Out of Range by Heidi Lang

Jul26

3 sisters: Abby, Emma, and Ollie McBee.

A months-long feud, trading pranks, insults, and put-downs, culminates in the girls being sent to Camp Unplugged. Their parents hope that some time together, away from internet, cell phones, and other distractions, will help the sisters to re-unite and forgive each other. But it’s not working. Abby, the oldest sister, has found a new friend at camp, and Emma and Ollie feel just as angry and left out as they did at home. So the malicious pranks–a frog in the tent, honey in the sleeping bag, and more–continue, and the girls’ camp counselor, Dana, is just as exasperated with them as their parents were.

So, Dana takes the girls on an all day disciplinary hike up a nearby mountain, and then when the three sisters are separated from Dana, they get lost and and injured. And they have to outrun a fire and navigate a raging river. And they meet a bear, and there may be a mountain lion stalking them. Can the sisters learn to work together, forgive each other, and survive?

The author shows the tangled relationships between these three sisters, their fears and their hopes and their growing pains, so well, as they trade insults and yet come to realize how much they really care for each other and need each other. It’s not an immediate or complete change that happens just because the sisters are in crisis mode. Abby is still the somewhat bossy and superior older sister, twelve years old and responsible but not sure she’s up to the responsibility. Emma is still the middle sister, ten, caught between Abby and Ollie, afraid of strong words, somewhat anxious, and longing for everything to go back to the way it was before the sisters broke up into “sides”—The Youngers against Abby. Ollie is still the baby (who isn’t really a baby any more), stubborn, impulsive, and slow to apologize. There are layers of personality and relationship and sisterhood here that are revealed a little at a time, like peeling an onion, as the three sisters come to know each other and themselves so much more deeply.

I liked this book a lot. The sisters have been rather cruel to each other, but they eventually, and realistically, find a way to forgive each other and move forward. I’m going to be recommending this books to sisters and to brothers, all siblings, who are forging their own sibling relationships, probably in less challenging circumstances than those the McBees face. I always told my kids when they were growing up that friends come and go, but family, sisters and brothers, are forever. Those sibling relationships are an important training ground for life, and sometimes they have to be mended–because we all say and do things to hurt each other.

Good book.

Hana Hsu and the Ghost Crab Nation by Sylvia Liu

Jul18

Hana Hsu can’t wait to be meshed: her brain tied into the multiweb by means of a neural implant that will enable her to communicate with everyone, thought to thought, brain to brain. AND she will be able to choose one of three areas of giftedness to be enhanced: intelligence, sensory powers, or physical strength. However, there are, of course, problems. Hana can’t get meshed for another year, not until she’s thirteen. And Hana feels she is losing touch with the rest of her family, especially her older sister and her Ma, both of whom are already meshed. Then, there’s Hana’s grandmother, Popo, who’s beginning to lose her memory. The only way Hana can see to help Popo and regain her family’s closeness and bond is to get meshed as soon as possible.

Enter the Ghost Crab Nation, a loosely organized group of underground protestors who are trying to, well, Hana’s not sure what their aims are or whether or not she can trust Ink, the girl she met in the junkyard, or Wayman, the old man who wants her to spy on her Start-Up program to see if something nefarious and dangerous is going on. But the Start-Up program is Hana’s way to get herself meshed early, maybe if she does well in as little as three months at the end of the summer. Should Hana trust the leaders of her Start-Up? Should she trust Wayman and Ink? Is there a downside to getting meshed? The entire book is a mystery inside a science fiction dystopian fantasy, and the world building is well done.

Other pluses:

  • Hana is a great character, concerned for her family, ambitious, and curious. She does some rather dangerous things, but all in a good cause.
  • The theme of asking questions about what our reliance on the internet and our interconnectedness is doing to us as individuals and as a culture is certainly relevant, but it’s not a didactic or propagandistic novel. The idea are presented by means of story and on a middle grade level.
  • The action is well paced, and the plot is believable within the confines of the world the author has created.

