Greenwich Village—composers John Cage and Philip Glass, artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns and art patron Peggy Guggenheim— for validation. The biographers tell us over and over that Yoko struggled all her life to impress and leave a mark on the art world, and later the music world. She was just as conformist as her parents; she just chose a different culture to conform to and inhabit.

Yoko Ono:
“The thought of being able to do something, that thought that I may be able to leave a mark on the world excited me tremendously.”

“Many people thought that I was a very rich girl who was just ‘playing avant-garde.’ . . . I had to say, ‘I know you are a talented artist. All you have to do is reciprocate that and just realize that I am a talented artist.'”

“I was an outcast in avant-garde because the rest of the avant-garde was trying to alienate the audience. . . . I was trying to communicate. I was trying to say ‘love’ and ‘yes’ and ‘peace.'”

Finally, after becoming frustrated with the art world and its critics and their failure to recognize her genius, she found her own worshipper, John Lennon. The biography descends into hagiography as the biographers try to justify and be completely non-judgemental about Lennon’s desertion of his wife and child and Yoko’s abandonment of her (second) husband and child so that the two could be together and revel in their misunderstood genius-ness. When Yoko and John later travel to Majorca to kidnap the daughter that Yoko had abandoned for the previous three years, the authors assure us that “all she (Yoko) wanted was her fair share of time with her daughter.”

They did it all for art’s sake. I did find some of Yoko Ono’s “art instructions” interesting and somewhat thought-provoking. But she was much less profound than she thought she was. “Yoko believed that words, and even ideas themselves, could be art. She wanted viewers to ask: What makes something a painting? What makes something not a painting?”

Well, I would answer those questions rather simply. Words and ideas may be art, but for something to be a painting, it requires paint. An idea in the artist’s head, especially if communicated very imprecisely to the viewer by means of words and/or enshrined objects, is not art, and it is certainly not a painting. I would say that so-called “found objects” are not sculpture either, since sculpture requires an artist who manipulates a medium in some way. “Found poems” are only poetry if a real, live poet puts the words together in a way so as to create meaning.

And primal screams do not make music either. So, Ms. Ono and I are in disagreement about the nature of art, the definition of music, and the art and discipline of making a beautiful and loving life. Still, I found her life story interesting, but rather sad.

Saturday Review of Books: November 16, 2013

“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.” ~Anna Quindlen

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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. Carol – The Sun on the Stubble
2. Joseph R. – Night of the Living Dead Christian
3. Hope (Six Books on Christology)
4. Janet (The Wonderful O)
5. Janet (On Stories and Other Essays on Literature)
6. Lazygal (No One Else Can Have You)
7. Lazygal (Coincidence)
8. Lazygal (Africa is My Home)
9. Lazygal (One Hundred Names)
10. Lazygal (The Disappeared)
11. Lazygal (The Kept)
12. Lazygal (Ketchup Clouds)
13. Thoughts of Joy (Runner)
14. Thoughts of Joy (Practice Perfect)
15. Thoughts of Joy (Fangirl)
16. Alice@Supratentorial(Ordinary Grace)
17. Alice@Supratentorial(October Reading)
18. Alice@Supratentorial(Non-fiction Cybils)
19. Alice@Supratentorial(Other Cybils)
20. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Peril)
21. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Catie’s Secret)
22. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Shadow Lamp)
23. Barbara H. (Missionary books for children)
24. SmallWorld Reads (Nowhere but Home by Lisa Palmer)
25. Glynn (Jayber Crow)
26. Glynn (Poems to Elsi)
27. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Paperboy by Vawter)
28. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (The Thing About Luck by Kadohata)
29. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Armchair Cybils Nov. linky)
30. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (Farewell to the Master)
31. Brenda@CoffeeTeaBooks (Holy is the Day)
32. Brenda@CoffeeTeaBooks (Live Like a Narnian)
33. Brenda@CoffeeTeaBooks (The Song of Annie Moses)
34. Brenda@CoffeeTeaBooks (A Million Little Ways)
35. Susan @ Reading World (Burial Rites)
36. Becky (Cymbeline by Shakespeare)
37. Becky (Magic Marks the Spot)
38. Becky (Storybook of Legends)
39. Becky (The Nonesuch)
40. Becky (How the Barbarian Invasions Shaped Modern World)
41. Becky (Our Island Story)
42. Becky (Kind of Preaching God Blesses)
43. Becky (Reliable Truth)
44. Becky (Perfectly Matched)
45. Becky (Living for God’s Glory)
46. The Beloved Daughter & Giveaway
47. the Ink Slinger (Killing Pablo)
48. Melanie (Counting by 7’s)
49. Jeanne Harvey (When I Was Eight)
50. Annie Kate (Snow on the Tulips)
51. Carrie (Ben Rides On)
52. Tara Smith (The Saturday Boy)
53. Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies (The Rosie Project)
54. Harvee @ Book Dilettante (A Cold and Lonely Place)
55. Mitali (Razia’s Ray of Hope)
56. Miss Lifesaver (A Christmas Carol)
57. Thea (Emily of New Moon)
58. Liviana (Chasing Shadows)
59. Sally (5 Classic Gift Books for Children 9-12)
60. Joan (The True Blue Scouts of Sugarman Swamp)
61. Becky (Found In Him)
62. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (The Lavender Garden)
63. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Life After Life)
64. Harvee@Book Dilettante (The Pieces We Keep)

Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.

Poetry Friday: David McCord

Children’s poet David McCord was born on November 15 (or December 15 or 17), 1897 in New York City. (Most internet sources say December 15th or just 1897.) He grew up in New Jersey and Oregon, and went to school at Harvard, where he later worked as a fundraiser for the Harvard College Fund.

He once said about writing poetry for children:

“Whatever may be said about this small but graceful art, three things should be remembered: good poems for children are never trivial; they are never written without the characteristic chills and fever of a dedicated man at work; they must never bear the stigma of I am adult, you are a child.”

“McCord said he developed a love of words and a fine sense of rhythm from reading aloud the Bible to his elderly grandmother.” (Obituary, Harvard Gazette, April 17, 1997)

This poem is the one by Mr. McCord I remember reading over and over again until I practically had it memorized. I used to read my library books while perched in the mulberry tree next to my house, so I suppose this poem was something close to my own experience.

51VY32VQ2hL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_Every time I climb a tree
Every time I climb a tree
Every time I climb a tree
I scrape a leg
Or skin a knee
And every time I climb a tree
I find some ants
Or dodge a bee
And get the ants
All over me.

And every time I climb a tree
Where have you been?
They say to me
But don’t they know that I am free
Every time I climb a tree?

I like it best
To spot a nest
That has an egg
Or maybe three.

And then I skin
The other leg
But every time I climb a tree
I see a lot of things to see
Swallows rooftops and TV
And all the fields and farms there be
Every time I climb a tree
Though climbing may be good for ants
It isn’t awfully good for pants
But still it’s pretty good for me
Every time I climb a tree

Lee Bennett Hopkins discusses David McCord and his poetry.

Poetry Friday Roundup this week is at Jama’s Alphabet Soup. I can’t think of a more poetical place to visit on a crisp November day.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: Redux

In light of the movie that’s just been released, I thought I’d re-run my review of Ender’s Game from 2006 when I first read it. I would add the updated perspective that I’m much less inclined to think of books as “boys’ books” or “girls’ books” nowadays, having been proved wrong so many times by my own children and others. Suffice it to say that Ender’s Game is violent, with few or no well-rounded female characters.

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I hate mind games; this book was one big mind game.
I’m not too fond of war movies or novels or violence; Ender’s Game is all about war and violence.
I’m more of a fantasy fan than a science fiction fan; Ender’s Game is science fiction with a vengeance.
And to top it all off, this violent science fiction novel that tries to play games with the reader’s mind is definitely a boys’ book. It wasn’t written for girls, and it probably won’t appeal to many of them.

