Deb Nance
Who would ever guess that a book about women (and a couple of men) holding things could be so wise?
Well, if you saw that the book was written by Maira Kalman, you would have to look no farther to figure this out.
Women Holding Things is essentially a picture book for grownups. But be prepared to think and mull and think again and mull again as you look at the wonderful Kalman paintings and the thoughtful text.
Maybe it's because I've been disappointed with popular fiction lately, but I really wasn't expecting much from this book. (Honestly, I think I put it on my wishlist because of its title.)
It's much better than I expected.
The characters are a mix of sixty-somethings and thirty-somethings. The older group has all been friends since college and the younger group are their children and their significant others.
These are real people, all offering serious assets to the world and all with deep flaws. One of the older women has lost her husband and she is grieving. Her daughter can't seem to connect with her mom and she really wants to find a spouse. The other older woman is struggling with questions about her husband, she worries about her kids, and she will always grieve the loss of her baby girl.
It's pretty close to a 4.5. Very touching.
A couple of quotes...
“Georgia's eyes fill with tears. —What a good friend you've been to me.
—We all are. We all were. Oh dear. How sad life is.”
“Dido thinks back to the carefree retirement life she was having such a short time ago...Ha. Had she cherished that time as she should? Dido thinks we should all mark and cherish every single moment of our time on earth when it is running smoothly, is ordinary, interesting. Happy, even. It's nice to think that such a store will set you up, give you the strength to endure whatever life is quietly getting ready to sock you over the head with, to rock your boat for ever.”
Agnes...oh my!...Can I say that I've never seen a character in literature who seems to think less of herself than Agnes Grey? She doesn't dare imagine a better life and she finds ways to feel satisfied even when her life is very, very bleak. It is a heartbreaking story to read, not only for the sad limits Agnes faced but also for the constriction on her soul that resulted from the way women were treated.
A bit of the plot: Agnes' family falls upon hard times, and Agnes becomes a governess to bring in money. Her pupils are awful and the parents are awful, but Agnes forges on, eventually finding another workplace where the children aren't quite as terrible. There seems to be interest in her from one of the locals, Mr. Weston, but Agnes feels there is no way a man could really want to marry her. Then Agnes' father sickens and dies, and Agnes must return home to begin to form a school with her mother. Even when Mr. Weston shows up out of the blue and openly pursues Agnes...still Agnes feels Mr. Weston is probably not interested in her!
Trust me, I'm no scientist, and I understood just the tiniest bit of what I read in this book. But even if you are no scientist and you understand little of what you are reading, hey, it's fun. Really, really fun. People ask questions and Randall Munroe answers.
Sample question:
“If the universe stopped expanding right now, how long would it take for a human to drive a car all the way to the edge of the universe?”
Answer: “If you drive at a steady 65 miles per hour, it will take you 480,000,000,000,000,000 years—that's r.8 x 10 to the 17th power—to get there, or 35 million times the current age of the universe...” And that's just the start.
See? Super fun.
I heard Simran Jeet Singh speak at the Texas Book Festival. I was impressed with the things he said and the way he listened intently as others spoke. I was delighted to find and read his book.
The Light We Give is a memoir of Singh's experiences growing up, especially in the ways he had to face racism. The Light We Give is also a book about the Sikh faith, sharing its central tenets focusing on loving others, defining our values, and putting our values into practice.
Dachshund brothers Augie and Perry are left alone every day and they find themselves bored. Their solution? They escape from the house and do everything they are not supposed to do.
The dog brothers seem to be exactly like children. And the dog mother accepts whatever the dogs do with love. Charming.
Bonnie wishes she could buy new clothes for her first day of school. But her family can't afford for her to do that, and she has to get her clothes at a thrift shop. Bonnie's sister shares an idea: how about if she adapts the clothes to make them more beautiful? And so Bonnie uses a variety of easy, inexpensive methods to make her clothes something she would enjoy wearing.
Applying creativity to a problem!
Author Haruki Murakami talks about how he came to be a writer (he just decided to write a novel one day...out of the blue), who he writes for (himself), what he does to overcome writer's block (he doesn't get writer's block), what process he used to write his first novel (he wrote it in English and then translated it into his first language, Japanese), and much more in this little book of essays.
Deer wakes up, only to discover that one of his antlers is missing! He heads off to see if his friend can help him, only to discover that his friend, too, has been vandalized. And on and on the story goes, with the mystery growing ever deeper, and the vocabulary growing ever richer...
A satisfying story. I'm delighted to see a mystery here in the picture book world...kids don't get the chance to read enough mysteries. And with the added bonus of learning lots of fun new vocabulary words.
“In Brooklyn
in the summer
not so long ago
we learned to watch and listen
playing tag, ringolevio, and hide-and-seek
inside hallways and behind thin-limbed trees
and garbage cans.
And our block was the whole wide world
and the world belonged to us.”
School is out for the summer and every day in Brooklyn is playing with your friends.
I love Jacqueline Woodson.
“Bear died on a Friday,
while sunlight speckled the grass...
and caterpillars nibbled leaves in the forest.”
Bear dies, and his friends, Beaver and Mole, must come to terms with their loss. The two miss him and talk about him, and do things in memory of him over the course of a year, and the loss of Bear becomes easier to accept.
A beautifully written and thoughtful look at loss for young children. The ending is transcendent.