But . . . a couple of caveats:

  • When meshed (or maybe enmeshed) people meet they get a feed in their brains that tells them some basic stats about the other person, name, age, education, family status, and pronouns? Really, pronouns, like he/him, she/her. Luckily, no weird pronouns appear.
  • One of the characters, Ink, is a girl in the real world, but he’s a boy inside this virtual reality video game that everyone uses not only to play but also to communicate and move around and share information. That wouldn’t really be a problem, a girl choosing a male avatar in a game, except that it’s made very clear that Ink could choose to be male in the real world, too, if he/she wanted to. At least I think it’s clear, although nothing about this whole gender confusion era that we’re in right now is really very clear.

Were it not for the caveats, I would recommend Hana Hsu as a great story and a vehicle for exploring ideas related to the internet and social media and its effect on young, developing brains. It’s also got ideas and questions about family and how you maintain family bonds and how you fight injustice and solve social problems and how much is too much to give up in order to serve the community. But there is already enough gender confusion in this world as it is without adding to the mix. I enjoyed it, but I’m not recommending.

The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton

Jul14

Edward and Eleanor, brother and sister, live in a big old house in Concord, Massachusetts, with their Aunt Lily, a piano teacher, and their uncle Freddy, an addled literary scholar who deeply admires the Transcendentalists, especially “Waldo” Emerson and Henry Thoreau. The problem is a financial one: the bank is about to repossess and raze their home. This impending disaster sets Edward and Eleanor on a quest to find the hidden jewels and treasures that their long lost Uncle Ned And Aunt Nora may have received from an Indian prince, Krishna, and may have left behind when they disappeared as children. Clues in the form of a poem etched into an attic window guide Eddy and Eleanor to enter into dangerous adventures in the form of dreams that really happen, all to find enough treasure to save their home.

This book reminded me of Edward Eager’s books, Half Magic and others, and of Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays and Spiderweb for Two. The adventures of Eddy and Eleanor are both real and dreamlike, and the dreams are dreams with a meaning where the two children participate in a joint-dream but learn life lessons along the way. The dreams and the adventures are all intertwined with the writings and lives of Thoreau and Emerson and Louisa May Alcott as well as Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell in a way that is child-friendly and yet speaks on a different level to adults, too.

For example, in one chapter’s dream Eleanor and Eddy travel through a mirror, like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, and find themselves confronted with a long series of reflections of themselves stretching out to the left and to the right. The children must choose again and again which reflection to follow, and as they follow the sometimes more desirable but wrong path their choices narrow and narrow until the only reflection they can choose is a horrible, degraded and degenerate version of themselves. However, when they go back and choose the right path the land of reflections behind the mirror opens up into a multitude of wonderful choices of who each child could become.

Instead of two choices, there were many. They were unable to choose which was the best, so they picked one at random. And beyond that choice lay a hundred, and beyond the next a thousand. Just as the other maze had led them down a narrowing path until there was no choice left, this one opened out into wide and shining worlds of possibility.

And that scene in its turn reminds me of C.S. Lewis and The Great Divorce and Narnia and “further up and further in.” There’s another dream or vision that the children have at Christmas time of all of the light-bearers of history, from ancient times up through the present day, and one of them is Jesus, perhaps the brightest but only one of a multitude of greater and lesser “lights” who add to the accumulated light of the centuries. It’s not exactly right, but it’s close.

Anyway, I loved this book, and I’m pleased to see that there is are sequels, in fact eight books in all about the Hall family of Concord, Massachusetts, one of which is the Newbery Honor book The Fledgling. I’ve actually read The Fledgling a very long time ago, but all I remember is something about flying and perhaps geese? Anyway, The Diamond in the Window is the first book in the series (Hall Family Chronicles), and the second book, which I hope to read soon, is called The Swing in the Summerhouse. The other books are:

  • The Astonishing Stereoscope
  • The Fledgling
  • The Fragile Flag
  • The Time Bike
  • The Mysterious CIrcus
  • The Dragon Tree

I actually have The Fledgling and The Time Bike in my library. I purchased The Diamond in the Window from Purple House Press, so I have that, too. But it looks as if the others in the series are out of print, so I’ll have to find them used or from the public library if I want to continue reading about the Hall Family and their escapades.

