Tuesdays at the Castle

There were only two rules the Castle seemed to follow.  Rule One: The throne room was always to the east.  Rule Two: If you turned left three times and climbed through the next window, you'd end up in the kitchens.

Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George

Sometimes when I walk through the shelves at the library I snag books based entirely on their cover (and usually their inside flap).   This book was one of those, from the award book section in juvenile fiction that I frequent every time I'm a
t the library.  It was a fun, fluffy read, one of those that reminds me of why I so loved (and still do) indulging in books as a child. 

The Glower family lives in an enchanted castle that can transform as it pleases.  Each Tuesday something changes: a new wing added, a hallway lengthened, a secret passage where there was nothing before.  It is a fun, intriguing building and the kids love to live there. 

A few pages in, however, the king and queen have gone missing and the three Glower children at the castle must use it to fight those that are trying to take over.  The kids are involved in pranks as well as dangerous adventures as they join forces with their castle to try to make sure the crown stays protected.

Though there was nothing that made it really stand out in a literary sense, for me this book rates high.  It was just fun!  I loved being taken away by my imagination.

Two post scripts here: first, I am the dork that almost always reads about the author and reads through their notes at the end.  I was delighted to see that Jessica Day George not only lives in Salt Lake City but also attended BYU, my alma mater.  Second, my nickname (from one of my siblings) is Glower - odd, but true.  It was hard to read about the Glower children without a smile coming to my face because of it.

The 5 Love Languages

For love, we will climb mountains, cross seas, traverse desert sands, and endure untold hardships.
Without love, mountains become unclimbable, seas uncrossable, deserts unbearable, and hardships our lot in life.

The 5 Loves Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman

When I just looked this book up on Amazon to link the title to purchase it, I saw that it was the #1 seller in marriage books.  That is very impressive.  I'm not really surprised.

I devoured this book in a couple days.  I believe I could have read it in one sitting but made myself take time to digest things as I went.  I have heard many reviews of it and was delighted to finally get to it.  Frankly, I probably should have purchased it to read it sooner, as it was always checked out at the library - it was that good. 

Surely there are many reviews of this you could read.  As soon as I finished it I handed it to TJ, which is maybe the best thing I can say about it.  I told him that I wanted him to read it - truly wanted him to - and that it was due in two days.  To his credit, he put his book (The Princess Bride) on hold and jumped right in.  We've talked about it extensively since and he speaks of it as a very enlightening book. 

Dr. Chapman's hypothesis, which he believes thousands of couples have proven, is that everyone has a native, or primary, love language.  He believes there are many dialects of these languages but there are truly just five love languages.  Research shows that the "in love" feeling so associated with dating and engagement disappears after about two years and at that point love becomes a choice.  Each person receives love in a different way and it becomes very significant for each person to receive love in the way that is most meaningful to them.  Most of us were brought up by parents that spoke one or two languages so we frequently are far from proficient in each language.  Marriage, then, becomes a learning place where we often need to learn the language of our spouse.  For love to thrive and for the marriage to be wonderful we need to consistently choose to speak the language of our partner. 

The languages are:
1. Physical Touch
2. Words of Affirmation
3. Acts of Service
4. Receiving Gifts
5. Quality Time

The book describes each in detail and what you can do to learn that language.  I really loved it.  I believe TJ and I have mostly concluded the primary love language of each and our more consistently working to speak them.  It has been an eye-opening experience for us and one we truly appreciate.

This one is good stuff.  I'm asking for it for Christmas (if I don't gift it to TJ for his birthday).

French Kids Eat Everything

Chances are, my children are not going to grow up to go to Harvard, or to be major league sports stars, concert musicians, or NASA astronauts.  But no matter who they grow up to be, how and what my children eat will be of great importance to their health, happiness, success, and longevity.

French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters by Karen Le Billon

Last year I picked up the audio version of Bringing Up Bebe and went back and forth between being entirely intrigued by it and being sort of bored with it.  Overall, though, I enjoyed it and picked up some insights along the way.  One of the most captivating themes of Bringing Up Bebe, for me, w
as the way that French families, and children in particular, eat.  So when Janssen said that French Kids Eat Everything was one of the best books she's read this year, I went and snagged it from the library.

This is such an interesting book.  I really enjoyed it.  The foundation of the book is that the narrator, Karen Le Billon, married a man (Philippe) from France.  When their children were 2 and 4 they decided to move from Vancouver, Canada back to France for a year.  Both she and her husband were given a one year leave from the university where they taught and they moved to the same village as his parents, in Brittany, France.

And so the adventure begins, with all sorts of cultural mishaps, misunderstandings and mistakes.  Children, and adults!, in France eat so differently from those in North America.  Karen is quite floored to see children at the age of two eating a four course lunch in day care everyday with utensils.  There is no whining or crying or complaining.  The kids eat things like fish, leeks, beets, and Roquefort cheese on a daily basis (I showed TJ the menu for one week of preschool lunches and we truly did not recognize 70% of the foods on it).  It is so fascinating. 

