While I am still loving to read real books and not textbooks it must be said here and now: what have y’all been reading that’s worthwhile these last two years? I know, I know. You’ve already told me. You’ve already said what you like, but now I’d have to go back in the archives and read comments just to try to remember and I can’t.

Harper Collins has been sending me books on a pretty regular basis lately. Yesterday I got Jessica Seinfeld’s cookbook called “Deceptively Delicious” and read it thoroughly. That’s good for me as I normally just look at the pictures. The premise is that she has some picky eaters in her family and purees fruits and vegetables in everyday recipes to ensure they get proper nutrition. Good on her. I just use sarcasm and hold my children’s noses while I force it down their throats as I straddle them on the kitchen floor. Maybe her way is better.

Truthfully, I don’t have picky eaters, they just all get stuck in a rut of what they like and eat it until they can no longer stand the sight of it. Currently, I’m waiting for them to tire of ramen noodles, but that one is holding out pretty well. Not too long ago Mason came into the kitchen demanding to know what I was cooking. It wasn’t anything homemade, it was a box mix of falafel and I bought Tahini sauce to go with it. He’s been falafeling it ever since.

Other than that, my only trick for getting my children to eat fruits is to actually cut them up and leave them on the counter. If I arrange it on a plate, they are more likely to pick it up and eat it.

You can pre-order the book here, but only if you plan on ceasing that practice of putting your kids in a headlock to get them to eat carrots.

Sometimes I enjoy the slow life afforded to me as I watch through my lens what other people are doing. I’m a people watcher. Guilty. Since it’s not ever me that’s going along sluggishly, I blissfully watch others in the slow motion of life, and that’s a good thing because it reminds me to be a little more downtempo. This past week I’ve been doing that but there is a huge amount of guilt that comes with it.

Shouldn’t I be doing something?

Who gets to be this decadent?

Something that I love to do is go to the Farmer’s Market and take pictures. Like this one, which is my such a slow-moving shot that he almost seemed to pose for me.

Then there are all the vibrant colors and luscious fruits and vegetables that I savor them through my camera before buying them, taking them home, and pretending like I had grown them myself. Of course, I can’t grow anything and it has nothing to do with the fact that there are over 30 trees in the backyard that provide too much shade. It’s that I simply don’t know how (the when of planting, the tending, the everything) but someday when this frenzied life has slowed a bit I might take it up.

These are the things I would grow.

And, of course, this:

If I keep taking pictures of them maybe I’ll actually do that someday.

The only thing currently stopping me is the fact that I’m taking this really interesting children’s literature class that I need for the Reading degree. How is it possible that I have an English Lit. degree and never took children’s literature? I suppose it’s because I was a snobby undergrad who thought I’d be a professor of lit-tra-chure and only needed to study Keats and Joyce. This class, however, has afforded me another luxury: buying children’s books.

Since I promised a reading list and am still working on it (it’s like another project. Jeebus. What was I thinking? I am gonna publish that bad boy once it’s finished) I thought I’d offer the titles of the books I’m reading for the class. All of them are fabulous, fun, touching and I would recommend you take a lazy weekend morning and spend it at the bookstore reading the following:

Not A Box by Antoinette Portis. Especially if you have a very young child who likes to play with cardboard boxes. We all did it, but this book is cute and gives rise to imagination.

Koala Lou by Mem Fox. Fox is quite the trailblazer in children’s book and these are adorably illustrated.

Flotsam by David Wiesner. This is the current winner of the Caldecott Medal and received the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book Award. It’s a wordless picture book that is phenomenal. Truly a good one for the coffee table.

Since I already love Patricia Polacco (Chicken Sunday was one of Mallory’s favorites as a child and I just read Pink and Say for a read-aloud in a history classroom last year - not recommended for a first time reading. I broke down and cried. It was that powerful.) I’ve picked up My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother. Mason thinks I got it because of his red hair. Alas, I did not but Morgan sure appreciated the title.

