1280 - 1283 (2025 #32 - #35). October 2025

Sonora by Jenni L. Walsh

The cover of this book caught my eye when I saw it among the LibraryThing Early Reviewers selections for September 2025.  In May of 2016, I visited the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, and, at that time at least, there was an amazing sculpture on the ceiling of the entry rotunda, of a girl on the back of a horse diving into a tank of water.  The book's cover reminded me of that.

So of course I had to request the book, and I was lucky enough to win a copy to review.

Jenni L. Walsh's book is a fictionalized account of the Sonora of the title, Sonora (born Nora Evelyn) Webster (1904-2003), from the age of about 19 (in 1923) to about age 27 (in 1931), when Sonora experiences a life=changing event.  

The oldest of six children abandoned by their father and raised by their mother in Georgia, Sonora answered an advertisement placed by showman William Frank "Doc" Carver in 1923, looking for a girl who could swim, dive, and ride, and joined his diving horses act.  They travel around the country performing, eventually settling at the Atlantic City (New Jersey) Steel Pier.

A movie made about Sonora's life in 1991 was Walsh's inspiration for the novel, but as Sonora herself said the movie was inaccurate, Walsh used Sonora's 1961 autobiography as her primary source.  An author's note at the end of the book includes this and other information about its writing, and is followed by discussion questions for book groups.

Most interesting to me were the details about the training and sequence required to perform horse diving.  This was an easy and enjoyable read, and I recommend it.

The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill

This 2022 middle-grade (Accelerated Reader grade 5.1) fantasy novel by 2017 Newbery medalist Kelly Barnhill (for The Girl Who Drank the Moon) was a National Book Award Finalist in Young People's Literature for 2022 and was recommended by my Seattle-area best friend Kathleen.  On the surface, it's a fairly typical story of good-versus-evil, right-versus-wrong, but older readers and adults may pick up on the allegorical, even satirical, aspects of the story.  

Fifteen orphans live with the unnamed Matron and her husband Myron in a town where the library and school burned and were never rebuilt.  Townspeople have become suspicious of each other and pretty much keep to themselves, not helping their neighbors.  All the adults in town have an out-of-proportion admiration for their dazzling mayor, who (supposedly) defeated a nearby dragon years before.  He collects taxes, but does nothing to help the townspeople, just agitates them.

At the edge of town lives a kindly ogress, a baker and gardener extraordinaire, who enjoys bringing vegetables, cheeses, and baked goodies as surprises to the townspeople, late at night.  Her generosity is helping the orphanage, but not quite enough.  One of the orphans decides to run away (to leave more food for the others), and the kindly ogress finds her.  But the mayor blames the ogress for the child's disappearance, and uses this distraction from the truth to rile up the townspeople.

Does the mayor - actually a dragon in disguise - sound a bit familiar?  Early on (chapter 4), he says, "I, alone, can fix it."  Yup.  In an interview, Barnhill said she was writing fairy tales "just for myself" in response to the 2016 election, and "one day, I wrote one that just didn’t feel the same as everything else. It stuck with me in a different sort of a way. ... I was finishing [the manuscript] around the exact same time that [George Floyd] was murdered by police" in her home of Minneapolis.

Besides dragons and ogres, the book is full of crows who can talk (in their language of course), so there are plenty of fantasy elements for children who enjoy that.  The book starts out slowly at first (or maybe it just seems that way to an adult reader like me) but picks up later on.  Still, I think it could have been shortened a bit.  The allegory and satire will probably go right over the heads of the intended age group audience, but some of their parents and other adult readers might get a kick out of what happens to the mayor at the end.

Lights at Night by Tasha Hilderman, illustrated by Maggie Zena

This gentle bedtime book celebrates the different kinds of light, natural and man-made, one might experience at dusk and in darkness, inside and outside, throughout the seasons.  

One or more foxes, or a representation of them, appear on nearly every double-page spread.  Author Tasha Hilderman is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, some of the indigenous peoples of Canada, and I have to wonder if the fox is important in that culture.  

I loved an interview where Hilderman explained how important it was that combines (and not tractors) be in the text and illustrations, and the interviewer notes, "even something as small as that ... is representation of people who live in a particular place in a particular way of life ... So all those kids who do know what combines are and live with them and have that experience get to really see that reflected."  This is exactly why I'll be sending this book to my great-granddaughter, who lives on a farm.