Over twelve months Karen, with the help of her husband, his family, friends and other locals, starts figuring out what the French do differently that make their kids like all sorts of things that her kids won't touch (and neither will any other child in North America) and why they are so well behaved at every meal.  Eventually she compiles a list of ten rules, each of which is explained in the book. 

Many/most of these rules is pretty contrary to the norm for North American parents so it was refreshing to see a new perspective.  That said, I don't think the typical person in North America could follow these to a T, which she discusses in the last chapter (after they've had to make adjustments in Vancouver themselves).  However, as TJ and I discuss someday having children, some of these ideas take on greater weight for me.  My biggest takeaways:

1. Food should be used for nutritive purposes only.  This does not mean one should eat only to meet dietary guidelines (in fact, the number one purpose of food in France is pleasure, which I think is delightful), but rather that food should not be a pacifier, a distraction, a soother, or a threat.  The French would simply never think to say, "Stop hitting your sister or you don't get dinner."  They (including kids) would also never wander to the cupboards when bored.  It is just engrained in them that meal times are 7:30, 12:30, 4:30 (for the kids) and 8:00 that they don't do differently.  Already I sneak candy to the kids all around me and realize now I am encouraging food as a comfort or distraction, which only breeds problems in the long run.

2. Kids can like all foods.  Research shows that it takes 12-15 instances of exposure to like a food (taste is learned).  The French master this by beginning to introduce everything they can think of (really) before the child is 2 years old (at which point a fear of new things sets in: irrelevant when everything is already familiar).  This concept is practiced both at home and at school, as vegetables, especially, are served as purees, sauteed, raw, in salads, as side dishes, and in casseroles.  Parents are gentle but firm in insisting that the children try them and peer pressure often helps the situation.  In the end, the children do truly learn to leave all different things, which I just don't see where I live.  My goal, which I know is aggressive, will be to introduce many vegetables between the ages of 1-2 (the French typically feed their child a leek puree [I've never had leeks] before anything else, including cereal).  The plan is to start making these with TJ now!

3. Food should be enjoyable, not guilty.  This goes against everything I've been taught growing up: I love it.  I really appreciated that the French believe that food is meant to be enjoyed: it should not be a source of guilt or anxiety.  The quote at the beginning of this post sums it up for me: eating is a part of life and should be healthy, happy and enjoyable.  For too many people that is not the case and I think we can do better training our children!

And on that note, go read the book.  It's fascinating.  And it taught me that maybe if I just give olives a few more tries I'll like them.

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat by Lynne Jonell

I may as well get to the point: I absolutely loved Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat.  It was such a FUN read.  I remember watching Monsters, Inc. and walking away saying, "That was a fantastic show.  I can't believe they could construe such an absurd story line into something cohesive."  I felt much the same way about Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat: I could never adequately describe the book but it was just so good.  And so, I'll take a stab at describing it.  :)

Since Emmy's parents inherited a massive fortune from a great uncle they never knew, they have been traveling the world, leaving Emmy in the care of a nasty nanny, Miss Barmy.  Miss Barmy is simply not kind but she is also very odd: she makes Emmy drink all sorts of strange things, rub things behind her ears, keep a remarkably full schedule, and be the perfect child.  It's a mess.  But one day Emmy stumbles on Miss Barmy in an area of town she's never seen before: a rodent store that houses all sorts of animals with unique tags on them, listing powers and abilities of each. 

And on the story goes: a well-woven plot about some impressive rodents and a smart little girl who figures out Miss Barmy while dealing with her own innocent emotions.  It was such a fun ride: one I will certainly purchase for my children and read with them again and again.

Seedfolks

"Gardening boring?  Never!  It has suspense, tragedy, startling developments-a soap opera growing out of the ground.  I'd forgotten that tremolo of expectation produced by a tiny forest of sprouts.  A fact bobbed up from my memory, that the ancient Egyptians prescribed walking through a garden as a cure for the mad.  It was a mind-altering drug we took daily."

Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman

TJ and I went out to eat with some long time friends at Cafe Madrid, our favorite (...only) local Spanish restaurant.  The food was delightful and the company was great: we sat at the table for three hours.  For a good 45 minutes we discussed books, which is something I can certainly get excited about.  As usual, I suggested Funny in Farsi, which is probably in my top 3 favorites of all time.  Our friends suggested Seedfolks, which they said was a "good, quick read."  They were right.  I picked it up from the library three days later and read it in an hour.

There is an empty lot in the middle of Cleveland that has turn into a dumping ground of sorts: it's filled with old tires, refrigerators, a sofa and rats.  But a little girl who misses her father starts an unexpected change in the old lot when she plants a few beans: she hopes her dad will look down from heaven and see that she is just like him, gardening.  Each chapter introduces a different character, who goes to the lot for a different reason, planting hope with their various seeds.

