Question:

Did you do anything fun over this holiday weekend? Black Friday shopping? Sleeping in? Eating out? Visit a bar? Hang out with friends? Do anything cool enough to redeem the fact that you played a largely text-based computer game that doubled as a history lesson for far too much time, restarting and saving each and every time you contracted cholera or your boat sank as you came around Cape Horn or you accidentally stole a mule and was hanged?

Answer:

No. I read a butt-load of nonfiction books. Here are some exceedingly short reviews.

Zora! The Life of Zoara Neale Hurston

by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Judith Bloom Fradin

Last summer, I read another story about Zora Neale Hurston, a fictionalization of her childhood called Zora and Me. I then attended a speech by the two co-authors that proved their tireless, inspired research into Ms. Hurston’s life, as well as their absolute insistence that the mythology of Hurston’s decline into obscurity and poverty was just that – a myth. Fradin and Fradin ascribe to this mythology to an extent, which detracted from my overall reading positive reading experience; however, this biography does an excellent job of portraying Hurston as a creative, independent, and complicated lady.

 

Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95

by Phillip Hoose

Dear Phillip Hoose,

I do not normally give two shakes about birds of any sort.

However, I read your books, and suddenly birds are the most interesting thing I have ever thought about.

How do you do this?

Sincerely yours,

Jessica

 

The Plant Hunters: True Storeis of Their Daring Adventures to the Far Corners of the Earth

by Anita Silvey

Weirdo scientists who took death-defying trips into the jungle to collect plants? Cool topic. And this book is real pretty – full of hilarious old time photos of said-scientists, beautiful plant drawings, and other ephemera.

That being said… I wish that I liked this book more. I think it was a bit repetitive, “one-note”-y. Ah well.

 

Stars in the Shadows: The Negro League All-Star Game of 1934

by Charles R. Smith

I have little or not interest in baseball, but Stars in the Shadows gets mega-points for a cool format – it’s a slim little book, recreating a single baseball game, capturing both the on-field drama as well as the surrounding cultural excitement and involvement. It’s told entirely in rhyming verse – cool! It is heavily illustrated – cool!

The format is fun, Frank Morrison’s illustrations are just amazing, buuuut at the end of the day, the poetry was just too much of a stretch. The rhymes were often forced and the rhythm hard to latch onto. Maybe if you are an actual sports fan, you could ignore this, but it was just too much for me to keep track of.

 

Miles to Go For Freedom: Segregation & Civil Right in the Jim Crow Years

by Linda Barrett Osborne

The Civil Rights Movement & surrounding racial history of America is important, important, important.

However, if I have to read another Civil Right book right now… I might just have an emotional breakdown.

Regardless of my emotional state, Miles to Go focuses solely on pre-Civil Rights era atrocities, which is unique. The images – vintage signage and publications and portrait photography – are especially notable.

 

A Passion for Victory:

The Story of the Olympics in Ancient and Early Modern Times

by Benson Bobrick

Fun fact 1: The Olympics used to involve no-rules fighting to the death.

Fun fact 2: The Olympics were not actually popular for a significant period of time – nobody really gave a crap until the 20th century.

Fun fact 3: I have been reading too many books and I cannot summon the energy to say anything useful about this book

Fun fact 4: The Olympics were, at some point, a display of ancient Greek athletes doing sports in the nude. Let’s bring that back *cough* Michael Phelps *cough*

Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917

by Sally M. Walker

This is a little known piece of history – what could have been a mostly harmless harbor accident turned into the biggest explosion before nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two Canadian cities decimated, countless victims.

Massachusetts was a big help, donating supplied and money, and apparently the big Christmas tree in Boston Common is a yearly gift from Nova Scotia, in thanks.

Otherwise, Death. Destruction. Explosions. Suffering. Sadness. And so it goes.

How long until I can read something about cupcakes or fairies?

 

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I am blessed to have some dear friends to hang out with today, and am blessed to have a full-time job that requires me to work tomorrow. Seriously, though. This is the first year in the last five that I have a ready-made excuse NOT to go Black Friday shopping! SERIOUSLY, THOUGH I live with this boy who discovered Black Friday shopping awhile back with one of his fellow stingy friends, and even though he had food poisoning or the stomach flue and became violently ill while WAITING IN LINE AT A CIRCUIT CITY, he still counts it as one of the best days of his life. You should have SEEN the deal he got on that external hard drive, guys!