The lights described in the beautiful text glow from Maggie Zena's illustrations, digitally rendered in Photoshop.  This book could be used to talk about the seasons, holiday celebrations, and different forms of light in a classroom, yet could also help soothe a child with fear of the dark.  Highly recommended.

Our Corner Grocery Store by Joanne Schwartz, illustrated by Laura Beingessner

In an interview, author Joanne Schwartz said she was inspired to write this book by a store at the end of her Toronto street, run by an Italian couple who had emigrated to Canada in the 1960s.  The story takes place on a Saturday, when Anna Maria helps her grandparents at the store, from opening to closing.  Readers and listeners will enjoy spotting the details in Laura Beingessner's intricate illustrations.

This book is a reissue of one originally published in 2009.  It was a finalist for Canada's Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award in 2010.  It's aimed at children ages 3 to 7, but most will need the book read aloud to them, as there is a lot of text.  I think the book would be appreciated by all elementary school age children, and could be used in social studies lessons about neighborhoods and communities.  

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1279 (2025 #31). September 2025

I was on the road almost all of the month, and did very little reading other than guidebooks for the Oregon Trail (which I am still reading and will hopefully write about next month).  I did receive one picture book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program that was short enough for me to read and review the last day of the month:

The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt, written by Riel Nason, and illustrated by Byron Eggenschwiler, is a lovely story about a ghost who's a little bit different.  Instead of being a sheet like most ghosts, he's a patchwork quilt.  (One ancestor was a checkered tablecloth, his great-grandmother was a lace curtain.)  Being a quilt is problematic - for example, he can't fly as easily as other ghosts.  But things change one Halloween.

This is a gentle, non-scary Halloween story for young children, with messages about courage and acceptance (of self and others).  The color palette of the illustrations is muted, but full of interesting little details.  

Originally published in 2020, the book I'm reviewing is a lovely gift edition with gilt-edged pages and a gilt-embossed cover.  The end papers echo the patchwork of the little ghost, in grays, beiges, and blues. I plan to make this lovely book a gift to my two great-grandsons.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1276 - 1278 (2025 #28 - #30 ). August 2025

The Girl from Guernica by Karen Robards

So late last month, I had finished reading all the items I had around to review for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, so I checked some books on my wish lists in Libby to see which had the highest average rating, and this was it.  

Although the premise and some of the events in the book stretch credibility, it is based on a real incident - the bombing by the German Luftwaffe of Guernica, Spain, in April 1937, at the request of Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.  

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

I love Kate Quinn's historical fiction, so when I saw that my local public library had this e-book, I placed a hold and got it about the time I finished The Girl from Guernica.  Much to my surprise, it was actually a murder mystery, albeit set in the early 1950s.

Christina the Astonishing by Marianne Leone

In an author statement that accompanied the advance reading copy I received of this novel, Marianne Leone said, "After three memoirs, this is my first deep dive into fiction."  It felt a bit like a memoir, though, because of the similarities between the narrator, Christina, and Marianne herself (acknowledged by the author in the same statement).  

This growing-up-Catholic novel starts (Part 1) in 1960 with Christina in fourth grade at a Catholic school in a Boston suburb.  It then jumps to 1964 and eighth grade (Part 2) followed by eleventh and twelfth grades (Part 3), all still at the same Catholic school (which is coed grades 1-12).  Part 4 is set in Christina's post-high school, early adult years.

My favorite chapter was in Part 3 - "Quando Mai," which is an expression often used by Christina's Italian immigrant mother Rita that means "when ever?" or "since when?"  It starts out with Christina writing a (literal) litany about the nuns she's had as teachers in first through eleventh grades, when she's supposed to be researching the saint she is named for.  There is more than one named Christina, and the one she chooses is Christina the Astonishing - which at first I thought Leone just made up.  But no, although never canonized, Christina the Astonishing is venerated in the Catholic Church.

