MotherReader

I have become well aware that we are closing in on the last days of summer. While many of you are sending the kids to school already, here in Virginia we have another two weeks — plus a spare, long weekend — and I’m clinging onto these eighteen days as our last gasp of freedom before Schedules come to take over our lives.

However, even I can no longer deny that school is just around the corner, so yesterday I shared some back-to-school titles at PBS Booklights, and today I’m sharing a poem that seems to speak of my own reluctance to leave summer behind.

The School Boy
by William Blake 
I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me.
O! what sweet company.

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn.
The little ones spend the day,
In sighing and dismay.

Read the rest of the poem at Famous Poems and Poets and find more poems through Poetry Friday, hosted today at Teach Poetry.

Today at PBS Booklights I’m talking about three picture books with surprise endings. One of those titles I’m sharing here, because I’m ready for a discussion.

There were lots of raves for the trailer for Lane Smith’s It’s a Book. (You can see the trailer at that Amazon link.) The concept of talking about a book as not being electronic may certainly be enhanced by the irony of watching the video on one’s computer. I get that. But it’s bothered me since I first saw the trailer that it doesn’t contain what makes the book... special.

At the very beginning of this book, we are introduced to the characters — a mouse, a monkey, and a jackass. That’s the hint. The payoff comes after the monkey has explained the concept of a book throughout the story, and ends with the line, “It’s a book, jackass.”

See, I’m not sure that I’m okay with that ending in a practical sense, as in actually wanting to read it to my niece. I guess I can respect it as a choice in the name of Art and Literature, and I suppose that is where all the amazing reviews are coming from — Horn Book, Kirkus, The New Yorker, and so on.

But if you look at the Amazon reviews, mainly from parents, you’ll find a more divided group. Even reviewers giving the book three or four stars often said something about the use of the word jackass and questioning whether they would want to read this book to a child. Some pushed the title as being for older kids or even adults. But is that what we’re lacking? A picture book for adults? Others questioned whether school libraries would want to own it. Again, because that’s what librarians need: more issues.

Without that bit, it’s a good book with a commentary on our electronic age. The illustrations are engaging, and there’s humor in the story and the concept. But jackass? That gives me pause.

What do you think?

I’ve been back home for more than a week and I haven’t felt like writing. Well, that’s not exactly it, but trying to clarify has made me write this particular sentence over and over again. Which is a good example of why I didn’t feel like writing. Maybe I should back up.

I did get back from a wonderful trip to New York City. We didn’t get to do everything we wanted to do in the city, nor did we create an overnight Broadway star in my tween. We did have an fantastic time and she had an excellent experience, and I’ll try to write a fuller report later.

Right after we got home, I found that an important medical consultation for my mom was going to be pushed back two weeks — unless we could make it in two days instead. That wouldn’t be a problem, except that she lives in Virginia Beach and the appointment was at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. So instead of a week of rest following our fun-but-exhausting trip, I was getting the house ready and then hosting guests.

I had a nice visit with my brother, who needed to drive my mom up to my place. My niece was a ray of sunshine. My mom was... okay. It was an overwhelming experience for her — from dropping everything to come north, to the bad luck surrounding her appointment which put in five hours of driving time for an hour’s consultation, to processing the visit with the specialist, and so on. Her stroke makes it hard for her to understand complicated things anyway, and we’ve got tough things to talk through — as many times as it takes.

We have many appointments and tests to go before I can really share more, but I can say that it wasn’t an easy week and I didn’t feel like writing. The problem is that the more I don’t blog, the harder it is to get started again. Like, at all. So I’m dumping this all out here in the hopes of clearing the cobwebs from my brain and getting going again online.

Thanks for listening.

I thought that I might continue to update the blog in my free time in New York City, but now I’m seeing that as pretty unlikely. Both the updating and the free time. Yes, though I’ve managed to carve out a few minutes this evening to say that I could TOTALLY LIVE HERE! And by that, I mean in my cousin’s apartment with its wide-open rooms and eight- ten-foot ceilings and intricate wainscoting (I think that’s the right word; I’ll have to look it up).

The tween was happy with her first day at Broadway Artists Alliance, even though it seemed a bit overwhelming as we went in — for both of us. It’s going to be a little tough getting her there because it definitely involves a bus or subway transfer, and I’m not crazy about either. But I’m learning. I took in the American Museum of Natural History with the teen, though I could have benefited more from going in one of the many spas we saw along the way. Seriously, how many spas does one city need?

I may be back during the week, and I may not. But if not, I didn’t want you to worry.

By now, many of you have heard of the blog Ripple, where illustrators donate their art for donations to causes to help the wildlife in the Gulf Coast disaster. I’ve been following the project since the beginning, and am excited to report that it has raised over $8,500 in funds — most of it one $10 card at a time. I have five myself.

I’ve noticed many artists listed as children’s illustrators, and recently the site has offered $50 cards from authors of published children’s books. So far, all the contributions from Tom Warburton, Janeen Mason, Susan Miller, Aaron Zenz, Vanessa Brantley-Newton, Mo Willems, Stephen Marchesi, Maggie Swanson, and Jarrett Krosoczka have sold. Upcoming featured illustrators include Matt Phelan, Dan Santat, and Don Tate. I hope that more illustrators will lend their name and art to the cause.

