A Piece of the World

by Christina Baker Kline 

A fictionalized version of Andrew Wyeth’s interactions with Christina Olson, subject of Wyeth’s painting, “Christina’s World.”  Christina was a strong, determined woman who didn’t let her physical handicaps prevent her from doing what was necessary to keep her home.

Quotes

“Over the years, certain stories in the history of a family take hold.  They’re passed from generation to generation, gaining substance and meaning along the way.  You have to learn to sift through them, separating fact from conjecture, the likely from the implausible.
  “Here is what I know:  Sometimes the least believable stories are the true ones.”    p. 15

“The older I get, the more I believe that the greatest kindness is acceptance.”      p. 276  ¶ last

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The Uncommon Reader

by Alan Bennett 

This novella is a satire on the importance of reading.  When the Queen (unnamed but alluded to as Queen Elizabeth II) takes up reading, most other things go by the wayside.  It makes those she works with unhappy.

Quote

“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”    p. 34  ¶8

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The Invisible Life of Addie Larue

by V. E. Schwab

What young Adeline/Addie, living in the late 1600s in a small village in France, most wants is freedom.  When her family decides she should marry, she runs away and makes an agreement with a god (that answers after dark).  She gets freedom but it prevents her from being remembered by anyone, from leaving a mark anywhere.  (For example, when Addie rents a room for a week, the landlady evicts her the first night because she doesn’t remember Addie.)  And then, she meets a young man.  The story takes place across the span of 300 years.  There is some language (from a small-part character) and some sex (easily skipped).

Quotes

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”    p. 35 ¶ 9

“...It is a lonely thing to be forgotten.  To remember when no one else does.”    p. 77  ¶3-4

“Palimpsest.  She doesn’t know the word just yet, but fifty years from now, in a Paris salon, she will hear if for the first time, the idea of the past blotted out, written over by the present....”    p. 78  ¶10-11

“Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad.   You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real.  After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?  If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?      p. 103  ¶5, 7

“Small places make for small lives.  And some people are fine with that.  They like knowing where to put their feet.  But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way.  You cannot leave a mark.”     p. 179  ¶10

”’There’s this family photo,’ he says, ‘not the one in the hall, this other one, from back when I was six or seven.  That day was awful.   Muriel put gum in David’s book and I had a cold, and my parents were fighting right up until the flash went off.  And in the photo, we all look so . . . happy.  I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real.  There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid.  So photos are like fictions.  I love that about them.  Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.’”    p. 239  ¶7

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WinterFrost

by Michelle Houts  

I loved this little chapter book for upper elementary or middle school readers. 

On Christmas, 12-year-old Bettina is entrusted with the care of her nearly-year-old sister, Pia, when her father must leave for a visit to his uncle and her mother is called away to care for her grandmother.  The Petersens, near neighbors, are available for help.  Bettina is confident she can handle Pia for a few days.  Unfortunately, the family forgot to put out a bowl of rice pudding for their barn nisse, Klakke, on Christmas morning.  He’s not a retaliatory nisse but he is a little mischievous and switches up the food for the animals in the barn.  After straightening everything in the barn, Bettina and Pia return to the house.  Bettina puts Pia down for a nap, bundled up in the carriage, which she pushes outside (which seems to be the norm in Denmark).  When she goes outside to get Pia, she is gone.  Oh, the challenges and adventures that ensue!  Just a fun, quick read.

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Remember. The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting

by Lisa Genova

Excellent!  I love this book.  Genova, a neuro-scientist, seems to have written this book for the layman, the person concerned about forgetting/not remembering and wondering if it’s normal and natural or a sign of Alzheimer’s.

These are just some notes, and then some specific quotes.

You must pay attention to create a memory.  If you were there and something happened but your attention was elsewhere, no memory was created to remember.  In the moment most things are lost unless something memorable happens.  (“...We learn to ignore what is familiar and of no consequence.  We can’t remember what we ignore.  Remembering requires that we give the thing to be remembered our attention.”  p. 80  ¶2)

The hippocampus is where new and long term memories are stored.  The prefrontal cortex is where present moment is remembered.