When I was doing an internship last year a kindergarten boy and his class were walking down the hallway and he stopped me, “Are you Patricia Polacco?” he asked. I smiled because I knew who she was and I don’t think I look like her at all. “No,” I said. I was genuinely disappointed that I was NOT Polacco. “Oh.” The next day they were taking their bathroom break and he stopped me again, “Hey! Are you Patricia Polacco?” I couldn’t resist and God will forgive me for this: “Yes, I am. Do you have one of my books in your classroom?” He got really excited and whispered, “We have Chicken Sunday!” Later that afternoon I went to his classroom and let him sit on my lap while I, the author, read to him from my book.

That’s a forgivable sin, right?

The Last Dragon by Silvana De Mari. I chose this one since it won the Mildred Batchelder award which is given out to a book originally published in another language (Italian) and then translated to English. I haven’t started it yet, but it looks fantastic.

Quest For The Tree Kangaroo by Sy Montgomery won the Orbis Pictus award for nonfiction for children. Every science teacher needs this in the classroom.

Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford. This is a Caldecott Honor book and a winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for Non-Violent Social Change. If you read this aloud to a child you must be on the dramatic side. Must.

Finally, I’m reading The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron. I bought it last school year because, and only because, I read somewhere that it was a newly challenged book that people wanted to ban because of the word “scrotum” on the first page. First, it pertains to a dog and second, for crying out loud… I just don’t put up with book banning. It was awarded the Newberry Medal as well, so if you don’t take my Question Authority! attitude, at least listen to the ALA.

Tomorrow I’m off for California and business and pleasure and beaches and diary readings and taking lots of pictures. Read all that stuff while I’m gone and tell me what you think, ok? And visit your local Farmer’s Market. Eating a fresh peach while reading a book is as close to heaven as you might get.

Mark Twain nee Samuel Clemens is a genius.

Of all the things to ban a book for, this one is mostly challenged because, as it states here, of the N-word. They even say the phrase “N-word” in the document, which makes me want to claim that word once again because I’m not one to be afraid of words.

They don’t like it because they say “nigger”. There. I said it. After I said it, I wrote it.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is still required reading in most high schools despite the fact that it continues to be challenged. To my knowledge, no one has ever successfully banned it in my district and I have yet to hear about a fight breaking out in Senior Lit. because someone’s senses were so offended by reading about Jim and Huck floating down the Mississippi.

Earlier this week I mentioned the fact that Scout, the narrator from To Kill a Mockingbird, is my favorite character who epitomizes simplicity and complexity all in one. The only reason she is a notch above Huck is because of their vast differences in the realm of experience. He is much more experienced than she because of his jaded, painful past in dealing with an alcoholic father. However, his difficult past doesn’t make him morally relative. Perhaps, then, he is to be lauded for making some good choices despite having a difficult childhood.

Maybe with the exception of the sacrifices Jean Valjean gives in to in Les Miserables, I believe Huck to be the most propitiatory character in fictional history. He has been told from his earliest learnings that helping a slave is a sin in the eyes of God and that the punishment for such a deed warrants an eternity in hell. Even while he wrestles with this fate and wavers between turning Jim in and allowing him his newfound freedom, Huck makes the only decision he feels he can: he decides to save Jim’s life.

When he does this and makes his decision verbal with the line, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” it is the most significant choice he, as a young boy, can make.

It is this decision that makes me love Huck. Makes me see what his heart is truly made of. And it gives me hope that he will be ok in life if he can choose hell over allowing a human being to live in bondage on this earth.

How About You?

What are your favorite banned books? What authors are on your Must Read list that have left a mark on you as a reader? I’ve rambled on for nearly a week about this and want to hear what books I need to add to my list.

Thanks for letting me share.