De and No: A Poem by Sherry Early

Jul7
After we have
      debunked
      deconstructed
      degraded
      demythologized
      destroyed
What then?
What is left?
How then shall we live?
Will it indeed be a brave new world?

No, boundaries, no definitions,
No constraints, no constants,
No men, no women,
No logic, no dialectic
      No. . . a world of no.

Those Kids From Fawn Creek by Erin Entrada Kelly

Jun20

Fawn Creek, LA is a very small town–so small that the school has only 12 kids in the seventh grade class, and those kids have known each other pretty much all their lives. So, when a new kid comes to town, and she’s mysterious and stylish, with the name “Orchid”, everyone is immediately paying attention. Orchid Mason comes to Fawn Creek direct from Paris, or maybe New York City, and she has the most interesting stories to tell. And Orchid wants to be friends with Grayson and Dorothy, who feel like the misfits in Fawn Creek’s seventh class and in their own families.

This book was decently written, but it left a bad taste in my brain. The author, who grew up in Louisiana, seemed to have an axe to grind about small towns and small town life. The kids all call their little town “Yawn Creek”, and Grayson is ostracized and ridiculed because he is more interested in style, clothing, and fabric than he is in going hunting. Grayson’s own brother calls him “little sister” and worse names. Grayson’s father denigrates him and doesn’t understand him, even though the dad does sort of come through in a good scene towards the end of the book. Grayson’s best friend, Dorothy, is an only child who feels invisible, and her parents are uncommunicative and just odd. In fact, none of the parents in the book are very kind or helpful or in touch with their children’s needs or concerns, except maybe Grayson’s mom who grows some as a character.

I guess the gist of the story is that small towns are ugly and full of bullies and weird religious fanatics. There’s a group of three seventh graders who call themselves the “God Squad”, so poorly characterized that I never could remember which girl was which. There are also a couple of “mean girls” and some jock boys. It was all rather dingy and unpleasant, and I was glad to close the book and escape from Fawn Creek. If I lived in a small town, like Fawn Creek, I wouldn’t choose this book to help me see the good aspects of community. But it might make me even more anxious to get out.

The Patron Thief of Bread by Lindsay Eagar

Jun17

“Fished from the river as an infant and raised by a roving band of street urchins who call themselves the Crowns, eight-year-old Duck keeps her head down and he mouth shut. It’s a rollicking life, always thieving, always on the run—until the ragtag Crowns infiltrate an abandoned cathedral in the the city of Odierne and decide to set down roots.”

Now the leader of the Crowns, the fearless Gnat, wants Duck to apprentice with the local baker, Master Griselde, and use her position of trust to steal both bread and coin for the Crowns. As Griselde becomes a friend and a mentor, even getting a tutor to teach Duck to read, the choices become more and more difficult for Duck. Will she remain loyal to the Crowns, the only family she’s ever known, or will she become someone new, a respectable and honest apprentice baker? Can she start a new life, or will the old one pull her back into the gang?

I really enjoyed this story and felt as if it had a lot say about loyalty and forgiveness and the possibility of change. However, in some chapters that alternate with the ones that tell Duck’s story, the voice and narrative are that of a frustrated gargoyle who lives on the roof of the unfinished cathedral, unable to fulfill his destiny of being a rescuer and a protector. The stories do intertwine and come together in the end, but I never cared or wanted to read about the gargoyles. And I don’t think I can put the book in my library, even though it’s a good story, because the chapters told from the viewpoint of the gargoyles portray them as profane and prone to insults and salacious gossip. Also the gargoyles are just ugly, mean, and sad. I wish Ms. Eagar had left out the gargoyle chapters.I sort of get what she was going for–a parallel story of identity and redemption–but it just didn’t work.

Lindsay Eagar also wrote Race to the Bottom of the Sea, which I added to my list of 50 Best Middle Grade Novels of the Twenty-first Century. She’s a good writer, but The Patron Thief of Bread could have done without the gargoyles or with better gargoyles or something.

