The Curious Garden - Peter Brown

For: Kids
Copyright: 2009
$16.99
Rating: 4
Endpapers: FRONT: Gray scattered with small rocks, BACK: Bright freen scattererd with grass, flowers, and tiny mushrooms growing

Liam lives in a city of concrete, with nothing growing. One day he cllimbs up to some abandoned overhead railroad tracks and discoveres some weeds and a tiny tree trying to grow. So he becomes a gardener, watering and pruning and caring for the weeds. The weeds and mosses, because of this care, begin to spread. Eventually it travels the lenght and breadth of the abandoned tracks, down the sides of the bridge, and onto roofs of nearby building. All it took was the gentle caring of one boy.

In the Author's Note in the back of the book, Brown describes an old elevated railway on the west side of Manhattan that was abandoned in the 80's , then "redecorated" by nataure. I'd sure love to discover it. I wonder if it still exists?

MOVIE - Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

Wonderful
On Demand - this morning, Sunday May 31st
Originally hit the screens 11/25/2005
RT: 69% cag 91%
1:48 (N)
Joan Plowright, Rupert Friend (he was "introduced" in this film...)
Direcor: Dan Ireland
from the book by the lat English author Elizabeth Taylor

I'm not sure why I loved this movie so much that I'm inclluding it here. I don't want to forget it. I even want to watch it again (which, other than for a very few, is unusual). It was really well done. It was beautifully crafted. It had great dialogue, a wonderful message, a touch of poetry and innocence and a whole lot of love. When it came out and was at the Loft I attempted to go see it on numerous occasions, but it never panned out. I'm glad...very glad....I finally got to see it.

An elderly woman and a young man become fast friends. The young man has chosen to live without material objects, making music on the street for donations, while he writes. He has no computer, only an old typewriter. The elderly woman moves into a hotel where other elderly people live, taking meals with them at separate tables in an elegant dining room. They sit separately and speak to one another only at the end of the meal. However, they become friends. The young man, at Mrs. Palfrey's request, pretends to be her grandson, Desmond. She becomes "Sassa" to him. Their relationship grows. They listen to each other.

This is a story of friendship. Friendship among lovers, among different generations, among lonely people. (However, what the story says about family relationships, actual blood relationships, leaves me a bit bummed. Is it saying that with responsibility, love and tenderness and caring become unimportant? I'm going to have to think about this....)

Yes, it's a thinking movie. I didn't intend to cry at the end, but a drop or two did roll down my cheek. I hate sad endings, though this only had elements of sadness, it was actually quite a joyful movie. I do want to watch it again.

RT Consensus: "Bittersweet and endearing, this film about aging and unexpectded friendship is a lovely vehicle for Joan Plowright."

29. Indigo Slam - Robert Crais

Read by David Stuart
1997
Unabridge CD/Brilliance Audio
7 CD's - 7 hours
Rating: 4.5

I should probably rate this a 5, but there was just a little too much shoot-em-up action for me at the end. I just love these characters, though. Elvis Cole, private detective, who has a Pinnochio clock and Disney figurines in his office, lives in an A-Fram, and drives a yellow 1966 Corvette. Joe Pike, his powerful, smart, and deadly "sidekick". Lucy Chenier, his lady-love, a lawyer from Louisiana who is trying to obtain a job in LA. And this case's protagonists, three children looking for their father. It turns out their father is a counterfeiter fleeing the Russian mob. He's also avoiding the US Marshalls, who, in trying to protect them three years before, botched it. He no longer trusts them.

So we have these three interesting kids: Terry, 15, the mother hen, who has her GED and drives, Charles, 12, a foul-mouthed kid who uses his mouth to cover up all his uncertainties, and 9 year-old Winona, innocent and happy. At the end it looks like Elvis may be left as guardian to the kids, so it'll be interesting to see if Crais mentions them in future books.

Lots of twists and turns - i'm getting so I can predict them pretty well ! -- a zillion ways for the good guys to die but they never do -- a lot of humanity and just a little tender down-home lovin' make a really good read.

