Word-of-Mouth. Doing My Part.

According to bestselling author Ken Follett, his epic book, The Pillars of the Earth was a word-of-mouth hit. Not necessarily well-reviewed, practically dismissed as folly by some, Pillars, the story of the building of a mighty Gothic cathedral, went on to become an international bestseller that got people talking...and the conversation continues. Now I'm just doing my part to strongly recommend this grand novel.

The book came out nearly 20 years ago.  Recently, someone told me it was the best book he'd ever read. Only 100 pages in, I can see why. Follett begins by transporting the reader to the year 1135 and he does so masterfully. So instantly engrossed was I, I found myself yearning for the days when I lived in New York and so enjoyed my subway-reading time. But, hark! I found the solution -- the book on cd! I can attest, read or spoken, Follett's words will move you. His characters are so fully-formed and so real...I have chuckled, cringed, and wept on their behalf (and remember, I've only just begun this massive tome).

...got to go. It's time to leave for work. My chariot and story await. It may be a short commute...but thanks to Follett, I love the company, and I don't mind if there's traffic.

 

This time, it's also personal

Sunday's Book Discussion. Historic.

When we meet tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. for our Fall Book Discussion Series and Jordon leads the talk about The Garden of Last Days, there's certain to be discussion of the pre 9/11 setting of the novel. There will also be discussion of Jordon's personal Dubus history. Jordon knew the author's father, Andre Dubus many years ago .When Janet and I went with Jordon this past summer to hear Andre (III) speak, it was a reunion of sorts...Jordon last saw the author more than 40 years ago!  

Pennies Into Gas; Helping your child understand our tough economic times

photo by Flickr user Stargonautone

A young girl asked me for books about tornadoes last week. She wanted to know how they work so that she wouldn't be afraid of them anymore. Books can provide a safe space for children to learn about something affecting their lives and explore their fears. How many of you have used books to help children conquer their fears of monsters under the bed? Well, now might be a good time to break out the books about financial crisis, poor economy and recessions.

Over at Slate, there is a great short piece and accompanying slide show called, "Mom, What's a Credit Deafult Swap?" They suggest a few titles of books for your children to read or for you to read together. I've included the titles available at our library as well as a few more below.

Children are very perceptive and can get stressed out about the same things you do. Imagine how scary words like depression, recession and financial crisis mut sound to them.  You can help them explore this topic and just like the little girl who is not longer afraid of tornadoes, your child will be able to bravely face the world knowing their family's cupboards will always be filled with love (Ramona and her Father by Beverly Cleary).

 

For Older Children:

 

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney; published in 1881,  this landmark book details the struggles of the Pepper kids who "are so dirt-poor they have to mend their broken stove using part of an old boot" yet remain positive and optomistic as they try to help their bankrupt single mother.

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder; this classic children's book was oroginally published during the Great Depression. People seemed to take solace in the extreme hardships the Ingalls family faced.  Like Five Little Peppers, the kids strive to please and help the parents through the difficult times. Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry by Mildred Taylor; delving beyond mere poverty, 10 year-old Cassie's family faces prejudice and hate in their Great Depression era story. This story won the Newbery Medal in 1977 and remains just as powerful today as it was then. Ramona and her Father by Beverly Cleary: In all the Ramona books, there is an underlying theme of tough times. The Quimbys often scrimp and pinch, but in this story, Ramona's father loses his job. His depression results in tremendous anxiety and fear in the children, especially Ramona.  Ramona gives voice to fears that many children today may have and shows us the inner workings of a child's desire to help when their parents and family are struggling. We worry about our kids...and they worry about us too.
       
 Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse: In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression. Winner of the Newbery Medal in 1998.  How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O'Connor: Living in the family car in their small North Carolina town after their father leaves them virtually penniless, Georgina, desperate to improve their situation and unwilling to accept her overworked mother's calls for patience, persuades her younger brother to help her in an elaborate scheme to get money by stealing a dog and then claiming the reward that the owners are bound to offer. Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor: Addie and her mother live in a small tralier with no steady income. Addie makes her own dinners with next-to-nothing in the cupboards and holds on to hope that things will get better.  Amber was Brave, Essie was Smart by Vera B. Williams: An absolutely heartbreaking story told through poems and pictures about two sisters who hold each other up even when their bellies are empty.

 

 

For Younger Children:

Spuds by Karen Hesse: Maybelle, Jack, and Eddie want to help Ma by putting something extra on the table, so they set out in the dark to take potatoes from a nearby field, but when they arrive home and empty their potato sacks, they are surprised by what they see A Chair for my Mother by Vera B. Williams: A child, her waitress mother, and her grandmother save dimes to buy a comfortable armchair after all their furniture is lost in a fire

Take one Manhattan Real Estate Mogul, who is not all there in the mental health department,

Add one 15 year old flapper, her opportunistic mother, a rabid tabloid press and an African Honking Gander. What does this get you?