The Rent Collector:Adapted for Young Readers by Camron Steve Wright

Jun16

This book tells a great story, but adapting it for young readers, which is all the rage right now, was a bad call. Sang Ly lives with her husband and baby at Stung Meanchey, the largest garbage dump in all of Cambodia. Ki Lim, the husband, picks recyclables out of the garbage to make a living for the family. Sang Ly does some trash-picking, too, but mostly she takes care of baby Nisay, who is sickly and small with chronic diarrhea.

The story develops as Sang Ly becomes friends with the grumpy Rent Collector, Sopeap, and Sopeap teaches Sang Ly to read and to appreciate literature. There are some lovely moments in this story as Sopeap’s character and mysterious past are revealed and as she shares her love of literature with the illiterate Sang Ly. However, I feel as if most of those moments and insights would pass right over the head of the middle grade readers to whom this book is being marketed. Instead, they would remember the dump and the poverty and the dangers of trash-picking and the death and disease. The picture on the cover (supposed to be Sang Ly?) is misleading. There are a couple of minor characters in the book who are children, but mostly this book is about adults with adult concerns and problems. I would possibly give this book to young adults, high school and up, but it’s just not a middle grade novel.

The original adult novel was based on a true story, a film documentary called River of Victory. I wouldn’t mind watching the documentary, and I also wouldn’t mind reading the full, adult novel. The writing is good, and the story itself is inspiring. I just don’t think it should have been adapted for middle grade readers.

Anybody Here Seen Frenchie? by Leslie Connor

Jun15

Eleven year old Aurora Petrequin has a best friend, Frenchie Livermore, but it’s Aurora who does all of the talking for the pair. Because of his autism, Frenchie doesn’t speak, but he communicates with Aurora with his eyes, his attention, his tweets, and other nonverbal cues. Aurora, on the other hand, is almost Frenchie’s opposite: active, loud, and impulsive. And while Frenchie loves birds, Aurora is a rock hound.

Frenchie and Aurora both find it difficult to make friends with other people, but as Aurora begins to develop friendships with other girls her age, will Frenchie get left behind? Not if Aurora can help it. Until one day Aurora does forget about Frenchie for just a minute, and Frenchie disappears. As the story progresses, the whole town turns out to help find Frenchie, a child that not many of them noticed much before he turned up missing.

Author Leslie Connor has written some vivid and memorable characters in Aurora and Frenchie. I feel as if she met her goal stated in the Author’s Note: “I was determined to get these characters right.” Aurora, with her loud voice and her habit of interrupting and blurting out her thoughts, makes the reader just the least bit uncomfortable, at least this reader. And that little bit of discomfort made me realize that loud, hyperactive children can come across as rude or out of control when they are really trying to be their best selves. Frenchie, on the other hand, because he is nonverbal, truly does seem to “disappear” from the narrative at times, only to pop up with an insight (the author shares Frenchie’s thoughts from time to time) or an action that shows him to be a person with as much to share as anyone else in this world.

I felt this book was a good one to put on the “diversity list.” It doesn’t try too hard, doesn’t make anyone a villain, and all is well in the end. Frenchie and Aurora are good examples of the diversity of gifts and abilities that are present in all of our children–and adults. And the adults in the story are present and good and all trying to help find Frenchie. Even without a villain in the story, the tension that makes a good drama is there: has anybody seen Frenchie?

Meriadoc Homeschool Library June Newsletter

Jun1

It’s summertime, and whether you’re doing school or taking a break, summer in Houston is prime reading time. Read at the pool; read at the beach; read at home in air-conditioned comfort. But do stay cool and read! 

I want to share some opportunities and resources with you in this June newsletter, but some of you who are library members need to come by the library on Monday, Tuesday, or Friday to choose new books for summer reading. And some of you have yet to join or visit Meriadoc Homeschool Library, but you are cordially invited to do so this summer. If you are interested in scheduling a library visit, you are welcome to email me at sherry.pray4you@gmail.com to set up a day and time for a library tour. Come on down!

And here is a list of those resources and opportunities that I promised.

