Wonderful Oaxaca

I’ve been in Oaxaca, Mexico, for the last month, enjoying the blue skies, the temperate weather, the delicious food, and the unseasonal (for anyone used to gray winters in the Pacific Northwest) bursts of color. When I’m writing poetry for adults, I get a bit cerebral; writing for children, I allow a little more room for the senses. But Oaxaca reminds me that writing almost always broadens and deepens its effect when it evokes one or more of the five senses. Here are photos from my trip – not over yet! – that involve sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. In Oaxaca, I wake up and tell myself each morning to use my eyes, my nose, my fingers, my ears, my tongue!

A Plate of Christmas Cookies, Kind Of…

My sweet neighbor sent over a plate of Christmas cookies the other day, via her 8-year old son, Henry (who is maybe a foot taller than the last time I talked with him in September as school opened) and her 5-year old daughter, Thea (ditto.) The kids, of course, are even more of a treat than the cookies.

I’m going to offer up my own little plate of “cookies” on Books Around the Table today – links to delicious articles I’ve read in the past month that I want to share. Think of them as gingerbread men, peppermint bark, Mexican wedding cookies, shortbread, chocolate chips, little reindeer and Santas and mittens – sugar cookies with red and green frosting and white piping. Enjoy!

---

Have you seen the New York Times announcement of “Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2022”? I like a lot of them this year — they seem kid-oriented, lots of fun. I went immediately to my library to check them out – and a couple of them are so popular right now that I’m on a waiting list to get them. That’s a good sign, isn’t it? My favorites of the books I found on the shelf and brought home were Yellow Dog Blues, written by Alice Faye Duncan and illustrated by Chris Raschka, and Telling Stories Wrong by Gianni Rodari, illustrated by Beatrice Alemagna. The latter will make kids hoot with laughter. I’d love to be at a read-aloud of that with kids in stitches. Here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/books/review/the-2022-new-york-times-new-york-public-library-best-illustrated-childrens-books.html

from Telling Stories Wrong

Cover of Yellow Dog Blues

---

“An Awe Walk Might Do Wonders for Your Well-Being” – nothing better than fresh air to get you out of the doldrums, clear your head, remind you there’s a lovely world out there, make you feel creative. Here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/well/move/an-awe-walk-might-do-wonders-for-your-well-being.html

---

Do you know the work of the South Korean author-illustrator Baek Heena? She won the 2020 Astrid Lingdgren Award but her prize ceremony was postponed due to the pandemic. The citation about her work says, “With exquisite feeling for materials, looks and gestures, Baek Heena’s filmic picture books stage stories about solitude and solidarity. In her evocative miniature worlds, cloud bread and sorbet moons, animals, bath fairies and people converge. Her work is a doorway to the marvelous: sensuous, dizzying, and sharp.” If your local library doesn’t have any of her books, urge them to purchase a few. Here’s the link to the announcement about her prize: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/82868-baek-heena-wins-2020-astrid-lindgren-award.html

And here is the general Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award page, with the 2021 and 2022 winners – Jean-Claude Mourlevat and Eva Lindstrom: https://alma.se/en/

Baek Heena with some of the figures she uses to illustrate her picture books.

---

“A Fast-Growing Network of Conservative Groups Is Fueling a Surge in Book Bans” – disturbing news. Here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/books/book-bans-libraries.html

---

Tsundoku: That’s the Japanese word for a stack(s) of books you’ve purchased but haven’t read. It comes from the words  tsunde-oku (letting things pile up) and dukosho (reading books). I have a few stacks, to say the least. And here is a wonderful article from Big Think about how important these stacks are when it comes to reminding us that we don’t know everything! https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/do-i-own-too-many-books/

Here is what Maria Popova at Brain Pickings has to say about Umberto Eco’s definition of the “anti-library”: (actually, it’s a review of the book Black Swan by Nassim Taleb, about Eco’s idea.) https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilibrary/

If you want to read about more “untranslatable words” like “tsundoku,” take a look at Lost in Translation: An Iluustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World by Ella Frances Sanders.

