Courage

Every so often I give myself a news fast. I say "give myself," because whenever I do this, it is a relief, a little gift to my spirit to not know what's going on in the world for a week or so. 

I like to be informed, and I find politics and such things interesting, addicting even, but sometimes my spirit needs a break. 

Something very interesting always happens when my news fast ends. I flip the news back on as I'm driving around and I find I haven't missed much. Particularly regarding politics and the economy, what I'm hearing sounds exactly the same as it did the week before. 

I had one awesome year where I hardly ever drove anywhere. I don't know how that happened, but I maybe had one car trip to make a day for kids, and sometimes not even that. I hardly ever heard the news during that year, and the following year, when I got stuck again in a routine of lots of driving, I started listening to the news on a regular basis again. 

And the same phenomenon was true. The news is generally the same day in and day out, and the news is stressful. 

I flipped on the radio yesterday as I was driving and heard the end of a story about a 34 year-old man who was too frightened to move away from home. It was "safe harbor" in a world that was too scary for him to face. 

The world is scary—I think sometimes the news makes it seem ten times scarier than it is—but regardless of whether or not these scary things are real or just perceived or a mixture, it is going to take courage for our children to get up every day and face jobs and insurance and taxes and terror and politics and schools and so forth. It is going to take courage for them to want to start families and bring children into this uncertain place. 

I've been thinking about courage and would love and book recommendations you have—from picture books to YA—that deal with the issue of courage. I want to tell my children stories that show them courage can be gained and used to get through the inevitable struggles of this life. 

Because there will be struggles. There just will. And stories can be the things that help our kids get through them. That's a large part of why stories have been told in every ancient civilization—not just for entertainment. 

Here are some of my favorites I'm going to share with my kids. Read any of them, and I think you'll be inspired by the courage of others.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (the movie and the book)

To Destroy You Is No Loss: the Odyssey of a Cambodian Family by JoAn Criddle (this will be tough to find at the library, but you can buy it used, and I can, with confidence, say that it is worth it—you will never regret reading this book). (14 and up)

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Septys (14 and up)

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (9 and up)

My Book of Life By Angel by Martine Leavitt (14 and up)

Heck Superhero by Martine Leavitt (12 and up)

A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck (10 and up)

Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson (10 and up)

I'm in love—

—with a new book.

I could not put this book down, starting it on Wednesday, pouring through it all day yesterday. I generally have a strict rule that between the hours of four and eight, I am nothing but a mom. I'm not a writer, I'm not a reader, I'm not anything but someone who makes food (hmm...), gives kids attention, reads to them (for them, not for me), helps with homework, plays games—someone who is completely focused on five little people. I normally don't do any reading at all until after nine at night.

But I did a lot of hiding in the bathroom yesterday. Then I hid in Calvin's room. Then I hid in Lucy's.

I could not put this book down.

Granted, I couldn't put Ruta Sepetys's first book, Between Shades of Gray, down, but this book was maybe, maybe, even better. Okay, it was better. Maybe even way better.

Out of the Easy is in some ways a rougher book than Between Shades of Gray. They are both historical fiction, the first about Lithuania in the first half of the 20th century, and Out of the Easy about post World War II New Orleans. The Big Easy. New Orleans at its roughest and dirtiest.

Josie's mother is a prostitute. Josie spends lots of time in brothels with murderers, madams, prostitutes, the mafia. Some parts of this book, the subject matter itself, might make people uncomfortable, and I would not recommend handing it off to your 14-18 year old until you've read it yourself, but Ruta Sepetys has a gift. She has many gifts, of course, including writing riveting stories full of depth and the best characters, but she also has a gift for taking the sensational and making it real. This is not a book meant to titillate or be scandalous. She handles even the prostitution delicately—you see its ugliness without having to really see anything.

I had to know what happened to Josie. I had to find out her future. I had to find out what happened to her friends. I had to know which boy she ends up with. I had to know.

