christmas books. (159-162).

i checked out some christmas books for brother bear and i to read.  my original plan was to read them christmas eve and day, but since he went with dad on eve they became christmas day and day after christmas reads.  hence the belated christmas post.  but here they are:

first, we read if you take a mouse to the movies, its a christmas spin on laura numeroff's beloved if you give . . . books.  and i hate to be mean especially on christmas but this book was not as cute as her others.  i know you was limited to christmasy things but it lacked the randomness that makes her other books so cute.  but i mean this is me being a judgy adult, brother bear seemed to enjoy it.  well just the snow castle part.  but still read it.

next, we read georgie's christmas carol by robert bright.  this is the first georgie book that i have read.  in this book, the ebnezer is georgie's neighbor, mr. gloam.  if mr. gloam was by myself and wanted to ba-humbug the holiday away no problem, but sadly his niece and nephew are visiting and he won't let them celebrate christmas.  apparently he is bitter that he didn't get a sleigh one year.  the kids decided to write to santa in hope that they will still be able to celebrate.  those sweet kids also make sure santa brings a sled.  georgie and his friends find the letter and decide to make christmas happen for them!  they deliver the presents.  the next morning, mr. gloam is still gloomy but when he goes to throw out the sled, georgie gives him a push.  he slides into the town and is filled with christmas cheer!!! and everyone is happy!

a cute story but i wonder if kids will notice the absence of santa.  it was nice that georgie played santa but wouldn't the real santa had showed up too to save the day?

the third book we read was mr. willowby's christmas tree by robert barry.  this is a cute little story about mr. willowby's tree being too big and him cutting of the top and passing it on to someone else.  the tree being too big results in someone else having a little piece and everyone ends up with a tree for christmas.  love that mice make a cheese star for their tree.  it's an adorable tale of how one man's trash may be another man's treasure.  i also loved the illustrations:

the last book we read was the christmas piñata by jack kent.  it is the story of a broken pot that is turned into a piñata.  at first he feels useless but then his self confidence increases when a use is found for him.  he becomes a central part of the las posadas celebration.  las posadas is when the kids go around asking for shelter like mary and joseph and end up at one house where there is a party.  sadly, the piñata is destroyed and becomes a part of a trash heap.  it's sad but happy he had fun when he did. then another pot joined him and they had a very serious talk about life:

"we began the same and we ended the same," said one pile of bits.

"everybody does," said the other.

"and in between, we were each useful in our own way," said one.

"everybody is," said the other.

and the whole trash heal signed happily,  for there is contentment in knowing that whoever you are, you're somebody.

it was a cute story but that end is a little

too deep for christmas.  i mean it is good for discussing death but at christmas time it could be a bit of a downer.  but it was still a good read.

hopefully you made some book time with your family on christmas and merry belated christmas!!

tales of a fourth grade nothing. superfudge. judy blume (157-158)

i recently purchased a superfudge tee from out of print, which inspired me to revisit judy blume's beloved classics.

since superfudge is a sequel to tales of a fourth grade nothing, my revisit had to start there.

in tales of a fourth grade nothing, we are introduce to peter hatcher and his family, which includes his mom, dad and of course his little brother, two-year-old terror, fudge.  before i go on i have to share that as a kid, fudge's antics were a little annoying, you felt bad for peter (his poor poster board for school!), but fudge was so crazy you couldn't help but like him.  however, as an adult, all i could think of was how did the hatchers end up with such a horrible child!  peter is well-mannered and caring kid.  fudge, on the other hand, is the type of kid i give dirty looks to when i see them misbehaving.  i also silently judge the parent for being a horrible and ignorant person for raising a indecent little monster that will contribute to the world's ultimate demise because only stupid people are breeding (harvey danger reference).  if i was in that movie theater with fudge, would have definitely demanded my money back!  but i mean fudge did have his moments, i thought it was adorable how he wanted to be a bird when he grew up and it was kind of funny how he would only eat if served like a dog.