Recommended podcasts:

The Literary Life. “Where we believe that stories will save the world! Join your hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks as they explore all aspects of a life cultivated by books and stories. Together they discuss what makes stories so powerful, how stories shape us as individuals and as a culture.” Right now they are reading and discussing The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

Read Aloud Revival. The latest episode, #207, of Sarah Mackenzie’s podcast on the joys of reading aloud with children is all about “how to fall back in love with reading this summer.”

The New Mason Jar. “The New Mason Jar with Cindy Rollins is a place to explore the atmosphere, discipline and life of a Charlotte Mason education for all. Our hope is that you will be inspired to enter the large room that Charlotte spread before us and find peace, hope and joy in your educational endeavors, however imperfectly.”

Stories from the Ashes. A brand new podcast (only three episodes so far) in which Ambre and Amanda discuss books and life together.

To purchase books for the summer or for the next school year:

(To borrow books, come to Meriadoc Homeschool Library, of course.) However if you want to purchase books for your own home library, my sister Judy has a great private book sale group, Seize the Book, on Facebook where you can join and find lots of quality used books at great prices. 

Local (SE Houston) events and opportunities:

Gulf Coast Christian Home Scholars Beta Club is sponsoring a 2022 Homeschool Curriculum, Classes, and Co-ops Fair. This event is restricted to vendors with used curriculum, homeschool classes, and co-ops. The event will take place at Trinity Fellowship Church on June 11, 2022 from 10 am to 2 pm. Admission is free to the public, and you can find out about co-ops, classes, and other homeschool events at the fair as well as have the opportunity to purchase used books and curriculum from other homeschooling moms.

Selah Academy for the Arts high school musical class is performing Les Miserables this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, June 2-4, 2022 also at Trinity Fellowship in Friendswood. This is a beautiful story of redemption, and the students are doing an incredible job. Link to order tickets.

Summer class for moms:

I will be participating in this online encouragement and discipleship opportunity along with moms from around the country and the world. I did it last summer, and It is worth the cost.

Morning Time for Moms Summer Discipleship Class (Online with Cindy Rollins)

I have lots more ideas and resources to share with you in person or in future newsletters. I hope your summer is full of joy and full of good books!

The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat

May5

Christina Soontornvat, author of Newbery Honor book A Wish in the Dark, has written another middle grade fiction novel with an imaginary world setting, and this one is also set in a place that feels southeast Asian or Asian Pacific but is in fact completely imaginary. Sai, our protagonist, is a girl from the slums who is pretending to be an educated, middle class girl with a chance at a future. However, in the Kingdom of Mangkon, future prospects depend on lineage, the number of respected and verified ancestors that one can claim, and Sai not only has no money, she also has no lineage, only a criminal for a father and a mother who disappeared when Sai was a child. Sai managed to finagle her way into becoming Assistant to Mangkon’s most celebrated mapmaker, Paiyoon Wongyai, but when she doesn’t get a “lineal” on her thirteenth birthday, everyone will know that Sai is an imposter and a usurper. Her only chance is to go with Master Paiyoon on an expedition to the south seas, discover the fabled Sunderlands where the dragons live, and come back a heroine.

Sai is a typical middle grade fantasy protagonist, a poor and challenged child with special talents, looking for a way to move up in the world. She is interesting insofar as she makes some bad choices but manages to come through in the end, and she never discovers that she is anything other than the poor child of criminal and often absent parents, although her father does have some saving character traits in the end as well. I like the idea that Sai doesn’t have to discover that she’s really a princess in disguise to become a worthy and productive member of society.

There’s also a touch of anti-colonialism in the story as Sai learns that discovering a new territory and annexing it to the kingdom of Mangkoon, sometimes means exploiting that new place and oppressing its people. And she finds a way to undermine that move toward colonial exploitation without having the story become didactic and heavy with messaging.

Christina Soontornvat is fast becoming one of my favorite contemporary authors of middle grade fantasy fiction, and I can’t wait to read more of her work. I’m especially interested in reading her other Newbery honor book, the nonfiction All Thirteen: the Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team.