Leone is five years older than me, and, like one of her friends in the book, I have an aunt who was a nun (for 75 years).  I never experienced any mean nuns, nor was I ever awed by (nor afraid of) them, thanks to my aunt.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed Leone's take on her growing-up years.  This book has a lot in common with Leone's Ma Speaks Up, a memoir about her mother, which I also received from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program and read eight years ago.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1272 - 1275 (2025 #24 - #27). July 2025

How to Dodge a Cannonball by Dennard Dayle

I requested this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program because it was listed as historical fiction and was published by a well-known house (Henry Holt).  Instead, it is really "Civil War satire about American racism" as described in the blurb, and I was probably not the best audience for that.  Parts of the book were quite funny, but I found the story hard to follow (and unbelievable) in places.  White teenager Anders joins the Union Army as a flag twirler to escape his abusive mother, defects to the Confederates, then back to the Union after Gettysburg - but to an African American regiment, where he claims to be an octoroon.  By the end of the book (also quoting the blurb), "Anders begins to see the war through the eyes of his newfound brothers, comprehending it not so much as a fight for Black liberation but as a negotiation among white people over which kinds of oppression will be acceptable in the re-United States."  I did finish the book, I didn't hate it, and I'm sure there's an audience who will love it - just not me.  (My ex-brother-in-law, who tries too hard to be funny in his annual holiday newsletter, would probably love this.)

The Irish Goodbye by Heather Aimee O'Neal

Three sisters come home for Thanksgiving after many years apart, due to a fatal accident on their older brother's boat and his later suicide.  Cait, the oldest, is recently divorced with bratty twins, home from England where she recently quit her attorney job when she didn't make partner.  She wants to get together with her high school crush - the brother of the boy who died on her brother's boat - and invites him to the holiday dinner.  Maggie, the youngest, is nervous about bringing home her new lover, knowing her mother won't approve.  Alice, the middle child who stayed near home and takes care of their aging parents as well as her own family, has a secret that could wreck her marriage.  These women are somewhat unlikeable (at least to me) at the beginning of the book, but as their backstories come out, I grew to empathize with and even like them.  This is author Heather Aimee O'Neill's first novel, and I have to wonder if she modeled Maggie on herself and Cait and Alice on her own sisters.  Write what you know, right?

Drawing Is ...: Your Guide to Scribbled Adventures by Elizabeth Haidle

A beautiful book for ages eight and up about drawing, with a number of exercises to practice the tips and skills discussed.  Author and illustrator Elizabeth Haidle used pencil, ink, gouache, graphite powder, digital collage, and a lot of hand-lettering.  I especially love the endpapers, the first with tools of the trade neatly lined up, the last with them more scattered, many clearly used, and interspersed with sketches.  A great gift for a budding artist or anyone interested in learning more about drawing.

This Book Is Dangerous! by Ben Clanton

This picture book features Jelly, the jellyfish character from cartoonist Ben Clanton's Narwhal and Jelly series of easy readers / comic books / graphic novels.  (I reviewed the first book in that series back in 2016.)  The story is silly, and not particularly interactive, in my opinion, but the illustrations are fun, and the glow-in-the-dark dust jacket is awesome.

I also re-read Moloka'i by Alan Brennert, since I'd forgotten some aspects of the story (which I first read in 2008) when I read its sequel, Daughter of Moloka'i, earlier this year.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1266 - 1271 (2025 #18 - #23). June 2025

This month, I read some more books by John Graves - I'd checked out everything my local public library had in late April in advance of a presentation about his Goodbye to a River near the end of that month.  

The Last Running was a short story originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in June 1959.  It was reprinted a number of times thereafter, including as a stand-alone book in 1974 with black-and-white drawings by John Groth.  In his annotated bibliography in John Graves and the Making of Goodbye to a River:  Selected Letters, 1957-1960 (read in April), Graves describes it as "Cowboys & Indians, spinoff from the digging in regional history that was part of my homecoming to Texas.  Possibly the best of my few short stories, certainly the best known of them."  Set in 1923, it features the reunion of an old Comanche named Starlight with a Texan named Tom Bird, who pursued him in the late 1860s after a horse raid that resulted in the Comanches murdering a Texan and his wife and two children.  

This story, along with excerpts from Goodbye to a River and other selections of Graves' writings, some previously unpublished, were compiled into the 1996 anthology A John Graves Reader.   Graves makes it clear in the preface that he often revised the works, both unpublished and previously published, for this anthology.  Notes at the end of each of the 22 pieces in the book indicate the provenance.  It's hard for me to pinpoint a favorite, but one story that stuck with me was "Fishing the Run' (originally published as "Going Under" in Texas Monthly magazine in March 1981), about a fishing trip on the Brazos not far from his home near Glen Rose (which isn't far from my home) with his 15-year-old youngest daughter, with a scary ending that makes one realize we're all getting older.