here are some of my favorite parts. i loved when father poured fudge's dinner on his head, i viewed it bad parenting but didn't stop it from being hilarious.  the story of the birthday party was too much, all i can say is that kids are a mess.  also peter was right about the fat kid not needing a second helping of cake!  the story of the commercial totally reminded me of the full house episode when stephanie steals the commercial from dj.

the one thing that i couldn't believe was the ending!  how did fudge swallow a turtle?!?!? i mean i didn't believe until the x-ray showed it!  i kept on thinking, why are they getting an ambulance there is no way he could have swallowed a turtle, but fudge did.  but i mean it was the perfect ending to the book, peter gets a new dog that he names turtle and fudge lives!  btw kudos to judy blume for starting and ending the book with pet turtles!

*tales of a fourth grade nothing was part of flavorpill's 50 books every parent should read to their kids.

i learned via the dedication, a lot fans asked judy blume for a sequel so she made one, superfudge.

she also did a great job of referring tales of a fourth grade nothing in this one!  

in this book, the hatchers have a new edition to the family, baby tootsie (i loved how peter pointed how his siblings candy inspired names).  when peter found about the baby being on the way, he freaked out! but i mean if you had fudge as a sibling you would too!  aside from the baby, some new changes are that father decided to quit work and write a book and mom decided to go back to work (way to go mom!  she also wanted to study art history, double way to go mom!) and the whole family moves to jersey!

of course fudge is fudge, craziness follows them to jersey.  again i was outraged by some of things fudge did like playing hide-n-seek with tooties.  it freaked me out to imagine him carrying an infant and hiding her in closets!  and of course him kicking his first kinder teacher and calling her rat face though she was totally uptight but still

he should respect his elders!

but fudge did have some great moments.  i could not get over how cute he was about the santa letter writing and then of course telling peter he only pretended for their parents.  also the story of the visiting author and the picture was hilarious.  and fudge's use of big vocabulary words was great too!

i also loved the new people they met in jersey, well except that annoying kid daniel.  i really liked alex but primarily because of his halloween painting!! loved that he was jimmy's dad's painting anita's anger.  how clever! i might have to steal that costume idea from him!  i also liked mrs. muldour and her worm cookies!

and i have to add there were so many things in the book that adult me appreciated.  i got the charm of their jersey home esp the bathtub thought peter hated it.  also their use of the garden and growing organic!  i also liked how the parents were honest with fudge about where babies come from.  

all in all, two wonderful books that have stood the test of time.  i loved them just as much as fourth/fifth grade me loved them!!  can't wait to pick up fudge-a-mania on my next library trip!

milkweed. jerry spinelli. (156)

jerry spinelli's milkweed caught my eye during a library visit at albany park when i was subbing.  the row of gold book spines looked so crisp and neat, i amazoned to see what the novel was about.  i learned that it was a story about a young gypsy or jewish thief living in nazi-occupied warsaw.  it sounded interesting but i didn't decide to check it out until after i read the diary of a young girl and night.  

this book was an unexpected delight.  i had no idea what it was about but i guess you can judge a book by its spine.

it is the tale of a holocaust-era robin hood, stopthief.  stopthief was an orphan who might have been a gypsy.  his origins are unknown, he had no recollection of his family, only memories of stealing to eat.  while stealing bread from a woman, he met uri would took stopthief under his wing and helped him survive nazi-occupied poland.  uri created a backstory for uri and renamed him misha pilsudski.  

before i continue i have to share how much i loved uri and how he selfishly cared for misha.  misha was the hero of this story but uri was definitely his guardian angel.

uri and misha stole food to survive but they had a strict moral code and only stole what was needed and shared with others.  they shared their loot with a gang of boys but also orphans living in a home.  misha also befriended a young girl, janina, and helped her family by them providing food.  food during this time was scarce and thankfully misha and uri used their talents to steal for good use.  though they were often called filthy thieves and jews, they had hearts of gold and helped without realizing they were.

