When Everything Feels Like The Movies: Ra-rah for YA

I was really excited to read this book.  When I found out that Laney Liu was defending it in this year's Canada Reads competition, I grew even more excited.  So when my stack of books arrived in the mail last week, I chose to read this one first.

When Everything Feels Like The Movies is a YA novel starring (no, really...starring) Jude Rothesay, a teenager with nowhere to fit in or belong in his small town.  Jude is gay.  He likes dressing up in women's clothing. His mother is an aging stripper with low enough self-esteem to keep welcoming his abusive, addict stepfather back into their lives.  His bio dad is AWOL.  His best friend betrays him.  Those who love him do it so secretly or in such a twisted way that it ends up being just as hurtful as hate.

And he's bullied.  Seriously bullied.  End-up-in-the-hospital kind of bullied.  But he kind of gives it right back, publicly taunting others.  He distances himself from reality by imagining he's living a Hollywood life, where his "haters" are just the price he pays for fame.

I wanted to love this book.  Instead, I like what it's trying to do.  (It's a strong kind of like.  As in, I don't want to marry this book, but I would invite it to my intimate wedding.)  The melodrama was a bit hard to read at times, even though I get that that's the point.  Raziel Reid has created a character who is pitiable, lovable, and lothable all in one paragraph.

Do you want to read it yet?  You should.  I'll warn you: it's graphic.  But that's kind of the point, too.  Reid is trying to get you to feel something as you read this book, and its not exactly a comfortable feeling.

It's not the first time that Canada Reads has featured a YA selection.  I think it was 2009 when Fruit was nominated...and that's still one of my favourites.  So maybe after you read When Everything Feels Like The Movies, you could read Fruit.  Read them both.  And weep.  Because that's kind of the point.

Flora & Ulysses

My first surreptitious night read!  Orson will stay awake and stare at the reading lamp for way too long.  If it's dark, he gets all dozy and sweet so quickly.  It took me a while to figure out that I can read in the dark...if I read on my iPhone.

I have already raved about the amazing selection of ebooks and eaudiobooks available through the Kitchener Public Library, and the slickness of borrowing them using the KPL and Overdrive apps.  So I can go on and rave about Kate DiCamillo's book instead.

Flora & Ulysses won the Newbery Award for 2014.  This honour is given for "the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children" each year.  So kind of a big deal.

In my mind a children's book that can appeal to both kids and adults, speaking to them on two different levels simultaneously, is the ultimate read.  (Kind of like the Pixar movie of the literary world.)

Flora & Ulysses is classic and edgy at the same time.  Classic with its nods to E.B. White (a focus on beautiful vocabulary, with definitions tucked right in to the story) and Roald Dahl (adult villains and outcast, misunderstood child heroes).  Classic because it addresses issues of importance to children: divorce and unconditional parental love.  Classic--and even a bit old-school--because of the absence of up-to-date technology.  (The machines in this story: a fancy vacuum cleaner and a typewriter.  No smartphones here.)  Edgy, because it incorporates poetry and comic strips into the traditional novel form. Quirky, because narration of the story is shared between Flora Belle and a superhero squirrel named Ulysses.

Up to this point, my favourite DiCamillo read was A Tale of Desperaux.  I thought that would be the best read aloud ever for a class of Grade 3 students.  Then it was made into a movie and I figured I would have to wait a few years before considering this book for a class read aloud because students heads would just be full of images from the film rather than their own imaginations.  Now I'm thinking Flora & Ulysses is up there, too.  It could be a great class read-aloud of its own--with a little bit of creative thinking on how to share the comic book pages (document camera? hmm).

Worth a read.  And maybe even a reread.

This crosses #7 off the list: a book with non-human characters.  (Thank you, Ulysses the Squirrel and Mr. Klaus, the cat.)

Pinter, Canada Reads, and KPL e-awesomeness

Tonight I finished The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter.  It's a play, so I'm using it for item #47 on my Year Of Reading Ambitiously list.  I was going to use it as "a book you can read in a day," but I ended up picking it up and putting it down several times because baby just wasn't that into it. ;)

So this play falls into the categories of "Comedy of Menace" and "Theater of the Absurd."  Yes.  Yes it does.  It's a twisted mess of truths, half-truths and untruths and it's supposed to leave you tangled and confused but perturbed.  It did. Perhaps we should just leave it at that.  (I did enjoy some of the snappy, back-and-forth dialogue, though.)