I read an article where Robert Crais and Elvis Cole are compared to Robert B. Parker and Spenser. They love their cities, (LA and Boston) you can follow them around in your mind because they give a lot of good directions and locales, they both have tough sidekicks (Joe Pike and Hawk) and significant lady loves (Lucy Chenier and Susan Silverman). They each even have a pet they talk about all the time (a cat in LA, a dog in Boston). They are both even good cooks, though, thank goodness, Elvis isn't quite as philosophical as Spenser. I guess it's time for the latest Spenser, huh?

28. Every Soul a Star - Wendy Mass

For: Middle Grades & Middle School
Published: Oct. 2008
322 pages
Rating: 5

This is the second Wendy Mass book I've read and I've become a fan. She knows how to tell a good story. This one, told in three voices, is wonderful.

Ally's parents moved to the middle of nowhere when she was small. They run an unusual campground, the Moon Shadow. They chose this spot because it's the perfect place to see a total eclipse of the sun, and they've been preparing for it for years. Ally has been homeschooled, loves where she lives, and is an expert on the skies: comets, asteroids, stars, you name it. However, she knows very little about the world outside her domain.

Bree is a self-centered A-clique pretty girl who just happens to be the daughter of two scientific-geek parents. She has her summer...and her life...all planned out when her parents drop the bomb-shell that they are going to take over the Moon Shadow Campground, in the middle of nowhere, for three years. Bree and her younger sister will be homeschooled there.

Jack is a self-proclaimed loser. Pudgy, clumsy, and lacking any self-confidence at all, he has failed science and must attend summer school. When his science teacher propositions him to attend a two-week Eclipse tour to the Moon Shadow Campground as his assistant, he goes, but with great trepidation.

The three, of course, meet. They bond, along with two younger 10 year-old siblings and another male "camper" named Ryan, share astronomy adventures, and change, all for the better, of course. And readers learn a lot about astronomy along the way. It's a feel good book. I'm not sure how realistic it is, but I do feel that relationships like the ones formed in the book DO happen. There's even a wise old lady that always wears sweatsuts to get attached to. Lots going on. I did, indeed, enjoy reading this tale.

FIRST LINE: "In Iceland, fairies live inside of rocks. Seriously. They have houses in there and schools and amusement parks and everything."

I've done a little research on Wendy Mass. I like both 11 Birthdays and Every Soul a StarI'm going to read more of her this summer.

MOVIE - Angels & Demons

Nonstop action with never a dull moment!
Viewed May 27 at El Con
PG-13 (2:20)
RT: 37% cag: 70%
Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor
Director: Ron Howard

It seems like I've been rating a lot of movies at 70% or so lately. That's good. Means I've not been disappointed.

I read this book early in 2001. It kept me occupied while Steve was sick when no other book could. So I've remembered it quite well, which isn't usually the case. However, I went to the movie with the attitude I was going to watch it as a movie in itself and not compare it to the book. I was pretty much able to do that. And sure, some of the plotline was the same. I also totally remembered who the BAD GUY was (I didnt' want to),even though as the ending approached I thought that part may have been changed. I DO think the ending of the movie was changed from the ending of the book, but that was totally okay. It worked. Except now I've got to get ahold of a copy of the book and see if I remembered, perhaps, the ending of ANOTHER book....

Tom Hanks and his female sidekick go on a crazy ride through the city of Rome from historical church to historical church following clues related to the illustrious Illuminati that Hanks' character is such an expert on. He matches wits with Vatican priests and Swiss guards, trying to prevent the murder of four cardinals and the destruction (literally) of the Vatican while the Cardinals are locked in voting for a new pope. Ah, such hair-raising excitement. I remember this book made me ask a multitude of questions about the politics of the Catholic church, many more than the movie did....

It was fun to watch. I had a nervous stomach by the end, though. Tom Hanks is so much fun to watch!

