Your Summer Reading List (the children's edition)

Editor's Note: I have been sorely absent from this particular blog because, well, I just have. But summer is here, and it's time to get back on track. I have been known to hand people their Summer Reading Lists like I'm in charge or something, but I thought it might be a nice change of pace to offer a little fun reading list for the kiddos. And who better to help me out with such a thing than my own four kiddos?

These titles are just for fun, and you will be neither tested on them nor will you be required to write a three-point paragraph about their use of alliteration, water imagery, irony or any other literary device that can cause great distraction when all you really want to do is read a good story without a teacher quizzing you about what you learned from it.

And looking ahead . . . for you older readers, you will benefit not only from my inability to throw away anything, but also from my good fortune of attending a public high school that--while it had its share of faults--boasted an excellent literature curriculum full of classics. While I remember hating the summer reading lists, I now appreciate their value. I will pull from that dusty, cobwebbed memory as I urge you adults to pick up a few of the books that you should have read as a teen but never got around to them. It won't be too painful. And you will not be tested in any way.

These suggestions will come in installments in the coming days. Today's selections are:

The Doll People by Ann M. Martin and Laura Godwin

What is this book about?
It's about this girl, the main character Annabelle, who wants to find her aunt and she found her journal. Her aunt has been missing for a long time. The uncle has been looking for her because she finds out that each day, there is a little more writing in the journal, so she knows somebody else has been writing in the journal and knows about it.

Why is it called The Doll People?
Because Annabelle is a doll, and her family is a bunch of 100-year-old dolls.

Why did you like this book?
Because I don't get to read a lot of adventures.

Anything else?
Oh, yeah, also, when she is looking for her aunt, she finds a friend in a box.






Homer Price by Robert McCloskey
What is this book about?
It's about this boy trying to figure out mysteries.

What was your favorite part?
It's been a while since I read it.

Do you remember anything funny or interesting about it?
Well, um, this music is kind of distracting me. What was the question again? Oh, yeah, something interesting. Homer's family runs this thing where people can board, and the bad guys rented a room. And then ... (her voice trailed off and she left the room, so I don't know what she said, but it had something to do with one of our dogs peeing on the living room floor).

But really, it is one of her favorites.


Check in frequently for more suggestions . . .

Acts of Liberation

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted (and Other Small Acts of Liberation), by Elizabeth Berg, 2008; Random House


If you're not a person who stays on top of new releases, then a trip to the library can be full of surprises. You can wander the aisles, thumb through the books on the shelves, stare at the wall of Staff Picks, and occasionally, you hit pay dirt.

And that's how I stumbled upon Elizabeth Berg's collection of 13 essays, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted.

That's the great thing about authors like Berg -- she's always writing, always publishing, so you never know when you'll come across a book you haven't read.

Released in 2008, this is a departure from her fiction, although the essays read largely like excerpts from a novel. The title comes from the essay that bears the same name, and naturally, I read it first. And what perfect timing! On Easter Sunday, I ate whatever I wanted. And I'm pretty sure Jesus was OK with that. I'm also pretty sure he laughed when one of my friends insisted that the strawberry/crushed-pretzel/cream cheese salad with gelatin belonged with the salads and not the desserts. I argued with her, then decided, heck, it's Easter. Put it with the salads. And then I had four helpings. And that's OK because it's a SALAD and not a dessert.

To balance things out, Berg's essay "The Day I Ate Nothing I Even Remotely Wanted" chronicles a Weight Watcher's daily battle with a diet that allows only condiments like fake butter spray and a spritz of vinegar.

But the book is not all about food. "The Only One of Millions Just Like Him" tells the story of a husband and wife and their dying dog, and while it made me cry and think of my dog Penny, it was also laugh-out-loud funny.

And in typical Berg fashion, the truly poignant and sad stories are mixed in. I will admit that I skipped a couple of those. I saw them coming, and I simply skipped ahead to the next essay. That's the beauty of reading a collection of stand-alone pieces. The commitment level is really low.

