It's Monday - and a New Year!

      Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and 

  

Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they and others have been reading! Your TBR lists will grow! Happy Reading! 

Leigh-Anne Eck and Cheriee Weichel are now hosting the "MustRead" challenge for 2021 that Carrie Gelson started so long ago. If you are interested, go here! See my list above! Or the post yesterday.

Happy New Year! Here we go. . . Best wishes for a super year everyone!

Two Adult Books 

Good Evening, Mrs. Craven- The Wartime Stories of Molly Panter-Downes.

          I discovered this collection when it was donated to the used bookstore where I volunteer. I know I've read stories by Mollie Panter-Downes in the past because she wrote prolifically for The New Yorker, but this intrigued me because I thought it might have some connection to those responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic. This centers on the experiences in World War II Britain. The stories are dated from October 1939 to December 1944, bookended by two of her well-known Letters from London. I've loved every story, showing the emotions, the inner thoughts of people in crisis, sometimes grandiose, often selfish, lives being lived alone or with others. And I wondered how connected they are to today in 2020, now2021 as all of us live in our own strange new world? Find and read at least one of Panter-Downes' stories. You won't be sorry!

           I finally finished The Rose Code, a complicated and very long book about secrets at Bletchley Park (now a WWII Museum), codebreakers during WWII. It centers on three women, unlikely friends, but changes and betrayals both hurt and cemented the friendships. I won it from Goodreads and it is good, but the holidays took quite a lot of time and my reading detoured to some books below and other reading, like the magazines I hardly ever get to! If you enjoy Kate Quinn's historical fiction, this is another good one!

One lovely picture/short chapter book:

           I've loved Gary Schmidt's books in the past and knew this would be a good one, perhaps for lower-middle grades? It's a lovely, short story of a father and son, Samuel, off into a coming (then arriving) snowstorm to find a milk cow for Samuel's mother who wants it for the new baby. It's a story of how people used trading instead of money to see if what they have can turn into what they need. Starting with a bowie knife, Schmidt slowly shows the wise ways of the father and the sweetness of Samuel as during the trading, a few things come their way that he wishes "just a little bit, it wasn't a brown-eyed cow his mother was wanting." Showing some wishes, but selfless giving, Gary Schmidt and his late wife Elizabeth Stickney (her pen name) weave a sweet tale that turns out just right. You'll see! Eugene Yelchin, writer, and illustrator, paints some lovely full-page illustrations within the pages. I enjoyed this very much.

              Earlier in the year, I shared a picture book by this same couple. It's a lovely story, too! Almost Time, illustrated by G. Brian Karas, is all about the struggles to wait for something good. Clearly, Gary and Elizabeth know about young boys! My review on Goodreads is here. 

Picture Books:

        I know it's a Christmas book, yet it's also about people, enemies, reaching out with love on a special night. This is a fictional account from a song written by John McCutcheon, the book's author. Beautiful paintings by Henri Sorensen show the surprise, then wonder, and finally heartfelt feelings on a special night in the trenches of World War I. It connects to me today as I wonder how those in conflict here in the U.S. can find common ground? I am hopeful that we can, that we will.

         I grew up in a small town without a library and was a happy child when the bookmobile came with so many new books. I did own some, but could not possibly have owned all that I read during my elementary years. We moved to a city when I was in middle school where there was a marvelous library, yet I still missed my bookmobile.

         I imagine I could have made do unlike the children shown in this wonderful story of Afghanistan by Bahram Rahman who grew up there. He now lives in Canada, has written a story from his first country, letting young girl Pari go with her mother to help as they journey on Kabul's first library bus. They visit remote villages and one refugee camp in the story, yet I imagine the bus goes to many other places day by day. When they stop, girls come to exchange books read with new ones. And Mama gives a brief English lesson. Many layers inform this story as shown in the quiet and beautiful illustrations with a desert background and happy girls so excited that the "library bus" has arrived. There is a brief passage about refugee camps and an author's note at the back. It will be a good introduction to life in another land for young readers or a companion book with others who tell of the world of getting books to those who have no other way to get them. 

          Note: Only girls are shown in the illustrations that appear to demonstrate that in the past, they were forbidden to learn to read and write and this book celebrates their new-found freedom. Here is one article that tells of the real bus, but this time, shows one of the founders talking to only boys. 

           If you haven't read the adult book published years ago titled Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, it's quite a wonderful and inspiring story!

          What can I say but that this is one I had to wait for and also have to turn in without renewing because of so many holds! Captain Swashby, old sea captain, retires to a small house, a lonely place which is exactly as he wished it. As Beth Ferry so aptly writes, it was "Salty and sandy and serene. Until" the house next door was suddenly occupied by a girl and her granny. They intruded too, too close so Swashby left some angry words in the sand, "No Trespassing". The sea had other ideas, however, and changed the message through a bit of wave action to "Sing". I hope you see how this is going, and there are sweet surprises made even happier by the illustrations by Juana-Martinez Neal (Alma and How She Got Her Name, Fry Bread). She fills the pages with mostly sandy backdrops but a happy and friendly girl and her granny, and a very grumpy Captain Swashby, until the end. A wonderful story is told in this picture book.

Now Reading: Elizabeth Acevedo's With The Fire on High