---

That’s it for my little plate of holiday “cookies.” Hope you’ve found them delicious, too. Wishing you all the joys of the season!

Contemplation vs. Stimulation

All writers know what a tug-of-war the writing life is – you’re never quite sure whether to prioritize stimulation or contemplation. With the former, you experience the world; with the latter, you make sense of it. During the down time it gets real: cook meals, clean dishes.

I’ve been both off-the-grid (on an island near Martha’s Vineyard) and deep into the grid (NYC) for the last two weeks. The  island has rowboats, it has sheep in the meadow, it has dirt paths leading to beaches with bleached-white whale bones. It has no commercial enterprises. None. Meanwhile, on nearby Martha’s Vineyard, several dozen Venezuelan immigrants were being declared victims of a crime (perpetrated by Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis), so I guess “off-the-grid” is only true up to a point. But in general, the vibe on this particular island is non-vibe. Days spent in contemplation.

New York City, indisputably on-grid, has a 3-story (!!!) M&M souvenir shop, outside of which the question bubbles up: How many M&M souvenirs does any one person need? Key chains, magnets, t-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, wind-up dancing M&M’s, M&M flashlights, M&M phone covers, M&M sheets and pillow cases, M&M pajamas, M&M stadium blankets, M&M onesies. At this level, NYC is a 180-degree turn from the world of the island — it’s ALL commercial enterprise, 24/7.

On the other hand, NYC also has Broadway (both On- and Off- I saw Tom Stoddard’s new play Leopoldstadt and the musical Book of Mormon) and a public library guarded by Patience and Fortitude, two lions sculpted from pink Tennessee marble.  In the streets of the city, you hear many languages spoken by people from many countries. Though the island I was on near Martha’s Vineyard is calm and green, the chaos and energy and diversity of NYC appeal to me just as much. City days aren’t days of contemplation but days of stimulation. Is there anything quite like the thrill of a curtain rising in a majestic Broadway theater?

As I write this, I’m just north of Boston in Lynn, Massachusetts. It’s a smallish blue-collar town. Lots of ponds around, lots of autumn trees currently flaming yellow, flaming orange, and flaming red. Lobster roll restaurants, with “lobster” pronounced “lahbstuh.” The big booming Atlantic Ocean rolling in nearby. Also nearby is Salem, famous for its witch hunts (the real hunts, not the political ones.) Both Lynn and Salem are getting ready for Halloween, putting skeletons on their porches, hanging spider webs rather than hanging “witches,” buying pumpkins to carve. There are no sheep in the meadow, no pink marble lions, no dancing M&M’s. But there are cardinals at the bird feeder and someone paddle-boarding across the pond. This is life at the normal level, the day-to-day level, the cook-and-clean level. And though Lynn is neither off-grid idyllic nor on-grid frenetic, that is, not the stuff of a writerly life, it’s where my daughter and her family live, so it’s perfect for now. I’ve contemplated, I’ve been stimulated. Time now to be with people I love.

Here are half-a-dozen links I think you, as readers and writers, will like:

1. A video game based on Emily Dickinson’s poetry. What??? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/you-can-now-play-emilyblaster-a-video-game-inspired-by-emily-dickinsons-poetry-180980305/
2. “Voices thought lost to history…” An imaginative Irish storytelling site: https://www.virtualtreasury.ie/hidden-stories
3. Bestselling authors describe how they organize their bookshelves. https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/07/28/book-organizing-authors/
4. Ever find anything tucked into the pages of a library book? https://www.npr.org/2022/08/02/1114851706/library-notes-books-collection
5. Are you in a reading slump? Here’s a solution: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/07/11/reading-slump-help/
6. Have you ever bought a book based on the blurbs endorsing it? If yes, this might explain why: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/13/killer-crabs-and-bad-leprechauns-how-the-best-book-blurbs-excite-our-brains

Country Fairs

Caldecott Honor recipient Elisha Cooper’s first book, Country Fair.