Working memory - whatever is held in your consciousness right now in the present moment.  It’s short-lived, holding space in the prefrontal cortex for sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and language.
  
Declarative memories = things I know.  Sometimes must work to recall them.

3 kinds of long-term memory
- semantic memory - for information
- episodic memory - for what happened
- muscle memory - for how to do things (ride a bike, play a piece on the piano, etc.)
Muscle memory (brain not muscle) –- a sequence of events bound together by the basal ganglia -- is the ability to perform a previously learned skill

Semantic memory -- what you know not attached to any person, what or where, or any specific experience; information; the history of you remembered by you (beginning on p. 78)
Episodic memory - attached to what and where:  personal and always about the past

Memory - consolidating and retrieving what you’ve learned.  Quiz yourself about what you learn (semantic memories)..

Quotes

“Regular use of these tools — repetition, spaced learning, self-testing, meaning, and visual and spatial imagery — will no doubt strengthen your semantic memory.”    p. 75  ¶1

“Why do we retain so few memories for what happened when we were young?  The development of language in our brains corresponds with our ability to consolidate, store, and retrieve episodic memories.  We need the anatomical structures and circuitry of language to tell the story of what happened, to organize the details of our experiences into a coherent narrative that can then be revisited and shared later.  So as adults, we only have access to memories of what happened when we owned the language skills to describe them.”    p. 86-87

“Your episodic memories are chock-full of distortions, additions, omissions, elaborations, confabulations, and other errors.  Basically, your memories for what happened are wrong...."  (p. 99  ¶1)

“For every step in memory processing—encoding, consolidation, storage, and retrieval—your memory for what happened is vulnerable to editing and inaccuracies.  To begin with, we can only introduce into the memory creation process what we notice and pay attention to in the first place.  Since we can’t notice everything in every moment that unfolds before us, we only encode and later remember certain slices of what happened.  These slices will contain only the details that were seduced by our biases and captured our interest.  So my memory for what happened last Christmas morning will be different from what my son remembers, and neither his memory or mine will contain the full picture—the whole truth, so to speak.  From the get-go our episodic memories are incomplete....
  “Nascent memories are highly susceptible to influence and creative editing, especially during the period—hours, days, and longer—when these memories are being consolidated, before they’re committed to long-term memory.
  “In the process of consolidating an episodic memory, your brain is like a sticky-fingered, madcap chef.  While it stirs together the ingredients of what you noticed for any particular memory, the recipe can change, often dramatically, with additions and subtractions supplied by imagination, opinion, or assumptions.  The recipe can also be warped by a dream, something you read or heard, a movie, a photograph, an association, your emotional state, someone else’s memory, or even mere suggestion.
  “And every time we retrieve a stored memory for what happened, it’s highly likely that we change the memory....” [Much more detail in the book.]    p. 99-101

“Prospective memory is your memory for what you need to do later.  This kind of memory is a bit like mental time travel.  You’re creating an intention for your future you.  This is your brain’s to-do list, a memory to be recalled at a future time and place.  And it is fraught with forgetting.  In fact, prospective memory is so poorly supported by our neural circuitry and so steeped in failure, it can almost be thought of as a kind of forgetting rather than a kind of memory.”    p. 132  1

To help remember, create a cue – time-based, event-based
  “This kind of memory is highly susceptible to failure.”    p. 133  ¶2

“When it comes to saving your memories, repetition is a mighty warrior in the battle against time.
  “But maybe you want to forget something....  Stop repeating the story of what happened.  Stop going over the details with your friends and in your thoughts.  Don’t overlearn the experience.  If you can find the discipline to leave those memories alone, they will eventually fade....  The emotional elements of that memory can gradually decay if left alone.  It is through the erosion of memory that time heals all wounds.”    p. 151  ¶1-2

