23. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

listened to on Audible - Unabridged (12:12)
narrated by Cassandra Campbell
2018 G. P. Putnam's Sons
370 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction 1952 - 1970
Finished 2/27/2019
Goodreads rating: 4.54 - 98,680 ratings (wowzer!)
My rating: 5
Setting: 1952-1970 northern NC coast

First line/s:  "The morning burned so August-hot the marsh's moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog.The palmetto patches stood unusually quiet except for the low, slow flap of the heron's wings lifting from the lagoon.  And then, Kya, only six at the time, heard the screen door slap."

My comments: What a beautifully crafted story, how I enjoyed listening to it!  I have a feeling that if I had read it I would've been impatient with some of the description of the marsh, the animals, the winds and grasses and beaches.  But listening to it read in Cassandra Campbell's lilting voice, it became poetry.  Loneliness and aloneness, beauty and nature, described brilliantly.  This is a wonderful piece of storytelling.

Goodreads synopsis:  For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life–until the unthinkable happens.
          Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

22. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

read on my iPhone
2017 Viking
327 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 3/5/18
Goodreads rating:  4.34 - 95,075 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting:  Contemporary Glasgow, Scotland

First line/s:  "When people ask me what I do -- taxi drivers, hairdressers -- I tell them I work in an office.

My comments:  I've been pretty much consumed by this book for the last 24 hours. It was definitely a slow starter, but so worth getting into. Super sad in spots, laugh out loud funny in others. Engaging characters, I'd love to read more about Glasgow… and visit  Bucket list!

Goodreads synopsis: No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. 
          Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
          But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
          Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
          The only way to survive is to open your heart. 

PICTURE BOOK - The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles by Michelle Cuevas

Illustrated by Erin E. Stead

2016, Dial Books for Young Readers/Penguin

HC $17.99

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.94 - 974 ratings

My rating: 4

Endpapers: Dark sage green

Illustrations:  woodblock prints, oil pastels, and pencil.

1^st line/s: "The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles lived alone on a high spot with only one tree for shade.  He always kept his eyes on the waves, watchful for a glint of glass."

My comments:  A gentle book about loneliness.  It made me sad, actually.  I wonder how kids would feel about this story, and what ages would work best? Lovely illustrations, creative, and imaginative, three things I look for in a picture book.  This one will definitely work for adults and older kids!

Goodreads:  The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles, who lives alone atop a hill, has a job of the utmost importance. It is his task to open any bottles found at sea and make sure that the messages are delivered. He loves his job, though he has always wished that, someday, one of the letters would be addressed to him. One day he opens a party invitation—but there’s no name attached. As he devotes himself to the mystery of the intended recipient, he ends up finding something even more special: the possibility of new friends.

PICTURE BOOK - The Farmer and the Clown - Marla Frazee

Illustrated by the author

2014 Beach Lane Books

HC $17.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.32

My rating: 4

Endpapers:  red

Title Page: browns and yellow: sunrise: farmer heading for the fields, walking away from his small house

Wordless picture book

My comments:  A farmer (who lives alone way out in the country) rescues a baby clown who falls off a circus train. Through days and nights they bond and become very attached to one another - until the train returns and the farmer gets to reunite baby clown to his family. 
Happy? Yes. Sad? Yes! Perhaps my current loneliness makes me feel extra, ultra sorry for the poor farmer, but I'm left with such a sad feeling after reading this story!

Goodreads:  Whimsical and touching images tell the story of an unexpected friendship and the revelations it inspires in this moving, wordless picture book from two-time Caldecott Honor medalist Marla Frazee.
          A baby clown is separated from his family when he accidentally bounces off their circus train and lands in a lonely farmer’s vast, empty field. The farmer reluctantly rescues the little clown, and over the course of one day together, the two of them make some surprising discoveries about themselves—and about life!
          Sweet, funny, and moving, this wordless picture book from a master of the form and the creator of The Boss Baby speaks volumes and will delight story lovers of all ages. 

PICTURE BOOK - Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch - Eileen Spinelli

Illustrated by Paul Yalowitz

1991 Aladdin Paperbacks

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.43

My rating: 4.5

Illustrations:  "The illustrations in this book were first drawn with ebony pencil on Bristol plate paper and then colored over with Derwent color pencils.  Because the artist is right-handed, he starts on the left side of the paper and moves to the right so that the picture won't smudge.  The paper is very smooth, and only the artist knows where that mysterious texture comes from."  Cool.

1^st line/s:  "Mr. Hatch was tall and thin and he did not simle.  Every morning at 6:30 sharp he would leave his brick house and walk eight blocks to the shoelace factory where he worked.  At lunchtime he would sit alone in a corner, eat his cheese and mustard sandwich and drink a cup of coffee.  Sometimes he brought a prune for desert."

