So Many Books; So little Time

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears

by Verna Aardema

c. 1975

I like this book. It’s a West African tale retold. It’s also a Caldecott Medal winner. But the reason I like it is that it shows cause and effect. The mosquito tells a tall tale (read “lie”) and so upsets the iguana that he puts sticks in his ears so he can’t hear any more lies. By doing that he offends the snake by not saying good-morning. The snake goes down the rabbit hole because he assumes the iguana means to harm him and scares the rabbit who makes the crow assume there is trouble afoot and she alerts the monkey who accidentally kills a baby owlet. The mother owl is so upset that she won’t wake the sun so it becomes a perpetual night.

The message to children here is, of course, that lies don’t just affect us and that once we tell them, we can’t control what will happen to them nor what kind of damage they will do. Of course King Lion gets to the bottom of what happened but that didn’t bring back the baby owlet nor did it take away the retribution the mosquito has felt ever since.

It’s a piece of fiction to be sure but it does have a decent message to tell to children. It also introduces African literature. Interesting illustrations that can be looked at over and over again and also sound effects built into the story. This one is a keeper.

The Robbery at the Diamond Dog Diner

The Robbery at the Diamond Dog Diner

By Eileen Christelow

c. 1986

This is another Reading Rainbow selection and another stupid book.

In this work, we have a diner where the female owner wears diamonds to serve the patrons. We also have the rumor of diamond robbers–wearing blue hats, driving a yellow truck and named Shorty and Slim. Amazingly, unnoticed by our main characters, a yellow truck pulls up with two “people” inside–one slim, one short, both wearing blue hats. HMMMM.

Meanwhile, one of the people inside comes up with a plan to hide the diamonds her friend wears–hollow out eggs, put the diamonds inside and seal them up. Then no one will think of looking in the refrigerator. And they might not have except that the one with the idea also had a big mouth and blabbed in the hearing of the slim and short men with blue hats and the yellow truck.

I’m not sure what the author is trying to prove here with this work. It just comes over as being incredibly silly. And maybe that was the point. But then I have to ask, what is Reading Rainbow trying to prove?

This has become a running gag around my house the last couple of days. Yes, everything turns out all right in the end but it’s definitely silly and then some.

Smoky Nights

Smoky Nights

by Eve Bunting

c. 1994

This Caldecott Medal winner is a beautiful book with a difficult concept.

Daniel watches from his window with his mother while looters raid his neighborhood. He is afraid and confused and his mother explains as best she can. Finally the looters leave their neighborhood and his mother tucks Daniel and his cat Jasmine into bed with her with just his shoes off. She tells him to sleep but he thinks he can’t. Then he is shaken awake by his mother and he and the rest of his neighbors are fleeing a fire in their apartment building. Daniel wants to look for his cat but is told she has already left and to get out of the building.

Once on the street, he tells the firemen about his cat and is led off to a shelter with his mother and neighbors including Mrs Kim who owns a market his mother won’t shop at because it’s “better to buy from our own people.” Mrs Kim also has a cat who fights with Daniel’s cat.

At the shelter, Daniel is given hot chocolate and a bed and his mother has him lie down. Then the fireman comes in with his cat and Mrs. Kim’s cat. The two cats were hiding together from the fire. Through the cats, Daniel and his mother and Mrs Kim learn what it means to get along. And through the fire, the cats learn to get along. And through Daniel’s mother, Daniel learns what goes through looters’ heads.

This is a concept book about intolerance and tolerance. It’s not expecially preachy but gets the point across. The illustrations are done in 3-D by David Diaz and then photographed making it a beautiful book to hold in your hand. This book should be shared with care given as to the needs of the child. It may make some children more fearful and it may ease the thoughts of others.

Sports Pages

Sports Pages

by Arnold Adoff

c. 1986

This is an unusual book. Just to be certain, I showed it to my husband who used to teach English and asked him if it was written in Free Verse. He said that’s what he would call it and he would also call it awful.

And I would agree–except that it is a great way to introduce Free Verse Poetry and also for kids to learn a lot about a lot of different sports all at once. I can’t take credit for the last thought, though, that came from my seventeen-year-old son.