With the extra publicity in July, the other $10 cards have sold very well. But there are a bunch of cards from June still available. Consider buying one for the chance to contribute as part of our community.

How about: The Sea was Filled with Color

Or Seagulls

Or a print of Still Life

Or Black Shells

Or any of more than 150 unclaimed cards. Even if you find your contribution to be less for the art and more for the charity, go find one and make a difference for the Gulf and maybe even for an artist. You’ll see the whole list of titles at the bottom of Ripple. Some unclaimed cards include:

609, 610, 611. Brown Blues
614. Mermaids and Jellies
619. Help!
628. Spirits of the Sea
636. Black Shells
642. Precious
646. Ladyfish
647. Smothered
651. Pelican and Fish
654. Wisdom of the Dolphins
657. Cleanup Effort
663. We Are One
664. Swan Song
665. What Greed Can Do
667. Can You Hear Us?
671. This Is Wrong
677. Spot on the Sea
678. Blanket of Oil
684. Mamma Are We Surrounded
686. Slick Willie
688. In the Hands of Hope
690. Starfish and Octopus
705. Save a Couple of Birds
714. Remember
718. Babe in Arms
722. Those Aren’t Urchins
731. The Enemy of the Anemone
734,735. Ducks
738. Cranewife
741. Behind the Illusion
745. Escape
746. Who Did This?
776. A Bird’s Fate
777. Pirate

Three months ago my mother had a stroke. She was lucky in that her impairment wasn’t severe, and physically she recovered quickly. To be more accurate, her body excluding her brain recovered quickly. Her brain relearned some things within a week; many other things are still behind a locked door. She struggles to read and comprehend more than a paragraph. She mixes up numbers, can’t do any math, and forgets the time. She can get confused in new situations, and in those times her speech also loses some coherence. There remain a number of surprises as we learn some new, discrete impairment.

This weekend offered one of those moments. My mom came up to see my tween in her summer musical theatre performance, where she was featured in several numbers and had the Maria solo in “I Feel Pretty.” The logistics of the travel arrangements weren’t easy, but it was very important to my mom that she make it to this show, so we made it happen. My daughter gave a wonderful performance, both in dancing for songs from Hairspray and in her solo. I wasn’t sitting next to my mom, but she seemed to be enjoying the show. It wasn’t until the end that she shared that she hadn’t recognized her granddaughter during her solo. She was light about it, but it broke my heart. She came all the way here to see my daughter perform, and then didn’t realize that was what she was seeing. I tried to make sense of it — because certainly she recognizes us — and came to the conclusion that with the costumes, and without the context of a familiar setting, her stroke-impaired brain couldn’t make the connection between the lovely singer and her own granddaughter.

These are the times when I understand how much has been lost, and how surprising some of the losses are. Also that I began to worry about what is still in store. One of the findings from all the brain scans was a benign tumor that is pressing on her optic nerve and other sensitive areas. Surgery looks likely, but is tricky and possibly dangerous. One of the hardest parts is that it may fall to me to make or at least to finalize some of the decisions, because this kind of problem solving is exactly where my mom struggles. It’s scary.

I’ve found some help and comfort in My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., and am talking about the book in a separate post for NonFiction Monday here.

When my mother had a stroke, I turned to books as my usual source of comfort. Or, better put, comfort in information. Mostly it was a frustrating experience, as strokes are so individualized that I didn’t find much that felt helpful to our situation. The best source came from a memoir of a stroke written by a brain scientist, My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

One morning this neuroanatomist got the ultimate brain study experience — seeing a stroke from the inside. She details the progress of the stroke as various parts of her brain shut down, and then takes the reader through her own journey to recovery. This is an amazing book for several reasons. First, it is an inspiration to stroke survivors to see the complete recovery of someone who had a massive stroke. Second, it helps stroke survivors and their families cope with the often-present question of “Why didn’t she call 911?” (Answer: The stroke knocked out that logical approach.) Third, it details assistance to recovery in a readable and personal way, while also offering a handy list of recommendations at the end of the book.

And fourth — and in many ways most important to the book and to the author — it shows us the beauty and divine spirit of our right brain. What the author found was that as the entire left hemisphere of her brain was shutting down from the ruptured artery, she was experiencing the world through her right brain and was astonished by the immense joy and peace she found there. In fact, at a point she would rather have given up on this life and let go, but for a found purpose to share with the world that this sense of spiritual oneness is within us.

If you want a preview of the book, and her intense experience, watch the video of her presentation. It will certainly make you think.


Nonfiction Monday is hosted today at In Need of Chocolate.

Today at PBS Booklights I’m sharing thirteen chapter books that take place during the summer. I tried to include a mix of styles, genres, and characters, but in general, I went with a lighter tone in the books I selected. There were many more titles that could have been included, and I think I’ll do one more list of tween/teen selections. I hesitate to commit because making each of these lists took a long time — much longer than I thought it would.

Anyway, last week I wondered here if there were an ideal way to indicate race and culture in very short reviews. This week I come with a new problem that perhaps you — yes, you, author person — can solve: I couldn’t find many summer stories that feature kids of color. Can someone get on this, please?

Oh, and here’s last week’s list of Summer Picture Books again — because, as I mentioned, it took a long time to make so I need to get like, double credit for it.