The Diamond in the Window

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Can you guess what it is? I bet you can't. Here's a hint: it's not reading.

OK, I can't hold it in anymore. It's this:

Do you know what this is? It's One Direction's new book! It was sent to my blog's PO box, giving me the ultimate parental power: the thing that would make my teenager recoil in screaming horror. Remember my maybe not totally nice theory that teenagers are where the idea of vampires came from? Well let's just say having this book in my office was like having raw garlic and the cross in one.

"Look, honey, it's a book for the blog!"

Teenager approaches, happy and smiling. Then—shazaam!

She runs screaming into the night.

The only sad thing? I let the 12-year-old take it to school to perform the same...exorcism? Powerful ritual?...on a friend who has the same aversion. Chestnut, however, put more thought and energy into it and gift-wrapped the thing in pretty paper. The poor unsuspecting dupe opened it, shrieked, and tossed it into the cafeteria. But don't worry; once the screaming was over, they picked it up, and, if we're to believe Chestnut, "Gave it to this kid who really likes One Direction."

But we all know it will find its way to another victim.

And I? I willingly gave my power away. Yes, I miss it—power's intoxicating like that. But it's good to know it's making its way around the world. Be on the lookout for strange packages. They may be more powerful than you ever anticipated.

 

UPDATE: ANOTHER COPY OF THIS BOOK WAS DELIVERED TO MY PO BOX TODAY!!! Strange forces are clearly at work. I...I don't know what's happening or why, but if I start using lip gloss, send help.

What Did You Buy at the Library Book Sale?

You know we love a library book sale. It's where you find the random crazy book you never knew you wanted, while supporting your local library, and in my case, unfortunately stand too close to someone who definitely smelled like poop. (Oh god, I don't think I will get poop out of my vocabulary now that I have children. It's just...there. Alas.)

Anyway, I got this:

I think it will be quick and thrilling. And also this:

And maybe something else that I have forgotten because of my loose, lax brain.

But here's the thing that I found most interesting. Diana, let free among the stacks, purchased this:

Well. That was refreshing. I did not expect this at all.

How do political mindsets get formed? Certainly a person listens to her parents. And of course I am a feminist. But Diana is (I would say) far more politically conscious and aware than I am, and than I was. And she's more...radical. Which is a little bit exciting and a little bit terrifying.

Still, I was surprised. She had money and was in a library, and there was a whole bin of books with ancient celtic fonts that basically screamed. "We're about magic!" Or maybe, "We're about magyck!"

And, as I always do, I wonder what this is an omen of.

So far, she says, "It's pretty dated."

!

"It talks about George Bush a lot, which just doesn't feel relevant, but it's pretty good."

I feel there is some personality test I can market in which I give you $5 and send you into a library booksale, and then I see what you come out with. The only problem: I don't know yet exactly how to read the results. I am working on it. If you tell me what this all means, I will share my millions with you.

Half-Baked Ideas: On Giving the People What They Want

A few years ago I was reading, I believe, Elizabeth Berg, when it hit me: This was, in my view, lady porn, by which I mean that it seemed intent on offering to a particular group...well, exactly what they wanted. I thought this contemptuously: Who, I thought, would only listen to what they wanted to hear?

But the weird thing is, I had a similar thought about The Cobble Street Cousins series, by Cynthia Rylant. If you don't already have a 7-year-old girl addicted to this, it's something you might want to consider: Three cousins live with their beautiful maiden aunt (a florist!). Their parents are ballet dancers, away on tour! They live in a beautiful attic! They make cookies! And I thought: Wow, it gives them exactly what they want. But this time, I thought it affectionately.

What gives? I have just finished my third and last library sale book: Songs Without Words. It's by Ann Packer, and I somehow thought it was by Ann Patchett (oops). But, I thought, why not give it a try?