However, I thought Ender’s Game was one of the best books I’ve read in a long time; maybe the best science fiction novel I’ve ever read. Someone told me that Ender’s Game is on the required reading list for Marine Corps officer candidates. I can see why; did I mention that this book is very military, very male?

Ender Wiggin is an illegal Third (third child), but like his brother, Peter, and his sister, Valentine, he is a genius. The powers that be hope he is also the one kid who can save the world from the Buggers who have already invaded Earth twice and are expected back anytime. Or maybe we’re planning to get them before they invade for a third time. Either way Ender, still a child, must learn enough very quickly to lead Earth’s army in what may turn out to be Armageddon, the final battle for domination of Earth and its colonies.

The themes in this book make it intriguing even as the plot twists and surprises keep the reader turning the pages to see what will happen next. Ender’s Game asks questions about power and violence and sin and forgiveness. Is it morally acceptable to use overwhelming force against an enemy when you know that enemy is willing and able to destroy you? What if you begin to enjoy the exercise of violence and power over others for its own sake? Can members of very different cultures communicate and make peace, or are they doomed to destroy one another? Is it acceptable to strike first to destroy an enemy who has already attacked you once? Can people change? Does a truly evil child, a torturer, become civilized? How? How are leaders formed? What makes a group, an army unit, for instance, a cohesive force? How does a leader go about creating that cohesiveness?

Lots of questions. Some of these questions are questions that we’re still pondering and muddling through as a country in the aftermath of 9/11. Orson Scott Card certainly doesn’t have all the answers, and I thought the ending of the book was its weakest part. However, he definitely asks the right questions, questions that we will be forced to answer as we deal with our own crises in this post 9/11 world.

Highly recommended with one caveat: the language is army language, rough and crude. If that bothers you, skip this book. (To tell the truth, crude language annoys me. However, it wasn’t gratuitous; I would imagine that men whose profession is violent use just the kind of language that is in this book, only worse.) I think it’s worth skimming over some words in order to read this story and think about its implications.

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I assume the movie asks and attempts to answer some of the same questions. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve heard it’s quite violent, in keeping with the source material.

Hold Fast by Blue Balliet

Betsy-bee loves Blue Balliet’s books–Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, and The Calder Game— which incorporate art education and mystery and adventure to make up a lovely, colorful mixture of a read. She might like this one, too, even though it’s different. It’s set in Chicago, but it’s not a Chicago of art museums and art thieves. Instead Hold Fast is about a family of four, Dashel and Summer, the parents, and Early and her little brother, Jubie (short for Jubilation). Dash works as library page at the Harold Washington Public Library, and he’s “a man who love[s] language almost as much as color or taste or air.”

“Words are everywhere and for everyone. They’re for choosing, admiring, keeping, giving. They are treasures of inestimable value. . . . Words are free and plentiful!”

51tNF5vxWjL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_The above quote is an example of the way Early’s father, Dash, talks about words and books and learning and, well, life. He’s a whimsical, poetic, word-lover sort of guy, and unfortunately he gets mixed up with a rough crowd by mistake. Early and Jubie and Sum end up separated from Dash and living in a homeless shelter. Everyone, including the police, thinks Dash has run away because he might be involved in criminal activity. But Early knows her father is a man of honor and responsibility. Dash will come back to the family, and they will prove his innocence and fulfill their family dream of having a real house someday.

The book is confusing at first. But if a reader can get past the first couple of chapters, this one is a keeper. Early has a voice that shines, or resonates, or whatever the right word is. And she’s quite as concerned about words and how to use them and treasure them as her father is. I doubt there are many families like Dashsumearlyjubie (yes, that’s what Early calls her family in the book), but I doubt there are many families quite like mine either. Or yours. Happy families are not all the same, no matter what Mr. Tolstoy said, and unhappy families are only happy families that have given up in some way or another. Quirky, unique, eccentric, whatever you want to call us, our families have personalities, too. And I really enjoyed the author’s portrayal of Dashsumearlyjubie and the plot of how they were pulled apart and eventually knit back together through faith and perseverance.