Why you get Peaches and Daddy!
 
Peaches and Daddy: A Story of the Roaring 20’s, The Birth of Tabloid Media & the Courtship that Captured the Heart and Imagination of the American Public by Michael Greenburg is a wonderful new history of the trial that was the water cooler conversation starter of 1927.
When Edward  “Daddy” Browning, the Donald Trump of his time with better hair,  set his cap for Frances “Peaches” Heenan a 15 year old high school dropout,  it set loose a maelstrom of publicity that would have made Brittany at her most nutty baldness so jealous. This story has it all, an acid attack, lots and lots of shopping, tantric sex, the raw food movement, a newspaper art department with way too much time on its hands, and of course the aforementioned African Honking Gander.
 
I personally love any book where the Foreword contains the phrases, “study in dysfunction”, and “lurid details” and also includes the word prurient. Fabulous! Sign me up!
 
Of course, this story does not have a happy ending. How could it? But it will keep you in a state of fascination for all 320 pages. Even if it does have a 300 Dewey designation!

Life is too short for traffic

Last week I was stuck in the mother of all non-holiday traffic jams-- Tuesday night repaving on I-95 northbound. For better or for worse, I entertained myself for an hour and a half by listening to the second presidential debate. Not a bad way to pass the time, but not what I expected to do during a trip that usually takes about 11 minutes.

The cause of all this craziness? Merging down from three lanes to one. You’d think by now folks would know how to do that in an organized, timely manner, but no. To find out why normally thoughtful, rational people are incapable of this simple maneuver, check out the latest by Tom Vanderbilt-- Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us). In a recent interview he summed it up quite nicely:

Merging is the most stressful single activity we face in everyday driving, according to a survey by the Texas Transportation Institute. People who have done studies at highway construction work zones have also told me of extraordinarily bad behavior, triggered by this simple act of trying to get two lanes of traffic into one. Sometimes, it’s simply the difficult mechanics of driving — trying to enter a stream of traffic flowing at a higher speed than you are, for example.

Drivers, to quote a physicist who was actually talking about grains, are objects ‘who do not easily interact.’ But I also think there’s something about the forward flow of traffic that makes us register progress only by our own unimpeded movement; as in life, we seem to register losses more powerfully than gains, and registering these losses boosts stress.

Wow. If his theory sounds familiar, check out the financial headlines from last week.

So what did I learn from all this? The next time I hit 95, I’m checking the Connecticut DOT website before I head out. You know all of those cameras along the roadway? They record what the highway action is like in real time. No waiting for traffic info on the 8’s or 10’s (and praying they will say something—anything!—about the Connecticut roads), just live pictures of headlights and tail-lights moving right along. 

Another option is to check out the Tom Tom One GPS system, a great resource for finding those less traveled alternate routes.  Either way, you can bet I won't be listening to tonight's debate from my car!

This has to be the world’s worst title.

And I feel that her editors were on break when this one slipped by. But Bon Appetit, Y’All   by Virginia Willis has to be one of my favorite cookbooks so far this fall. 
Virginia Willis is Southern by birth and trained with Anne Willan at La Varenne and her food reflects this. You hop from Cheese Straws to Gougeres, Country Captain Chicken to Coq Au Vin, Chess Pie to Crème Brulee au Vanille. The pictures are glorious and her personality shines through with hilarious anecdotes and touching personal stories (you must check out the story accompanying the recipe for Fingerling Potato Salad. We were laughing so hard we started to cry). It is an awful lot like spending time on a friend’s front porch. Provided that friend can make a  mean Corn Spoon Bread. 
I was a lucky girl growing up. I had a French Grandmother and a Southern Grandmother. This book reminds me of lovely by-gone dinners at two very different tables. But they both had wonderful food lovingly prepared in common. Cook something good this weekend!

Parent Favorite: Classic and Modern FAMILY STORIES Booklist

Did you grow up enjoying Little Women, Sarah, Plain and Tall, and Cheaper by the Dozen?  These classics are still popular family stories for kids!

Check out these modern read-alikes:

 

The Penderwicks series
  by Jeanne Birdsall

 

The Elevator Family by Douglas Evans

 

Judy Blume family series such as...

---Pain and the Great One series

       

 

---Fudge series

 

 Saffy's Angel series by Hilary McKay

 

 

What are your favorite FAMILY STORIES for kids?  Tag them with "parent favorite" in the catalog!

 

Parent Favorite: Classic and Modern MYSTERIES (a Booklist)

Did you grow up enjoying Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and the Hardy Boys?  These classics are still popular mysteries for kids. 

