Big

by Vashti Harrison

This won the 2023 Caldecott Award (given for illustrations), which was why I borrowed it from the library.

The illustrations are adorable!  The story is such a good one.  It’s about a little girl who is bigger than her peers.  She gets stuck in a swing and people begin to make fun of her and call her names, then suggest ways she could change (to, in their eyes, improve).  We see her cringe, wilt, withdraw, and collapse in tears. 

She decides she likes herself just the way she is—kind, creative, graceful, caring, considerate, compassionate, imaginative, free, fun, smart, graceful, nimble....

What a great book for little ones who are learning about themselves and that the physical body is much less important than being having good character traits.

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Orion and the Dark

by Emma Yarlett

This is a children's picture book, probably appropriate for children ages 3 or 4 and older.

Orion is afraid of everything—EVERYTHING—but most especially the dark.  One night the Dark comes to visit him and takes him on a tour of the scariest places.  Orion realizes that the Dark is his friend.  Fabulous!

I was prompted to read this after seeing the new movie based on the book.  The book is MUCH better (in my opinion)!

I think this could be an excellent book to read to a child who is afraid of the dark, but the parent should decide.

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Recipe for a Charmed Life

by Rachel Linden

A little magical realism.  And I loved it! 

Georgia May’s goal in life from the time she was a child has been to be a chef managing a restaurant kitchen in Paris.  She watched Julia Child with her mom when she was little, but then her mom left.  Now, at age 33 as the book opens, she’s a sous chef in Paris with the hope of becoming the chef in a new restaurant that will be opened soon by her current employer.  And then things turn sour.  Her boyfriend, the chef where she works, is cheating on her (skip over the refrigerator scene).  Just as she learns this, a renowned restaurant critic is awaiting his meal AND the chef cooking his meal of fish has burned it.  In retaliation, Georgia May plates the burned fish and serves it.  She quickly realizes it’s an awful mistake. 

The owner of the restaurant suggests she leave town until the scandal blows over and suggests that she’s lost her spark and that being away will give her the opportunity to get it back.  Georgia May's spark is that her food often brings memories or helps people make decisions or to see things clearly, etc.  While deciding what to do, she sees an email from her mom, sent a week earlier, asking Georgia to get in touch with her and inviting her to visit.

Except for that one scene in the refrigerator, I loved this book.   

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The Frozen River

by Ariel Lawhon

  Excellent!  But then I’m a steadfast fan of Martha Ballard, anyway.  This book of historical fiction is based on 18th century midwife Martha Ballard’s diary.  It mixes actual characters and true events with fictional events and likely some fictional characters.
   The book opens with a childbirth, then quickly moves to Martha identifying a dead body that had been found frozen in a river.  She declares the cause of death as hanging.  The new-to-town physician claims otherwise.  Martha quietly seeks out more information over a period of several months.  Part of the story includes a minister’s wife who was raped by the dead man and another man who was one of the local judges and includes the court processes to bring the one left alive to trial.
   Family history research has given me an idea of the circumstances of women in the late 1700s into the 1800s.  I thought this book put meat on the bones of general research about the lives of women of the time—their limits in society, the general expectation of behavior, their role in the home and family, etc.  For that alone I think it’s worth reading if you’re interested in women’s history.
   There is a little language and there is a grizzly scene near the end. 
   The Author’s Note after the end of the book explains what and why Lawhon made changes, inclusions, exclusions, and some assumptions for the book.
   For more about Martha Ballard, read Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s biography, The Midwife’s Tale.  Also, a transcription of Martha’s diary is available online at https://dohistory.org/diary/1785/02/17850208_txt.html.

Quotes
On keeping a journal.  “Memory is a wicked thing that warps and twists.  But paper and ink receive the truth without emotion, and they read it back without partiality.  That, I believe is why so few women are taught to read and write.  God only knows what they would do with the power of pen and ink at their disposal. ...Being privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in this town, I have a rather good idea what secrets might be recorded, then later revealed, if more women took up the pen.    p. 39 ¶1

“To name a thing is a proprietary act.  It is a commitment.  Of ownership or care or loyalty.  It means something.  With that single word I have declared that this little beast [a silver fox] is mine, and that I have a responsibility to protect her.”    p. 94 ¶2

“If anyone had told me two decades ago, when I was buried in small children and endless chores, that one day I would sit at my desk in a warm, quiet house while the snow fell outside and complain of loneliness, I would have slapped them.  That future seemed as far away as Constantinople.
  “I would very much like to join the rest of the house in slumber, but I can already feel the creeping wakefulness that often assails me at night.  This is a new affliction, something that began once I rounded the corner of forty-five.  I never understood what a gift sleep was until it vanished.  Whereas, in all the decades before, I slept deep and heavy, soaking up every morsel of rest that was offered.  I now skim the surface, fitful, easily woken, and unable to drift off again.  On nights like this, no amount of physical exhaustion can induce my mind to shutter, so I read by candlelight instead.  It is the only time I allow myself this indulgence.  The joy of falling into another life, another world, is the one thing that mitigates the frustration of a sleepless night.”       p. 106 ¶5-6

“Words can be a gift, but so can silence.”    p, 192 last sentence

“The quilt is large, big enough to cover them both, and is made of scraps of fabric that I have gathered and kept over the years for this purpose.  Every year I make an extra quilt, sewn in bits and pieces at night before the fire when my other work is done....  I do this because every year there is a wedding.  Sometimes rushed.  Sometimes performed according to the standards of our town.  Yet each young bride finds herself in a new home and does not know how to make it her home.  This, a simple piece of bedding, is the answer.  Everyone must sleep, and to do so beneath a warm quilt, tenderly made, is the first thing that helps a house become a home.”    p. 193 ¶4

“I follow him to a table at the back and sink onto the bench with a groan.  This is a new thing I’ve discovered about myself in recent years.  The noises.  Stand and groan.  Sit and grunt.  Some days it seems that I can hardly take a step without some part of my body creaking or cracking and this—even more than the gray hairs and the crow’s-feet at my eyes—makes me feel as though I am racing down the final stretch of middle age.”   p. 167 ¶ last

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