the reader follows misha through a series of dark and horrific events, the nazi invasion of the warsaw, bombings by russia, life in the ghetto and deportation to the concentration camps. it's all very heavy but filtered through the innocence of misha it is easier to digest and being a young adult novel, easier for young readers to comprehend what occurred during the holocaust.

misha, like most children, i would image, during the holocaust did not completely understand the horrors of the nazis.  as demonstrated in night even adults were unaware of what was happening to the jews.  misha's innocence and naïveté was endearing and demonstrated just how preposterous and evil the nazi party was because the reality was unconceivable to misha's young mind.  for example, misha desire to be a nazi so that he could march in a parade, he had no idea of what they were doing, he just liked parades.  or how he always identified himself as gypsy when called a jew not knowing it was unfavorable to be either.  the best example was his desire to follow the trains to the ovens not knowing what was occurring at the camps.  but what made him special was not knowing that his thieving provided so much.  looking for coals was a game to him, little did he know the warmth he gave to the orphans.  as he grew older he started to understand and did his best to provide for those he loved, as demonstrated in his trying to find a pickled egg for janina when she had lost all hope.

another stark contrast to misha's innocence was the street gang boy's sarcasm.  it was sad to see the boys talk about life without the blind faith in happiness that kids have.  instead the kids talked of death so matter of fact because of what they had lived through.  but it was sweet when they talked about angels or mothers or angles , things that made them hopeful about life.   

also the title milkweed came for this idea of angels.  while in the cemetery the boys come across a headstone and discussed angels.  misha later took janina explained angels to her.  later, janina found a milkweed puff on her shirt and called it her angel.  and so milkweed became angels and gave the kids hope.

in every book, i read i am still shocked by what the jews had to endure.  i couldn't imagine resorting to eating rats or standing out in the snow and having to relief myself on myself.  or walking around with the dead bodies covered by newspapers.  it was also horrible to read how the soldiers and their girlfriends treated the jews like a freak show, taking pictures and watching them

fight over bread like birds.  though i did   appreciated how spinelli included misha's craziness that occurred from having survived and needing to share what he experienced.  how difficult to endure all that only to be expected to function as though it hadn't in a new foreign land. the stress this must have caused justified misha's craziness.  thankfully, misha ended up with a happy ending with his daughter and granddaughter.

this book was a really wonderful story about a very dark period in history.  its a story filled with hope and compassion with the world seemed to be void of it.  

great expectations. charles dickens. (155)

a couple months ago i purchased a used kate spade great expectations book clutch.  they normally run $328 but lucky me i found it used and in good condition for $62 on poshmark!  and as much as i love it, it isn't worth the $300, i mean its laminated!  but $62, yes it is.  but here it is:  

anyway, i felt like a poser because i never    read all of great expectations yet here i was carrying it around as a purse.  it was an assigned reading my senior year but i totally cliffnoted it. (i had a really bad case of senioritis).  i knew pip and of course remembered miss havisham, but they were all i could recall.  well i did have an scene in my head of someone, running in and tearing down the curtains in miss havisham's room, but i think that was because of the movie because this scene, i would discovered on this reading did not occur in the book.  

this rereading or actual first reading of great expectations epitomizes why i started this lets-read-those-high-school-assigned-readings-now project!  because i regret not reading this the first time i was assigned it.  i will admit that 30

year old me is a better reader than 17 year old me (i remember being lost vocab wise.  those macbeth references definitely would

have been lost on me the first time!) which may be the reason for my enjoying great expectations on this round but i absolutely loved it.  there were so many twists and turns and sadly (or gratefully) i didn't pay any attention in class because i did not recall any of them so i was actually surprised!  i mean even the identity of pip's benefactor caught me off guard.  (in retrospect, i deserved that b+ in ap engish).  modern day soap operas have nothing on this dicken's classic, it was amazing how everyone's secret connections were revealed in the end. i really was not expecting any of it. 

i won't rehash the story since the story is so well known.  or give a deep analysis other than looks can be deceiving.  plus the most important lesson of just because a person is high class doesn't mean they are classy and the vice versa being in the low class doesn't mean you are trashy.