The book already has two starred reviews (from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly), I'm pleased to say, but this was a five-star book for me. Pick it up when you have time to get lost in a world completely different from anything you've experienced before (hopefully!). Pick it up and rejoice that authors like Ruta Sepetys exist and they are young enough to write more!

My favorites from last year that you grown-ups might love

I have seven novels I loved from last year. They are my award winners, and I really think they have broad appeal and are worth putting on your reading list for this year. I've blogged about them, some more than once, but I wanted to record them all together, right here, so first of all, I can purchase them when the opportunity arises (I only own two of them), and secondly, so you can beat those midwinter doldrums with a fabulous book you've never read before!

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys


Seraphina by Rachel Hartman


The Dark Unwinding by Sharon Cameron


Bluefish by Pat Schmatz


The Unfortunate Son by Constance Leeds


A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle


Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein


Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World by Sy Montgomery


Oops. This is eight. And this isn't a novel. But I loved it and you should read it.

A Little Bookroom

If you've ever doubted the power of books to save and make a life, read this:

My Father's Books by Luan Starova. 

At the very least, it will motivate you to make books more important in your life. Not just urging your kids to do their reading homework every night, but using books to define your own life, and letting them see that definition every day.

Here is a snippet from another favorite book of mine, a wonderful book of short stories, magical tales, originally published in the early 1900s. It's the introduction written by the author, Eleanor Farjeon, and I think of it every day when I find books EVERYWHERE in our house. In the bathroom. On the floor. On the couches. Under beds. In the room I affectionately call "The dungeon," where the bikes are stored and the dogs sleep (????). This passage from the introduction demonstrates the joyous (if messy) life of a family that loves to read.

"In the home of my childhood there was a room we called ‘The Little Bookroom’. True, every room in the house could have been called a bookroom. Our nurseries upstairs were full of books. Downstairs my father’s study was full of them.  They lined the dining-room walls, and overflowed into my mother’s sitting-room, and up into the bedrooms. It would have been more natural to live without clothes than without books. As unnatural not to read as not to eat.

Of all the rooms in the house, the Little Bookroom was yielded up to books as an untended garden is left to its flowers and weeds. There was no selection or sense of order here. In dining-room, study, and nursery, there was choice and arrangement; but the Little Bookroom gathered to itself a motley crew of strays and vagabonds, outcasts from the ordered shelves below, the overflow of parcels bought wholesale by my father in the sales-rooms. Mush trash, and more treasure. Riff-raff and gentlefolk and noblemen. A lottery, a lucky dip for a child who had never been forbidden to handle anything between covers. That dusty bookroom, whose windows were never opened, through whose panes the summer sun struck a dingy shaft where gold specks dance and shimmered, opened magic casements for me through which I looked out on other worlds and times than those I lived in: worlds filled with poetry and prose and fact and fantasy...

Crammed with all sorts of reading, the narrow shelves rose halfway up the walls; their tops piled with untidy layers that almost touched the ceiling. The heaps on the floor had to be climbed over, columns of books flanked the window, toppling at a touch. You tugged at a promising binding, and left a new surge of literature underfoot; and you dropped the book that had attracted you for something that came to the surface in teh upheaval. Here, in the Little Bookroom, I learned, like Charles Lamb, to read anything that can be called a book. The dust got up my nose and made my eyes smart, as I crouched on the floor or stood propped against a bookcase, physically uncomfortable and mentally lost. I was only conscious of the story I was reading, and my heart which was in the story as well." 

There's more to that wonderful introduction, but I will stop there.

Do we want our children to remember our nice, sparkly furniture or our super clean and organized shelves? 

I hope my children can say many things about me when I am gone and they are old. I'm sure they will say I was not a great cook, because I am not. I am terrible. I'm sure they will say I was not the best housekeeper, because I am not. I am terrible. (Sam came downstairs as I was writing this and asked me if I've washed the mattress cover Calvin threw up on last night. "No," I said. "Do you think we have to?" And I was serious. Sam said, that, um, yes. We probably should.) 