I anticipated that the same 3-5 characters would each have a few chapters of narration but every chapter, from start to finish, was a different character, thirteen in all.  I really enjoyed it.  My favorite books are happy books and I loved seeing this group of strangers work together to make something beautiful.

I'm uncertain the best age for reading this but you could certainly have some good conversations with children about acceptance, service, kindness and hard work.  I heartily recommend this one.

Half Magic

"Still, even without the country or a lake, the summer was a fine thing, particularly when you were at the beginning of it, looking ahead into it. There would be months of beautifully long, empty days, and each other to play with, and the books from the library.”

Half Magic by Edward Eager

As with most of the book recommendations I pursue, I picked this up based on a recommendation by Janssen at Everyday Reading.  She lists it as one of her favorite middle grade books and I agree completely.  In fact, I told TJ that this is the exact kind of book I imagine reading to our kids on road trips in the future.  It was innocent, fun, entertaining and plain old wholesome: my favorite combination for a book.

Four siblings - Jane, Katharine, Mark and Martha - find a charm one day and, after a sequence of odd events, figure out that the charm grants them exactly one half of everything they wish.  With that understanding in place the four of them set out to have several wonderful adventures together, fumbling through some wacky wishes (caused by unsound math).  It was a lot of fun to see what sorts of adventures were the most exciting to them (they take turns with the charm) and it was quite funny to see what went awry. 

I also really enjoyed the narrator's voice, which I felt was the perfect tone for children.  I imagined the narrator as a he, since the author is a he, and he acknowledged the audience by saying things like "you know exactly what I mean" or "as I'm sure you know."  They were the sort of acknowledgements that I would bet make children feel connected to the book even further.  A great touch, I think.

I did close this book with a homework assignment to read something by E. Nesbit.  I'm ashamed to say I don't even know who it is but Edward Eager, the author, mentions Nesbit in every book he writes in an effort to point children to her books.  I'll add her to my list!

Every Soul a Star

"Wherever you end up, I wish you clear skies.  Always."
-Every Soul a Star, Wendy Mass

Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass

At the same time I was reading Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, I was listening to the audiobook for Every Soul a Star.  The two together provided a very nice contrast: while Major Pettigrew was very deliberate and mature, Every Soul a Star had young voices with a quick storyline.

Every Soul a Star has three teenage protagonists and the chapters rotate between each of them: Ally is a down-to-earth girl that lives at a campground with her parents and little brother - she is intelligent, thoughtful and sincere; Jack is an insecure kid living with him mom and brother, but he spends a lot of time in his tree house, where he escapes reality by drawing and daydreaming; Bree is the stuck-up girl from other girls' nightmares - she is obsessed with fashion, her figure, and her prospective modeling career.  I enjoyed that in the audio version each of the protagonists was played by a different person, so their voices were differentiated even further than their voices in the book may have allowed.

As the book opens, Ally, Jack and Bree are all living separate lives.  Ally lives happily with her family, her best friends, at the Moon Shadow Campground.  She and her brother, Kenny, are home schooled and love spending time outside, exploring nature.  Most especially, Ally has been blessed with a great love for the skies and spends many hours exploring the stars.  Her family is preparing for the solar eclipse and their preparations have lasted as long as she can remember: she has never been more excited for any single event.

Jack's life is a constant battle between what he wants to do - art - and what he should do - school.  He has failed science and is trying not to think about looming summer school when his science teacher, Mr. Silver, calls and invites him on a trip to see a solar eclipse.  The two week trip would take the place of summer school, so after approximately 2.8 seconds of thought, Jack accepts.  For the first time he can remember, he fits in with a group, as the others on the bus tour think he's wonderful, in spite of being overweight and imaginative.

Bree has just landed quite an impressive job at the mall's make-up store as Junior Consultant.  She is hoping to start a new modeling career and is the proud leader of the "A Clique" at school.  She gathers pictures of models in her spare time and rates herself, and everyone she sees, on a scale from 1-10 every day.  Her world comes crashing down when her parents announce they're moving and she, against her will, is forced to move with them.

The three meet at the Moon Shadow and have two weeks together leading up to the big eclipse that brought them all there.  They struggle to understand how each of the others thinks and they learn to better understand people in general. 

My favorite thing about this book was how much I learned about the stars and eclipses.  After it ended I told my husband I'd really like to go see an eclipse.  I also learned about exoplanets (aided by my husband's documentary-like explanation of how they're found) and meteorites.  Space is such a fun area to learn about and I liked seeing others' enthusiasm for it.

Maybe what I least enjoyed was the teenage voices: I hated being a teenager, which likely carries into this.  :)  It was okay, and a welcome change of scenery from Major Pettigrew, but I don't think I'll ever pick it up again.