This last Wednesday my husband and I went to the Northwest Washington Fair. It’s not the fancy State Fair, but to my mind it’s the perfect size. It’s small enough to see everything without getting worn out, but big enough to have all the magic ingredients: amusement rides, 4-H kids and their animals (horses, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, rabbits), vintage cars on display, hand-sewn quilts, knitted mittens and hats, art work, instructional displays about bee hives, perfectly canned peaches and string beans, flowers and berries from local gardens, kids’s Lego collections, kettlecorn, BBQ everything, cotton candy, gyros, corn on the cob. The Whatcom County Dairy Women sell ice cream. At various small stages there are local clog dancers and magicians and musicians. In the grandstand area, rodeo events. Perfection.

I took some photos and will share them below. Five are of kids’ displays – from vegetable “critters,” to instructions about how to play marbles. And two are of the quilts my husband and I voted for to win the “Viewers’ Choice” ribbon.

During the pandemic, the Fair was cancelled. This is the first time the gates have been open since the summer of 2019, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s one of the highlights of my year (and I’ve written about it before here at BATT.) I feel like the county fair is my local Italian piazza or Mexican market – full of life, full of tastes, textures, smells, sounds, and sights that anchor me to a certain world. In this case it’s not a distant, exotic world but a sweet, familiar one.

If you’re a children’s writer or illustrator and you’re reading this post, consider going to you local country fair to see what kids are passionate about. You’ll find that they’re interested in everything under the sun. And if you’re interested in one of those things, too (soap, honey, Ferris Wheels, Hot Wheels, photographs of dog snouts, the hidden talents and/or fears of chickens) – well, there you go: you’ll have come up with your next book

I sent this photo to my brother, who was school Marble King when we were young. And kids still love marbles! Hooray!

I did not know this! Chickens recognize faces. You learn something every day.

Who can resist an orange octopus?

Important information about the predators of “innocent chickens.”
Who knows? Maybe the adjacent vegetable critter is one?

The traditional quilt we voted for…

…and the wildly modern quilt.

Hope the rest of your summer brings many delights!

Julie Larios

The Music of It

[Works of art throughout this post – altered books and dioramas – are by Dawn Morehead] This one is called The Mad Tea Party.

You can find more here. 

———————————– 

I’m often stopped in my tracks by a bit of overheard conversation in English – something ordinary, something that has a specific way of being spoken aloud. “You’ve gotta be kidding.” We all know just how that sentence sounds, right?

“Go on!”

“I’ll never forget it.”

“He ought to be ashamed.”

“What are you gonna do?”

All the above are turns of phrase that native English speakers probably hear in their heads (reading them right now, for example) exactly as they are said aloud.  Robert Frost called this “sentence sound” (link below) – and he described it as what you hear when someone across a field is talking to you and you can’t really catch the sense of it, but you can hear the music of it. Accusatory, inquisitive, sorrowful – sentences have a sound. How a sentence sounds – a good tool for writers.  

[Cabinets of Curiosity by Dawn Morehead. See more here.]

My interest in the music of a language was sparked again recently by four things. First, I’ve been hearing (unfortunately) a lot of Ukrainian lately – a language I don’t know one word of. It’s being translated by reporters and/or their assistants on the scene of Ukraine’s conflict with Russia.  I can hear the music of it, at least the music of the sorrow or the anger affecting the way it’s said. Without understanding it, I understand it tonally.