My comments:  I'm going to use this for Annatude/ Owning Up/ Character Education immediately.  It will follow up perfectly with "being present."  It's SO easy to brighten up someone else's day.  Just a hello, a smile, a good word, a tiny gift, holding a door open for someone with a grin.  Kids are sometimes (umm...frequently) so absorbed in their own worlds that they don't realize how much little things make a huge difference.  This book with bring that idea home...LOUD, HARD, and FAST! (And although this takes place because of a valentine's day gift, it really isn't a valentine's story.)

In-Class Follow-up:   I will follow this up with brainstorming little ways that we can make days better for people.  Then we'll brainstorm (individually) people that have done kind things for us, or that are just great people in our lives.  I'll pull out some cool, cute stationary and we'll write notes to them and MAIL them, too!

When I read this book, I'm going to end with this poem by Bruce Coville:

Ripples

No one acts in isolation
And no act leaves the world the same.
Words and gestures ripple outward,
What shores they reach we cannot name.

All our lives end in a riddle --
A mystery without an answer,
For even gone we ripple on,
Like a dance without the dancer.

Did you extend a friendly hand?
Did you lift a battered spirit?
The one you helped helped someone else
Ah! Now we're getting near it.

That second someone dropped despair
Did not give in, instead revived
To teach, to love, to fight, to dare,
And what you've done lived on, survived.

On and out the circle widens,
Past all hope of comprehending.
The slightest touch can change the world
Healing, helping, lifting, mending,

Actions last for generations
Our fathers' mothers mold our hearts.
We in turn shape all that follows;
Each time we act, a ripple starts.

       ~Bruce Coville

Goodreads:  One wintry day, a postman delivers a mysterious package with a big pink bow to a lonely man named Mr. Hatch. "Somebody loves you" the note says.
          "Somebody loves me!" Mr. Hatch sings as he dusts his living room. "Somebody loves me!" Mr. Hatch whistles as he does his errands in town. "But who, " Mr. Hatch wonders, "could that somebody be?"
          After some time, Mr. Hatch discovers just who his secret admirer is and, in doing so, enjoys the biggest surprise of his life!

58. House of Dolls - Francesca Lia Block

Illustrated by Barbara McClintock
Harper, 2010
HC (a small book) $15.99
64 pgs.
Rating: 4

This quick, quick short read is for any child who believes that dolls have a life of their own. Madison Blackberry envies the lives of her five mismatched dollhouse dolls. They are happy, content, safe, in their lives, and she is unhappy and lonely in hers. So she begins taking things away from them.

The dollhouse and Wildflower, one of the dolls, used to belong to Madison's grandmother, who visits occasionally and still makes wonderful clothes for the dolls and furnishings for the house. When one of the dolls leaves the grandmother a message, she gets clued into her granddaughter's loneliness and life begins to ges better for Madison. And when it gets better for Madison, it gets better for her dolls.

The book starts like this:

"Wildflower, Rockstar, and Miss Selene lived in a house from another time, a white house with a red roof and red shutters and a red front door. In the garden was a real bonsai tree and a reflecting pool made from a pocket mirror tucked into a lawn of real moss."

Don't you just love it?

Lissy's Friends - Grace Lin

Viking, 2007
32 pages
for: kids
Rating: 3.5
Front endpaper: Large red crane and title page information
Back endpaper: Clear directions on how to fold a paper crane

Lissy moves to a new school and no one talks to her. Tired of having no friends, she begins folding paper and soon has a menagerie of various new folded paper friends - beginning with a crane, then giraffe, bear, dog, frog, rabbit, snake, elephant..... until one day they all fly away in a big gust of wind. One of her classmates catches one of them. They become friends, and Lissy teaches her to fold animals as well. In that way, Lissy became one of the gang.

The illustrations are great - right down to the fabric and origami paper patterns. Bright and bold, and the kind you want to cut right out of the book and put on the wall to brighten up a room.

Feel like folding paper cranes? Start out with reading this book. Afterwards, if kids are old/mature enough, read to them about Sadako.

The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness - Colin Thompson

Published: Sept, 2008
For: (See note below)
Rating: 4
Read: Jan. 2009
Endpapers: Tiny brown and white print with pawprints (after I read the book and looked again I realized the prints were of a 3-pawed dog with a "peg" leg - clever)
Font: Cool - looks like hand printing
Australian

Round, roly-poly George lived with his grandmother and was very lonely and sad. "Most Friday afternoons on his way home from school, in that time before the weekend when lonely people realize just how lonely they are, George visited the dog shelter." (Boy, do I know what he means!) The very last cage in the back and bottom of the shelter was where the dogs were kept that were about to be euthanized. That is where he found 3-legged Jeremy - another lonely soul. George and his grandmother took Jeremy home and built him three different kinds of new legs. And life was to be much better for many years to come for them all. A friend at last. And even George and his grandmother's relationship seemed closer after Jeremy's arrival.

Gentle humor. Funky illustrations - very brown. I really like this a lot.

NOTE: It mentions the fact that Jeremy's about to go to "the big kennel in the sky" a number of times, so unless you want to explain that to very young children, I'd stick with older ones you know will understand the idea of euthanasia.