The theme of these essays -- as you might have picked up from the book's title -- is liberation. How liberating to feel liberated. How free a person must feel to abandon rules and what I call "have-to's." A have-to is different that a rule or a law. A have-to is more like an obligation or a courtesy. Just think if you didn't follow a single have-to, even if just for a day. Pretend -- for just one day -- that nobody is watching you or your kids, nobody is looking at what your kids wear or how clean your house is, nobody cares how you will spend your morning or your evening, because in light of eternity, much of this stuff just doesn't matter anyway. Wouldn't you do a few things differently? Wouldn't you feel liberated? And wouldn't you feel like an Elizabeth Berg character?

From the back cover:

Every now and then, right in the middle of an ordinary day, a woman rebels, kicks up her heels, and commits a small act of liberation. What would you do, if you were going to break out and away?

And I would add, then go do it.

A Few Words About ... Words

Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences, by Kitty Burns Florey, 2007; Harvest Books



(Editor's Note: This review was originally posted in January 2008 on amycates.blogspot.com. Consider this an encore presentation. And a way to break my absence from this blog.)

Some generous soul at Harcourt sent me a complimentary copy of Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences by Kitty Burns Florey in December. And to you, Mr. Public Relations at Harcourt, a hearty thank you!

Florey does a super job of reviving all the wonderful memories of junior-high grammar and sprinkling it with a heaping helping of the history of diagramming. (Bet you didn't know diagramming had a history worthy of documenting, but it certainly does.)

What makes this book so enjoyable is the nostalgia it stirs. If you love words (and who doesn't, really; we use them every day, for Pete's sake), how can you not enjoy pulling them apart and putting them back together like a puzzle?

Diagramming for homework was one thing, but diagramming IN PUBLIC was the social equivalent of being asked to make the morning announcements on the intercom. It was your opportunity to shine, or wither up and die in front of a tough crowd. If you were fortunate enough to be called to the front of the room to diagram, you would toss back your oily hair, adjust your corduroy Levi's and strut to the board like you were about to embark on some great feat.

And oh, the pleasure of scoring a prepositional phrase! Or a compound subject! Or having to decide whether an object was direct or indirect! Get it right, and they might as well elect you Most Likely To Do Whatever You Darn Well Please. Get it wrong, and you were destined for a lonely lunch period or at least a silent locker visit. Diagramming in public was the stuff that would make you or break you in sixth grade, at least in my sad circle. "Wow, that was really neat how you knew the line should be diagonal instead of straight," or "Adverb phrases. Gosh. I don't know how you do it." Those were the exchanges heard when the bell rang.

Diagramming was different than solving a math problem. Screw up a math problem in front of the whole class? Who cares! But fall short in dissecting your native language? Woe to you.

Florey's book is a masterpiece, a tribute to all things grammatical and a reminder of why schools everywhere should resurrect diagramming, if they haven't already. I could go on and on, but I'll not spoil the ending.

Girl Talk

Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, edited by Jennifer O'Connell, 2007; Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The last post on this blog garnered a rather rude complaint. "This is too much to read. I don't have the energy." Well, then you'll probably have a hard time reading an actual book, then, seeing as how a blog post--even a lengthy blog post-- is substantially shorter than the average book.

Still, I took the comment seriously and will try to keep things a little shorter for those of you with tiny attention spans and low energy levels.

Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, published in 1997 (and soon to be released in paperback), is a compilation of essays edited by Jennifer O'Connell. If you have ever been a young girl, then you know Blume and her masterful way of addressing adolescent angst. You probably also know how to make a mean dog-ear in a paperback.

Titles like Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and that scandalous Forever made the rounds at my junior high, much like they did at every junior high school in America. Personal copies were secretively passed during science class or by the lockers, like contraband. I imagine they still circulate the hallways. Please tell me they do. I hope they haven't taken a back seat to stupid texting. Kids do still read YA literature, right? Even if it's not assigned reading?