Second, the documentary made about Michael Peterson’s trial for murder (The Staircase) shows a test jury listening to the expert testimony of Henry Lee, a forensic scientist well-known for his familiarity with blood evidence. His arguments about Peterson’s innocence were solid and convincing, or so the defense team thought, but the test jurists said they simply couldn’t understand him, “not a word he said.” These were Southerners, perhaps not from towns of tremendous cultural diversity, maybe not used to hearing many people whose first language was not English. It’s true that sometimes your ability to be understood in a learned language depends on your command of its sound qualities – the flow of it, and the emphasis on certain syllables, for example. Knowing the vocabulary of a language is one thing, knowing its music is another. I found Henry Lee easy to understand; but the test jury heard gibberish. To be fair, people who from the United Kingdom might not understand the way it’s spoken in the Deep South.  I’m including a link below to Eudora Welty reading her own short story, “Why I Live at the P.O.” Talk about musical English! But I’m sure some people who have learned “proper” English as a second language would not understand her, “not a single word.” 

Third, I’ve been listening to birds while I’m out in the garden. They have a musical language I don’t understand…but I have fun trying to guess. I’m confident most of the crows are scolding me.  

[A Field Guide to Birds / Dawn Morehead]

Fourth, in terms of not being able to make sense of what you’re hearing, I watched a damaged library copy of a movie I’ve seen before, A Month in the Country, inspired by the novel of the same name by J. L. Carr.  The sound on the library DVD was garbled to the point of unintelligibility; I should have given up and taken it back to the library. But I found it fascinating to hear whole scenes in English – lines and lines of dialogue – where all I could make out, other than an occasional word, was the basic cadence, the rising and falling of it, the music of it.  Like those test jurists I mentioned, or like Frost listening to his neighbor across a field, I wasn’t understanding anything, I couldn’t really make out the sense of it. As adults, we don’t get to experience that very often in our own native tongue. Maybe I’m easily thrilled, since I found it thrilling. And I love nonsense in general. “This is what English sounds like to someone who doesn’t speak it,” I thought as I watched the movie.

In the links this time around, I’m including one site where a singer is pretending to sing in English. You feel as if, with more careful attention, you might be on the edge of understanding it. But you can’t, because the singer is re-creating just the music of how English sounds, not the vocabulary. The vocabulary is gibberish.  

Links today: 

1. Robert Frost on “the sound of sense” and “sentence sounds,” from a letter he wrote to John Bartlett in 1913.  Sometimes I imagine Robert Frost reciting a slightly crusty version of Jabberwocky.
2. Here’s an interesting article about how Russia has dealt with the Ukrainian language. 
3. In 1970, Adriano Celentano released a song that was 99% gibberish, in which he tried to approximate the sound of English. Here it is. Charlie Chaplin does a fair job of going the opposite direction, singing a song in nonsense French-Italian. 
4. Writers who can create a voice that sounds authentically like spoken English – all the cadences, the tonal qualities, the flow, plus all the sense of it, are few and far between.  Hemingway gets cited. His sentences are short, clean, and clear. But my favorite is Eudora Welty. You do have to attune your ear to the way she speaks it, with her soft Mississippi drawl, the same way you do with the English in Downton Abbey.  For a real challenge, try the English spoken in Danny Boyles’s film, Trainspotting! Here is Welty reading her wonderful short story, “Why I Live at the P.O.” 
5. Here’s how teaching herself to write in a new language changed Jhumpa Lahiri’s voice.
6. A great collection of children’s book illustrators form the latest exhibit (“Generations”) at the R. Michelson Gallery. 
7. And speaking of children’s books, here is the 2022 list of award winners from Bank Street School of Education. Congratulations to them. Lots of poetry books included, hurrah!
8. Throughout this post, I’ve included the photos of the work of Dawn Morehead – she does amazing things with altered books. You can find more here. 
9. One last treat in terms of turning the music of our language (book pages) into beautiful objects. Here are three samples, and here’s the link: 

Tea cup by Cecilia levy

Shoes by Cecilia Levy

Boots by Cecilia Levy

Last minute addition: Don’t want you to miss this interesting article from The Smithsonian about ways in which bird song resembles human speech. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/do-birds-have-language-180979629/

—Julie Larios

My Brain on Spring

My brain in winter mode –
Professor Richard Macksey’s home library in Baltimore, MD…

My brain in spring mode: Skagit Valley Daffodils (Edmund Lowe, photographer)

At the coming of spring, I go from mostly INSIDE myself (blanket, book, sofa, the smell of hot cocoa, and a mental image of the personal library. above) to mostly OUTSIDE myself (garden, seed packets, blue sky, the smell of fresh dirt.) Sweet peas (pretty) have been planted; raspberries (yumm) have been transplanted (fingers crossed); sugar snap peas (yumm again) are in; tulips, grape hyacinths and forsythia are blooming under pink cherry and white almond trees. Even my daphne bushes survived the big freezes (multiple) of Winter 2022.