i do want to discuss my love for certain characters.  who doesn't adore joe with his heart of gold and love for pip? society would not have labelled him a man of good manners and pedigree but there was no denying that he was a loyal and reliable friend.  i thought it was amazing that though "poor" he had the means to settle pip's debt in the end.  i was also happy he got a happy ending with biddy and kids of his own!!

i also enjoyed wemmick and his two personas, not mixing business with pleasure.  his home self was the best, how he took care of his aged parent.  and the surprise wedding could not have been more adorable! i had a total book crush on him!

and though she was batty, you can not deny that miss havisham was great.  i mean she would make an excellent halloween costume!  one would need a wedding dress, once white now yellow, one shoe on also once white now yellow, and a watch stopped at twenty to nine.  she was scary but such an excellent villain that you can't help but love her.  and in the end,  like the grinch her heart does turn three times in size and she regretted what she did to estrella.

i love/hated pip.  i hated how he treated joe when he came into his great expectations.  i hated how he was in love with estrella though she was proud, their first day together was a red flag that she would make him miserable.  but he redeemed himself when he accepted and helped his benefactor.  also i loved how he secretly helped herbert and made sure miss havisham did too.  

but i must add that my disapproval of his love for estrella caused me to dislike the ending and i wish the original ending was the standard ending.  the ending i read was all hollywood where pip and estrella randomly meet up at miss havisham.  she recently discovered, he in town for a visit.  they meet and it's hinted that they end up together.  boo!!! because he was not worthy of her love!

in the original ending, estella discovered the spider and fell in love with a poor doctor.  she and pip run into each other on the street.  pip has joe's son with him and she assume it is his and that his life is better without her (which it is) and he sees that she has actually has a heart and is capable of love!  

i like that ending because they both become better people which i doubt would have occurred if they ended up together.  

though i will add if they originally ended up together out of actual true love i could have dealt with it.  how happy would pip's benefactor be to discover that his the wife of his gentleman was his daughter!  so for his sale i would have been okay with it.

i am glad i ended up enjoying great expectations as much as i did because i would have felt lame carrying that clutch around if i didn't.

also if you were in mr. brice's class with me and didn't read this, you really should!

amendment:  so after posting this on fb i thought to myself, maybe we didn't read this in brice, so i consulted my classmates.  we didn't, it was assigned our freshman year!  freshman year!! there was definitely no way 14 year old me could have got this!  but i will add, i did get an a in that class.  lol

the secret garden. frances hodgson burnett.

as i mentioned in my matilda post, i was inspired to read the secret garden because it was one of matilda's favorite. i had purchased it a couple weeks prior but it shot to the top of my to-read list because of matilda.

the secret garden is another book that i owned as a child but never read it.  i used to carry a copy around all the time with the intent to read it but never got very far.  i just couldn't get into it.  i have to admit on this read i had a difficult time picking it up.  i did get a little bored with it.  i am not one for mystery or gardening so i was like get on with the story already!    

but before i go on, i have to give a quick little rant about the secret garden being the original the secret.  i learned about the secret back in 2010 (i think) on the car ride to coachella with my friends, carnation, cody, jerry and john.  my bestie, john, explained to us that if we wanted something we needed to put it out into the universe for it to happen. cody put it out there for cheese at a party we were attending later that evening.  now let me explain we were in a car, and there was no way cheese could possibly happen . . . but it did!!!  carnation, our driver pulled out from her backpack, cheese snacks!  it blew our minds, i mean we had no idea it would work but it did!  and ever seen seeing that i quasi-believe in the secret.  now i haven't read the book the secret, but after reading the secret garden think the author behind it's philosphy just ripped off colin.  colin knew the power of putting things out into the universe and making it happen!  the kid gained the ability to walk and run from his believe in the power of reciting something.

this power that colin had is what i believed made this book so great.  its important for kids to understand the importance of self-confidence and faith.  it's one thing to have dreams, its quite another to have the self-assurance to know that you can accomplish those dreams.  to quote george michael, you got to have fa-fa-faith.   