“We tend to vilify forgetting.  We cast it as the bad guy in the epic battle against everyone’s favorite hero, Remembering.  But forgetting isn’t always a regrettable sign of aging, pathological symptom of dementia, a shameful failure, a maladaptive problem to solve, or even accidental.  Remembering today the details of what happened yesterday isn’t always beneficial.  Sometimes, we want to forget what we know.
  “We also tend to think of forgetting as our default setting.  Unless you actively do something remember some piece of information, your brain will automatically forget it.  Easily....  We forget without trying... because we didn’t pay enough attention... because we didn’t create strong enough relevant cues....  Forgetting can also be artful—active, deliberate, motivated, targeted, and desirable.”    p. 156  ¶1-2

About active ways of forgetting (motivated forgetting)    beginning p. 159, p. 163
  “So while we all want to an amazing memory, we can’t put all the onus and credit on remembering.  An optimally function memory system involves a finely orchestrated balancing act between data storage and data disposal: remembering and forgetting.  When performing optimally, memory doesn’t remember everything.  It retains what is meaningful and useful, and it discards what isn’t.  It keeps the signal and purges the noise.  Our ability to forget is likely to be just as vital as is our ability to remember.”    p. 163  ¶last

“Using the strategies and insights you’ve read about in this book—paying attention, decreasing distractors, rehearsing, self-testing, creating meaning, using visual and spatial imagery, keep a diary—will improve memory at any age.  They may have a less powerful effect on your memory performance at seventy than they would if you were thirty, but these methods still work.”    p. 172-173

 “Memory creation requires attention.  Paying attention is the number one thing you can do to improve your memory at any age, and a lack of attention will impair it.  Every time.....  What else boosts or blocks memory formation and retrieval?  Often, our ability remember depends on context.”    p. 189  ¶1

“You’ll be better able to recall ... information if you’re in the same state as you were [hungry, hot, tired, stressed, thirsty, etc.] when you learned it.”    p. 194  ¶2

About sleep and memory, beginning p. 207
  Sleep is not doing nothing, it’s a biologically busy state that’s vital to health. 
  "Sleeping also hits the save button on ... newly encoded memories.  It saves memories in two steps:  First, the unique pattern of neural activity that occurred in your brain when you were experiencing, learning, and even rehearsing something while awake is reactivated during sleep.  This neural replay is thought to facilitate the linking of these connections, cementing them into a single memory.  In fact, the amount of replay that occurs during the consolidation process while you snooze correlates with the amount of memory you’ll be able to recall after you wake up.”    p. 209  ¶1
  Lack of sleep interferes with consolidation of memories.
  Naps can help.
  “A growing body of evidence suggests that sleep is critical for reducing your risk of Alzheimer’s disease....  Most neuroscientists believe that Alzheimer’s is caused by an accumulation of amyloid plaques.  Normally, amyloid is cleared away and metabolized by glial cells, the janitors of your brain.  As a group, these cells form your brain’s sewage and sanitation department.  During deep sleep, your glial cells flush away any metabolic debris that has accumulated in your synapses while you were in the business of being awake.  Deep sleep is like a power cleanse for your brain.  And one of the most important things that is cleared away during your nightly slumber is amyloid.
  With not enough deep sleep “the glial cells won’t have enough time to finish cleaning your brain, and you will wake up in the morning with amyloid left over in your synapses from yesterday.  An amyloid hangover.”    p. 213
  More, more, more in this chapter.  Read it again.  In fact, read the whole book again!

My only complaint of this book is that there are no notes to support her statements.

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The Paris Apartment

by Kelly Bowen 

Lia inherits her grandmother’s Paris apartment.  When she arrives she realizes that it hasn’t been lived in for decades.  Then she notices the paintings, the beautiful dresses, and sees the Nazi magazines.  She immediately suspects that her grandmother was a Nazi sympathizer. 

She arranges for Gabriel Seymour, an appraiser and restorer of old paintings, to view the paintings.  She chooses him particularly because his surname and the name on one of the small paintings is the same. 