Check out these modern read-alikes:

Kiki Strike by Kirsten Miller

Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce The Enola Homes Mysteries by Nancy Springer Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator by Jennifer Allison

Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett Lulu Dark by Bennett Madison  
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd The 39 Clues by Rick Riordan

 

  What are your favorite MYSTERY books for kids?  Tag them with "parent favorite" in the catalog!

 


 

 

Is History Repeating Itself?

For the past few weeks every newspaper, magazine, and scrolling ticker has been plastered with photos of anguished traders, scary graphs and complex analysis of financial instruments that seem more like magic than math. The current financial crisis seems unprecedented and unpredictable. Yesterday’s New York Times offered some perspective by examining the roles of two famous businessmen during hard times: Warren Buffett and J.P. Morgan.

The Times notes that “Comparing the two men and their moves in periods of market turmoil, just more than a century apart, reveals how much some things have changed over the years and how other things have not, according to business historians and finance experts.”

This got a few of us thinking about the history of the markets and the comforts of knowing that we’ve been in dire straits before and it doesn’t always end with apple carts and a generation growing up sharing a pair of shoes with their siblings. Several of you are ahead of us on this curve- when we started looking for books on the history of Wall Street, we found a number of them were already checked out. We’ve put what’s here on the front table for you to peruse.

For the historically-minded, there’s
Manias, Panics, And Crashes : A History Of Financial Crises

Bull! : A History Of The Boom, 1982-1999 : What Drove The Breakneck Market--and What Every Investor Needs To Know About Financial Cycles
What Goes Up : The Uncensored History Of Modern Wall Street As Told By The Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, And Scoundrels Who Made It Happen
House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty And The Rise Of Modern Finance

 

 

 

If you're looking for a modern take (and maybe a little schadenfreude) we have
America's Bubble Economy : Profit When It Pops
The World Is Curved : Hidden Dangers To The Global Economy
Chain Of Blame : How Wall Street Caused The Mortgage And Credit Crisis
The New Paradigm For Financial Markets : The Credit Crisis Of 2008 And What It Means
Crash Proof : How To Profit From The Coming Economic Collapse
Undue Influence : How The Wall Street Elite Put The Financial System At Risk

If you want a more explanatory approach, try:
Money, Greed, And Risk : Why Financial Crises And Crashes Happen
How the Stock Market Works


Or for biography fans, in addition to the new Warren Buffett bio, there’s:
The White Sharks Of Wall Street : Thomas Mellon Evans And The Original Corporate Raiders
Titan : The Life Of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
The Dark Genius Of Wall Street : The Misunderstood Life Of Jay Gould, King Of The Robber Barons
Henry Clay Frick : An Intimate Portrait
 

Wild about Harry? Titles to Try After Harry Potter

Read and Reread all the Harry Potter books? Have no fear... Your Library is here...to recommend...

 
Atherton House of Power by Patrick Carman. Edgar discovers the book that explains the secret of the world of Atherton. 
 
May Bird and the Ever After by Jodi Lynn Anderson (grade 4 up). May Bird jumps into death by accident, and just wants to get out. Her adorable kitty (good kitty!) is the true star of the story. Sort of 6 Flags meets The Addams Family.  
The Wizard of Oz series by L. Frank Baum - Grade 4 and up. If you’ve only read the first book, you’re missing a lot including Princess Ozma, Jack pumpkinhead, and more Dorothy tales. 
 
Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins (grade 4 up). Gregor falls underground where giant cockroaches, bats, and strange humans beg his help.
 
Chanters of Tremaris trilogy by Kate Constable (grade 5 up). Musical sorcery and unlikely friendships enliven this intense trilogy.  
 
The Runaway Princess by Kate Coombs (grade 4 up).  When her father announces a competition, his determined daughter decides to enter.
 
Into the Land of the Unicorns by Bruce Coville - Into the Land of the Unicorns is book one. Grades 3-4 and up Cara enters the land of the unicorns, not knowing if she will ever return home.
 
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (Grades 3-4) Charlie is a poor boy with only one dream - to win a golden ticket and visit the legendary chocolate factory of Willy Wonka. 
 
Whispering to Witches by Anna Dale (grade 4 up) This book does have a sequence with a boy on a train being attacked by witches, so of course it reminded me of HP.   
 
Delaney, Joseph Last Apprentice (series) (grade 5 up).  Tom’s apprentice to the spook; he’d better get brave.
 
So You Want to be a Wizard Series by Diane Duane (Grades 5-6 and up) Kit and Nina are two ordinary children...until one day they both discover that they are wizards. Unfortunately, this new power doesn't come with directions! 
 