Aaaanyway. This year, I’ve just got to work in the morning, so sorry, honey, you can get up at 4 a.m. and put on your winter coat and hats and mittens by yourself.

But for those of you getting your holiday shopping started early, and not everyone on your list would like a 1,567 GB external harddrive, here are some books I would suggest. Do bookstores do Black Friday? If the answer is yes, I might change my curmudgeonly tune…

 

For babies and toddlers…

 

Everywhere Babies by Susan Myers and Marla Frazee

Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney

Pantone: Colors by Helen Dardnik

This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen

 

For assorted other children…

 

Penny and her Doll by Kevin Henkes

Wonder by R. J. Palacio

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson

Chomp by Carl Hiaasen

 

For your weird teenage cousins…

Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Baby’s in Black: Astrid Kirchnerr, Stuart Sutcliffe, and The Beatles by Arne Bellstorff

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

 Rookie Yearbook One ed. by Tavi Gevinson

 

For brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, and other “adults”…

 

 

 

The Signal and the Noise: Why Some Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t by Nate Silver

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman

The Story of America: Essays on Origins by Jill Lepore

Live By Night by Dennis Lehane

 

 

It is possible to be objective about a book, to judge literary quality based on established criteria, to separate the reader-self from the text on the page.

However, it’s probably impossible to do all that 100%, and do it 100% of the time.

A professional part of me says I should try my darndest to be that objective reader, but a big part of me doesn’t really want to bother.

(And maybe the biggest part of me just doesn’t want to? The part that likes the intersections of self and reading, that finds it amusing to chill out in this in-between? This is why I insist on keeping a blog that is about a lot of books but also in no way claiming to be a professional resource, and also why I have a lot of persistent professional angst…)

And how, exactly, do you read these three books in the same weekend and not let the reading experience of one bleed into the other?

Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

by Doreen Rappaport

There are so many books about the Holocaust for young readers, but heck if this isn’t the most encyclopedic that I’ve encountered. And Rappaport doesn’t just retell the same retellings – instead, this book is thick with stories you haven’t heard, the often minute tales of bravery, ingenuity, and self-sacrifice enacted by Jews while they were oppressed, tortured and killed. This book is dense for certain – it took me a few weeks to muster up the energy to make it through, but man, these stories are wild! People crawling through sewers, starting armed forest civilizations, pitching homemade bombs into Nazi strongholds, and general badassery. See Marc Aronson’s NYTimes review for more coherent descriptions (maybe more professional? maybe not… I’ll let you judge).

 

We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March

by Cynthia Y. Levinson

This is another book about unsung heroes, this time of the American variety. I took an extremely comprehensive course on the American Civil Rights Movement while in college – probably the most life-influencing course this white girl has ever sat in on, by the way – and I’m sure we learned about this march in class. However, Levinson writes about the movement in Birmingham and its participants in such vivid specificity that I couldn’t remember a single thought or assumption I had before I opened this book. Focusing in on the particular experiences of four youngsters from different backgrounds and neighborhoods, creating her text with heavy research and interview material, Levinson captures not only the tremendous maturity and resolve necessary to willingly submit oneself to angry dogs, police with billy clubs, fire hoses, and, oh, jail, (AT FOURTEEN!), but also the experience of just being a young teen during this time of Jim Crow. What it felt like to look into a restaurant from the outside and see a banana split that looked good but know that you were not allowed inside, would never be allowed inside, and that was that. What it felt like to realize that you, just a kid, had the power to influence change, and were maybe even essential to the cause.

Yes, I’ve been in a bad mood, been hormonal, been pretty crazy… but this book made me cry.

 

Ask Elizabeth: Real Answers to Everything You Secretly Wanted to Ask About

Love, Friends, YourBody… and Life in General

by Elizabeth Berkley

To Berkley’s credit, this is probably a book I would have lovvvvvved as a ten, eleven, twelve-year-old. As an oldest child, tween and teenhood, to me, felt like a foreign landscape that I was walking through, alone, and believe me, I knew a written map when I saw one.

However, it is not possible for me to read a book as if it exists in a vacuum, 100% impermeable to the rest of my life and the world.

And it was 100% impossible for me to read a book about bffs, crushes, and self-esteem, penned by a non-expert celebrity, no less, without One! Thousand! Eye! Rolls!

Maybe it there was one reference to the following video clip, I could have taken this book seriously.