another important lesson from the secret garden, is that you must move on from death (a lesson i needed since i lost my grandma bea the week before).  when someone closes to you dies, you can't shut off the world and wallow in sadness.  you have to continue in life and continue to love all the things that person loved and taught you to love.  if mr. craven did not see his son as what he had lost but as a part of his wife that he still had and need to love and care for he, he would not have wasted 12 years being miserable. furthermore, if he took care of the garden and allow it to grow, they would have had a place in which her spirit could always reside.  i am extremely grateful that mary came to them and helped them both heal and see that they could live and not feel sad about having lost mrs. craven.  they could allow mrs. craven's memory to live on through them and the garden.  we need to be happy about that times we had with those we have lost versus be sad about them not being in our present.

also i absolutely loved martha and her family!  dickson and his little gang of critters.  he was like a woodland fairy with his ability to talk and care for animals.  but the best was their mother, mrs. sowerby was filled with such wisdom when it came to kids.

  

my favorite was the story mrs. medock share about some wise words of her.  

[mrs. sowerby] says, 'once when i was givin' th' children a but of a preach after they'd been fightin' i ses to 'em all, "when i was at school my jography told as th' world was shaped like a orange an' i found out before i was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. no one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems like there's not enow quaters to go around.  but don't you--none o' you--think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find out you're mistaken, an you won't find out with hard knocks." what children leaned from children,' she says, 'is that there's no sense in grabbin' at th' who orange--peel an' all.  if you do you'll likely not even get th' pips, an' them's to bitter to eat."

it is true we don't own the whole world and if we think so, life will be tough for us.

another great quote came from mr. craven, "where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow."

where we plant love and happiness, hate and sorrow can not grow.  we must seek the positive.

and this sentiment is why the secret garden is a timeless classic.  i am glad i finally read it and regret not reading it in my youth.  my adult mind may have gotten bored but my adult heart needed to learn the lessons from this book. 

kiki de monteparnasse. catel & bocquet. (154)

i came across kiki de monteparnasse on amazon and of course the cover inspired my man ray's famous photograph i had to check it out.  i figured a book about the model for man ray had to be interesting.  and it was!

as you have seen in this blog, i fell in love  with the lost generation thanks to woody allen's midnight in paris.  so i was excited to read and learn about kiki.  prior to this i had no knowledge though i had seen her back.

my post on kiki's memoirs discussed the stories i enjoyed from her life so i will share what shocked me and some of my favorite illustrations.

i was shocked by the drug use.  i always think of coke as an 80s thing but it has been around for a while.  i mean i remember how shocked i was when i discovered this lyric in cole porter's i get a kick out of you:

some, they may go for cocaine.

i'm sure that if i took even one sniff

it would bore me terrifically, too.

yet i get a kick out of you.

but was still surprised when i saw it in kiki's life though not completed shocked because she was a party girl as seen in these illustrations:

i was also surprised by how many men offered to pay her for flashing them.  i mean i guess its better than prostitution.  i mean a peek for some money, i can understand why she did it.

of course there was a bunch of nudity and sex.  she did pose nude and have alot of sex with artists.  again i don't blame her if i was in paris during this time i would have been the same way!

of course the book covered her relationship with man ray.  how they created beautiful art together but how their love was also destructive.  it was seen how kiki wanted to be a mother yet man ray didn't want kids, showing a more softer side of kiki.

the book also covered the time in jail

she mentioned in her memoirs.  it also showed her decline.  it was difficult to see her abused by marcel when she seemed to be an nonsense kind of girl

her whole life.  and like every too glam celeb, drugs took a hold of her and ruined her life.   it was also sad to see her life end due to drugs and alcohol.  if kiki was around in the 90s her life story would have made a great vh1 behind the music episode.  kiki had some hard times but she still lead an exciting life and contributed so much to the art community.  