Little (Grrrl) Lost by Charles deLint. This is The Doll People for older readers. If you like miniature folks with a pinch of magic, this is for you.
 
Fardell, John. 7 Professors of the Far North. Picture the Hogwarts Express, underground, and ending up in Scandinavia. And add 7 professors, one of them evil. Okay, it’s wacky, but I bought it.
 
Funke, Cornelia Inkheart, Inkspell, Dragon Rrider (grade 3 up). I’m rather addicted to Cornelia Funke, and very excited InkDeath was just published. Intricate plots with magical creatures and objects and great characters.
 
Goudge, Elizabeth The Little White Horse (grade 3 up). If you’ve ever dreamt of your own magical world set in the English countryside, this Carnegie medal classic is required reading.  
 
Hunter, Erin The Warriors series (grade 4 up). Tribes of cats abound in these ever so popular series.  
 
 
Jones, Diana Wynne - Grades 5-6 and up Howl's Moving Castle (and anything else she's written! Try The Pinhoe Egg) Sophie leads an ordinary life - until she offends a witch and gets changed into an old lady. Sophie finds freedom in her new guise by becoming the housekeeper of Howl - a wizard with a moving castle.  
 
Levine, Gail Carson Ella Enchanted and Fairest (grade 4 up)
 
Lewis, C.S. - Narnia series - Grades 3-4 and up Lucy discovers a secret world where animals talk and a white witch has declared eternal winter. Lucy and her siblings must rescue Narnia from her spell.
 
McKinley, Robin - Grade 6 and up. The Hero and the Crown, The Blue Sword, Dragonhaven – If you like to read things that make you forget your name and your homework, Robin McKinley is the QUEEN of fantasy. Her newest book is Chalice.
 
McMullan, K.H. - Grades 2 and up Dragon Slayer's Academy – Wiglaf's off to Dragon Slayer's school but can he survive princesses, dragons, wizards and pigs who speak Pig Latin? Shorter stories for fantasy on the go.
 
Meyer, Kai The Water Mirror series (grade 4 up) Egyptian mummies attack Venice (cool.)
 
Nimmo, Jenny Charlie Bone series (grade 3 and up) Charlie leaves his moldy aunts to go to magic school.
 
Nix, Garth - Grade 6 and up Sabriel (series). Sabriel uses magical bells to bind the dead. Her cat is a grumpy creature of free magic.
 
Keys to the Kingdom (series) Pierce, Tamora - Grades 4-5 and up. Arthur is a human who gets dragged into ‘The House’ to rule its seven levels … if he can.
 
Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce.  (Alanna is the first book) Alanna wants to be a knight, but only boys can be knights. Alanna plans the biggest deception of her life.
 
Circle of Magic Series by Tamora Pierce - 4 children with strange powers: Sandry makes cloth come alive; Tris can influence the weather; Daja is in touch with metal and Briar has a great gift with plants. (Sandry’s book is the first book)
 
Protector of the Small Series (First Test is the first book) by Tamora Pierce. Keladry is the first girl ever to be admitted into the knight-in-training program at court. Except, of course, for Alanna, but she was disguised as a boy. 

 
Immortals Series (Wild Magic is the first book) by Tamora Pierce. Daine’s animal magic may save the kingdom and her new friend and wizard, Numair. 
 
Wee Free Men (series) by Terry Pratchett (grade 5 and up) – Listen to the audiobook; it’s unforgettable. The book’s not bad either (ahem).
 
Riordan, Rick The Lightning Thief series (Grade 4 and up) If you haven’t heard of this book, you must have been living under a rock, out of sight of all children for at least 3 years. Shame!
 
Sage, Angie Magyk series (grade 4 and up) Magic, siblings, and dark passages. Heaps of fun from the Heap family!
 
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (and sequels) Grades 6 up. Some books you read for the ending. This is one of them. The main character is dirty, unpredictable, scheming, and, as I said, watch out for the ending. 
 
The Strictest School in the World by Howard Whitehead  (Grade 4 up)  A boy who bounces, a girl who wants to fly, and a boarding school with magical watchdogs. The Victoria era has developed fangs. 
 
Wilce, Ysabeau Flora Segunda (Grade 5 up) Flora takes her unpredictable elevator to a long-forgotten room, discovering a magic she may not be able to control. 
 
Wrede, Patricia C. - Grades 4-5 and up. Dealing with Dragons (series) A princess runs away from home to be a cook for a dragon who loves cherries jubilee.   
 
Wizard’s Hall by Yolen, Jane - Grades 3-4 and up – Considered by many to be the first Wizard school book before the hugely popular you know what series.  
 
Savvy by Ingrid Law – Grades 4 and up – A new book about a family with Savvy – sort of magical talents – and a wild road trip.

 

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