It seemed to me that it too did this thing: it offered a certain kind of wish fulfillment, that of the well-heeled, well educated white mother. First it scares her with the specter of her worst fears: your children are not OK, your husband is repelled by you, your best friend finds your neediness insupportable. And then...everything is better (as does, indeed, sometimes happen). Your children are fine, your husband is attracted to you, your best friend wants to have lunch.

Why am I contemptuous again? Why is it OK for children to be given every pleasure they long for in books: cloaks of invisibility! Dragons! Boxes of chocolates!, and how is it different (and I think that it is somehow) to give poor adults some wish fulfillment? Why does it feel so different?

What You Should Do Right Now

Lately I have been beset by sudden attacks of loose ends, when I wander the neighborhood (or house, if I'm tired) not knowing quite what to do. Of course, there are many things I should do—clean the bathrooms. Earn some money. Find out what I'm supposed to do with the mysterious tax letter. But somehow those never come immediately to mind.

I am writing this in case you are suffering the same strange, late-May fog, because I have recently discovered what to do. You should read The Blue Fairy Book. No, not the big thick one with lots of words. The weird, inexplicable hard-cover one from my childhood. Like so:

Do you know why you should read it? Because of Felicia and the Pot of Pinks.

There is something about these illustrations that touches my soul in a strange and profound way. But even the pot of pinks pales beside—Diamonds and Toads.

Do you SEE? Jewels are coming out of her mouth! The extent to which this affected me as a child is...is probably not altogether OK. And not just because of her poor sister:

Snakes and toads in her mouth. How did it feel? I mean, I spent some time wondering about the jewels in the mouth too (aren't diamonds sort of, er, hard and sharp?) but the slithery aliveness of these give me pause.

But truly, there is nothing like a weird, fairy-tale book from your childhood to send you rocketing back to when you were another person, and the world and its stories were more...permeable. You could go right inside, without even hesitating. I think it's what I still search for, when I read.

Anyway, there you go, that should keep you off the streets and prevent you from getting anything useful done. If you have any bizarre dreamworld books from your childhood that might not be actually good, but have that weird hold on you, by all means leave them in the comments. We're always looking for tickets to the other side.

Fan Fiction! Aka: I Am Old, I Am Old, I Will Wear My Trousers Rolled...

Someone asked me what genres Diana has been reading, and I had to acknowledge that lately it's been a whole lot of fan fiction (does that even get called a genre, really?).

If I am lucky, the person asking is even older or more out of it than I am, and says, "Wha?" and I get to act like I have any idea of what I'm talking about by saying, "Oh, you know, it's what all the kids are into these days," though with this as with all things, I have no idea whether people other than the ones right next to me are reading it, or writing it, or whatever.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, fan fiction is (to the best of my knowledge) this: fiction written by fans of an author or series or novel. Sometimes it becomes its own published work (I think Fifty Shades of Gray was originally fan fiction of Twilight, which makes the whole thing feel even sketchier than I thought it did).

Except maybe it's not sketchy at all? Here are things I think are sort of great about kids reading fan fiction (or watching people read it on YouTube? Which is apparently a Thing?).

1) It makes kids write. It gives them a sense of themselves as readers/writers, and they end up writing and writing their own, presumably nutty, fan fiction. Yes, it is possible that much of what they write is...not the highest quality, but that's (in this context) besides the point.

2) It is an expression of LOVE! And love makes the world go 'round! Truly, I think it's a little bit like writing Led Zeppelin on the cover of your cloth-covered binder (can you guess my high school graduation year within two years from this reference?). There's something inexpressibly moving to me about all these people laying their tributes to authors at their metaphorical (or electronically represented) feet. Just check out Scott Westerfield's blog, where he often features his fans' fan fiction (it took me a long time to figure out how to write that), and see if your cold, cold heart doesn't soften just a bit.