O'Connell does a fair job in gathering quality essays from well-known writers like Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries) and introduces readers to lesser-knowns (check out Stephanie Lessing at http://www.stephanielessing.com/). I hesitate to offer this caveat, but you seem like nice readers, so here it is: The essays can teeter on tiresome. Unless you are a diehard fan of Deenie and It's Not the End of the World, you may find yourself yawning and saying, "Enough with the scoliosis and divorce already."

Funnier recollections would have come from Margaret and Freckle Juice fans, I would imagine, and if I had edited this book, I would have sought them out. Or written my own. The woe-is-me crap (or, more appropriately, woe-was-me-at-13) is starting to get on my nerves. We have too much of that in the world right now. Be woeful, sure, because that's what pre-teenagerness and teenagerness are all about, but have a sense of humor about you. Some of the essays contained in this book do so--and they do it well. Gloss over those whose writers are seemingly still mired in the yuck of adolescence and holding some mighty big grudges against friends they had to break up with. (All these years, and I never realized other girls found themselves in "friendship breakup." Who knew.)

Still, if you were ever the slightest Judy Blume follower, this is a nice walk down Memory Lane. You'll find yourself recalling book covers and even a few salacious scenes from select titles. You know the ones. :)

Southern Memoirs and Other Books Written in First-Person

I use the term "memoir" loosely here. All of the following are written in first person, and that's enough for me.

In the last post, I hinted that King would be among these. In the end, the Florence King book I was going to include didn't make the cut. It seemed a little "one of these things is not like the other." But maybe I will include it in the blog at a later date. If you want to check it out on your own, the book is Southern Ladies & Gentlemen, published in 1975 and very hard to find. (I scored a copy at a thrift store some five years ago.) Warning: King is bawdy, bawdy, bawdy. And laugh-out-loud funny. If you're looking for a genteel, mint julep, sweet tea Southern memoir, keep looking. This one ain't it.

So, let's share some memoirs, shall we?

Queen of the Turtle Derby (and Other Southern Phenomena) by Julia Reed, 2004; Random House

As Mardi Gras festivities come to a close next week, it seems only fitting that at least one Southern memoir makes mention of the celebration and the city that hosts some of the grandest parades and parties in the country.

Mississippi Delta native Julia Reed divides her time between New York and New Orleans. She says living in New Orleans is "not unlike living in the Old Testament," with flying Formosan termites, violence, sweltering heat and high humidity and mosquitoes so numerous that the city formed a 24-member Mosquito Control Board.

Like I can say anything about my family, but nobody else can, so Reed can write these things about New Orleans because it's her city. She is equally honest (not critical) about rural Mississippi and the country club class of Nashville.

She reveals the inner workings of a debutante ball and explores the "secretive, Byzantine, often fantastic culture of Mardi Gras." Debutantes and Carnival, she explains, are "inextricably intertwined."

Only in a memoir--a Southern memoir, actually--could anyone devote equal time to debutantes, tenderloins and George Jones.

Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living by Bailey White, 1993; Addison-Wesley Publishing Company

Somebody broke into my house and stole my copy of Mama Makes Up Her Mind, and that's just wrong. I've looked high and low, and while I did not file a police report, know that I am ticked off. To be honest, the book wasn't mine to begin with. I just never returned it. But still.

So I checked out a copy from the library so that I could refresh my memory.

Bailey White is one of those quintessential modern-day Southern essayists whose work is solid and witty enough to be featured on All Things Considered. Born in Thomasville, Ga., White writes what she knows. But it's not that smarmy, screen-door, fried-chicken variety Southern memoir that urges you to read her essays again and again. She's above that.

The stand-alone chapters within Mama Makes Up Her Mind are, at once, laugh-out-loud funny and poetic, but you don't have to deal with the outlandish crap that makes some Southern memoirs seem unbelievable. White's tales are simply honest. And simply well-written.