Justice originates among those who are approximately equally powerful, as Thucydides (in the terrible conversation between the Athenian and Melian ambassadors) comprehended correctly: where there is no clearly recognizable predominance and a fight would mean inconclusive mutual damage, there the idea originates that one might come to an understanding and negotiate one’s claims: the initial character of justice is the character of a trade. Each satisfies the other inasmuch as each receives what he esteems more than the other does. One gives another what he wants, so that it becomes his, and in return one receives what one wants. Thus justice is repayment and exchange on the assumption of an approximately equal power position; revenge originally belongs in the domain of justice, being an exchange. Gratitude, too.

Oh, come on. You knew I’d get around to it. I couldn’t get through Banned Books Week without an adolescent fiction book.

Lois Lowry is a damn smart woman and writer. She wrote a book intended for adolescents that transcends well into the adult domain. There are many adolescent books that I recommend to my adult friends because they are powerful. The Giver has been likened to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but I honestly believe it’s better. For this book she won the Newberry Medal in 1994. Everyone who initially read it was hit with such a strong impact that it was rightfully awarded the Newberry almost instantly. When you’re compared to Huxley and Orwell’s 1984, you know there must be something there.

In my classroom when I was teaching 8th grade, I always started this novel with a definition of “utopia” for my students and asked them to help me make a list of things that they would want for a perfect world. More often than not, classes would get into this and be knee-deep before realizing that there was no such thing. Rarely, I would have at least one in every class who would comment something along these lines: “Gee. This sounds like something Hitler wanted. That’s not so good.”

Kids are smart. I give them a lot of credit for seeing flaws in logic like “utopian societies” and proving them falsehoods so that they can correctly identify them as “dystopian”.

Jonas, the main character, has a special gift in this Perfect World created by the Elders. While they champion “Sameness” in their society, few of them realize that it’s not so perfect after all. There is no such thing as music or sled rides or even the realm of color, even though Jonas catches a glimpse of it sometimes before he masters the art of seeing it all the time. However nice it is to never have to experience pain in his world, he realizes that they also miss something else: the experience of love.

Jonas’ talents make it possible for the Elders to identify him as someone who fits the criteria to be selected for his job as Receiver of Memory, and he meets an older man who has held the memories for the community since he himself was young. He passes them to Jonas through the use of his hands and with each one he gives, he is relieved of the burden.

Since the book was a reflection of the times we lived in during the 90s, Lowry gives rise to issues such as cultural diversity and the politically correct society we created to balance it. Another important thing that happened at the time of her publication was that we dealing with euthanasia because of this man. She deals with it in her book when the old become an encumbrance to the rest of the society or when twins were born. Since they couldn’t have two people walking around looking alike, they have to decide which should live and which should die. Obviously, issues of abortion were still running rather hot and she wasn’t afraid to tackle either issue.

Children in Jonas’ futuristic world are given their life jobs at age 12, live in families where only two children are allowed, and where the parents are never the biological ones. Birthmothers have that job and are kept pregnant to perpetuate the population. They don’t deal with “death”, but rather, call it “release”, so when Jonas finds out what really happens, he is devastated enough to begin thinking on his own about seriously fleeing. By this time, Jonas has realized the harm in keeping memories and original thoughts from the people, but he has also become attached to Gabriel, a young baby who is being nurtured by his father.

Spoiler Warning: Normally, I don’t do this, but the way the ambiguous ending plays out, I have to. Don’t hate.

When Jonas makes his choice to leave, it’s apparent that the Giver of Memories almost blesses his decision. He spends most of the later chapters planning his escape and I remember wanting him to leave and hoping for the best. Even though there is ambiguity I assigned the final chapter as homework so students could decide for themselves what happens.

As soon as I finished the book the first time I sent it through the mail to my mother. When we talked on the phone to discuss it she mentioned how sad the ending was and how it was so tragic.

“Tragic? WHAT? It’s a happy ending, Mom! What are you talking about?”

My conclusions led me to believe that he does, indeed, escape to the Real World away from the confines of this created place he’s grown up in and finally gets to know all the history of the world in a free province. My mother, on the other hand, believed that Jonas dies and never makes it there. Instantly, I re-read the last chapter to see it from her point of view. I’ll be damned. I could see it from her perspective, too.