3) Some of it is probably really great. I don't read fan fiction—yet. But I have to believe that some of it is really amazing, just because the world is wide and varied and there are terrible and wonderful things everywhere you look. Besides, Diana is writing some (yes, it's out there, can you spot it? Dare you try?), and as her parent I just have to believe that it's awesome.

Reasons I am not super-psyched about the whole thing.

1) Can it be good to read lots and lots of writing that is not good? I don't know. I mean, lots of published writing is pretty crappy too, but sometimes it feels like I am watching her gorge on cheetos. Metaphorical literary cheetos.

2) But wait, the book is an inviolable world! It's true that I believe there is an alternative fictional universe where all books come from and that things that happen in books are true, so it freaks me out to consider that, say, Harriet the Spy has alternate possibilities contained within it. This, however, might be a slight idiosyncrasy on my part, so maybe I'll say no more about it.

3) It's on the internet. Which is bad for kids, right? And electronic? And unwholesome? That's as far as my logical thinking goes on this point. I will let you know if I get smarter about it. And it leads directly to...

4) It didn't exist when I was a kid. Yes, I am that person who doesn't trust things that are new. Though I think it's possible that if I thought about it the right way much of Shakespeare is fan fiction from Ovid, right? Sort of? Maybe?

Anyway, maybe your children are still happily plowing through various books by actual authors (which still happens here, as well—there'd be no fan fiction without the original book, right?), but this could be lurking in your future.

And tell me: what do you know about it? Is it part of anyone's child's life but mine?

An Unexpected Book for the Questing 11-Year-Old

Here is a book that makes no sense for a middle schooler, and yet has proved to be irresistible:

I was in Boston visiting my sister, and I finished my book and she had it on her shelves, so I started reading it and...I feel this sounds like I'm explaining some sort of drunken binge. Anyway, one thing led to another. I left it there, but took it out of the library when we got home, and finished it. And that's when Chestnut picked it up.

Chestnut loved it. I mean LOVED it. Was rapt, reading it every spare moment. Asked me, Could we go to the special sushi restaurant she reviews? This, from a child who won't eat fish sticks. "But she makes it sound so good!" is her explanation, and she is right.

It didn't stop there, either. We had Tender at the Bone on the shelves—the first of this series of memoirs. When Chestnut finished that I requested Comfort Me With Apples from the library. Each one she read with that kind of entranced pleasure that is the joy (or envy) of every reader in the world, that moment when you are so swept up in a book that reading it is completely satisfying. It's all you want to do.

For those of you with your own eager 11-year-olds, be warned: Chestnut did ask, upon reading the third book first, then the first second, "Wait, in the other book her husband is Michael, but in this book he's not...," so if divorce is ticklish for you, it might be an issue. Or an excellent way of talking about a tricky subject, who knows?

And no, I have not taken her to the fancy sushi place yet. There are many reasons for this: It was hundreds of dollars in the nineties! I am afraid she won't eat anything! I don't even know if it's still open!

Still, it's pretty cool that a book can take you that far, right up to the gateway of what you've always been afraid of.

The Old Identity Switcheroo

Maybe it has to do with that whole middle school task of creating an identity, or maybe it's actually having a pronounced proclivity: in any case, both my girls have very clearly established literary tastes. And they are aware of these tastes, happy and willing to proclaim them to the point of defiance. Chestnut likes brave girls, historical settings, magic sometimes but not always, virtue, and adventure. And these tastes do, in fact, give a fairly clear sense of her character: earnest and true, sweet and clear-eyed.

Diana, on the other hand, favors absurdity, dark humor, a sinister cast to just about everything, and fantasy—the more ironically complex and meta, the better. And that's just what she's like, too.

Given that they have set these stakes in the ground and drawn these lines in the sand so as to delineate who they are, you would think I could predict what people might read. Yet this is what Chestnut has been carrying around the house, on the subway, to various seders, for the past few weeks:

Here is the first line of the New York Times review of it, by Jonathan Miles: “That’s Not a Feeling,” Dan Josefson’s mordant, cockeyed first novel about a boarding school in upstate New York, includes, as many fantasy novels also do, a hand-drawn map of his invented world." And yes, that is a quote from the late, great David Foster Wallace on the cover. Caddie Woodlawn, where are you? You were here just last week!

