The Diamond in the Window

Sweets for the Sweet

First, you should know that this is in no way a disinterested quasi-review—the person who wrote the book under discussion is someone I know, and I got her book as a gift (though not from her), and I want her to like me, which is the worst possible perspective from which to write anything, really.

But! Even so, I feel I have something useful to say. Or maybe what I mean is that Chestnut has something useful to say, so here's how it all went down.

This book appeared in my house. It flew in with the mail.

It landed on the coffee table. It rested there for a while, and then it vanished, no one knew where. Time passed.

Then I read it. And it was sweet. So, so sweet. For me, as a grownup, almost too sweet and cute. Even so, though, I finished it. Indeed, I wanted to finish it; it has that strange fictional engine that some books have, so you just want to know what happens.

And then Chestnut found it. Or rather, I put it in front of Chestnut and she rejected it (the cover?), but then it was in her bag and she was at school and one thing led to another and...she loved it. You know why? Because there are some kids who are sweet and earnest and want to hear about good kids, kids who want to be friends. Kids who aren't so committed to irony, maybe, but instead have that painful glow on their faces of good intentions and fervent beliefs. Kids who are enthusiastic. Kids who want to read about friends and friendship, who can identify with the over-the-top earnest goofiness of the narrator, a girl who will never, ever be the popular kid, who seems to have buck teeth of the soul. You know that kind of kid? That kind of kid will be so, so happy to read this book.

Even if they have to sort of keep it under wraps, because this kind of kid—actually, these kinds of feelings—are exactly the kind that middle school seems designed to stamp out in the sensitive. But your sweet sensitive kid can read it at home, and they can remember they are not the only ones, and they will be happy.

We Recommend: Feminist, Inclusive Historical Edition! Or: I Know Nothing

 It's We Recommend, in which we use our superpowers to find readers the perfect book. Got a kid who needs a recommendation? Write us at thediamondinthewindow (at) gmail (dot) com with the age, reading tastes, favorite books, and any other relevant (or irrelevant) information, and we'll give it a shot. And really? All the good suggestions are in the comments.

Well, this one is tricky, for me, because you actually have to know something and not just glibly natter on about, oh, literature and stuff. See here:

This may be beyond your scope as an east coaster, but I have noticed that in my daughter's school, as they have been studying westward migration (lewis & clark, gold rush), there are virtually no women or people of color in the curriculum. I know the Lucy Whipple book. And of course there is Sacajawea. But do you happen to know any good books, fiction or non-fiction, about women/girls in the western united states in the 1800s?

Oh dear! The west! See, this question comes to remind me that I don't really know anything.

It occurs to me that there must be many, many Native American narratives about this, and...I don't know any of them. Not to mention Asian Americans working on the railroads...about which I know nothing. And of course—well, the whole wide world, which for the moment seems far beyond me.

I am striving to convince myself that this is, indeed, because I am an east coast person, but I know it goes beyond that into Race and Children's Literature and Whose Story Is History, and on and on. So I did the only thing I could: I went to my collaborators. Diana, who is normally quick with the feminist answers, said "History? You'd better ask her," meaning Chestnut, and Chestnut, lover of brave, historical girls came up mostly empty. There is a book, she said, whose name is like Kate's Journey, except it isn't Kate's Journey, except it's sort of like that, and it's about a girl on the Oregon Trail. Or maybe it's about something different....

You get the picture. So I have my last-ditch efforts. 1) To give you this:

(Image courtesy Amazon (could you tell?))

She dresses as a boy, she goes to find her father in a boomtown, adventures ensue. Chestnut liked it a lot. It could help out. But really, I am relying more on 2) Hey, readers? Help! Got any ideas to round out the story here? Put them in the comments.

We Recommend: A Regular Girl, from "Now"

t's We Recommend, in which we use our superpowers to find readers the perfect book. Got a kid who needs a recommendation? Write us at thediamondinthewindow (at) gmail (dot) com with the age, reading tastes, favorite books, and any other relevant (or irrelevant) information, and we'll give it a shot. And really? All the good suggestions are in the comments.

Hold onto your hats, everyone, this might hurt your feelings a bit.

See, this one came in the form of a conversation, like so:

Here is what my 9-and-a-half year old just asked:

Mom, is there a book that is about a normal girl who is about my age or a little older--5th or 6th grade--who has adventures but not problems so much, kind of like Ramona (but I've read all those)

ME: How about Harriet the Spy?

D; I meant a modern girl, like from now.

ME: Harriet the Spy is from now.

D: Mom, no she's not. I mean like Ivy & Bean, except no offense but Ivy & Bean isn't well-written.

Got me stumped. You?