My Canada Reads books arrived in the mail today.  When it comes to fiction, mostly I stick to buying used books because the thrill is in the hunt and, well, books are expensive.  But once a year (at least) I splurge and order up the Canada Reads titles.  I also ordered The Orphan Master's Son for a book club.  What surprised me was how tiny the box was that everything arrived in.  Has Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook reduced our love of reading and attention spans enough that novels are shrinking? Maybe, baby.

So I cracked open When Everything Feels Like The Movies and was a bit scandalized by the first chapter, but more on that later.  I had it in my head that I would take to reading in the rocker/recliner in baby's room while he drifts closer to dreamland.  

Problem.  It has become apparent that reading with the lamp on in the nursery just won't do: Orson is much too fascinated with light and doesn't seem to get the hint that it's his bedtime.  Which means I could spend that time on Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook or playing Trivia Crack on my iPhone, but for fear that my brain might be shrinking right alongside novel sizes, I'm resolving to use my phone to get some more reading in.  

I got out my KPL card and set up my phone for ebooks.  (HOW and WHY did I not do this sooner?  How and why?  Why and how?  There is so much good stuff out there!)  My first download: Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo.  Now that I have it all set up, I'm off to bed, but I'm sure I'll be up at some point in the night to feed baby and read at least a few pages.

The Trail Of The Conestoga

One item on my list for my "Year Of Reading Ambitiously" is "a book that takes place in your hometown."  I had to stretch a little bit to find something that qualified, but I figured a book set in the earliest days of Waterloo County was close enough!

Were it not my self-assigned "required reading," I may never have picked this book up, but I'm glad I did.  The Trail of the Conestoga by Mabel Dunham tells the story of the migration of Mennonites from Pennsylvania to what is now Waterloo County in the early 1800s.

It was the author's bio on the back cover that caught my attention.  Mabel Dunham was a librarian of the KPL and started the children's section there.  She was the first president of The Canadian Federation of University Women, and the particular edition of the book I bought was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the KW chapter.

There was something undeniably 1940s Canadian about this novel.  Beyond its musty smell, it's packed with little history lessons thinly disguised as back-and-forth banter between characters ("Why, it's Isaac Brock!" / "Who's that?") and morality tales spun so thick you trip over them.  Dunham's choice to focus on the Mennonites' reasons for and history as conscientious objectors would have been an interesting and bold addition to a novel first published in 1942, right in the thick of the second World War.  She consistently portrays females as strong, wise, and patient and takes a passive-aggressive approach to the issue of gender roles.  (Love this gem: "...she pressed her lips together and held her peace.  To begin a conversation was a privilege she usually accorded her husband, whom the good St. Paul had set up in some uninspired moment as the head of the household.  She was quite satisified so long as she had the last word."

This book is charming.  I was thinking about recommending it as a title for my book club to consider.  Unfortunately, it's not in print anymore.  A quick search on amazon shows that used copies are selling for a pretty penny.  (This makes me all the more proud of my $2.00 purchase from none other than the MCC's Thrift on Kent!)  So I guess I'll just offer up this book on loan for anyone who wants to read it.  I think librarian/author Mabel Dunham would approve.

A Year of Reading Ambitiously

I'm several months into my maternity leave and I thought I'd have a stack of finished books piled beside the nursery rocking chair by now!  While I've found some time to read, I've spent more time watching Netflix, playing games on my iPhone and continually refreshing Facebook.  My goal for 2015 is to turn some of that screentime into "pagetime" and get back to the focused, productive beauty of reading good ol'fashioned books.

With that in mind, I'm challenging myself with a 2015 Reading Challenge I found online.  (My time on Facebook is not totally wasted; it was thanks to a friend posting it on Facebook that I found out about the challenge in the first place!)

It's 50 books.  That's almost a book a week.  And we're almost a week in to the year already.  So I'd better get to reading.  Here's the list and my plan so far...

Yellow highlights mean I've read it already!  (I've been a bit late in posting this list.)