This is a book of poetry about sports. It covers soccer, tennis, football, basketball, baseball, wrestling, gymnastics, track, biking and horsebackriding. It looks at it from the participants point of view and they are sometimes winners and sometimes not and sometimes on the bench and sometimes spectators. This takes you out into the middle of the action and lets you experience it without ever leaving home.

On the other hand, with it being in free verse, there are times when it’s extremely hard to read such as when the word parallel was written on three different lines as in:

par

all

el

In these cases it is annoying and difficult to understand and becomes a concept book.

Poetry is concept, though and so the experience is not lost. When it comes to Free Verse, this book takes poetic license to the maximum. So, if you need to show extreme examples of Free Verse or if you want to introduce what it feels like to play a sport or if you just want to give children the idea of describing their feelings in a different way, this book has some value.

A Reading Rainbow Selection.

Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge

by Zachary Kent

c. 1988

This work brings out a lot of the personality of “Silent Cal” who wasn’t so silent after all but was incredibly shy. He was a listener and a thinker and not a talker nor a brilliant conversationalist. He preferred to say what he meant and be done. He had a very dry sense of humor but a quick wit. When one lady gushed that she had enjoyed his speech so much that she had stood up during the entire thing, he replied, “so did I.”

Calvin Coolidge became president upon the death of Warren G. Harding and was sworn in by his father–the only president to have been so. He was a shy Vermonter who lost his mother and sister at a young age. He was humble as well as shy and wanted only “to be of some use in this world.” He practiced law but also served as Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Massachusetts before becoming Vice-President and President.

Coolidge handled the Teapot Dome scandal and Prohibition and reorganized the FBI. There is speculation that he refused to run for re-election because he knew the stock market was going to crash but in all likelihood, he was emotionally bankrupt from the loss of his son Calvin Jr.

Silent Cal died as he lived–of a silent heart attack in his bathroom while shaving. He was president by accident or luck and served our nation at what was possibly the most prosperous time in our country’s history–or at least the time when people felt life was the best.

This is a decent work with lots of pictures. Longish chapters but the text moves along nicely. It makes you want to dig deeper into the life of this quiet and virtually unknown president.

Help! I’m Laughing and I Can’t Get Up

Help! I’m Laughing and I Can’t Get Up: Fall-Down Funny Stories to Fill Your Heart and Lift Your Spirit

by LIz Curtis Higgs

c. 1998

I happened into this book almost by accident. A friend from church was moving and offered those of us who helped her our choice of selected books she was discarding and I picked this one up. I’m a sucker for good Christian humor books and I know my friend to have excellent taste in humor. So, it came home but then it went on the shelf–until….I needed to have a book finished by the end of August and the one I was reading wasn’t going very well. Humor is always a fast read because who can stop laughing????

This book is funny but it isn’t just funny. It’s filled with insight as to why we laugh, what we laugh at and how we laugh. Liz Curtis Higgs dissects the laughing style of what we’re laughing at and the laugh we use and even the person we are inside that makes us laugh the way we laugh. And still the jokes are funny. She dissects herself too and finds out why she does humor and not “deep theology” like she would like to. She is an encourager and her gift of encouragement is humor. She can’t tell a joke (she says) but she can make us laugh–on stage and off.

This book is still in print and should always be in print. It’s 249 pages of insight and humor and laughs that all of us need again and again. Time for me to check out some of her other books–like all of them. We all need to laugh more. We may not live longer, but then again, we might.

On The Edge

On the Edge

Published in Outdoor Life

c. 1999

Believe the picture on the front. This is an exciting book. Unlike If Nature Calls….Hang Up! this offering from Outdoor Life brings the reader to the edge of his or her seat. These are the stories of survival that amazed the survivors, and their rescuers and their original readers and are timeless today.

Not all the stories in the collection are survival stories, though. There is “I Had to Have Moose” which chronicles the survival of a single mother. “The King of the Swamp” is a tale of an alligator from nature’s point of view. “The ‘Lion-Man’” is a tale of African medicine men seeking to keep hold over their tribes. “Last of the Mountain Men” is a tale of meeting a man who knew animals better than people.

By far the most and least satisfying story included is “Africa’s Meanest Game” by Fred Bear of Bear Archery fame. Most satisfying because of the tale he tells and the way in which he tells it and least because he promised a sequel which was not included in the collection.