Since it’s a banned/challenged book that hasn’t been entirely removed from our grasp, you can do the same thing. Read it. Determine for yourself. I have every confidence that people can think for themselves. There’s no chance I’d ever micromanage someone else’s brain so much that I would want to make all their choices for them. That’s exactly what our humanness affords us. We are flawed, but never any less than human for those flaws.
Incredibly, as a banned book, this one has a quote that perhaps those who challenge books have uttered in their quest to keep us from thinking for ourselves:

“We really have to protect people from wrong choices.”

Thanks, but no thanks. I can do that for myself and teach my children discernment on my own.

You won’t ever find another novel with more interesting character names.

• Milkman Dead
• First Corinthians
• Ryna
• Guitar Bains
• Sing (Singing Bird)
• Magdalene Dead
• Hagar

Ok. That last one is in the Bible. Still, you don’t find many modern characters with such memorable names. Many things are memorable about the brilliant piece of fiction by Toni Morrison entitled Song of Solomon. She infuses her work with such strong themes and motifs from other writing that it’s hard to separate the two and for that, these characters leave an indelible mark.

Readers can never forget that Milkman’s nickname comes from a janitor who catches his mother nursing him when he is well past the age of being appropriate. I mean really past. Way past. But it’s her attempt to reconcile a sexless, loveless marriage from which she cannot recover. The unreturned affections from men is another of her themes that make it difficult to like the characters and it’s not just the men. I am all at once outraged and full of commiseration for the women in the book who shortchange themselves and sacrifice a true love.

Issues of determination of the characters notwithstanding, it’s a story of demise of a culture, a class, a race that cannot seem to find its way out unless they are at rock bottom. In reality, we all experience that. Maybe that’s why I forgive Milkman for finding the only worthwhile relationship in a prostitute, Sweet. It’s the only time when there is any reciprocity in a bond between man and woman in the story.

Shash commented yesterday that she wrote her own two cents about censorship and I found out why Song of Solomon had been challenged in the first place. There are more books to be found here if you are interested, but here’s what I learned:

The book has been accused of being filthy, inappropriate, sexually explicit (Hello? Yeah. I’m reading that.), uses language degrading to blacks (I didn’t feel slighted in the least and that was, perhaps, with the knowledge that TONI MORRISON IS BLACK) and it’s been referred to as “trash” and “repulsive”. That I learned here. Song of Solomon not only brings to mind several Biblical accounts, but also African and Greek mythology. Issues of flying, literally and figuratively, out of a situation spur on the fight in these characters and makes you want them to cease all self-destructive behaviors just because you want them to get out of those situations, but you feel that it’s nearly fruitless for them to try.

Morrison doesn’t make it easy, either. The self-loathing and complexity of issues that the black characters have to face makes you want to hold your breath for them. When I first read this as part of a class I took in college for my minor degree of African-American Studies I recall having a day to finish before our final discussion. Perhaps it’s because I was young and didn’t see the climax coming, but I recall vividly having to miss the final class because of the impact it had on me.

It’s the first book I finished with an audible gasp and then closed the book to wail because I could hardly breathe. Never before had I needed a day (a whole day - I didn’t attend any classes the next day) to recover from reading such a powerful book, but this is the one that did it to me. When I called my professor to apologize, she said that many students missed that day and that she expected it. She knew of the power it beheld and allowed us to experience it so fully that she held off class that day and sent the few students home who showed up. Wise professor, that one.

Earlier this year in May the New York Times Book Review named her novel Beloved the best novel of the past 25 years. When you look at the picture from that link you have to be reminded that the Western canon has been a list predominantly held by dead white European guys. Of course, they held the prominent position of being banned as well.

In the company of gentlemen is the illustrious Toni Morrison. Fly on, sister. Fly on.

*The People Could Fly is the title of a collection of black folktales by Virginia Hamilton for children.