The last book by Graves that I checked out was Texas Rivers, published in 2002, with photographs by Wyman Meinzer.  This book was a compilation of six articles first published in Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine over about three years, beginning in March 1999.  That month's article was on the Canadian River, and in his annotated bibliography in John Graves and the Making of Goodbye to a River:  Selected Letters, 1957-1960 (read in April), Graves noted that "this piece was done to large extent out of books and from talking to knowledgeable people, with some field trips.  It came out reasonably well."  Graves acknowledges the people who helped him in an introduction.  The other rivers covered are the Lower Neches, the Pecos, the Clear Fork of the Brazos, the Llano, and the Upper Sabinal.  I'm only really familiar with the last two, from trips to the Hill Country.  The large photos are quite stunning, especially the double-page bleed spreads. I just wish that some of the photos that were printed quite small had been made larger.  There's also a two-page bibliography at the end of the book.

I also realized I had one more book introduced by Graves at home:  Landscapes of Texas:  Photographs from Texas Highways Magazine, published in 1980.  I forgot to make a note of what Graves wrote about this book in the annotated bibliography in the book mentioned above, but I think it was because the book was simply listed, as he wrote a number of introductions for similar books.  Entitled "Some Notes on Texas Landscapes," the introduction takes only ten pages in the book - there are 130 pages of photographs, followed by two pages of photo credits.  The photos are divided into sections for East Texas, Texas Gulf Coast, West Texas, Panhandle Plains, Central Texas (which is everything not in the other areas, including the Hill Country).  I appreciate that every photo has a caption.

The Great Dinosaur Sleepover by Linda Bailey, illustrated by Joe Bluhm

When my son was about two-and-a-half years old, he was obsessed with dinosaurs.  Playskool Toys had a line of plastic toys called "Definitely Dinosaurs," some of them distributed by the Wendy's burger chain, and my son had a number of them - and he could remember and pronounce the names, such as Apatosaurus (which was blue).

This book reminded me of those long-ago days.  Jake is supposed to have a dinosaur-themed birthday sleepover party - but his guests all get the flu.  But in the middle of that night, he awakes to find three dinosaurs - including the difficult-to-pronounce Pachycephalosaurus - watching a "hilarious" dinosaur movie on the downstairs TV.  They came for the party!

I didn't realize until reading another review that there's a T. rex hidden on most of the spreads - and a subtle message about not leaving others out of the fun.  I disagree with another reviewer who down-starred the book because of the word "gobsmacked."  Author Linda Bailey is Canadian.  The omniscient narrator uses the word, not any of the characters, and I for one appreciate picture books that introduce a few new vocabulary words to children.  It can't be any harder a word than the names of some of the dinosaurs! 

This is a great book (with a fun ending) that any dinosaur fan (kid or adult) will love.  I can't wait to give it to my great-grandsons.

Speak to Me of Home by Jeanine Cummins

This story of three generations of women - Puerto Rican Rafaela Acuña y Daubón Brennan, Ruth Brennan Hayes, and Daisy Hayes - was one I found hard to put down each day (as I do most of my reading in my daily half-hour on an elliptical trainer).  

Spanning seven decades (1953-2023) and multiple locations (Puerto Rico; Trinidad; New Jersey, St. Louis, Missouri; and Palisades, New York), the book jumps back and forth in time and place, but the chapter headings signal the reader of both.  

Rafaela is the privileged daughter of a government official - until her father is disgraced, and she has to take a job on a USA military base in Trinidad.  There she meets her American husband Peter Brennan, and marries him even though her heart belongs to another.  They start their family in Puerto Rico, but move to Peter's hometown of St. Louis when their youngest child, Ruth, is seven.  Rafaela encounters prejudice there, and her marriage founders.

Ruth goes to college in New Jersey where she also encounters prejudice - but in reverse, from Puerto Rican students.  She falls in love with two different men, but ends up marrying an Irishman, Thomas Hayes - who dies when Ruth is 38, with three young children, Vic, Daisy, and Charlie (later Carlos) to raise.

The story begins with Daisy at age 22 in Puerto Rico.  She's in an accident in the height of a hurricane, and Ruth and Rafaela need to get to her.  That does happen near the end of the book, but first we get all of their compelling backstories.