A Black Hole is Not a Hole by Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano

One time, in my AP Chemistry class, I needed some extra credit. And by “some” extra credit, I mean a lot of extra credit. The most fun way I earned extra credit? Sewing a little white felt mole from this exact pattern and turning it in for Mole Day. The least fun way I earned extra credit? Making a Powerpoint that explained String Theory.

Although A Black Hole is Not a Hole is a compact, pleasing little science book with illustrations both charming and beautiful, and the scientific explanations are slow and clear without being oversimplified… reading this book felt a little like making that String Theory Powerpoint. This is high science that my brain is just not equipped for. How I ended up in AP Chemistry and not AP English is a great mystery.

Young scientists, allow your brains to grow bigger than mine and enjoy this book. Maybe by the time you are in high school, you won’t need any extra credit.

 

The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World by Mary Losure

I like a good nonfiction book that exists solely to call attention to an interesting, obscure bit of history that you never would have heard about otherwise. I read a biography of a lady who stole a lot of babies once that I found questionably authoritative and downright horrifying exactly for that reason: reading about these small moments in time, these strangely influential people who have fallen from history’s radar, makes me feel like the universe is vast and interesting.

You’d think I would say that about a book about Black Holes and not about two child trick photographers…. but that’s neither here nor there.

The Fairy Ring is a pleasantly slender history of two young girls who may or may not have actually seen fairies in their backyard, but who did indeed make some trick photos with paper fairies, and those photos indeed did get national press, and the forgery was not revealed until they were both old ladies. It’s an interesting little story and Losure does a good job of calling attention to the strangeness of being a small girl in England, where you have limited agency in your daily life, but maybe have the singular power to materialize fairie-kind.

 

That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone ed. by J.L. Powers

In case black holes and fairies are a little too upbeat for you, might I present to you a collection of narrative essay about children growing up in war zones? This is a weighty read, but worth it – each chapter is a narrative written by someone who has seen war or the effects of war firsthand, and the book as a whole becomes this testament to our world’s violent, violent history. The fact that there are so many wars past and ongoing conflicts is just baffling, especially considering the personal impact. The essay’s authors explore their own childhoods as unwilling players in war – as a Cambodian refugee, the child of a PTSD-addled Vietnam vet, as a civilian in an occupied state, as a potential Taliban recruit, as an orphan.

This book is fascinating, chilling, humbling, and it feels important. This is a small-press book – I hope that it finds as many readers as it can get.

I made it my first 27 years of life without ever hearing about famous living artist, Chuck Close. Heck, I think I may have actually seen some Chuck Close portraits before; still nothing.

And then, last week, I read two books about Mr. Close, and am now an expert, I think.

First, I read Boston-Globe Horn Book Award Winning Chuck Close: Face Book. This book is structured around a school “fieldtrip” – a group of children visiting Mr. Close in his studio and, after studying his life and his work, asking him some rather astute questions. The children had questions about his childhood, his career, his art, etc. It’s a pretty little book, and has an awesome flip book in the middle with portraits you can mix and match.

And then I decided to read Chuck Close Up close by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, because I didn’t JUST read a biography of the same man the day before. Oh yes I did, that’s what this entire post is about! This book is like a slim picturebook, but there is a surprising amount of text. Where Chuck Close: Face Book is more casual, written in Mr. Close’s own voice, and loosely structured, Greenberg and Jordan present a more traditional biography – a format that allows a bit more depth of content.

What I’m trying to say is that

A) Chuck Close is pretty fascinating and talented, especially his thoughts on his own creative process – he is super down to earth, treats his art like craft, and is constantly adjusting his techniques and mediums to adjust for various mental and physical limitations.

B) Both books are informative, interesting reads, and you can read both back to back and not be bored.

C) It is possible that I saw a wall-sized painting of Bill Clinton and forgot about it. I think I am becoming senile.

Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure by Jim Murphy and Alison Blank

One of my favorite qualities of nonfiction for kids and teens is that the authors are never allowed to be too narrow. Some readers may come to a book with background knowledge on the topic, but most don’t – they need a little more context. Good nonfiction authors, I’ve found, do more than do a little info-dump at the beginning of the book; they simply broaden the discussion to give a cultural and historical background, weaving in specific information as they go.