1.  A book with more than 500 pages

2.  A classic romance

3.  A book that become a movie

4.  A book published this year

5.  A book with a number in the title

6.  A book written by someone under 30

(I am Malala?  When Everything Feels Like The Movies? - is it?)

7.  A book with nonhuman characters - Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

8.  A funny book

9.  A book by a female author

10. A mystery or thriller

11. A book with a one-word title

12. A book of short stories

13. A book set in a different country

14. A non-fiction book

(Charlotte Grey's book of letters?)

15. A popular author's first book

16. A book from an author you love that you haven't read yet

(All My Puny Sorrows)

17. A book a friend recommended

18.  A Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

19.  A book based on a true story.

20.  A book at the bottom of your to-read list.

21.  A book your mom loves

22.  A book that scares you

23.  A book more than 100 years old

24.  A book based on its cover

25.  A book you were supposed to read in school but didn't.

26.  A memoir

27.  A book you can finish in a day

28.  A book with antonyms in the title

29.  A book set somewhere you've always wanted to visit

30.  A book that came out the year you were born

31.  A book with bad reviews

32.  A trilogy

33.  A book from your childhood

34.  A book with a love triangle

35.  A book set in the future

36.  A book set in high school

37.  A book with a colour in the title

38.  A book that made you cry

(I don't think I can pre-plan this one.)

39.  A book with magic

40.  A graphic novel

41.  A book by an author you've never read before - A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

42.  A book you own but have never read

(Rules of Civility)

43.  A book that takes place in your hometown - The Trail of The Conestoga by Mabel Dunham

44.  A book that was originally written in a different language

45.  A book set during Christmas

46.  A book written by an author with your same initials

47.  A play - Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party

(Goodnight Desdemona, Good morning, Juliet)

48.  A banned book

49.  A book based on or turned into a TV show

50.  A book you started but never finished

(The Dovekeepers)

A Lesson Before Dying

Until very recently, my books have been in storage.  This means, rather than reading stuff I already own, I've been browsing bookshelves online and in thrift stores for something to read.  I found Ernest J. Gaines'  A Lesson Before Dying for a bargain price of $2.00 at a local thrift store. 

The book's award winning status (National Book Critics Cirlce Aware For Fiction) and the narrator's occupation (teacher) piqued my interest. A Lesson Before Dying tells the story of a young black man sentenced to die after being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being convicted of a crime he did not commit.  His lawyer's approach to get him acquitted is to portray him as a lowly animal who didn't know any better.  When the lawyer's defense falls through, the boy's godmother begs the local schoolteacher to visit the boy in prison and convince him that he's more than the worthless animal the court deems him to be.

It's a bleak and depressing book (the title could have told you that), but ultimately a moving one that causes you to think about obligations to family and community, in addition to issues of race, gender and social status.  If I was a high school English teacher, I would consider adding this book to my required reading list. 

P.S: I just found out that this book was made into a movie in 1999, starring Don Cheadle and Mekhi Pheifer.  It won 2 Emmy awards.  Huh.  There you go.

A Trio of "Memoirs?"

I've been reading again lately.  I'm veering away from reading panic-inducing online parenting articles and back into the world of books.  Real books.  For lack of a better description, I'll call these books "memoirs."

First I read Tina Fey's Bossy Pants.  The best bits were about being a new mom and enduring the advice/judgement the rest of the world casts upon you.  Perfect timing for me to read her snappy comebacks on the topic!

Then I read Amy Poehler's Yes Please.  This book was a bit confusing and all over the place to me.  Its thick, glossy pages, bright fonts and colourful pictures seemed an attempt to distract from the lack of actual content.  But I did learn a bit about Poehler's life and the lack of brainpower required to get through it was a plus in my sleep-deprived first few months of parenthood.  (Also, she doesn't drag out the gory details of her divorce.  She just states that it happened and moves on.  I respect her for that.  Plus, Parks and Recreation is just such a great show that the behind-the-scenes snippets on that were among the most interesting parts to read.)