As the weather warms and flowers bloom, I’m inclined to share more. So here are a few links, and my reasons (other than red tulips in bloom) for sharing them:

1. I love the work of local photographer Edmund Lowe (see photo of the Skagit Valley daffodil fields, above.) When I look at his photos I not only see his world, I also hear it, smell it, taste it, touch it. All art is a conjuring of the senses, isn’t it? No matter the medium (including writing!) we want to link our bodies to the story. Here is a link to his website.
2. I want to share Julie Danielson’s examination of Corinna Luykens and her 2017 book, The Book of Mistakes. At Danielson’s blog “Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.” Luykens makes an artist’s case for having fun and letting go of anxieties, specifically those that involve making mistakes with your work. An accidental smudge, a disproportionate head? Serendipitous mistakes, says Luykens, often take you exciting places. And if you’re interested in children’s literature in general, check out Danielson’s blog . It’s not to be missed.

3. Another sharable favorite: Du Iz Tak by Carson Ellis. This is my kind of book, 100%. How did I manage to miss a careful reading of Carson Ellis in all my years with kids books? Her work is relatively new to me, and I’ve had a ball reading it (Home is the most popular, I think, but don’t miss In the Half Room.) Imagine being a fly on the wall when Du Iz Tak was pitched to its editor: “Well, it’s a story told completely in a made-up bug language. No, there’s isn’t a translation; no, there isn’t any explanation. It’s all just bug gibberish.” Of course, the read-aloud inflections and the illustrations provide clues about what these strange words mean. Many picture books stay soft and quiet, but this one makes you laugh out loud. Here’s a link to the Kirkus Review, which locates a deeper meaning. Personally, I’m satisfied with the wordplay.

4. From the Archives: a fascinating look at the life and work of Ursula LeGuin, by Julie Phillips, in the New Yorker a few days after Le Guin died. “An author’s business is lying,” she wrote for the introduction of The Left Hand of Darkness. Reade this article and see if you agree. If you already love Le Guin, I recommend her book of essays, No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters.

 “As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.” (U.LeGuin)

A bit of trivia: The photographer and all three of the authors mentioned in #1-4 live/lived in the Pacific Northwest – Oregon and Washington, west of the Cascade Range. Is it the fresh air we breathe here that keeps our imaginations stimulated? I say yes.

5. Do you know the work of Nicole Appel? Read about her and get a look at what she draws here.

6. Not from the Pacific Northwest but from a part of the world we all have our minds on: the Ukrainian illustrator Maria Prymachenko (several spellings but Wikipedia goes with this one.) Thanks to Jama Kim Rattigan, a Facebook friend, for the heads-up – Jama has been posting many pictures by Ukrainian artists. Below is a piece of Prymachenko’s art. She worked mainly in embroidery and ceramics.

I know we’re holding in our hearts all the people who are suffering in that part of the world right now. Please do what you can to help them – perhaps a donation to UNICEF, for the children?

[Update from Wikipedia; “The Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum, where several works by Prymachenko were held, was burned during the ongoing 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the supposed loss of 25 of her works. However, according to a social media post by journalist Tanya Goncharova, local people were able to save some of Prymachenko’s works from the fire. According to an interview with Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiia Prymachenko, in The Times, ten of her works were saved by a local man who entered the museum whilst it was on fire.” ]

Enjoy the links, and breathe in spring.