This is a book set in two time periods with several characters.  Chapters move from one character and time to another.  We learn that Lia’s grandmother, Estelle Allard, was not a sympathizer but one who helped people escape, and that Gabriel’s aunt, Sophie, worked with Estelle for a while.

This drew me in despite the dual time line and the story being told from different characters’ perspectives.  (I should add that there was some language in difficult circumstances.)

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Every Secret Thing

by Susanna Kearsley

Ohhh, good.  It was a mystery bordering on a thriller.  Kate is a journalist who is in London to cover a national trial.  As she sits outside awaiting the verdict, an older gentleman approaches her and begins a conversation.  Kate is dismissive when he tells her he knows of a murder deserving justice that was committed many years ago.  He asks about her grandmother and tells Kate she has the same eyes, then gives her his card.  Andrew Deacon is his name.  He walks away and is hit by a car and killed.  Kate asks her grandmother about him and the story begins.  Whew!

Quote

“‘I always think they’re rather sad things, photographs, when someone dies.  One is left with the pictures, but none of the stories.’”    p. 55 ¶5

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The Nature of Fragile Things

by Susan Meissner 

Oh so good!  Sophie Whalen is a mail order bride to a man named Martin Hocking, a man who seems to have no interest in her other than that she can take care of his 5-year-old daughter, Kat, and give him the appearance of being married. 

There are so many deceits related to Martin, but they gradually begin to unfold.  This takes place in San Francisco before and after the 1906 earthquake.

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South of the Buttonwood Tree

by Heather Webber

Excellent.  A little magic, a mystery, love of family, learning about not judging.... 

Blue Bishop has been judged by the people of Buttonwood her whole life because of the actions and behavior of her parents, but she persists in doing good things for the people of the town.  She’s a children’s book author and illustrator who wants to adopt a child.  One morning, a baby appears south of the buttonwood tree with a button that says “Give her to Blue Bishop.”  The buttonwood tree has been dispensing wisdom for many years.  Thus begins the story.

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Hamnet. A Novel of the Plague

by Maggie O'Farrell

Exquisite!  Such vivid imagery, such detail about small things, and oh so lyrical.  If only for the beautiful language it would be worth reading.  But the story focuses on William Shakespeare (though never named as such); Anne, called Agnes in the book, who becomes his wife; and their three children, Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith.  We seem to learn more of Agnes and her feelings, thoughts, actions, than of the other characters.  The story is told in two different time-lines –William first meeting Agnes and their youth; and Agnes and the children as they grow.  There are other characters, of course, family members, but I think Agnes is truly the main character.  The reader knows her thoughts, sees her actions, and I related more to her than any of the other characters. 

There is an awful sadness, a sorrow, a grief in the story, especially for Agnes and Judith, when Hamnet dies.  Agnes’s grief is palpable and anyone who has lost a loved-one and feels devastated will identify with Agnes through her grieving process.

William is mostly absent after their marriage; he moves to London, presumably to help his father’s glove business grow, but soon begins writing and producing plays.

There is one open door scene (though not in a bedroom) which was easy to skip over.

I loved this book!

Quotes

“She listens to the string of sounds that comes from his [toddler brother Edmond’s] mouth breathily, as he stirs [the leaves in a wooden bowl he’s playing with]: ‘eff’ is in there, for ‘leaf,’ and ‘ize,’ for ‘Eliza,’ and ‘oop,’ for ‘soup.’  The words exist, if you know how to listen.”    p. 96,  ¶8 end

In a dream Agnes sees her dead mother wearing “...a red shawl knotted over a blue smock....”    p. 128  ¶1

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This TIme Next Year We'll Be Laughing

by Jacqueline Winspear

Excellent!  I loved it.  Winspear grew up in the late 1950s and 1960s in England.  I love the detail about picking hops, oast houses, her parents’ time living in a gypsy caravan, and the other memories she shared of her own childhood and youth.   

Her parents taught her to work and that work would take care of many emotions – anger, sadness, unhappiness.  She had surgery on her eyes when she was young.  Her face was black and blue after the surgery.  When her father saw her, he held her close and told her, “This time next year we’ll be laughing (p.157-8).”  I love the subtle admission that now is rough combined with the strong suggestions throughout the book that things will get better in the future.  The optimism!