To qualify for free shipping on Yes Please, I added Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) to my order.  THIS ONE WINS.  Mindy Kaling has, by far, the tidiest and most clever writing of any comedienne I've read so far.  Maybe its just their improv roots showing, but where the other books tended to ramble to fill space, Kaling's book was just essay after essay of awesome.  If you're going to read one of these three books, this one is it.  (After that, go watch all the episodes of The Mindy Project on Netflix.  And then watch them again.  This woman is the best kind of funny.)

The Massey Murder

Starting the summer off with some true, patriot love, I finished Charlotte Gray's The Massey Murder this afternoon.  It's not a typical title that I would choose, but I wanted to read it because:
a) Ever since Charlotte Gray demo'ed her razor-sharp wit and debating skills during CBC's Canada Reads 2013 debates, I've been promising myself I would read something of hers
b) It's non-fiction.  My literary conscience tells me I need to read more of that.
c) It's KW's "One Book, One Community" selection for this year and the book nerd in me needs to be a part of these kinds of things.

So it turns out that Gray had every right to be critical of the books in the Canada Reads competition.  She can write.  Not only that, but she gives narrative to history that makes it more accessible for readers like me who are all about the story.

She also gives a voice to the voiceless in this book.  Subtitled, "A Maid, Her Master and the Trial That Shocked a Country," this book offers best guesses as to what really happened when Bert Massey was shot by his maid when entering his house one February evening in Toronto, 1915.  Gray highlights how Carrie's (the maid's) voice was hardly needed or given consideration in a male-dominated, morally-motivated and class-driven society.

I like this quote: "Servants are everywhere and nowhere in history.  Carrie and women like her worked too hard to have any energy left for writing diaries or letters, and if any of them did manage to scribble down something, it has probably been lost.  When a youngster like Carrie went into service, she walked into the shadows." (p. 90)

Gray does an excellent job of putting Carrie Davies' story in context.  She provides background on the famous Massey family, the Toronto newspaper wars, class divisions, and Canada's place in WWI, which gives the story significance not only in the changing tides of 1915, but also today.

My one complaint about the book is that is the writing seems to mellow or loosen by the end.  Initial chapters give the impression that the book is leading to something greater and more powerful at the end.  But maybe that was intentional.  I'll have to think on that a little longer.

Anyway, it's definitely worth reading and if anybody wants to join me at the September 2014 author visits where this book will be discussed, do let me know. ;)

Summer Reading List

Ulysses by James Joyce

The House At Riverton - (Downton Abbey Withdrawal, Anyone?)

We consume TV seasons in our household much like Cookie Monster does cookies.  (Full season?  Me want! Nom. Nom. Nom.)  Needless to say, Season 4 of Downton Abbey was finished within a week or so of it arriving in our mailbox.  The episodes paraded by before my Downton Abbey fix was satisfied.  Luckily, I had something waiting on my bookshelf to ease the withdrawal symptoms: The House At Riverton by Kate Morton.

The novel is split into four parts.  Narrated by Grace Bradley, a 98-year-old archaeologist who lived many of her years in service at Riverton House, working for the Hartford family.  Told through a series of flashbacks, realizing she is nearing the end of her own life, Grace slowly reveals and untangles years of family secrets, including what really happened the night of a mysterious suicide on the family estate.

If you need more Downtown Abbey, here's your ticket. 

I Read Canada Reads

I spent much of my Christmas holidays reading.  That is to say, I read when I wasn't crocheting or watching Netflix or both.  Basically, I hibernated for two weeks.  And it was amazing.  And I miss it already.

Digging into the Canada Reads books has become my winter mission.  I started with Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues.

This is a fascinating story that dropped me into a world I didn't know existed and had never even considered: the Jazz scene in Germany during the Nazi regime.  It's a complicated emotional portrayal of guilt and regret from a character who was ultimately powerless, but who spends his life blaming himself for what he should have done.

As well-crafted (and well-researched) a novel as it may be, the only thing Canadian about this book is its author.  Also, it already won the Giller Prize in 2011 and was a finalist for the GGs and the Man Booker.  I kind of feel like this book has already received its public accolades.  So while it's a great book, it's not the underdog I'm hoping to cheer for in this year's Canada Reads competition.

Shelagh Rogers did a great interview with Esi Edugyan for her radio show, "The Next Chapter" and it provided some great aural distraction while I did several loads of laundry one day.

