give thanks!
thanksgiving day! what a month of delicious reads.
and i haven’t even scratched the surface of my violent and crazy love of books. if you asked, i wouldn’t admit to a favorite book. i wouldn’t want any of my other books to get jealous: for crime and punishment to crawl off its shelf or for death is a lonely business to wait for me by the jar of mayonnaise in my refrigerator. but when it’s dark and the lights are out and i’m by myself i might whisper “you’re my favorite” under the covers to leo lionni’s frederick.
it’s a small story about a tiny mouse. over the summer and fall all the other mice are busy busy busy gathering nuts and seeds and berries to store up for the winter. they think frederick is a nutcase. he sits instead of hurrying from one bush to the next.
fie on him, you might say, he isn’t getting any of my christmas pudding, the lazy lump. but, then when the sun pulls behind the clouds and winter descends, it turns out that frederick was busy gathering something else. he saved words and colors and stories and songs for those long winter months and pulls them out one by one, drawing a hush over all the mice who scolded him.
i won’t argue that the pantry needs filling, but there are needs that go deeper than maslow’s bare bones hierarchy. i think frederick got something right. we are built of something more than food. we come from stories. and words. and memories.
so be thankful, my friends, and store up the harvest around you. remember the single sharp laugh, the taste of friendship, the smell of bathwater, the feel of an afternoon, the texture of puzzles, the silk of pumpkin, the down of hair, the deepness of a voice.
store it up.
give thanks for life by remembering it and passing it on.
Filed under children's lit, life, thankfulness | Comments (2)the art of the personal essay
phillip lopate, one of the current gods in creative nonfiction, selected a few century’s worth of essays from seneca to woolf, montaigne to didion. lopate’s introduction to this collection is pivotal to an understanding of the genre. if essays intimidate you, start here. with a little patience, you’ll find something (whether it be mcphee or emerson or white) that will tickle your brain and stoke up thoughts you thought had drowned.
a girl of the limberlost
this is one of those “coming of age” novels that i clung to as i fumbled and stumbled my way through junior high and high school. elnora comstock is sassy and bright, empathetic and curious. and those lunches! my tummy dreams of the packed lunches of elnora comstock.
and occasionally, when no one is looking, i still fancy myself with very long hair and a penchant for gathering moths.
Filed under classic, thankfulness, young adult lit | Comment (0)the funny little woman
here’s to very small women with magic rice paddles!
precious bane
thank goodness this book is back in print.read it religiously, once a year. tune out the kids. turn off the TV. light a candle. melt into something soft. and just read. read read read.
it’s the tale of prue sarne, a woman stricken with a hare-lip (or rather, a cleft-lip, for those of us who need a translation). but beyond that, it’s the story of love that sees something more substantial than physical appearance.
it takes time to get into the rhythm of dialect of mary webb’s characters, but it’s worth the patience. this book is gold.
Filed under fiction, thankfulness | Comment (0)