Here are my fervent pleas (which, of course, fall on the deaf ears of an uncaring universe): Why don't I understand anything? Who are my children, and why do they keep changing on me? Why do I even want them to have fixed identities? Why am I not a better parent? What is the point of it all? etc.

It's not that I am sad that she likes this book. I am...bemused? Befuddled? Confused and uncertain, but maybe that's my identity?  Happy, too, because it's pretty great that a person can be willing to leap outside the walls they've used to construct themselves. Perhaps I will take a cue from her, and learn to be open to the world, and to roll with the changes. It's possible, right?

The Mantle is Passed

This past holiday season, Diana had the excellent idea that her cousin, who has just started to read chapter books, and is a very foused, intense sort of person, should read Secrets of Droon.*

Oh, how this series was loved in my house. It's a sort of sci-fi/fantasy version of the Magic Treehouse? Sort of? There are many, many volumes.

So we went to Book-Off and purchased books 1, 2, 3, and 4. And lo and behold, Diana was right. He started reading the first one—and he couldn't stop. He burned through 2, 3, and 4, and now the sky's the limit. My sister called me asking whether we had any more. And thus began the roundup. We went through all the shelves, gathering book after book. Tossed in as well were Jack Russell: Dog Detective, A to Z mysteries, a seemingly endless slew of Boxcar Children books, until we had three big bags, and my kids' shelves looked...like the shelves of people who are 13 and 11. Which they are, but still.

I mean I know, this is what we wanted to do. And the cousin is so, so happy. It's just that it feels weird, that's all.

Chestnut sneaked in and liberated some Girls to the Rescue books ("they're my favorites"). And there's one or two George and Marthas hidden somewhere. 

The cousin is, reportedly, very happy. I am too. It's just...change is weird. Growing up is intense. And other news flashes.

*A note of caution: do not attempt to read these yourself, if you are a grownup. They are...they are not for us. And that's fine. 

Inexplicable Dinner Table Books, A Visual History

Yeah, so I applaud this, at the same time I am mystified by it. 

Found, all open to various pages, these four books, after two nice girls ate/read through dinner:

So...yeah. I guess on the one hand I feel, "My work here is done!" And on the other hand I think, "Uh oh, what will this all lead to?"

Which I guess is how you're supposed to feel as you watch your children become grownup people, right? Both burstingly proud and unsettled.

I'm Henry the Eighth I Am. Henry the Eighth I Am, I Am

I'm more or less through my reading block. Wolf Hall is good—it's interesting and immediate and strange. And I was starting to think that I was learning a fair amount about the Tudors and early 16th century England.

Or I thought I was, until I started talking to Chestnut. It turns out Chestnut has read extensively on the subject. "I'm just very interested in the Tudors," she said, except she pronounced it Two-Doors.

What has she read? Well, this:

And this:

And then this, too:

This last one, she warns, isn't very interesting.

But: what's the whole thing with the Tudors anyway? It's the oddest sensation, having the historical period you're reading about overlap with what your kid is reading about. I mean, normally she stays squarely in Colonial America, where girls were pure and true, or stout-hearted tomboys, etc. And they're just not a whole lot of grownup books about that (though I must take a moment to recommend the crazy One Story piece by Jim Shepard, which is, in fact, a grownup story about this period).

Anyway, it just seemed odd to me. Also humbling. I think the whole "Royal Diaries" phenomenon is a more acceptable to older kids extension of the princess obsession of youth. But maybe there's a whole other side to it? Maybe it's about finding ways in which women had power? But maybe that's what the princess thing is about too, somehow?

I will tell you this: no tween books about Cromwell. YET.