After Half-Blood Blues, I decided to tackle The Orenda.  I've never read anything by Joseph Boyden, but I feel like his books follow me around.  I find them on tables in bookstores with signage like, "The Best Novels You've Never Read."  The Orenda has also received a lot of press coverage, so I decided to give it a go.

I was glad I warmed up with Half-Blood Blues: compared to Edugyan's novel, The Orenda is a brick.  This novel is narrated by three characters: a Jesuit priest, a Huron warrior, and a young aboriginal woman taken from another village who becomes the warrior's 'adopted' daughter.  It was difficult to ease into--kind of like a fast-paced conversation that began without you--but once the narrators' stories began to intertwine, it was difficult to set the book down.  (Bonus: You can build some good muscles with this one!  It's large, available only in heavy hardcover, and hard to quit!)

A review from Quill and Quire comments on The Orenda's "blockbuster feel," adding, "The Orenda will be this year's Book of Negros, I think."  We could definitely do worse for entertaining, Canadian historical fiction!

Entertaining as it may be, it's definitely not fluff.  One impactful episode in the novel occurs when the priest loses the wampum that the warrior was to present to another tribe as part of a peace negotiation.  He bemoans: 

• "I have lost my people's story, my gift to the ones who are our enemy, in the hope of changing that course." (p. 108)

This implies that Canadian history played out the way it did because the stories of certain peoples were lost or dismissed.  (Yikes.  This entry is starting to sound like a high school essay.)

Where Boyden's novel differs from many of the aboriginal themed/flavoured/inspired novels that I have read (and they are a genre of personal interest...I have read many!) is that the picture he paints of aboriginal history is much more brutal and complicated than the peaceful, idealistic scene that is typical.  I will be very interested to hear the commentary that accompanies this novel in the Canada Reads debates.  I'm hoping this book makes it to the final rounds because I know it will generate great discussion.

I guess I should stop here.  More Canada Reads comments to come.

#bookaday 10: Reflecting on Choices and Change

For me, books are frequently tied to geography.  If it happens to be a novel where the author takes great pains to describe the setting, then there's that geography, yes.  But today I'm thinking more about where I'm reading than the places I'm reading about.  For example, I still vividly remember reading Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water while rolling through Alberta's rocky mountains in a Greyhound bus 10 years ago.  I remember taking the train from Ottawa to Kingston with Margaret Atwood's Alias, Grace.  The Lonely Polygamist kept me company through the mountains and deserts of Utah.

On the last few days of our recent trip to Germany, we spent some time in the beautiful countryside of Batten-Wurtemburg and I carried around Ron Berger's An Ethic of Excellence to enjoy in bits and pieces during our explorations.  An Ethic of Excellence is about as close to required reading as I'm gonna get this summer: I joined a Big Ideas committee at school and my principal bought us each a copy of this book to read over the holidays.

Normally when I read books for professional development, I have to be pretty intentional about pausing to reflect.  I pull out a notebook or a pack of sticky-notes as a reminder to slow down and think critically about what I'm reading.  However, when you're hiking through the peace and quiet of a park in the Black Forest on a Monday afternoon, there's nothing forced about it.  The internal dialogue just sort of...begins.

An Ethic of Excellence was on my mind as we pulled into the parking lot at the base of Wasserfälle Allerheiligen (All Saints Waterfalls).  Perhaps I was looking for something to distract myself from the oodles of staircases ahead.  Most likely it was a combination of that and the fact that, despite its slim size and conversational tone, An Ethic of Excellence is dense with intensity and inspiration--more tightly packed than my carry-on luggage.

Wasserfälle Allerheiligen: Stairs, stairs, and more stairs.

Berger's book is a manifesto: he urges educators to make some significant changes in how they approach, value, and think about learning tasks and assessment in the classroom.  He writes passionately about the advantages of taking an integrative, project-based approach to learning.  He calls for a shift in school culture and a transformation of teacher and student roles.  As I started the climb, I started to think about change in my profession and to consider our choices in how we respond to it.

We do have choices when it comes to responding to change.  I found them quite analogous to the choices I got to make that day.