27. The Year the Swallows Came Early - Kathryn Fitzmaurice

Booklist Starred Review
Grades 4-6, ages 9-12
273 pages
Published Feb. 2009
Rating: 5

Madelyn, my Because of Winn Dixie lover, is going to adore this book. I can't wait to share it with her. This is Kathryn Fitzmaurice's first . Wow. And here's an oxymoron for you, it's a simple, complex book. There's a little bit of everything in it, and real people, imperfect adults, imperfect kids, but real. That's what I liked best. There's lots of metaphor and symbolism, but when it comes right down to it, it's the books simplicity that got me. I couldn't put it down.

Groovy Robinson's in the sixth grade, and all of a sudden her life is turned upside-down. Her father is arrested and taken to jail, and Groovy knows not why. When her mother finally tells her the story, her whole world is shaken, and the father she'd been ready to welcome home no matter what he'd done looks a lot different in her eyes. The normally-positive kid goes into a decline, even refusing to be called "Groovy", the nickname her father gave her, but her given name, Eleanor, instead. Her love for cooking, her plans to be educated at a great cooking school, disappear. She mopes. She's depressed. Many stories are woven into this one. Her best friend, Frankie's problems with his wandering mom. Even her mother's horoscope, supersticious-filled pronouncements and her firned Mirasol's determination to be an artist all work into the plotline. It's a delicious story. It's real.

It takes place in or near San Jaun Capistrano, California, where the swallows are said to return thousands of miles every year at the same time (like the monarch butterflies to Monterey). However, I researched a bit on the internet (isn't that what a good story's supposed to do, make you think further and relate to it?) and it sounds like they haven't returned for a few years. Nevertheless, I'm hoping my summer jaunt through southern and mid-coastal California next month will take me to this well-defined setting so that I can see it for myself. And one of the California Missions is here, too!

FIRST LINE: "We lived in a perfect stucco house, just off the sparkly Pacific, with a lime tree in the backyard and pink and yellow roses gone wild around a picket fence."

Our Abe Lincoln - Jim Aylesworth

An Old Tune with New Lyrics
Illustrator: Barbara McClintock
for: Young kids
Rating: 5
2009
$16.99

A class is putting on a play about Abe Lincoln, accompanied by simple words to the thune of "The Old Grey Mare." I sang the words as I read from page to page. The following is from the middle of the book:

Friend Abe Lincoln go sent of to Washington
........Sent of to Washington
........Sent off to Washington
Friend Abe Lincoln got sent too to Washington
........Many campaigns ago.
Kind Abe Lincoln then led as the president
........Led as the president
........Led as the president
Kind Abe Lincoln then led as the president
........Many cruel days ago.

Simple. You get the picture. It tells the story of Abraham Lincoln simply, first facts for younger kids to have and hold and take with them through life.

There's no white - pale yellow instead - one full page is a framed illustration, the facing page has the stage curtains on top and side with additional drawring across the bottom, beneath the lyrics.

Very, very nice.

The Pied Piper's Magic - Steven Kellogg

2009
Rating: 5
For: Kids
$16.99
Front endpapers: Elf walking through a lovely forest
Back endpapers: Pied Piper Fountan full of happy people swimming

Take one happy fairy tale full of magic and fun and imagination, add colorful full-page illustrations by Steven Kellogg, and every kid AND adult will be smiling. Sure, it's a corny, predictable story, but it's clever and charming, too.

A take on the pied piper, but many changes and additions make it practically a new story. Peterkin the elf has decided to look for work and spread a little happiness, so he sets off until he finds a run-down house in the woods. Elbavol, the witch, has always been unhappy, but Peterkin does such a topnotch cleaning jog that she gives him a pipe (horn) that has magical power that she's never been able to find. He discovers that it plays words, and if he flips over backwards, the words reverse.

Okay, one wicked king and many rats/star later, Elbavol/Lovable and the king marry and everyonee is happy, happy, happy!