Ok, first let's get some things straight. Ramona the Pest and Harriet the Spy are from more or less the same historical period. Ramona was first published in 1968, Harriet the Spy in 1964. So we'll just see who's calling who not from now, missy!

But, at the same time...yeah. I mean, Harriet the Spy was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. And that may have had something to do with the fact that her life made some sort of sense to me. But now? I don't know, I think the absence of cell phones, googling—it's got to be noticeable to a kid.

So even though this made me think of a lot of "normal girl" novels—like, say, all of Judy Blume, and the Betsy-Tacy books—I will try to honor the desire for someone from now. Because while those are amazing (I think she would LOVE Betsy-Tacy), they are not, by any stretch, from now.

I turned, as I do, to Chestnut and Diana. Chestnut considered the Cobble Street Cousins. But, to address another sore point, I think her aversion to Ivy & Bean is more about its simplicity than any alleged poor writing. Though it could be that we just have different tastes. I will just put it out there that I, personally, find Ivy & Bean a delight to read (within reason). Then again, I have an aversion to the whole nomenclature of "well written" that is too complicated and weird to go into here. So I will just say: we think not, on the Cobble Street Cousins, as it might be too easy for her.

Which got me to thinking about Amber Brown. My hesitation? "not problems so much" Amber Brown has some problems, sort of? Hmm. And so, we came to this:

OK, yes: the first of the Anastasia books was written in 1979. But! There are more! There are lots! And one was written as recently as 1995! Yeesh. Maybe it should be Amber Brown? Still—I think she would like this.

Help me out, youth of today! Got anything more recent?

We Recommend: 9-Year-Old Blues

It's We Recommend, in which we use our superpowers to find readers the perfect book. And before I forget, like I did last time: got a kid who needs a recommendation? Write us at thediamondinthewindow (at) gmail (dot) com with the age, reading tastes, favorite books, and any other relevant (or irrelevant) information, and we'll give it a shot. And really? All the good suggestions are in the comments.

OK, this one will ring bells of recognition (is that actually a thing? Maybe not). But what I mean is: you will know what she is talking about. But! WILL YOU KNOW WHAT SHE SHOULD READ? That's the question, right?

I have a 9-year-old who is a strong reader, but has veered off into reading a lot of light series and graphic novels. And endless Harry Potter. I'd like to get her brain working a little harder and want to lure her back to the glory of books with deep stories and fabulous characters. She loved Bridge to Terebithia and Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of NIHM, though listened to both on audiobook before reading it herself. I'm trying to interest her in Island of the Blue Dolphins right now. Wrinkle in Time is too advanced and she doesn't like anything that involves scary or mushy stuff. She liked Half Magic, Ella Enchanted, Cricket in Times Square.

OK, now you know, those of you who read here often, that I am about to go off on my usual rant about Let the Children Read What They WANT! For extended diatribe, complete with Dr. Who references, see here.

However. While I am hesitant about the focus on juding reading material on its ability to "challenge" readers, I also know the frustration of having seen my brilliant amazing 8-year-old bring home Mary-Kate and Ashley detective stories.

Those...books. Were. HORRIBLE.

So.

Here are some things I think, with the caveat that I am just a random person who has taken it upon herself to write a blog about books and I have no expertise at all, or education that's about reading or reading levels.

1. The way to get children inspired by what they read is to let them follow their own crazy hearts.

2. But, you know, there's no law against putting awesome books out on the coffee table to see if they will catch someone's eye.

3. Some kids have a much easier time listening to audiobooks and then reading them. This seems entirely fine to me. Even better than fine, actually.

4. As a reading grown up, you are in for heartbreak as you watch your children cavalierly dismiss books you KNOW to be great.

5. We should all be used to heartbreak by now.

6. Reading = Pleasure, and like all pleasures, it grows and changes and transforms over time.

OK, on to the books. I talked to both Diana and Chestnut. Diana thought long and hard, and came up with the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett. However, she also thought Chestnut might be a better source, given the (longer in the actual email) description of the child. So I asked Chestnut. She didn't think long and hard AT ALL. She knew, all at once, as though the truth sprang into her head.

I have not read this book. It may not be complex and amazing. I fear it is not. But it came from the heart. And I think that getting excited about a book makes you want to read another book and then another and then another and then all of sudden you're reading Darwin and you're 27 and you have no idea how you got there.

Also? Maybe The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?

But we all know this is merely prelude. So have at it in the comments: find this kid a whole slew of books that will delight her.

And for heartbreak company: I STILL have not gotten Diana to read Watership Down. And I don't think I ever will.

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.

An Excellent Thing That Did, in Fact, Happen

Diana has been after me to read this:

But first I was on a PD James kick, and then I was reading something else, and then I started it because someone had helpfully left it in the bathroom but then we somehow forgot to bring it on vacation, and so it went. She kept rereading it. I didn't read it. 