Quotes

“We are, all of us, products of our family mythology.  Stories are not only passed down, but nestled in every cell.”    p. 5  ¶2

“Martin Parsons, founder of the Research Centre for Evacuee and War Child Studies at the University of Reading, England, suggests that it takes three generations for an experience of war to work its way through the family system.”    p.30  ¶1

“...It has only been since I began to write this memoir that I have reconsidered the power of storytelling on so many levels.  Of course, we know a story can change even a nation—the stories told by politicians, especially tyrants, dictators and despots, have sent young men and women to perish on battlefields for millennia.  Countries and peoples have been brought to their knees by stories, and equally they have been given the strength to rise up, to endure and to show strength beyond measure.  But as much as stories bring warmth to our days, help us find our voices or work things out, stories—even the ones considered entertaining—can also damage, create doubt, cause an aching distress or a wounding humiliation.  Words have the potential to cause such pain, it’s a wonder the dictionary doesn’t come with a government health warning.”    p, 138-139

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The Girl Who Thought in Pictures. The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin

by Julia Finley Mosca, illustrated by Daniel Rieley

I saw the excellent movie about Temple Grandin (trailer below) a few years before I came across this book at the library.  I knew that Temple was autistic, knew a little about her background and youth, her work and accomplishments with animals, so was interested to read this children's biography about her. 

This book is written in verse and I think it’s really well done.  I think it will be appealing to some children and is a treat introduction to who who Temple Grandin is and why she's different and special. 

I especially liked the point that being different is not being worse.  At the end there is a 2-page spread with fun facts and tidbits from the author’s chat with Temple; another 2-page spread with a time line; and a more detailed biography for adults.

This is the movie trailer for "Temple Grandin."  I watched a presentation by Dr. Grandin a few days ago and she seemed to be very supportive of this movie and its presentation of how she thinks visually.



Here's a brief interview with Dr. Grandin, from CBS News, discussing how to help and support children with autism.



Click here for a list ob Grandin's books.

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Real Clothes, Real Lives. 200 Years of What Women Wore. The Smith College Historic Clothing Collection

by Kiki Smith

This book has beautiful, full-page photographs of clothing from the 1800s to today that everyday women wore.  There is a brief description of each item of clothing and a page or two describing the item, how it was made, when it was worn, and the likely life situation of the woman who may have worn it. 

There are also old photographs of women in similar clothing, newspaper ads and articles, and printed pattern envelopes.  Some of the oldest dresses had visible repairs.  The clothing is organized into categories:  home, public dress, accessories, rites of passage, service, and suits.  Within each category the items of clothing are generally arranged chronologically with the oldest shown first.

I was most interested in seeing and reading about the clothes that were from earlier than my own lifetime: the 1865 work dress, the 1860-1880s home dresses, the 1895 wrappers.  I know that some of grandmothers may have worn similar clothing. 

There are close-ups of some of the clothes but I wish there were more so the details of how each was created or repaired was shown.

Be sure to read the Introduction by Vanessa Friedman.  It explains the rationale for collecting and saving old, worn women’s clothes.  In the Smith College collection, she wrote, “were clothes that were valuable not because they had been created by a famous designer..., or because they belong to famous people..., but because they had been worn out in the process of everyday life by anonymous owners.  Because they were stained, torn, mended, and otherwise flawed, and through those flaws told a story of life and times: families, responsibility, hardship, aspiration.”

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The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive

by Lucy Adlington

Excellent!  In some ways it was hard to read (as in sorrowful) but so worth it.  The author introduces the reader to a number of young, female seamstresses as they grow into adulthood in Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and France and then find themselves prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where they were eventually selected to become seamstresses in a salon for the wives of Nazi leaders.  (I can’t imagine having to do a work I love for people who treat me like vermin.) 