You also learn a lot about the secondary characters - Rafaela's parents, her sister Lola, the family cook Priti and her son Candido, Peter and Ruth's brother Benny, Thomas and Ruth's other beau Arthur, and Daisy's brothers and cousin Stefani, Benny's daughter.  I want to know more about these characters and could see a sequel to Speak to Me of Home some day.  

This novel makes me want to visit Puerto Rico. and it makes me want to read more of Jeanine Cummins' books, especially American Dirt.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1262 - 1265 (2025 #14 - #17). May 2025

Who is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service edited by Michael Lewis

I saw a television interview of editor Michael Lewis about this book, and decided to read it, as my local public library had (surprisingly, for my ruby-red community) just purchased it.  Lewis wrote two of the eight essays in the book (as well as the introduction); Geraldine Brooks and Sarah Vowell were two of the other essayists I recognized.  Originally, these stories - each about "someone doing an interesting job for the government" - were published in the Opinions section of The Washington Post in 2024.

With Elon Musk's chainsaw approach to cutting government "waste," the early 2025 publication of this book couldn't be more timely.  There's a misconception out there that government employees are lazy bureaucrats.  Full disclosure - I am a retired government employee, albeit on the state and local (municipal and school district) levels, not federal - and I am damn tired of that stereotype.

As a former university librarian who supervised archives, my favorite essay was Vowell's "The Equalizer," about Pamela Wright of the National Archives (NARA).  Formerly Chief Innovation Officer there (she left in December 2024), Wright was behind such programs there as Citizen Archivist, where volunteers transcribe handwritten records to make them searchable online, and add tags (search terms) to photos and other existing online records, and History Hub, a digital reference platform where anyone can submit a query and NARA archivists, other federal staffers and citizen volunteers will chime in with answers, follow-up questions or advice, all free of charge.  

Under her leadership, NARA has also partnered on digitization projects with genealogy websites such as FamilySearch and Ancestry, and used OCR (optical character recognition) and AI to create a name index for the 1950 Census release on April 1, 2022, that made it immediately searchable.

I have to wonder how many of the people profiled in this book  have lost their jobs or otherwise left federal government employment, thanks to tRump's policies.

Bannock in a Hammock by Maisana Kelly, illustrated by Amiel Sandland

With rhyming text and colorful illustrations, this picture book for preschoolers is about a bread popular with the Inuit and other native peoples of Canada.  It ends with a recipe and a glossary of four Inuktitut words used in the book (two names and two nouns).  Although they're not Inuktitut words, definitions of char and Klik would also have been helpful.  This book would pair well with The Only Way to Make Bread.

Magda Revealed by Ursula Werner

I really enjoyed this novel about the historical Mary Magdalene.  Telling her story in her own words after two thousand years (as the prologue and epilogue make clear), Magda (as "everyone who ever loved me called me") is not the prostitute of lore, but a victim of gang rape (by visiting theological students), healed by Yeshua (Jesus).

The main body of the book begins in Magdala, Magda's home, and moves on to Capharnaum (Capernaum) and Jerusalem, as Magda follows Yeshua to his death and resurrection.  The last part of the book is about Magda's ministry and what happens to her after Yeshua's time on Earth.  The epilogue has a twist that surprised me, but made sense in the context of the whole book.

Magda Revealed reminded me a lot of another novel I read recently, Recycled Virgin by DA Brown, in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, gets reincarnated over and over.  That  book also presents an alternate interpretation of history from that given in the Bible and religious (especially Catholic) doctrine.  It's also similar to Margaret George's Mary, Called Magdalene, although that biographical novel is twice as long, 630 pages to Ursula Werner's 315.

I do wish Werner had included an author's note and discussed the research she did for this book.  For example, I was able to figure out that Magda's companions Yohanna (Joanna) and Shoshanna (Susanna) are based on women in Luke 8:1-3.  I'd like to know, for example, the inspiration for another female companion, Ilana.

This book has a lot to say about what's going on in the world (and particularly the United States) today.  If you're someone who believes everything in the Bible is true, this book is not for you.  But if you're even a little bit open-minded (I'm Catholic born-and-bred but now mostly agnostic), give this book a try.

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler 

I read Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower in March, and my name finally came up this month on the holds list for its sequel, Parable of the Talents.  It was published in 1998.  That was 27 years ago.  It's amazing and frightening, the parallels to what is going on in the USA today.  