And then Diana started 8th grade, and I finished what I was reading, and the fog lifted and everything came together—I was sitting on the couch zoning out like a master, when she showed up with it in her hand and said, "Mommy, why don't you read this and then we can talk about it?"

Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person in the world. 

OK, I will dab the tears from my eyes and show you just how wonderful the world can be sometimes. Because you can be stuck in your workaday life, and then you find out your 13-year-old has been busily reading something that has THIS in it:

COMMERCIAL BREAK

INT. BEDROOM — MORNING

(A PERKY MOM carrying a laundry basket enters her TEEN DAUGHTER'S bedroom. The girl lies on the bed, upset. The mother's face registers concern. She sits beside her daughter.)

MOM
What's the matter, honey? Why aren't you ready for school?

DAUGHTER
I'm not going to school today, Mom!

MOM
Not go to school? But you love school. You're a high achiever who fulfills my narcissistic need to outshine the other mothers on the block.

DAUGHTER
I know, Mom, but I can't go! Not with this unsightly lip hair.

MOM
(Smiling smugly, MOM pulls a large white plastic vat from her laundry basket.)
Oh, honey. You just need some of this. New Lady 'Stache Off with triple beauty action.™

DAUGHTER
Lady 'Stache Off. Isn't that what you use to sanitize our toilets?

MOM
(laughing) It does both! And now, with new Lady 'Stache Off's triple beauty action™, you can moisturize and self-tan while you rip that unsightly hair from every pore.

(Reprinted without permission but it's just an excerpt and I couldn't find an email address for her and I hope she doesn't mind, I am sorry, Libba Bray! You should all go buy multiple copies of the book now.)

OK, that is just one page. ONE PAGE. It goes on from there. And can I tell you, the thought that my 13-year-old is getting to read (and reread, and reread) this, as just one grain of salt in an ocean of bullshit that wafts around her and every other teenage girl (and all of you just go ahead and do your best to look away from that both tortured and mixed metaphor)—well, it makes me happy. So happy!

 

UPDATE: So I posted this before I finished the whole book, and in terms of age and reading content and all, there's a lot of, uh, sex. Sex in which girls are happy and all. But still, may play some havoc when you discuss it with your kid. Just so you know.

The Facts of Life

OK, we're going to try to keep this one clean. I mean, as clean as possible while still saying what I mean.

See, I was fine with the whole "My body is changing" type of book. We have our favorite one, and really—everything was fine.

Except everything was not exactly everything, if you know what I mean.

It's all very well to talk about ovaries. And armpit hair. Very well indeed! But it doesn't begin to talk about, you know, other stuff. Stuff like: First base and erections and sexual pressure. Oh my!

Of course, these are things you should talk about with your child. Preferably while you're in a rowboat or something, with fishing rods. And then your kid, who is maybe 14, says, "I'm so confused about boys!" (or girls or whatever) and you smile wisely, even ruefully, and say, "Gee, I was confused too when I was your age." And then you say a whole bunch of wise stuff.

Trust me, this scenario is far, far better than trying to find a parking space when it is 93 degrees out and someone is honking really loudly at you and your eleven-year-old says "My friend's sister's friend said she went to third base with a boy and what does that mean anyway?" while you have a heart attack.

I am of the opinion that even if you do manage to pull it together to explain the fine points of the bases, it's always helpful to have a book as well. For one thing, people don't roll their eyes at a book (or if they do, the book doesn't mind). Also, the book is there to be perused over time, instead of someone saying to it, "Oh stop, stop, that's so gross."

That's not to say that I have the perfect book. These are the books we got from the library:

Which is, ah, a trifle hetero-normative, if you will, on the cover there.

And then this:

They are—fine? I must say, I kind of can't stand "girl power" as a phrase, especially when it's accompanied by an exclamation point. It seems so unbearably false, you know? I find it alienating. I mean, I get that it's supposed to be something to aspire to, but it's a bit peppy for my taste.

But they did, these books, talk about, you know, stuff. Which was helpful. 

The question is, are there better options? Should I haul out an old Our Bodies, Ourselves (which I, personally, read compulsively when I was a teenager)? Is there something, somewhere, that's, I don't know, better? That will make the world an easier, less terrifying place for my children to exist?

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

You Recommend: Magazines for the Sad

This is You Recommend, where I am out of ideas about something, and plaintively ask my readers for help.

I know it's been quite a while since we did a We Recommend, partly because I misconstrued the last one, partly because we haven't really been getting requests.