Murphy and Blank are such authors. I have never been more interested in pathology than when reading Invincible Microbe. The best part, I thought, was the sometimes painful, always weird details of what passed for TB treatments over the years: starving, bleeding, rolling everyone’s beds out on the porch to sleep – all fair game! You will never be more thankful for modern medicine, and, at the same time, more horrified that tuberculosis is still a rising problem around the world.

 

Abraham Lincoln & Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship

by Russell Freedman

I have a well-known histori-crush on Abraham Lincoln, but Frederick Douglass ain’t no slouch. Ever read his autobiography? That’s some tough stuff. Anyway, these two men are quite well-known and much biographed, but Freedman manages to provide a compelling little dual-biography by focusing on the qualities and interests that the two figures shared. However, I did not know that these two men had a few encounters, and while “friendship” might be a stretch – they only met a handful of times – they obviously had a great respect for each other, a respect that was racially crazy for the time. I really enjoyed this book

Discovering Wes Moore by Wes Moore

Aaaaand speaking of unlikely friendships, this guy Wes Moore  met a guy with the same name who grew up in the same neighborhood as he did. While Wes Moore #1 became an “author, businessman, and US Army veteran,” Wes Moore #2 received a life sentence for murdering a policeman. At some point, the cops came to Wes Moore #1’s parents house looking for dirt on Wes Moore #2; later, Wes Moore #1 decided to mail Wes Moore #2 a letter, and they developed a friendship. How interesting.

Maybe Wes Moore’s book for adults, The Other Wes Moore is more of a reflection on this interesting friendship… but the juvenilized version, Discovering Wes Moore, is all childhood memoir, all Wes Moore #1 looking back at how his Mom raised him right, family made sacrifices, how he acted like a dumb little kid most of the time but learned from mistakes and became a man, etc etc etc. The Wes Moore #1 meets Wes Moore #2 bit is kept to the final chapter, reserving the rest for good old fashioned Lesson Teaching.

Ahem.

We may have reached the point where I am not allowed to read anything other than middle grade and young adult nonfiction. This is unfortunate when you are 75 pages into Raven Boys and your hold on Happier at Home just came in, but alas, alack. Here is a random assortment of the true stuff I’ve been reading.

Meltdown!: The Nuclear Disaster in Japan and Our Energy Future by Fred Bortz

I remember news coverage of the  2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and remember something about a nuclear something something, but because I am a privileged American, I let things go in one ear and out the other. Bortz pulls your attention into the geological factors that lead to such seismic incidents, cultural factors that allow Japan to, um, exist basically on top of a fault line, and, most significantly, how the world gets power from nuclear plants and how dangerous it is when these plants are damaged, like the ones damaged by the earthquake in Fukushima in 2011. This is fairly dry stuff – science and all – but damn if I learned a lot about nuclear physics, power plant structure, and the shocking SHOCKING capacity for human error. All this privileged American stuff sure requires a lot of trust that some dude will read a meter properly and not contaminate my home and the earth at large for HUNDREDS OF YEARS.

Black Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives by Albert Marrin

Speaking of terrible, problematic, dangerous power sources… how about a book about oil? I didn’t realize that I was reading two such similar books simultaneously until the final, almost identical chapters laying out the pros and cons of alternative energy means because where Meltdown! is science-heavy, Black Gold is all history. Did you know that cars used to be considered “clean” forms of transportation, because the alternative was piles of horse manure in the streets? Did you know that World War II was ended in a large part because Germany ran out of oil? Did you know that Britain invaded the Middle East (aka Iraq) in an effort to bolster their navy by securing some Middle Eastern oil? Did you know that no matter how expensive gas prices are at the pump, we are GOING to run out of oil? Maybe you are not a privileged American who spends her time reading romance-y books for teenagers and knew all this, but I didn’t. I found this book startlingly engaging.

And also, the answer is: solar.

Speaking of post-industrial angst… Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London is a little love letter to Mr. D, equal parts biography and amateurish literary analysis. According to Warren, Dickens was a God Amongst Men, walking around and writing stories that ignited the British Upper Class into their Oprah-caliber “best selves.” Before Oliver Twist, nobody gave a rip about the poor factory children! Thank you, Charles Dickens!

I am being facetious, because I have an academic distaste for children’s biographies that veer towards hero worship. It is a fine primer on Charles Dickens’s quite interesting life (did you know that for a spell, his family LIVED in PRISON while Little Dickens worked in a factory??) and an adequate overview of his important work, significant social influence, and the bizarre, exploitative economy of 1800’s Britain.