—Julie Larios

Link Time

“Anna and Walter Schwarz on Will A. Lowman’s Jackass” (Eliza Schwarz) from the Anacortes Museum’s collection of 70,000 historic photographs.

I’ve decided to focus my contributions to Books Around the Table on links to sites that intrigue me. Some will have to do with kids books, others with writing, others with quirky sparks that might intrigue you as well. If you have links you want to share which do a similar job, I hope you’ll add them via the comments below.

My favorite this time around: The photo pictured above, of two kids on a jackass. It’s from small-town Anacortes Museum’s collection of 70,000 historic images (this in a town with a population of approximately 17,000 people!) newly digitized and put online as a searchable database. Here’s the link: https://anacortes.pastperfectonline.com/randomimages

Want a writing prompt? Find historic photos of a few unrelated people whose faces or circumstances interest you. Imagine a narrative that connects them.

Hope you enjoy these links!

Julie Larios

1. Goodnight Moon’s Margaret Wise Brown was an iconoclast. Who knew? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/02/07/the-radical-woman-behind-goodnight-moon
2. Sometimes, your comfort zone is all about the relative scale of things. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/when-a-cruise-ship-is-as-big-as-its-port
3. ALA Media Award winners 2022 – Newbery, Caldecott, etc.: https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2022/01/donna-barba-higuera-jason-chin-win-newbery-caldecott-medals
4. On teaching your kids to be lazy: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/opinion/teach-children-to-be-lazy.html?referringSource=articleShare
5. Authors talk about their creative process: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/01/20/authors-creative-process/

Mrs. Fry, who ran a bakery in Anacortes

The children of Seid Chee, who was the labor supervisor at the Anacortes salmon cannery.

“Simon’s Wrecking Jalopy in the Marineer’s Pageant Parade” (1935)

Luvera’s Fruit and Grocery, founded in 1918 by Nicholas Luvera of Calabria, Italy. [From the Anacortes newspaper: “Luvera’s supplies 93 per cent of the purse seine fleet with groceries, and enjoys a large part of the waterfront trade. Nothing but the best of everything is the rule at Luvera’s, the first store to install the new R C A Victor radio.”]

The Pleasure of a Book Group

 

   

   

 

   

BOOKS WE READ THIS YEAR

As the end of this sometimes difficult/sometimes hopeful year approaches, I begin to feel a number of New Year’s Resolutions sneaking up on me. I capitalize “Resolutions” because those little buggers need the insistence and ferocity of a capital “R”; my track record with resolutions is not stellar. I often break them by January 2nd. But it’s a new year, so new goals, right?

Some of the goals are about my relationship with my body. I’m 72 and this relationship, like any relationship that lasts decades, includes fondness, irritation, misunderstandings, boredom, and laughter.  Bodies are strange things, no? Frankly, I’ve always been better friends with – and kinder to – my brain. Brains can also wear out, of course – that thought scares me more than mortality.

I don’t want my brain wearing out, and I hear it’s good for brain health to keep the brain active. One resolution I feel coming on is this: READ MORE BOOKS. Not that I haven’t been reading in bits and pieces, but as some of my blog posts suggest, my attention has been brief and scattered. Articles here and there. Headlines, Commentary. Opinions. Reviews. Interviews. Cartoon captions. An essay about the joys of Rome or a googled article about how electrical circuits work. Fluttering and jumping. Snippets and bits.

But I’ve been lazy and undisciplined about books. What’s that about? Pandemic fatigue? I don’t have the answer(s) yet. Might not ever figure it out, but I’m going to try to get the joy back. I remember reading several books a month – even big, generational narratives –  and loving them when I was younger. Would I read One Hundred Years of Solitude now? Probably not, and what a loss that would be. Lately, if a book is long and challenging, and I’m reading it on my own, I abandon it.

Here is my working theory: I need to talk about books with people. Especially novels, which I find, pro forma, challenging. Non-fiction, easy: the real world is intriguing. But fiction? I need to talk about fiction. That way, I can see characters and authorial strategies from a different point of view. If I’ve disliked a novel and someone else has liked it, why would that be? Have I missed something? Have I read carelessly? Have I neglected a good story because I’m too hooked on style? Too hooked on reality, too suspicious of the imagination?