My aunt Eleanor thinks I should marry her nephew Kevin. The fact that Kevin has to lie down with a cold rag on his head after an hour in my company, and the fact that I can't seem to breathe normally when I am in the same room with Kevin, and have to go out on the porch and gulp air every ten minutes, does not signify to Aunt Eleanor.

"But your families are so close," she pleads.

"Our families are the same, Aunt Eleanor," I point out.

"A little inbreeding in a strong family is not a bad thing," she pronounces with a smack. Just the thought of inbreeding with Kevin takes my breath away, and I have to put my head down between my knees.

This is just one girl's opinion--it being my blog, after all--but the key to a good Southern memoir is subtlety. Too much of a drawl, too many bug-catching, peanuts-and-Coke, rope-swinging tales, and you're at risk of crossing the line into cliché. White manages to steer clear of that line. She can let you know, for example, that her mother's favorite movie is Midnight Cowboy and that her Aunt Belle once tamed an alligator in the Georgia swamps, and you not only believe her, you want to hear more.

Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbark, 2006; St. Martin's Press

Do I really need to say any more than what the title already says? Maybe a few lines, anyway.

Celia Rivenbark is a North Carolina humorist who either has or had a newspaper column. She writes primarily about life in the South, but she is particularly adept at pointing out things that tick her off. In the chapter of the same name, she bemoans her daughter's transition from the 4-6x department into the 7-16 area, where she determines, "My baby was growing up. And apparently into a prostitute." If you have daughters, you know how true this is.

Whither the adorable seersucker? The pastel floral short sets? The soft cotton dresses in little-girl colors like lavender, pale pink, periwinkle blue? This stuff practically screamed SYRINGE SOLD SEPARATELY.

She goes on:

Who decided that my six-year-old should dress like a Vegas showgirl? And one with an abundance of anger issues at that? ... I hope you won't take this the wrong way--you, the mom on the cellphone flipping your check card to your kid so she can buy the jeans that say SPANK ME on them.

There's much, much more where this came from, all wrapped up in a tidy pink package in hardback. I received this book for Christmas two years ago, and it resurfaces every couple of months so that I can reread favorite chapters. That's the beauty of a collection of essays: the level of commitment isn't so high. Read. Put it down. Pick it up a few weeks later.

Uh-Oh ...

Time got away from me over the holiday weekend. Blame it on basketball. And my favorite deli. And a last-minute Saturday road trip. And the sleep deprivation that followed. And another road trip scheduled for today. Maybe if I kept my rear in the chair and not in the car ...

Memoirs are chosen; blog is not written. That Monday post I promised? Look for it THURSDAY. I will make it worth your wait.

(For those who enjoy hints, the names are Reed, King and White. And maybe a surprise or two.)

And the Winner Is ...

Stephanie T. from Houston, Texas! Stephanie will be receiving a copy of Vince Antonucci's I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt. I don't know you, Stephanie, but I hope you will gain something from the book and will then pass it along to someone else who can benefit. Congratulations!

Stephanie's entry in this week's give-away was one from a record number of participants. "Record number" being easy to achieve because it was the first such contest. But you loyal and kind readers have set the bar high, and I appreciate your interest in this new blog. Plenty more give-aways to come, I promise.

To the kind Canadian who sheepishly entered with an apologetic "I'd love to win this book if you're willing to mail it to Canada," I am just letting you know that as long as the USPS stays in business, I can cross all kinds of borders. Don't let geography hold you back. Throw your name in the hat every chance you get.

A reminder: Look for a new post Monday, when I review a few Southern memoirs. (Some are actually compilations of essays, but I figure if they're written in first person, I can call them "memoirs." It's my blog; I can do what I want.) And even if you live in, say, Canada, I'm certain you'll find something you'll enjoy ... if only just the titles of the books. Crazy.

Happy weekend. And if you live in the United States, happy LONG weekend as you celebrate your favorite president on Monday. Throw a barbecue, sleep in, buy some new towels and linens, whatever floats your boat.