Blogging and drinking: these are a few of my favorite things!

I'm thrilled to see some of my favorite ladies on the cover of School Library Journal this month:

Betsy Bird (Fuse #8), Liz Burns (A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy), Monica Edinger (Educating Alice), Cheryl Klein (Brooklyn Arden), and Jen Hubert Swan (Reading Rants!). You all look gorgeous!

And check out the accompanying article!

Eat, drink, and cheers to my blogging cohorts!

Tender morsels

I work on a 24-hour-a-day clock (unfortunately) but the world around me seems to be going double-time today. Thus, I only have time for some happy linkage:

• Check out Diablo Cody's "In Praise of Judy Blume" article in EW. As if we didn't already know how awesome she is (Diablo and Judy...)! Thanks to my Child_lit listserv for the link.
• Deborah Wiles has a lovely account of Coleen Salley's funeral in New Orleans. What a fitting celebration for such a good-hearted, spunky woman! The world needs more people like Coleen. Thanks to Educating Alice for the info.
• Dear god, Gwyneth Paltrow apparently is starting her own lifestyle website? To "nourish the inner aspect"? And she claims that her life is good because she is "not passive about it"? This comes second-hand from Thursday Night Smackdown - the website isn't up yet - but I'm already feeling all cringey about it. And I love Gwyneth. But this could be going too far. Especially with everything going on economically, socially, and politically. So not the time for self-promotion and flaunted privilege. If she starts a magazine, I'm losing ALL respect. (Here's more info from US Magazine. I felt betrayed reading this because I do love her. But ugh.)
• Alison at Shelf Talker has a spectacular rant about Urban Outfitters and their blatant sexism (my words, not Alison's) in the literary t-shirt department. Come on, UO! Get a friggin CLUE!
• Last but not least, the real-life And Tango Makes Three penguins have broken up. Apparently Silo has left Roy for a female penguin...and Roy sits in a corner alone, staring at the wall. The best part is the end quote by one of the authors of the book: "We wrote the book to help parents teach children about same-sex parent families. It's no more an argument in favor of human gay relationships than it is a call for children to swallow their fish whole or sleep on rocks." Hee-hee! If only it were that easy, no?

Eat, drink, and celebrate banned books week!

UPDATE: Oh, you're all going to wish I had got my information right when you see this, but I did not. Gwyneth Paltrow's site is actually up and running. I present you with GOOP. Indeed...

REVIEW: My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath

You know how sometimes you read a book at a certain time in your life and it just…clicks? It’s the exact book you needed to read (you were meant to read) at that exact moment? That was My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath for me.

This is the story of Jane Fielding, a 12-year-old girl who lives with her single mother and her siblings in a house on the beach. Through the course of a summer, she goes through that change. You know the one. Where she slowly begins to create a life outside of her family. Where she realizes that the adults in her life are fallible. Where at the same time she is realizing her parent has secrets, she is gathering secrets of her own. It’s the classic coming-of-age story.

I appreciated the way in which Horvath shapes this story. She portrays that age as confusing, saddening, and heartbreaking…yet there’s magic, light, and beauty found in the midst of the sadness. As the reader, you’re both intimately involved with Jane’s adventures…yet it also seems as if you’re floating above her watching it all happen, slightly detached. How can you be both? I don’t know, but somehow Horvath does it.

This book reminded me of Richard Peck’s A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder: Adventures is written in vignettes with kooky unforgettable characters. This differs, though, in that there is a pensiveness to it, a certain naïveté and depth to the characters that I just didn’t get from Peck’s books. It’s all so bittersweet – you know the growing up must happen. Even Jane knows that the process of growing up has brought her so many adventures, and that is a wondrous thing. But there’s still sorrow about that with a side dish of worrying. There’s a bit of the adult perspective here, perhaps: as an adult reading this, I know where Jane is going in the growing-up process, and I’m reading this feeling nostalgic and sad for my own lost youth, feeling heartache for Jane because she is forever changed. A child reading this book will, no doubt, have an entirely different perspective. This is one of the most personal books I’ve read in a long time.

There are such beautifully crafted passages in this book; it’s difficult to choose just one to share with you or to extract it from the rest of the text. Nevertheless, I give you this gem:

So for now the house is still ours. But there is no joy. The house
is no longer a sanctuary. It may not always be a member of our
family. It may be taken from us as no family member can be, so what is it,
then? Only a house. I cannot afford to love it anymore.

That is one of the more melancholy passages but illustrates beautifully Jane’s lesson that part of growing up is making choices about what you will love and what you cannot. That sometimes you must close your heart to one thing so that you can give more to others. It’s incredibly poignant and totally believable that a 12-year-old has learned this lesson.

I felt a tight grip on my heart as I read that last page, and I was incredibly sad to have it end. Which is always the sign of a Good Read. And if I didn’t have a gargantuan stack of books waiting for me, I would immediately turn right back to the start of this one and read it all over again.

A must-read.


Other reviews:
Educating Alice
Welcome to my Tweendom
Bookami
And read School Library Journal's review via Amazon. It's spot-on.

DISCLAIMER: I am compelled to add that I'm disappointed with my own review. I use variations of "sad" way too much, giving you the wrong impression about this book. It's uplifting and hopeful, I swear! Connie Tyrrell Burns put it perfectly in her SLJ review: Horvath is a "word alchemist."

Bright colors in the middle of winter

I’ve been wanting to talk for days about Educating Alice’s post about Christo and Jeanne Claude’s The Gates in Central Park. At the time, Monica took her class on a series of field trips to the gates, and she includes some magical photos in her post. They’re the perfect pictures to cheer you up when the weather is cold!

I was still living in Arizona when The Gates were here and, even on the other side of the country, I was hearing and reading stories about how jaded New Yorkers were poking fun at the art installment. Snickering at it*. All of it I gave little attention to because I was living in Arizona…and I had never even been to NYC at that point. Monica’s post let me see how much I was missing, and it reminded me of the importance of art, creativity, and beauty in children’s lives. I only wish my daughter had seen The Gates – she would have loved it.

Truly, I can’t put my finger on why I feel so inspired by Monica’s story and her photos. Perhaps it’s because I just finished ranting about the deprofessionalization of libraries. Perhaps because I’m wintered out. Perhaps it’s because I feel like my daughter’s homework consists mainly of drilling her in “math facts” and leveled reading. Perhaps because it reminded that I wasn’t looking through the eyes of a child enough.

The glorious thing, though, is that sometimes even New Yorkers – and, especially, the children growing up here – can be inspired by bright swaths of orange in the middle of a gray winter. I can hardly wait to read Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan's Christo and Jeanne Claude: Through the Gates and Beyond!

Thanks to Monica at Educating Alice!

* See this blog dedicated to The Gates.