The Books That Made Me Love Reading–”In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak

In memory of Maurice Sendak, who died this past week, I’m reposting a review of In the Night Kitchen. More than just a review of the book, this post is a commentary on how Sendak introduced me to the concept of censorship for the first time. I’d like to think he’d be pleased with my story.

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak was published when I was in high school. I was too old to read it as part of its target audience; a 15-year-old is far removed from preschooler.

But the book did leave an indelible mark on me.  It may not have shaped me as a reader (that die had been cast many years earlier), but it did awaken in me a strong loathing for censorship.

As a picture book, the emphasis of In the Night Kitchen was the illustrations. Sendak’s matter-of-factness in drawing Mickey, the main character, naked and anatomically correct (for the most part) set off a firestorm. In addition to the furor over the naked little boy, there were also accusations that there were sexual undertones to the story, but at age 15, I was clueless about that.

What I didn’t understand was how or why a book would be banned. In the 10 or so years that I had been reading, I had a bounty of books from which to choose. There was the public library, where I spent a great deal of time, the library at my grade school and then high school, not to mention the large collection of books at home. I had never been denied access to any of them.

My “Baby,” My Guide

Husband and I are early in our two-week odyssey across the USA, driving from our home in Pennsylvania to Moab, Utah and back again.

The primary purpose of our trip is to see our (Y)ounger (S). YS is an interpretive park ranger at Arches National Park in Moab Utah. This is his third year working at a seasonal position in the park.

We left our home in north central Pennsylvania five days ago, arriving in Moab late yesterday afternoon. I have many stories to tell about our experiences on the way out to Utah, and I will be telling them over the next several days. But the story I want to tell first came to me yesterday on our last leg of the trip.

As we got closer to Moab, I started thinking about the nature of visit. We were going to see our “baby” (at twenty-six years old, he is the youngest of our three children) in a professional capacity.

Seemingly out of the clear blue, YS took to the semi-wilderness of the rural mountains of Pennsylvania when Husband and I moved there six years ago. We had raised our children in cities, as we had been. We never took more than an infrequent day trip to one state park or another.

YS was already in college when we moved, so his time in our new home was limited to school breaks and one summer when he waited too long to find a summer job so he landed with us for a couple of months. Those few months seemed to have flipped a switch for him.

A Litany of Love for All Women on Mother’s Day

To all mothers, may you enjoy a day of delight with your children—Happy Mother’s Day

To all grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers, may you revel in the joy of the next generations of your babies– Happy Mother’s Day

To all godmothers and women who have taken on the role of mother, may you feel the gratitude of those who call you Mother in their hearts– Happy Mother’s Day

To all mothers whose children have passed on, at no matter what age, may you cherish the memories of your children– Happy Mother’s Day

To all children whose mothers have passed on, may you make peace with the loss of your mother– Happy Mother’s Day

To all mothers who do not know where their children are, by choice or by tragedy, may you keep hope alive that in this life or the next, you will be with your children again– Happy Mother’s Day

A Reader Reviews–”Of Gods and Goats”, V.L. Locey

Picture it—you’re a young widow woman, scratching out a living raising goats and chickens in the beautiful hills of rural Pennsylvania. You make lovely scented soaps from the goats’ milk, and sell the soap and chicken eggs at the local farmers market. Your trusty beagle and cat curl up with you at night, and you visit each morning with the mail man, listening to him deliver local gossip along with the U.S. mail. Sounds somewhat idyllic, doesn’t it? Don’t hold your breath.

The morning after a storm that must have rattled windows the next county over, Libby Simons awakes to find a huge hole in the roof of her goat barn. She wonders what on earth could have caused that damage. She doesn’t have to wait very long to discover that it wasn’t anything on earth that created that headache. None other than Ares, the Greek god of war, had come hurtling down from the heavens in search of Hades’ helm of darkness and landed smack on Libby’s barn roof. Well, he actually crashed right through the roof, but you get the picture of what sort of adventures Libby’s life will now hold.

Locey uses generous touches of humor to tell a story that is deeper and more poignant than it appears on the surface. She refers to her book as “romantic rural comedy” and it is, indeed, quite funny throughout. Told in the first person, our gal Libby has quite a gift for the turn of phrase. I love a book that has me laughing out loud, and Libby, er, Ms Locey, provides that quite nicely.

Libby was left widowed five years earlier by the tragic death of her husband at the hands of a drunk driver. Although barely in her mid-thirties, Libby believes she will never be able to let go of Matt and share her life with a man again. She tries hard to fight her quickly growing attraction to the hunk-a hunk-a burning love that is Ares, but I think most women would be hard-pressed to resist a male, god or otherwise, that Locey describes as possessing “shoulders …as wide as I was long with mounds of muscle that flexed with each movement…His back was corded and tapered, cutting down into a firm lean waist.” And as Ares himself says, “I am many things, Wee Bunting, but meager is certainly not one of them.” Somebody get me a fan and a glass of cold water.