1.  We can choose to ignore change and let others do the exploring.  We can choose to wait at the point of departure, while others embark on the journey and wait for them to bring us news of their discoveries.

2.  We can choose to forge ahead blindly.  We can put our heads down and thoughtlessly follow the trail laid out for us, putting one foot in front of the other without looking up until we reach the destination.  Granted, choosing this approach means there's no time for rest, no time to pause and check the map.  We might reach the top, but we might be so tired when we get there that we'll miss the point of the journey.

3.  We can head off the trail, impulsively blazing a path that is completely our own.  Don't get me wrong, there is a time and a place for trailblazing, but there's a certain amount of wilderness know-how required before this is truly a wise move.  Most likely, if we move in this way, there's a good chance we might get lost, confused, discouraged and there's also a pretty good chance we're going solo--no one is going with us, and no one is going to follow.

4. We can choose to savour the journey, pausing to rest, reflect, and take in the scenery as we pass by  We can linger and notice the details, take photographs to preserve memories of our favourite parts, check in with the map to determine our progress, listen to the sounds around us, take it all in.

We can take time to leave trail markers for those who will take this climb after us, small signs of encouragement along the way.

This was not a climb up Everest.  This was just a significantly steep climb, straight up, on a hot July afternoon.  Every opportunity for change is not a drastic one.  "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," but so does a journey of one mile.

How will you choose to travel?

More Canadiana in Germany (#bookaday 9)

Reading makes you nicer.  In case you were looking for another great reason to savour a quality piece of fiction this summer, there it is.  You can read this Time editorial if you want to know the details.  The editorial also covers "carnal versus spiritual reading."  (And yes, typically reading a novel would fall into the latter category.)  We are becoming a society that does too much reading for information's sake and not enough reading for enjoyment's sake.  As a Primary teacher and lover of fiction, this freaks me right out.  Like the environmental citizen who drives a Prius or buys only organic just to do his/her part, I decided to up my ratio of spiritual to carnal reading this summer, just to do what I can to counteract the depletion of love for literature in our society.

I just had to figure out a way to work the carnal vs. spiritual thing into a post about Linden MacIntyre's The Bishop's Man, the latest novel to entertain my brain.  The book is about a Canadian Catholic priest who specializes in keeping the notorious "sins of the Fathers" out of the spotlight.  (Ah? You see the spiritual vs. carnal connection now?)  This novel won the 2009 Giller Prize. And yes, it's CBC's Linden MacIntyre who co-hosts the fifth estate.  So basically you're looking at a low-risk investment here if you're after a good read.  Guaranteed return on your time, folks.

What I thoroughly enjoyed about MacIntyre's writing was his ability to capture thought patterns.  He brings the reader in, out and through narrator Father McAskill's layers of memories and creates a collage of detail that allows the reader to understand McAskill's past and present as one complicated, organic whole.

The language is beautiful as well.  MacIntyre is able to call attention to words through protagonist Father MacAskill's love of of them.  The story is anchored in Canadian geography and explores themes of family, community and masked identity.

I stood in the hotel room bathroom to finish this one.  (It was late.  My husband needed sleep and I needed light to get through the last few chapters.)  It's that good.  Five out of five stars for this spiritual read.

Novel Thoughts (#bookaday 8)

When I read novels, I start a running narration in my head and suddenly life gets a lot more interesting.  The narration tends to adopt the style of whoever I happen to be reading at the moment.  Right now, it's Lisa Moore.  She has, as my husband observed, glancing over the pages as I took a moment to rest my eyes and return to reality on the airplane, a tendency towards long sentences that can themselves constitute a paragraph.

Lately, I've been feeling guilty about reading novels and trust me, it has nothing to do with their contents.  Well, not exactly.  I feel like I'm being too indulgent with my time, when there's much more I could be doing or learning.  I'm not sure where this idea came from, because it's absolute nonsense.  The world of book lovers continually shares the benefits of reading novels via social media.  I've been hoarding these bits of information in an attempt to quell my guilt.  Like a recent article about how reading novels makes us better thinkers--more accepting of ambiguity and less likely to make snap decisions.