The book picks up the story from Parable of the Sower, five years later in 2032.  It's told many years later primarily by Asha Vere (aka Larkin Bankole), daughter of Lauren Olamina, protagonist of Sower, as introductions to entries from Lauren's journals.  

In the book, former preacher Andrew Steele Jarret has been elected president under the slogan "make America great again" (a direct quote from the book). His "Christian America" followers set out to cleanse the country of those who aren't of their sect.  Lauren and her Earthseed followers have been living a mostly-quiet, successful life at "Acorn," the community they began five years earlier on land owned by Lauren's husband Bankole in northern California, and Lauren and Bankole have a baby daughter they name Larkin. Then one day, Jarret's followers show up, and turn Acorn into a prison camp, taking the young children - including Larkin - away to be raised in so-called "Christian" homes.

I don't want to include any spoilers - suffice to say the treatment Lauren and fellow Acorn residents receive is too evocative of what is going on right now with the ICE immigrant raids.  These two books are must-reads for everyone, in my opinion.

In a November 2005 interview (less than four months before her untimely death), Butler described the two books as "what I call cautionary tales: If we keep misbehaving ourselves, ignoring what we've been ignoring, doing what we've been doing to the environment, for instance, here's what we're liable to wind up with." 

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1259 - 1261 (2025 #11 - #13). April 2025

This was a busy month for me, with the placing of the ashes of my late husband Mark Gresham in Corpus Christi Bay on April 11, followed the next day by "Gresham's Freebie," a come-and-go reception at a Corpus Christi restaurant/bar.  

I did, however, hope to attend a presentation at the end of the month back in my home in Granbury about John Graves' Goodbye to a River - so I needed to re-read that book.  My copy was given to me in June 1975 as a high school graduation gift from my father's boss, Oscar Newton, and his wife June, with the inscription "To AMANDA PAPE, with our admiration, congratulations, and confident best wishes."  I'm sure I read it that summer, and obviously kept the book, but did not have time to read it again until this month.  

Goodbye to a River was published in 1959, and was about a three-week canoe trip Graves made in November 1957 down a stretch of the Brazos River running from Possum Kingdom Dam in Palo Pinto County, through Parker and Hood Counties (I live in the latter), down to near Glen Rose in Somervell County.  Having grown up in the Fort Worth area, Graves had spent much time here, and wanted to do the trip before the river changed, as a number of dams were (at the time) planned between the two already existing at Possum Kingdom and Lake Whitney (a ways south of Glen Rose).  As it turns out, only one dam was built in that stretch, and not until 1969 - the one that forms Lake Granbury in my town.

I read two other books by/about Graves that were related to this one:  

John Graves and the Making of Goodbye to a River:  Selected Letters, 1957-1960, (edited by David S. Hamrick), published in 2000 when Graves was 80, and

Myself and Strangers: A Memoir of Apprenticeship, which was written/published in 2004, when Graves was 84.

The first book is a compilation of original correspondence from and to Graves concerning the conception and production of Goodbye to a River, from a letter to his agent in September 1957 when he proposed making the canoe trip and writing about it for a magazine article, to its ultimate development into a book, with letters to his editor and publisher, the book's designer, and J. Frank Dobie (for publicity and promotion.  For this book, Graves added footnotes to many of the letters (which are difficult to read, due to the use of a very small and faint font), as well as a few photographs taken on the canoe trip, and an awesome annotated bibliography of all his published writings (as of November 2000) at the end.

The second book is an autobiography of sorts of Graves' early years, up to 1960.  He moves quickly through his early years (1920-1945) and those at the end of the book (1956-1960), with most of the focus on his post-WWII travels and living in Mexico, Mallorca, Spain, and the Canary Islands.  During this time, he is trying to become a writer (and live cheaply while doing so).  Much of the book consists of entries from his journals from January 1953 through April 1956, with commentary by Graves in 2004.  The title comes from Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, “I am writing for myself and strangers.” 

I did attend the presentation shortly after starting Myself and Strangers.  It was disappointing, in that the two Ph.D.s conducting the round-table discussion really did not talk that much about the book, but mostly about late-1800s interactions between Native Americans (mainly Comanche) and early settlers in these counties (Graves does include some of that folklore in his book).