Luckily, I have a group of friends I talk with about books.  Over the last year, the books we’ve chosen have honestly been the only books I’ve read cover to cover. Maybe my resolution to read more books is actually a resolution to pay attention to other books the way I pay attention to the ones I read and discuss with friends.

We’ve been meeting monthly for ten years – Zooming, for the last year and a half. Books we’ve discussed have ranged from classics to recently published books, from old favorites and small gems to big bestsellers. We’ve never established parameters about the way the books would be chosen, haven’t made rules about the way we would talk about them. We simply decided that each person, in turn, would pick out a book that the group would read. Some of the book choices have surprised us – we ended up not enthusiastic about some we thought we would love, and we absolutely loved a few we initially were unsure of (Hannah Kirshner’s Water, Wood and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town – who expected that to become one of our favorites this year?)

Over the last ten years, we’ve read between eight and ten books per year. We’ve turned mixed reactions over and around in our discussions. I’ve come to think of our conversations the same way i think about going to museum exhibits – enjoying them most when I’m with someone who likes a piece that I’ve approached with disinterest. Those familiar questions come out:  Have I missed something? Have I looked at the exhibit carelessly? Have I too often privileged style over substance? Is there something I can learn from this? The person I’m with (often my sister, who studied art in college) invariably knows a few more details than I do about technique, about effect, about effort, about the life of the artist. I listen and become interested. I find new footing. I grow. So it is with my book club.  Without fail, someone adds an observation that gives me a new perspective.

In 2021, we read eleven books. I’ve put their covers up at the beginning of this post. Loved some, disliked others, was bored by some, couldn’t put others down. Looked forward each time to hearing what friends thought of of a story, and why they thought what they thought. I heard people mention things about the book I hadn’t thought about. Loved re-viewing the book after their comments. A new member is joining us this month, and I look forward to getting to know her through books. 

As for the resolution I feel coming on: If I read eleven books this last year, can I put aside the snippets and bits long enough to double that number, or triple it? Can I re-engage with longer reading? Re-engage with novels? Re-connect with more people to get a discussion going? Maybe the bottom line in that resolution is “reconnect with more people.” I moved to a new town not too long ago and barely got settled in – I’m slow when it comes to settling in – before the pandemic began and new friendships went on hold. Maybe it’s time for me to join the local library’s book club.  Make new book friends, keep the wonderful old book friends. And give another old friend, my brain, more of a workout.

Coffee and Something to Read

If you’re reading this first thing in the morning, be sure you make your cup of coffee straightaway. After all, it’s National Coffee Week.

Now sit down and, as you drink your coffee, pretend you’re sitting in the extravagant Caffe Gilli in Florence. Go ahead, make it a cappuccino. Have a croissant, too. Caffe Gilli doesn’t cost a penny when you’re daydreaming.  

In your daydream, you’re sitting at the table on the right, nearest the clock.

As you sip, you need something to read. Here is something wonderful – an interview with the author/illustrator Maria Kalman posted this week on the Art of the Picture Book website.

When you finish, you can tell yourself you just had the perfect morning, and it will be true. Coffee and Kalman.

If you want a second cup, pour yourself one. This time pretend you’re in the Caffe Greco in Rome, founded in 1760, the spot where John Keats drank his morning tea.

With your second cup, try the two short videos (below) of storyteller Patricia McKissack. They are excerpts (can’t find the whole lecture) from her 2010 Spencer Shaw talk at the University of Washington. The highlight for me: She reads a poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar in the style of a jump-rope rhyme (Video 2.) In the first video, she talks about her storytelling coming from inquisitiveness – she wants answers, but she wants good stories, too. And can she tell a story! – as could her grandparents and her mother – I wish I’d been at that lecture to hear her.