But I hope they will say, "Books were everywhere in my home. We ate, drank, and breathed books. Mom wanted us to know about the world, about good and bad, about the lives of others and the lives of incredible, imaginary people. She wanted us to expand our minds and our experiences, every, every minute. So our house was messy. But it was a Little Book-house. And, in the end, we were happy there."

Rewards and Some serious survival

If you teach first grade (possibly in a school in Apex, North Carolina) and you want to reward your students for good behavior, you have some choices.

You can tell them that, because they've been so good, instead of regular morning work every Monday, they can have a special treat, such as doughnuts. Except you can't do that because of sugar. You can tell the kids they can do their homework early so they don't have to take it home, except you can't really do that because even in first grade kids are supposed to have homework every night. You can tell the kids they can go on the computer and play games. You can do that, because technology is educational. You can tell the kids they can watch PBS Kids for half an hour because TV is sort of technology, which is educational...

Or you could say, "You can read! You can read WHATEVER YOU WANT, no matter the level. You can wear pajamas to school. You can bring your favorite (fill in the blank). We can lie on the floor and have a miniature read-a-thon."

You can make reading a reward. What does that say when we make reading a treat, a treasure, a reward?

It says a whole lot about what the adults who are doing the rewarding consider a reward.

What are the rewards in your homes?

In ours, food is a huge reward. For example, right now, if the kids pick up after themselves, they can have cereal in the morning instead of oatmeal. There is probably something damaging in this—they will probably have cereal issues as adults—but it's working! They are picking up after themselves! So the end justifies the means. Right? Right?

Do I make reading a reward?

What about with the things we purchase? Do we say, if you earn this, you can download ten songs off Itunes? Or do we say, if you earn this, you can have three brand new books, straight off Amazon. Hardcover and everything.

If the family accomplishes something great, do you have a giant Friday night read-a-thon? Where everyone gets sleeping bags and pillows and popcorn and you read in groups or read on your own until ten o'clock at night?

We did that once. It was a disaster. There was fighting and very little reading. Everyone went to bed at eight o'clock. Including me and Sam.

This was over a year ago, and we haven't done it since, but I'm thinking we'll try again. Not because I think it will work now because they're older. I'm not sure it will ever "work." But they will get a message I can't give them any other way. That reading is a reward. One of the best rewards. And it's a family affair, worth popcorn and sleeping bags and mess.

If I don't do this, my children are going to think the best reward in the world is cereal or PBS Kids. And it's not. It's really, truly (really, truly!) not.

Onto some book recommendations...

If your middle grade boy (child) likes these:

And you want them to branch out to something just as exciting, just as full of adventure and the wild, but perhaps a little better written...

Give these a try—


Dogs of Winter by Debbie Pryon


Wild Life by Cynthia DeFelice (Calvin really loved this one—quick read, but so well done)


Legend of the Ghost Dog by Elizabeth Cody Kimmell

And if you or your child has not read this,


Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner

Please fix that right now. Everyone should read this book. I envy the person who gets to read this book for the first time. Read Stone Fox this weekend during your giant family read-a-thon because the house is clean or they did a great job on the chores that week or just because. Just, just because.

Expanding

These picture books will expand you and your children. They will make you think. You will finish the book in a different place from when you began.

You will never be the same. I hope. Please give them a try!

Infinity and Me by Kate Hosford



Little Bird by Germano Zullo



Abe Lincoln's Dream by Lane Smith



House Held Up By Trees by Ted Kooser


Jimmy the Greatest! by Jairo Buitrago



The Emily Sonnets: The Life of Emily Dickinson




And this is not a picture book. It's a YA Biography of the Bronte sisters, but I found it truly fascinating. If you love Jane Eyre (I do) or Wuthering Heights (I do not), you will definitely find this interesting, and it was such a quick read, I read it in a night.

The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne by Catherine Reef