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1255 - 1258 (2025 #7 - #10). March 2025

We Are All Animals: Discover What You Have in Common with a Dog, a Cat, a Bee, a Bat, and a Jellyfish!  by Ben Hoare and Christopher Lloyd, illustrated by Mark Ruffle

This large-format, 48-page picture book is chock-full of information on animals, including humans.  After a foreword, table of contents, and introduction, there are 19 double-page spreads discussing things that (almost) all animals have in common (exceptions are noted).  These includes some unexpected things like "we are all networked," "we all have clocks," and "we are all ecosystems."  Each spread is eye-catching with colorful, labeled drawings and occasional photographs of numerous examples of the topic of each spread.  This is all followed by a one-page glossary, a page with selected sources (and picture credits and dedications), and a one-page index.

My only gripe is when the small typeface is black against dark color backgrounds, when it could have been white (as it is on black backgrounds).  Because it is text-heavy, this book is best for ages 8-12 (publisher-recommended) or grades 3-6 (my opinion).

The Red Car to Hollywood, by Jennie Liu

This historical fiction young adult novel is set in 1924 in the original Chinatown of Los Angeles.  The story is told in first person by the main character, Ruby Chan, a 16-year-old second-generation Chinese-American.  Her father operates a Chinese furniture and antiques store where Ruby helps with sales and accounting.  As the story begins, Ruby is in trouble with her parents for getting into a compromising position with a white boy at her school.   They pull Ruby out of school and her mother has her doing housework while they consult a matchmaker.  Her father also plans to find a business partner during his upcoming trip back to China to purchase items for the store, and threatens to marry Ruby off to the partner.  (In that era, this would have resulted in Ruby losing her birthright citizenship.)

Her mother does allow Ruby out of the house to go to the laundry operated by the Wong family, as she hopes to match Ruby up with James Wong, a third-generation Chinese-American.  But at the laundry, Ruby first meets his sister, 19-year-old Anna May Wong, who is in the early years of her acting career.  Inspired by Anna May, and wanting to avoid an arranged marriage, Ruby takes her future in her own hands.

Author Jennie Liu, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, said in an interview that her inspiration for the book was "calls to Asian hate connected to COVID-19" in the spring of 2020.  She went on to add that, "The trend of targeting immigrants was especially repellant because, except for Indigenous Americans, everyone here has a family history of immigration or transplantation."  She also wanted to write about "the objectification of Asian women and the intersection of racism and sexism ... in early Chinese American history and perpetuated in Hollywood through stereotyping."

At 234 pages, the novel is an easy read.  It also includes an author's note at the end as well as discussion questions.  The book is well-researched; Liu even worked real-life female screenwriters Frances Marion and June Mathis into her novel.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler - graphic novel and regular editions

Written in 1993 but eerily predictive of today.  And scary.  Planning to read the sequel, Parable of the Talents, soon, and hopefully writing more about both books.

Why Wolves Matter, written and illustrated by Karen B. Winnick.

Subtitled "A Conservation Success Story," this nonfiction picture book explains what happened when gray wolves, the top predator in the Yellowstone National Park ecosystem, were killed off in 1926 - and what happened when they were reintroduced almost 70 years later, in 1995.  While the wolves were gone, some of its prey animal species (like elk) became too numerous, overgrazing on some plants (like quaking aspen), which in turn affected other animals.  

Author and illustrator Karen B. Winnick effectively shows the absence of all of these species by whiting them, leaving only an outline around a blank space.  In an interview, she stated her paintings were done using gouache (an opaque watercolor) and acrylic paint, and that she "grouped wolves from different photographs to create scenes, hoping they’d come alive on the page—real, with movement. Painting the texture of their fur and the grass was fun.  Whiting out the wolves and the animals affected by their absence was a way to visually emphasize the importance of wolves in the ecosystem."

This gorgeous and important book is completed with an author's note, a timeline, and a bibliography.  According to the author, it is aimed at ages 7-9 (grades 2-4), but I think it could be used with older children as well, in science and social studies lessons.  I also love that the Austin-based publisher, Greenleaf Book Group, to offset the trees consumed in printing, donates a portion of its proceeds to the Arbor Day Foundation (over 50,000 trees planted since 2007, according to the book's copyright page).

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

Renegade Grief

Renegade Grief:  A Guide to the Wild Ride of Life After Loss, by Carla Fernandez

I found this book to be incredibly helpful in my own grief - I lost my husband of 18+ years (and friend of 45 years) in August 2024 - by validating some of the things I had been intuitively doing since his death.

