27. The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

listened on Libby
narrated by Julia Whelan - Absolutely fantastic.

Unabridged audio (13:52)
2019
388 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction
Finished 3/25/2021
Goodreads rating:  4.27 - 251,213
My rating: 5
Setting: 1937 eastern Kentucky

First line/s:  "Listen.  Three miles deep in the forest just below Arnott's Ridge, and you're in silence so dense it's like you're wading through it."
 
My comments: Hot damn, I loved this book.  I had read The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek last year, so I was acquainted with the general idea of the WPA eastern Kentucky packhorse librarians of 1935 to 1943.  The narrator was absolutely fantastic.  I loved the characters: seven feisty women, two wonderful gentlemen, and a huge array of small-town folk who were mostly unlikable.  Yes, definitely a love story, but more importantly a wonderful piece of well-researched historical fiction,

Goodreads synopsis:  From the author of Me Before You, set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond.
          Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.
          The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky.
          What happens to them–and to the men they love–becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity and passion. These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is at times breathtakingly beautiful, at others brutal, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives.
          Based on a true story rooted in America’s past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic–a richly rewarding novel of women’s friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond.

MOVIE - The Rider

R (1:44)

4/13/18 Limited release

Viewed Tuesday, 6/19/18 at The Majestic in Gettysburg
IMBd: 7.7/10

RT Critic:  97  Audience: 81
Critic's Consensus:   The Rider's hard-hitting drama is only made more effective through writer-director Chloé Zhao's use of untrained actors to tell the movie's fact-based tale.

Cag:  6/Awesome  

Directed by Chloe Zhao

Sony Pictures Classics

Brady Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, 

My comments:  The Rider was an amazing movie, and I didn't fully realize the extent of the meaningfulness of it until the credits rolled.  The actors were all the real people that apparently lived the story playing themselves.  Like a documentary told completely as a story. Incredibly depressing, heartfelt, and even upliftiing in its sadness.  The South Dakota plains.  Thelvies of young people that are raised around horses, raised to ride.  The harshness and reality of spial cord injuries and brain injuries.  The rodeo.  Horses.  I don't even like horses!  But I sure did like this movie.  Here is Roger Ebert's (actually Godfrey Cheshire's)vright-on, excellent review:  https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-rider-2018

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Based on his a true story, THE RIDER stars breakout Brady Jandreau as a once rising star of the rodeo circuit warned that his competition days are over after a tragic riding accident. Back home, Brady finds himself wondering what he has to live for when he can no longer do what gives him a sense of purpose: to ride and compete. In an attempt to regain control of his fate, Brady undertakes a search for new identity and tries to redefine his idea of what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.

Small Medium & Large - Jane Monroe Donovan

Sleeping Bear Press, 2010
$15.95
32 pgs.
Rating: 4
Endpapers: White

In this beautifully illustrated wordless picture book, a girl writes a letter to Santa and is rewarded on Christmas morning with three boxes - one small, one medium, and one large. Inside are a cat, a dog, and a miniature pony. They all immediately become fast friends, eating together, playing and tobogganing in the snow, making snow angels and snowmen, having snowball fights, baking cookies, sitting by the fire together, than all snuggling into her bed at night.

At the end of the book the author tells of her own three animals who are really the prototypes for this story.

This is a lovely wordless book, a perfect addition to a Christmas library, for animal lovers especially. I went through it a number of times - the illustrations are beautiful, full of happy Christmas feelings (and I wouldn't consider myself a great animal lover, either).

Call the Horse Lucky - Juanita Havill

Illustrated by Nancy Lane
The Gryphon Press, 2010
$15.95
24 pages
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers - Lucky and Flicker trotting in a green field

Lovely, lovely edge-to-edge illustrations, particularly the first one.

Mel and her grandmother, while riding their bikes through the countryside, see a tired, skinny, sick horse. They call the Humane Society and the hrose, Mel has named him Lucky, is taken to a horse rescue ranch. Once Lucky recovers, he's taken to a horse therapy ranch.

The book ends with info on how kids can help abused horses in many different ways - including volunteering at a horse therapy ranch like T.R.O.T. right here in Tucson....one of the kids featured this organization in our school's Passport to Peace a couple of years ago, and T.R.O.T. is mentioned in the book.