Without being too graphic the author presents the situation of the captives and takes us into the concentration camp, showing the reader several areas of the camp including Kanada, warehouses of looted goods from captured Jews.  It was almost a behind-the-scenes look at some aspects of Auschwitz.

It was interesting to learn how friendships formed and how some prisoners supported each other, creating solidarity.

The book is based on research and interviews with 98-year-old Bracha Berkovic Kohút, and daughters, granddaughters, and other family members of those who were in Auschwitz.

Early in the book the author discussed how fashion can create unity (and to some extent, pride) in a group of people, something I had never thought about.  Think Boy Scout uniforms to military uniforms and even national folk costumes.  Fashion can also create divisiveness.

I came away with two lessons/reminders:

• First, we are all human beings.  We should not let the color of skin, the nationality, the religion of an other individual become a reason to reject, taunt, bully, or in any way harm another person, either physically or emotionally.
• Second, resistance can be manifest in a variety of ways. 
  

More about the book at https://www.timesofisrael.com/sewing-for-survival-the-last-of-auschwitzs-forgotten-dressmakers-dies/

This is a video of the author, Lucy Adlington  who is a fashion historian.  On the video she talks about her research, and how clothing was important to the Germans.  She also shares some background information that isn't in the book.



It's a fabulous book and you will probably came way grateful for your own circumstances and amazed at the resilience of the dressmakers of Auschwitz. 

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The Downstairs Girl

 by Stacey Lee

I loved this book.  The language and writing were beautiful and the story was interesting and insightful.  It is filled with surprising similes.  Written in first person, the story takes place in 1890 in Atlanta where 17-year-old Chinese girl Jo Kuan lives with Old Gin, an older man who took her in when she was a baby.  They secretly live in the basement of the home and print shop of one of the local newspapers. 

At the beginning of the story Jo works in a hat shop decorating women’s hats but is fired because she makes the customers “uncomfortable.”  She returns to work for the wealthy Paynes as a lady’s maid to their haughty daughter, Caroline, who is about the same age as Jo.  The story leads us through mysteries (to learn who Jo’s parents are), romance, surprising challenges, and adventure, all with the thread of discrimination running through it—against blacks, Chinese, and women—and their attempts to overcome it. 

It was just so well and engagingly written.  One thing I will say is that Jo seems older and more mature than any 17-year-old I’ve ever known.  And though published as a teen/young adult book, I think some of the content would be more appropriate for a slightly older audience.

Quotes

Robby speaking. ‘”Sometimes things fall apart so better things can come together,’ he says gently....  “My point is, a blessing loves a good disguise.’”    p. 281,  ¶2, 4

“What is the job of a parent but to teach a child that she has worth so that one day she can transform herself into whatever she wants.”    p. 365 top

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The Lost Spells

by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris

Oh my goodness, what a beauty of a book!  Just exquisite.  It is filled with watercolor paintings of animals, birds, nature.  Each painting is accompanied by a delightful, insightful poem.  Some are a single page, others several pages long. 

There are poems for fox, moth, daisy, jackdaw, jay, gorse, swifts, goldfinch, oak, snow hare, barn owl, heartwood, curlew, egret, grey seal, gannet, thrift, woodpecker, beech, swallow, and silver birch.  I almost think I learned more about the character and attributes of these animals and plants from the poems than from reading descriptions in a science book or online.  I loved, loved, loved jackdaw, thrift, and woodpecker.  All were great, though.

Here's a video showing the pages, but the beauty of the books is created by both images and words (another version of images in the hands of Robert MacFarlane). 



Best to see and read it in person, holding it in your own hands!

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The Last Bookshop in London. A Novel of World War II

by Madeline Martin

Grace and her friend Viv have been best friends since they were children and had always dreamed of moving to London.  When they arrive there as young adults in 1939, it is nothing like they imagined or expected.  They board with Mrs. Weatherford, Grace’s deceased mother’s best friend, at a discount. 