A Writing Kind of Day - Ralph Fletcher

POETRY
Poems for Young Poets
for: Intermediate Grades
2005
Rating: 4 (a 3-5 range of poems, graphics, not illustrations, are "ih")
811.54F at Library

Ralph Fletcher lives in New Hampshire, and I'm quite sure that at one time he was a part of Teacher's College Writing Project. He's written a lot of poems for kids, about kids, and books about writing poems. All the poems in this book are about writing, poems, poetry, words....they're really fun. What follows are a few particular favorites:

(Oh, what a great dedication:
For Cynthia Rylant, your delicious poems and stories continue to inspire me.")

Frost in the Woods

Uncle John lives in New Hampshire
near where Robert Frost was born.

He puts on his red plaid hunting shirt
and takes me hiking in the woods.

The leafless trees throw shadows
that dye the snow blue and black.

I ask him: Do you own these woods?
He answers: I’m renting them from God.

It’s just the tripm-tromp of our boots
until my uncle stops to recite a poem:

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree . . .

When he’s done the words keep echoing
in a quiet place that has opened inside me.

I ask him: Did y ou write that poem?
He says: I rented it from Robert Frost.

Bill of Sale

We read a poem
about a bill of sale
for a slave girl
named Lydia Wells.

She was sold for $133
on July 18, 1858, to a man
named Samuel Rothrock.

Coming home on the bus
I kept picturing Lydia,
the same age as me,
her bare feet in the dirt,
standing in the hot sun,
sold like an animal
to the highest bidder.

In a country like America
how could this ever happen?
How can I go on with my life?


Poetry

Poetry is like some
sugar-crazed teenager
who just got a license
but refusees to follow
the rules of the road.

It races out of control
then jams up the traffic by
going reeaaaaaal slooooooow.
It turns up the music so loud
you can’t figure out how it Decides
to capitalize certains Words.
Punctuation? Ha! A joke!
Won’t use complete sentences.

And why does it refuse to
stay
on
the
line?
The most annoying thing?
Poetry won’t shut up.
It embarrasses everyone
by telling the truth.

In the Land of Words - Eloise Greenfield

POETRY
New and Selected Poems
Illustrator: Jan Spivey Gilchrist
2004 (Why have I never seen this before? ? ?)
Rating: 5, oh yes
$16.99
Catalogued 811.54G

The library just purchased this book - I'm the first one to borrow it, it looks brand new. I've never seen or heard of it, but it was published in 2004. Where has it been hiding? It includes over twenty wonderful poems, many about poetry and poems and words and story. And Jan Spivey Gilchrist, who has teamed up with Eloise Greenfield in many of her books, has created fabric collage illustrations! She uses a running stitch about a quarter inch from the cut edge, and they look wonderful. This sure makes another great model - have kids find (or write) a poem they love and illustrate it by cutting felt. If kids are younger they can glue to adhere, but stitching could be done of at least the largest cut piece. Wonderful, wonderful.

How can I choose just one poem to include here? I can't.

In the Land of Words

In the land
of words,
I stand as still
as a tree,
and let the words
rain down on me.
Come, rain, bring
your knowledge and your
music. Sing
while I grow green
and full.
I’ll stand as still
as a tree,
and let your blessings
fall on me.

Story

I step into the story,
I leave my world behind,
I let the walls of my story
Be the walls around my mind.

New faces and new voices,
I listen and I see,
and people I have never met
mean everything to me.

I worry when they worry,
I quake when danger’s near,
I hold my breath and hope
that all their troubles disappear.

I don’t know what will happen,
I never know what I’ll find,
when I step into a story
and leave my world behind.

26. Marked - P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast

House of Night Series #1
Mother-daughter authors
Published 2007
320 p.
For: YA
$8.95
Rating: 4
(B & N Sales Rank #213!)

Rayna, one of my eighth graders, insisted that I read this book. She loved it. It was a quick read that was impossible to put down-bad girl/good girl, vampires (spelled vampyre), great-looking hot guys, love, friendship, predictability, and more books to come all make this a great package for young adult females.