And then I got a note from a friend, not on the blog but just a regular old "What do you think?" sort of email. Here's the deal: His relation is nearing her fourteenth birthday. She has been having a tough time, as we all do sometimes, struggling mightily with the societal pressures that fall on girls. They've been giving her a fairly rough ride of it—things are not easy for her right now. He wanted to know: what magazine would I recommend that he get her a subscription to, something that might provide a little light in the darkness, more or less? That wouldn't necessarily be a trip into the soul-less void, courtesy of Teen Vogue and Seventeen?

Of course, those of you old enough (and others, too) know that he is really asking for Sassy, much is it missed. And you know, too, that probably whatever awesome thing he is hoping for isn't something printed on paper, which kind of kills me, because there's nothing like lying in bed with a magazine, and it's not the same with a phone or computer.

I told him about Muse, which I have professed my love for previously, though I think it might be too young for her, and Cicada, which I don't know as well but pretty much trust is good. But truly, I don't have the answer.

So here we go: YOU recommend. I know a magazine can't fix something that's broken. But it would be nice to have something to send a 14-year-old girl that might make the world a little less terrible. Any ideas?

The Max and Ruby Dynamic—Fact...or Fiction!?!?!?

OK, so I need some information. Because the informatin I have? It is limited. I am lucky enough to be mother to the two most excellent girls, and we sit around the house being female. My husband, their dad, manfully (sorry) watches basketball, and thinks barrettes are pronounced "beret" like the French hat, but this guy-ness never really extends beyond him, if you know what I mean. There are no brothers, though we are blessed in nephews and boy cousins. But it's not enough, really, for me to know: the TRUTH about boys.

So here is my question: from the outside, it looks like the Max and Ruby stories are an incredibly accurate depicition of the dynamic between oh so many older sister/younger brother combos. That is: perfect (and bossy) big sister who knows how to do everything right, has to try to contain chaos/force field/loose cannon energy of essentially uncontainable little brother.

This is, in fact, what we see in lots and lots and lots of big sister-little brother situations. Is it that the girls just mature faster, and that coupled with being older makes them preternaturally together, and so, like goddesses, they stride the earth? Or is it that little boys just are tiny little spirits of chaos, overturning order and neatness whenever and whereever they can? Or are little boys getting a bum rap, just some more free-floating sexism to gum up the works?

I must say that we always really loved these books. Bunny Money was huge, with all the excellent cut-out money in the back. Not to mention the bluebird earrings that played "Oh What a Beautiful Morning!"

But the reality, people: what's your feeling?

Girls Read Guys Read?

There was a mass purge of bizarre branded items, review copies and other freebies where I work a few weeks ago, and I spent most of my time at the books table, where, among other things, I got this:

I just thought: what self-respecting children's book blogger would pass this up? Not that I'm exactly a self-respecting children's book blogger, but I try to be. It's a lot of memoir-type writing by male authors.

It came home with me and went to live on the coffee table, which is essentially our holding pen, where things wait to be blessed or damned. Did I read it? Of course I didn't read it. I've been too busy feeling sorry for myself for an array of ordinary-life trials and browsing aimlessly in the internet to actually read anything. Who did read it? Diana.

What a strange cognitive dissonance it is to see a girl reading a book that cries out on its cover: Guys Read.

She came at it fairly pissed off: "What do you mean guys read? Are you saying I can't read this?" She soon transitioned to irritation and suspicion: "This isn't a novel at all. It's not even fiction? WHY would you have Garth Nix, who is so awesome at writing fantasy, write something that's not even fiction?" Which gave way to absorption. She just read it. And read it. And then she read it some more. It migrated up to her room, where it lives happily shuttling between her desk and her dresser, a much-sampled, confusing new genre.

She did want to know why there would be a book just for guys, the very concept rubbing her the wrong way, and gnawing at her easily triggered injustice reflex. I talked a little bit, and probably none too coherently, about the covers that a lot of YA and middle-grade books have, and how they might be embarrassing for a guy to carry around, and the general stereotypes of who likes to read etc. She took it under consideration.

She feels that books should have no gender. I feel like that's sort of akin to saying there should be no racism. Of course there shouldn't be, but given that it's there, it's better to acknowledge it and try to eradicate it? Right? Maybe?

But really, what I thought would end up being about gender, instead ended up being about a kid reading authors she loves, but reading them in another genre—reading their memories, their actual voices. It's been strangely earth-shaking for her, at least that's how it looks from the outside. When you read a novel by Garth Nix, he's there on the cover, but other than that you're inside his mind. He vanishes from sight, because you're looking through his eyes. When you read his nonfiction story of his youth, he's there in front of you, inescapable, a person. It's like the end of the Wizard of Oz when they lift the curtain.

Did you guys ever read memoir type stuff when you were kids? What do you think?