Viv has a (forged) letter of recommendation.  Grace has none, even though she’d worked for years at her uncle’s hardware store.  Mrs. W. to the rescue: she has arranged employment for Grace at a dusty, cluttered, disorganized bookshop.  Grace doesn’t enjoy reading and is not excited about this work.  When she arrives the first day, Mr. Evans, the owner, immediately dismisses her.  Mrs. W. will have none of it and returns to visit Mr. Evans who, the next day, grudgingly acknowledges Grace.  Grace has a good work ethic and a knack for organization.  She begins to put the shop in order.  And then there’s the war, the Blitz, and Grace becomes a warden for the ARP (Air Raid Protection).

This was a great book for putting the reader in the setting of WWII in England with all its limitations and restrictions on citizens—rations, black-out curtains, getting around outside at night without lights, going on little sleep because of the bombings and sleeping in shelters, etc.  And then there was all the dust and debris and the dangers of moving in an environment that was tumbling down.  I realized that while the Germans were trying to obliterate England in order to conquer it, one of the other outcomes (Was it an intentional strategy?) was wearing the people down.  How did the the British survive on so little sleep, with such limited food?  The British are a resilient people!

I keep saying I’m done with WWII books, but I’m glad I read this one.


Quotes

George speaking: “‘Reading is . . . . It’s going somewhere without ever taking a train or ship, an unveiling of new, incredible worlds. It’s living a life you weren’t born into and a chance to see everything colored by someone else’s perspective. It’s learning without having to face consequences of failures, and how best to succeed.” p. 73 ¶5

“As much as she loved reading the story, no one had prepared her for the end being so bittersweet. No one told her finishing the book would leave her so bereft. It was as though she’d said goodby for the last time to a close friend.” p. 115-116

“There was a special scent to paper and ink, indescribable and unknown to anyone but a true reader. She brought the book to her face, closed her eyes and breathe in that wonderful smell.” p. 195, top

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Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame

by Olivia Ford

At the age of 77, Mrs. Jennifer Quinn decides she’d like to enter the Britain Bakes contest.  After all, she’s baked most of her life.  But she keeps her desire and the application process a secret from her husband, Bernard, thinking she wouldn’t get chosen and feeling uncertain about his response.  This leads to his suspicions that she has some medical problems.  There is one other secret she’s kept from him for fear of destroying their solid and loving marriage.

I enjoyed reading this book but the second secret seemed to me an odd addition to the story. 

"It’s strange, she thought, how recipes outlive the people that wrote them and yet they almost bring a part of that person back to life, as if a tiny piece of their soul lives in those instructions.”    p. 3 ¶ last

“Life could take away opportunities, but never your imagination.”    p 95 ¶2

“She studied the photograph of all that Ann and Fred had made [their grandchildren].  Although they were no older than five or six, it struck her that they were little time capsules of all those who came before them, mirrors of their ancestors who had lived through wars and fallen in love and, by a stroke of luck, survived.  That red hair, an aptitude for math, was in fact an age-old gift from someone that they had never met, but without whom they would not exist.”    p. 99, ¶1

“She would never be able to comprehend the strange borrowed time that you experience before bad news hits; the minutes, hours, sometimes days where you reside in a bubble of ignorance, a place where small things still matter, before it is pierced by the needle of perspective.”     p. 216 ¶5

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Home

by Isabelle Simler, translated by Vineet Lal

This is a beautiful picture book, one appropriate for both children and adults, with bright illustrations of homes of various animals, birds, and insects.  I was familiar with some of the animals but others were new to me:  the comet moth, European fan worm, hummingbird, satin bowerbird, case-making caddisfly, diving bell spider, elf owl, Eurasian harvest mouse, red ovenbirds, and many others. 

The illustrations for each animal fills two pages.  They are less illustrations and more drawings.  The colors are rich, deep, and brights, as appropriate for each animal.  Accompanying the drawings are brief poem-like descriptions of the animals and their homes.  At the end of the book is a paragraph about each animal, its locality, and its home. 

I can imagine this book being a good jumping off point for further research into the animals, especially for upper elementary students.

Truly, a beautiful book.

nm