When Zoey Redbird is 16, a tracker "marks" her with a half-moon tatoo on her forehead. When you are marked there is nothing you can do, you will now be changed into a vampyre. You must leave your old life behind to learn the ways of vampyres as your body slowly changes. One in ten don't make it, actually. But when Zoey discovers that she has been chosen by the goddess Nix to become a powerful high priestess, she takes on this new challenge in a positive way. She makes wonderful new friends and the current Hight priestess, Neferet, has become her mentor at the School of Night. There's a beautiful bully (aptly named Aphrodite) who is a mean, mean troublemaker, and there's the requisite hot guy that is totally attracted to Zoey immediately. What's not to love? The 320 pages flew by. I might even entice myself to read the next in the series (Rayna tells me she thinks there will be ten or eleven), Betrayed.

MOVIE - New in Town

Cute, predictable, and quite enjoyable
PG (1:36)
RT: 18% cag: 75%
Released Jan. 30, 2009
(I think this was the last day on the big screen here)
Century Gateway Cheap Theater
Renee Zellweger, Harry Connick, Jr.
Director: Jonas Elmer (Dutch, Hollywood debut)

The critics and I don't see eye to eye on this one. Yes, it is predictable and cute. So I guess I like predictable and cute. It's also quite funny, and Harry Connick, Jr. is charming, charming, charming. Zellweger's Lucy, a VP in a big company based in Miami, is sent to Hobunkland, Minnesota in the middle of a frigid winter to oversee a small plant there - and lay off 50% of its employees. Her secretary is a Jesus-loving scrapbooker, the union rep is an outdoorsman who easily exchanges verbal quips with her, and the rest of the cast is an assorment of funny (though, yes, stereotypical) small town Minnesotans. Boy and girl fall in love, girl fixes everything, etc. etc., but it was a lot of fun for and hour and a half - and who doesn't need an hour and a half of fun and laughter and popcorn once in awhile?

Shanghai Messenger - Andrea Cheng

Illustrator: Ed Young
For: Elementary kids
2005
Rating: 3.5
Endpapers: Turquoise

Xiao Mei, a half-Chinese American girl, is encouraged by her grandmother Nai Nai to visit family in Shanghai, China. With trepidation, the eleven year old travels by herself to spend some time with family she's never met. She gets to meet great-grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins who take her in immediately and form loving bonds quickly. She is introduced to the culture of China, makes many observations, gets to know her family, and even learns to write some Chinese. Simply illustrated this is a gentle, informative book.

The orange medly of lines and cross border every page on left and right. It's very eye-catching.

MOVIE - Adventureland

A smart, untrivialized comedy/drama
Viewed Friday 5/15 at Crossroads
Comedy/Drama (R) 1:47
Released 4/3/09
RT: 89% cag 70%
Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Ryan Reynolds
Director: Greg Mottola

In 1980's Pittsburgh, a recent college grad finds that his parents can't help him pay for his much-anticipated European summer, so he has to go to work at a local cheezy fun park. There he works on various "games" (not even the more desired "rides"), making the acquaintance of a various assortment of new friends - including Kristen Stewart, who plays a very interesting, very real role as a messed-up college student. Stewart and Eisenberg don't seem to have much in the way of sparks (Eisenberg feels too youngish for a college grad, too), but other than that.....a very enjoyable movie.

Altered Book Exchange

In March, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I journeyed to downtown Tucson, to what I've heard is the oldest building in the city. There I joined a small group of people who have committed to an altered book swap for the next year. We'll meet monthly for three hours in this incredibly pleasant space, share our art (this part makes me really nervous!), share new techniques, and feel artistic. Each month we switch books, taking someone else's treasure home with us to create two double-page spreads. I played with painting the pages with acrylics, covering everything with ModPodge, using a label maker, weaving directly into the page, sewing on paper, and cutting up junk mail. Those classy black and white stripes come from the subscription cards that fall out of magazines. I've begun quite a collection of them - I see a bigger black and white striped art project in my future....

So I thought it would be fun to post my first two pages. I'm hoping that my inspiration gets a lot stronger - somehow I have a great idea, but the finished project is never even close to the magnificent page I had in my head. Oh well. I have eleven months left to find a technique that will be mine.