being a graphic novel it was filled with wonderful illustrations.  i really loved the ones of photographs i saw in her memoir:

i especially found the ending illustration beautiful:

i will add that the chronology at the end of the book left me wanting to read more about kiki.   it also got me interested in man ray and i will have to pick up his bio.

kiki de monteparnasse was an interesting read to add to my knowledge of an era i love.

kiki's memoirs. alice prin. (153)

as i was reading the graphic novel, kiki de monteparnasse, i began to wonder where the stories told came from.  so i searched the library catalog and came across kiki's memoirs, written by kiki with an introduction by ernest hemingway!  

when i picked kiki's memoirs up, i was surprised by how thin it was, i wanted all the juicy details from her life and wasn't sure if the memoirs would give them all to me.

the first half of the memoirs are kiki or her actual name alice prin's actual memoirs .  she explained how her grandmother raised her along with her five other cousins, all who were bastards (for lack of a better word).   when she was 12, she moved to paris to be with her mother.  she worked odd jobs and longed for love.  then due to an argument with the baker she worked for kiki ended up with her first art job, posing for a sculptor.  she then began modeling for various artists and even painted her own art.  her biggest contribute to the art world was a result of her she meeting american surrealist man ray.  she became his muse and together they created beautiful art specifically photography.  here are some of my favorites and of course their most famous photograph:

kiki's memoirs were a bit confusing to read, it jumped around and she shared odd details but they were interesting since she was quite the character.  

one interesting story kiki discussed was the time that she was in jail for assaulting an officer but luckily man ray came to help her and she was released.

the later half of the memoirs is an interview from a paris newspaper.  i enjoyed this portion more because kiki was older, 50, and wiser.

there was one story, kiki shared about her grandmother that caused my admiration of  her grandmother for raising the grandchildren.  kiki shared how the neighbors told her to turn to public assistance for helping raising the kids to which she responded "i will raise my bastard, its nobody else's business.  it's the jerks their fathers who should be blamed."  everyone likes to blame the woman for bastard children but people forget that they have fathers too.

i loved how kiki was not ashamed of her bastard status.  she shared how she would run into her half sister and the sister would tell her, "i am going to tell my father" to which kiki responded "i don't give a damn, he's my father too."  

however, kiki's father was horrible, she shared a story of him trying to poison to kill her but her grandmother saved her. being abandoned by both parents caused much pain for kiki, as she sadly shared "no one knows what sorrow fills the heart of a child who doesn't have a father, whose mother is far away and whose only tenderness in life comes from a grandmother."

kiki's childhood was filled with sadness and misery.  she shared words of wisdom as she reflected on her sad memories.  she explained "when you meet an ugly and neglected little girl with her head shaved like an egg, don't laugh:  pitiful hair makes grown-ups loath but little ones cry."  from when her grandfather died, "death among poor people is not a catastrophe as it is among the rich, and when you have slaved all your life and barely succeeded in feeding yourself, the final departure is considered a deliverance."  kiki also shared about her mother's cold indifference towards her.  she discussed how she would become embarassed when other kids called their mothers, "mama dear."  she explained that she "would have let all [her] pain and [her] desire to be able say 'mama', since i was never permitted to say papa . . ."  how sad to feel unloved as a child.  however though her childhood was tragic, her life improved because of art.  it wasn't all glamour but when it was it was, it was glam!

the interview was not all sad stories.  kiki shared stories that demonstrated her colorful and vivacious spirit.  one of my favorite stories was how she took lace samples from a catalog and pinned them to her coat so that they looked like a beautiful blouse which people would compliment!  i also delighted in her stories about peré libion, who supported artists by feeding them at his restaurant.  i loved how at the one opening he brought champagne explaining he had provided everything else he might as well provide that (the artist had stolen place settings from his restaurant.  lol)

it was an interesting read and nice to see kiki discuss herself in her own words.  since it was brief, it left me wanting to know more which i will hopefully discover in the graphic novel.

ps i have to add kiki shared how her mother told her "country bumpkin you are and country bumpkin you shall be." i am country bumpkin that loves the city but feel that regardless of how far away i may move away, i am still a little bit country!