Author Carla Fernandez, who lost her dad to brain cancer when she was 21, is a cofounder of The Dinner Party, "a peer-led community of 21-45 year-olds who have each experienced significant loss."  While I'm out of the range of the target audience of that organization, I found many of the suggestions in Renegade Grief to be meaningful for me.

Grief is renegade in this book because our current culture minimizes grief.  We're expected to get over a death and move on.  This book describes about two dozen grief care practices that help the griever honor the past, be in the present moment, and create the future.

Practices honoring the memory of your deceased person and the history you shared include gathering with others to share food (and experiences), making or locating a place (an altar of sorts) where you can find your person, expressing your grief story in the way that's best for you (for me it's journaling and blogging), using objects of theirs to honor the past, letting go of other things with dramatic flare (which can sometimes mean destroying stuff), grief quests (often travel), and handling holidays and other big days through re-creation, remixing, or revolt.

As an example, on making/locating an altar where you can find your person - I have more than one (and that's okay).  Nearly-identical photos of my late spouse and I together - taken 42 years apart - surround a cap he used to wear when sailing, that has a "Corpus Christi" patch I crookedly sewed on it, also about 42 years ago. 

Additionally, I feel drawn to long walks next to the nearby lake, because I feel he's in the water and the sunshine.  

In contrast, his ashes have been sitting in a box on the table next to his side of our bed for almost seven months now - and it feels right to release them in Corpus Christi Bay next month, because he's never been in that box for me - it's not an altar.  But I think I needed that time to figure that out for myself.  Had I released his ashes any sooner, I might have always wondered if I should have kept them longer.

Practices that can help one be more in the present moment include escape (such as through role-playing games or superhero comics), crying, tending to your pain (sometimes through pleasure), meditating and breathing, dreaming (day or night), caring for a pet, even experimenting (with experts) with mind-altering substances, or doing absolutely nothing (resting).

Practices aimed at your future include creating your sense of home/sanctuary, caring for others (sometimes as a grief ally, sometimes by preparing for your own death), exploring spirituality (not necessarily religion), celebrating, but proceeding with caution.

Fernandez emphasizes that all these suggestions are not one-size-fits-all.  For example, I'm not into role-playing games or superhero comics, but I'd consider trying mind-altering mushrooms - especially since my brother-in-law is an expert, degreed mycologist.

The book is well-researched and includes extensive endnotes, and Fernandez has an 88-page companion workbook and a two-pager of discussion questions that can be accessed through her website.

I can't recommend this book enough - five stars.  I'm passing my LibraryThing Early Reviewers advance reader copy to a young grieving friend, and buying another copy of the book for myself.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!

1249 - 1254 (2025 #1 - #6). January - February 2025

NOTE:  I skipped from #1211 (the last book reviewed in 2024) to #1249 because there are 38 books I reviewed in my Live Journal that I am adding to this blog - but dating them 2006, as that is when I read and reviewed them.

The Greatest Stuff on Earth: The Amazing Science of Sunlight, Smartphones, Microphones, Mushrooms and Everything In-Between  by Steve Tomecek, illustrated by John Devolle

This 128-page book tackles a lot of science topics in mostly double-page spreads. Coverage of each topic is brief, yet I found I was learning new things reading this book. The illustrations are colorful and cartoon-like, and the font used was large enough to read easily (although black print on dark backgrounds is never a good idea). The four-page glossary at the end is helpful, along with an explanation of the research done for the book (I appreciate the author looking for at least three respected, reliable sources for each fact). There's also a three-page index and a list of selected sources - not all, and I suspect the selection deliberately targets websites, because those are generally easier for readers to access. I especially appreciate the author discussing topics like climate change, evolution, and vaccines - because in my right-wing state, many of these topics can no longer be discussed in school. This would be a good book to inspire children to find more to read and learn about the topics it covers that they find interesting.

The Paris Assignment, by Rhys Bowen - WWII historical fiction

Daughter of Moloka'i, by Alan Brennert - a sequel to Moloka'i - WWII-era historical fiction

Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun, by Erik Larson - nonfiction

The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks: 10th Anniversary Edition, by Amy Stewart - nonfiction

Renegade Grief:  A Guide to the Wild Ride of Life After Loss, by Carla Fernandez - reviewed in a separate post.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!