But, back to Lisa Moore and Alligator.  I read February this past February (fitting, no?) since it was nominated for Canada Reads 2013...and I discovered another Canadian author to add to my list of True Patriot Loves.  No surprise, Moore's novel won the competition.  When I found her book Alligator amidst the hoard of novels at the Elora Book Sale, I snapped it up with excitement (and maybe a bit of reptilian instinct) and I've actually been putting off reading it until summer vacation, the way some people save a bottle of wine to open at just the right moment.

This novel explores the sometimes dull, sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes beautiful agony of the "you're-all-I-have" relationships that tether us to time, place and circumstance.  In the same storytelling style as February, Moore's narration is delivered through several characters, their story threads interwoven and intersecting even if they are oblivious to it.  This novel is less about plot and more about character and will have you contemplating relationships and how it's possible both to stay and run away, to both grieve the loss of those existing right in front of you and be ever in the presence of the dead.

(Was that vague enough for you?  ;)  Long live the novel.  Let ambiguity reign.)

bookaday 7: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

So there's been a bit of a gap in my #bookaday attempt, but yesterday was my first official day of summer holidays, so let's consider my earlier blog entries to be appetizers before the summer feast!

Yesterday was an All About Me day.  Between naps and shopping, I pulled a book off the shelf and got to reading.  My first selection of summer?  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

This is an underdog story about an aboriginal teen from the Spokane reserve who makes the decision to attend school off the reserve and struggles with his identity as he straddles two worlds.  Written with humour and stark honesty, I think this book would be a hit with any teenager.  I caught a tiny bit of a CBC radio program while driving around the other day and this book was being used as a class text (high school? university?  I'm not sure).  I think this book would be a great addition to a course syllabus, or great for a young adult book club.  (It's a National Book Award winner, so clearly I'm not the only one who thinks it's amazing!)

Four out of five stars for this one.  Beautiful language and creative illustrations.  (I'm holding back one star because the sports glory stories--this time it's basketball--are always a little bit corny for me.)

#bookaday 6: Memoirs of a Goldfish

I've slacked for a few days.  Report cards, and then a weekend mini-cation, and then report cards got in the way.  This #bookaday is actually from yesterday.  I read Memoirs of a Goldfish by Devin Scillian aloud to my Grade 1 class before we began writing our own memoirs on our year together.

My students thought it was HILARIOUS.  (And I have to say, about half the jokes went right over their heads!)  They especially loved the last page ("Ew!  They're dating!").

A solid 4-star book.  A quick google search shows that there are plenty of ideas out there for how to use this one in the classroom!

#bookaday 5: Scaredy Squirrel Goes Camping

I love Mélanie Watt.  So does every Grade One student I know.  I've just updated myself on Scaredy Squirrel's latest adventure, Scaredy Squirrel Goes Camping and now I've got some great ideas for using this text to review many text forms we covered this school year --from maps to charts to labelled diagrams to procedural texts!

Leaving this one out on my dining room table to lesson plan for next week!  FIVE out of FIVE *S*T*A*R*s!

#bookaday 4: Marshall Armstrong is New to Our School

A few books came from amazon today!  In the package was Marshall Armstrong Is New To Our School by David Mackintosh.  Gorgeous artwork and a quirky main character--seems what I look for in a novel is pretty much the same as what I look for in a picture book!

I'll be pulling this one out early next school year to talk about building friendships and finding out that we have things in common with people who may seem very different than us.

#bookaday Day 3: The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas

Who doesn't love a good fractured fairy tale?  I just read this one aloud to my husband (my prince) in the kitchen (our favourite place in our palace)!

This takes the Princess and The Pea and gives it a bit of girl power.  Best lines....
"But I'm not a real princess."  
"You'll be an UNREAL princess!"

Four out of five...only 'cause there's room for a little more girl power. ;)

A crafty choice for #bookaday 2

I've chosen a book to browse for today's #bookaday selection. It's called Essential Crochet and it's a volume of 30 crochet patterns with some tips and techniques mixed in. I bought it for $1.00 at a book sale and I already got my money's worth: inside the front cover, someone has oh-so-helpfully written, "very interesting and unique." I love other people's marginalia...that's at least half the entertainment of a second-hand book!

I found a great pattern in here for a scarf with a zillion non-functional buttons. It seems to use crochet scraps: can't wait to try it!