All of the stories are well-written and so timeless you wonder how they could take place today until you reach the end of the story and find they happened 30, 50 or even 70 years ago. These are stories to read by the fire on a cold winter night when things seem totally dull and boring. Well worth the money and the time to read.

Warren G. Harding

Warren G. Harding

by Linda R. Wade

c. 1989

This Encyclopedia of Presidents’ offering is much better than the last one. This still presents a positive perspective of the president but as he is shown positively, the scandal that rocks his memory, The Teapot Dome, is at least mentioned and while it is acknowledged that it involved his friends, the author does state that there is no evidence that the president himself knew what was going on.

Born Warren Gamaliel Bancroft Winnipeg Harding, he was primarily a newpaperman before becoming a politician. He was a teacher briefly and always interested in politics but only entered the political arena at the behest of friends like many of the presidents. As president, Harding had an incredibly diverse cabinet though most of the decisions that were made in his administration seem to have been made around the poker table involving his friends, some on the cabinet and others not, and out of his knowing.

Harding came to the presidency after World War I, during a time when the United States needed to close out that part of its history. His inauguration was the first to have the president ride in an automobile, the first to be held on a specially built portico at the Capitol, and possibly the only one to not have an inaugural ball. Harding was the president to ask for and preside at the burial of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetary. Incredible photos of the event are included in the book.

Harding is one of our presidents who died in office and one of the few who died of natural causes–in his case, probably pneumonia and exhaustion. No doubt he saw the coming arrests and convictions of his friends but he didn’t live to see it or to be a part of it. Wade does a nice job of covering a lifetime complete with scandal but without spending undue time on it.

Kate Shelley and the Midnight Express

Kate Shelley and the MIdnight Express

by Margaret K. Wetterer

c. 1990

Here’s another true story for kids to read. This one has adventure, prayer, and suspense along with truth in it.

A young Irish immigrant, Kate Shelley’s mother suffered from extreme fear. On this particular night a horrible rainstorm took out a bridge and a train engine, trapping two railroad men in the roaring water, clinging to trees. Their only hope is 11 year old Kate Shelley who leaves her mother and siblings to cross another bridge in the dark that she is scared to cross in the daytime. She must do this by crawling as she has lost the light in her lantern and she knows there are missing boards.

Kate is racing against time as the Midnight Express is rushing toward the bridge that is out and Kate must reach the station in time to send the word by telegraph to stop. Does Kate make it in time?

Well, of course she does. Well researched and very well told by Margaret K. Wetterer. All Reading Rainbow books should be this good. Probably not a good book to read on a stormy night at bedtime, however.

Fearless

Fearless: Building a Faith That Overcomes Your Fear

by Cheri Fuller

c. 2003

I originally bought this book for the cover. I was intrigued by the thought of being fearless to the point of sitting on top of a cliff. Then I started reading the book and one of my best friends, Snail, wanted to know what I was reading it for since I was one of the most fearless people she knew.

Everyone has fears. We don’t want to admit we have fears because we are human and the society in which we live tells us that we need to have no fear but to be in charge. This book tells us how to have no fear because we have put God in charge and taken ourselves out of the way. Cheri Fuller uses her own life, the lives of friends and family and the lives of those in terrorist situations to show us how to completely let go of every ounce of fear we have.

The book is written in 14 chapters and an epilogue that no one should miss. She starts by asking us to face our fear, showing the high cost of fear, the greatness of God, and how we need to focus on the truth and move from panic to peace–that’s five chapters! She doesn’t give outlines but baby steps of moving along from fear to freedom. Chapter 6 is Acceptance: The Door to Peace. Then she moves into the meat of the matter with how to overcome fears about our children, finances, relationships, flying, fears from our childhood, fear of failure, fears about our health, and the ones we face in the midst of disasters.

Nothing is left out and nothing is white-washed. We live in fear and here is a way to move beyond fear to Freedom in Christ. Includes a scripture referenced study guide and ideas of journaling and making a peace packet to carry along as we travel with the fears we seek to leave behind. This book needs to be read by everyone and by some of us more than once. This was the second time through for me and I’m not ready to part with it yet.

This book is hard to find which is a real shame as it really should be on the bestseller list.