A Reader Reviews—“Honey the Hero” by Emlyn Chand

What do you do when you’re a young parakeet living in the Australian Outback and you long to explore your world? You become a superhero, that’s what you do.

At least that’s what Honey, the star of Emlyn Chand’s newly released kids book, does.

Inspired by a television show Honey watches through the window of a cottage on her travels, Honey decides to dedicate her life to helping other animals in need. The tricky part is who gets to decide if an animal really needs help.

Honey flits through the Outback, “rescuing” animals, only to find out they don’t quite see the need for help the way Honey thinks they do.

But Honey never gives up, and one day, she comes upon a lost dingo that truly does need Honey to rescue him.

Honey’s message is sweet in its simplicity. She stumbles the first few times she tries to help others, but helping has become her passion and she keeps trying until she gets it right. Not bad advice for birds, kids, and even we adults who read this book to the little ones in our lives.

Chand’s charming story is accompanied by equally cute drawings by Sarah Shaw. The pictures remind me of the styles used in comic books, which I think is quite appropriate given the premise that Honey is a superhero. Honey gives little ones the feel of comic book “save the day” heroes, minus the “bam”, “pow”, and “crack” of comics for older kids and adults.

Honey the Hero is the first in the Bird Brain Books series. Keep your eyes open for the adventures of Davey the detective and Poppy the peacock coming soon. Let’s see what adventures these two birds fly into!

The Books That Made Me Love Reading Challenge—“Busy Day Busy People” by Tibor Gergely

When Emlyn Chand, author and publicist, introduced her year-long challenge for folks to re-visit the books they loved in childhood that made them love reading, http://emlynchand.com , I thought back not only to my own favorite books as a child, but to my children’s favorite books as well.

There was no bigger favorite for my daughter than Busy Day Busy People by Tibor Gergely. I wish I had a nickel for every time my husband or I read that book to our daughter. I could be writing this from my own private island, gazing out into the azure tropical waters.

Busy Day Busy People tells the story of the ins and outs of daily life. Through words and very detailed illustrations, we learn about people working in stores and hospitals. We see pictures of auto mechanics and circus workers. Farmers grow our food and chefs prepare it for us in restaurants. And construction workers build new buildings in the city.

Ah yes, those construction workers. I have never figured out why a two-year-old girl was so fascinated by construction workers, but my daughter adored them. A new car wash was being built not far from where we lived at the time. Every day, my daughter strongly insisted that we go watch them for a while. So every morning, we either walked up or drove by to see what progress had been made from the day before. And each evening, we read, again, Busy Day Busy People. She was so taken by construction workers that she named her first goldfish, you guessed it, Construction Worker.

Oh how we tried to get her interested in other books. She enjoyed listening to the other stories that we presented, but the evening reading session had to begin and end with Busy Day. We came to hate that book.

But in that way that families have, Busy Day Busy People became a sort of mantra in our house. Even now, when our daughter is thirty-one years old, my husband and I often say “busy day busy people” when the conversation turns to how busy we are on any particular day.

A Reader Reviews–”The Spirit Keeper” by Melissa Luznicky Garrett

In the past year and a half, I’ve read many books in genres outside my comfort zone, young adult paranormal being one of them. I had taken a break from that genre recently, trying to get to more of the books on my huge to-read list. When Melissa Luznicky Garrett’s newest book, The Spirit Keeper, became available, though, I immediately wanted to read it based on how much I enjoyed her earlier work.

Although The Spirit Keeper is a new genre for Garrett, the quality of the writing is classic Garrett. With the explosion of self-publishing over the past several years, much is made of the quality, or lack thereof, of self-published books. Garrett is one of the many authors who can be held up as an example of the high quality available in indie books.

As I’ve come to expect from Garrett’s earlier books, Precipice and Turning Point, Spirit Keeper’s story is told in clean, crisp prose. In some indie-published books, and sometimes even in traditionally published books, I’ve had to train myself to push past awkward writing to get to the good story behind it. But Garrett’s writing is like makeup—the best made-up face is one that looks like there is no makeup at all. Garrett’s writing is so good, it seems as though the story is floating along on its own.

The Spirit Keeper tells the story of a teenage girl, Sarah, as she learns the secrets of her heritage as a Native American. After a tragic house fire that kills her mother and grandparents eleven years earlier, Sarah is taken in by her mother’s younger sister and brother, not all that much older than Sarah herself. Trying to shield her from the tragedy, Sarah’s aunt and uncle keep her past from her, but recent events and new neighbors make that impossible to maintain.