By the way, the Spencer Shaw Endowed Lecture this year will be given by author/ illustrator Yuyi Morales. You can hear the lecture free – live streaming on YouTube October 14th at noon PST – here’s a link.

McKissack Video 1 “I write because I have an inquisitive mind.”

McKissack Video 2 Jumping Rope to Paul Lawrence Dunbar

[Note: When you watch the McKissack videos, be sure to move the bar back to the beginning – for some reason they’re opening for me mid-way through.]

And if you need a shot of Caffe Greco’s interior for your daydreaming, here it is. Sigh.

You’re sitting at the table next to the statue.

Hither and Thither, Bits and Pieces

One Heck of a Pickle.

This post constitutes what is called a “mixed bag.” It’s summer, and as far as I’m concerned, that means my mind can wander. And my mind usually wanders hither in bits, thither in pieces. Here are seven of those pieces.

1. Summer: the beach, family, friends, and a picnic of hot dogs, corn on the cob, potato salad. And though I’m holed up inside my house due to dangerous heat and unhealthy air quality levels (the smoke from forest fires has finally descended on the suffering, over-cooked Pacific Northwest (scary orange sun, eerie orange moon) I’ve spent a bit of the morning making potato salad, heavy on the mustard and dill pickles. Bought eight ears of corn from a farm stand yesterday. Saw friends last night, all of us vaccinated, fingers crossed that was okay, because it was glorious to sit around a table with them and laugh and reminisce.  Summer!
2. Summer: nonsense and play. While making the potato salad this morning, I realized that if I totally followed my own writing advice to play more, be goofier, dive into nonsense, I would write a book about dill pickles. Maybe format it as a blog post from a young child who loves everything tart and sour – dill pickles, sauerkraut, rhubarb.  Or maybe just write a few poems about tart edibles for a collection of jump rope rhymes.
3. Jump rope rhymes. Hmmmmmmm. What rhymes with pickle? The list turns out to be more substantial than I thought.  Bicycle, tickle, fickle, nickel (and pumpernickel!), prickle, popsicle, icicle, and, of course, motorsickle.  Practically a sonnet’s worth. Nothing Shakespearean. Maybe a limerick.  You know what they say, follow your passion. Even if it’s a passion for poetry and pickles. 
4. If you didn’t see the high jump during the Olympics, be sure to look it up online. There was a golden moment at the conclusion of the jump, after both finalists (good friends from Qatar and Italy) cleared 2.37 meters. The jumper from Qatar, rather than agreeing to a “jump-off,” asked an official if he and his friend could share the gold medal – and the official said yes. The ballet of the jumps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjSCT97GSsA) was gorgeous, and the friendship that showed up at the end of the competition was even more so.

One Heck of a Friendship

5. Writers: If you haven’t seen The Father yet, see it. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman; they are brilliant. Watch it once to get the story (a doubled and unsettling perspective on Alzheimer’s) and once to study the character development on the part of the screenwriter and the craftsmanship on the part of the actors. In both cases, this is a lesson in “less is more.”

One Heck of a Movie

6. In case you ever doubted it, climate change is real. Here’s an image from the Seattle Times today. Smoke from the wildfires, temperatures from Portland to Seattle in the mid-90’s. Air quality officially “Unhealthy.” Third summer in a row.

One Heck of a Mess.

7. Last but definitely not least, kudos to friend Erik Talkin, whom I got to know at Vermont College of the Fine Arts. His picture book Lulu and the Hunger Monster just won a Social Justice Literature award from the International Literacy Association. “The SJL Award seeks to recognize outstanding books that address social responsibility towards individuals, communities, societies and/or the environment and which invite reflection and socially responsible action by the reader.” That’s a wonderful goal. And a well-deserved award, Erik!

One Heck of An Award

That’s all from me this time around. Autumn approaches, and maybe my wandering mind will settle in for a period of linear thinking….? Meanwhile, summer: Indulge yourself in the misc.’s and etc’s of the season.