The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn Saks

Are you a TED Talks nut like me? I scan those new listings regularly, eager to learn something wise and brilliant new life connection. A couple of months ago, I listened to Elyn Saks talk through her own life with schizophrenia. Wow. She can be so transparent and unemotional about what she has experienced, and oh so truthful. When I realized she had a book out, you can guess where I made a beeline to....yep: the library.

And it was worth it. I am kind of a nut about life- issue books but you already knew that. And Dr. Saks has a life issue that I have never read about, at least not with this lens and transparency. I am not sure how this book is categorized: is it a memoir or an autobiography? I am gonna guess the latter (but now that I read her website, I see she calls it a memoir). She writes with heartbreaking detail a number of her experiences with schizophrenia, offering us a fly-on-the-wall view of what life has been like for her as well how those experiences have helped her form what she does. A lawyer, she specializes in mental health law, teaching at University of Southern California. She brilliantly uses her own at times horrific experiences to advocate for those often without a voice: the mentally ill. Her work inspires me to continue exploring how to access my life experiences to support and advocate for others. She is just remarkable.

Here is the link to the TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/elyn_saks_seeing_mental_illness.html

Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool

Navigating Early is my new favorite book. I had heard rumblings on the web about this gem and read several blog entries describing the heft of the author's words. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I read fast for stuff I like and only rarely do I slow down, in those moments when I don't want a book to end. Here is one book I way slowed down on, savoring every word.

Teen-aged Jack's mother dies and military-dedicated father sends Jack to a military school thousands of miles from home. Experiencing the dreadful grip of uprootedness, Jack finds a surprising, unique, and steadfast friend in Early Auden. The two boys set off on a lifetime adventure, searching for a gigantic bear, rattlesnakes, and an important relative long believed by most to be dead. What they discover changes a number of lives and certainly not only their own. 

Author Clare Vanderpool won the Newbery for her first novel, Moon Over Manifest, a book I now feel compelled to read. She demonstrates such a sweet writing craft in Navigating Early. I treasured her framing of the story, and I frequently found sentences that I plan to use as writing prompts in my own writing. Add onto that the messages she ladles lovingly throughout the text: hope, compassion, empathy, patience. I can imagine this book being considered for the Newbery this year too.

"You're jumping into the navigating part too soon. Maybe you should focus on the beauty of those stars up there apart from their function. Just atke them in, admire them, stand in awe of them, before you expect them to lead the way. Besides, who's to say that one group of stars belongs together and only together? Those stars up there are drawn to each other in lots of different ways. They're connected in unexpected ways, just like people."  (page 36)

I am not the best at always living in the moment all the time but last night offered me another moment to try again at it. Alysa is redoing her room-- yep, she is a teenager and the loft that I would have loved has to go-- so she asked last night if I would go to Ikea with her for a few things. I appreciate when a book rivers into me during my life away from it, and I keep hearing some of the messages from Vanderpool's writing, particularly as I have an opportunity to lean into intentional time with my dear daughter.

I loaned Navigating Early to Ruth and after Ruth, my partner Laurie will likely read it. That means it will be a few weeks before I get it back into my loving, eager hands. I am not in a rush; I know that good things come to those who wait.....twiddle away, thumbs. I have all the time in the world.

More by I.C. Springman

One 45-word book, one small talking mouse, and one boisterous magpie (and those birds are ALL boisterous!): the ingredients for a masterful, simple, and stupendous book about stuff.

We Portlanders were treated to an article yesterday on crows that is getting lots of talk time on radios and in blogs. This article offers yet one more window into the brilliant world of crows. According to the new book Gifts of the Crows: How Perception, Emotions, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans by Marzluff and Angell (2013), those black birds are seriously smart and meaningfully devious. I infer from the little I know about crows-- have yet to get my hands on the Gifts of the Crows--I feel pretty certain they are far smarter than magpies. We had magpies in Colorado where I grew up, and I thought the most they were good for was making a lot of noise. My brother liked them for other reasons likely involving a bb gun. But I digress. While reading More, I found myself seeing and hearing those little flying cackles that woke me in my teen years, screeching and crackling about outside. But even in all of my tree-climbing, I don't recall an animal who might put as much in a nest as this one does.

I loved the idea the author and illustrator represent in this book. The message is a rich one. I could easily imagine using this with young learners, particularly as an entrance into less, more, and other mathematical excitement! Check 'er out!! More.

Black Dog by Levi Pinfold

 

Imagine turning the page to a gigantic dog face covering the pages midway through a book. The little yellow thing in the bottom right is a youngster who has more gumption than the family members hiding out in the house. While quite respectful, fear doesn't seem to be a interrupting factor for this young person's way of being. Rather Small (well-named, don't you think?) wants to greet the family's fears by going out into and standing with this large, cumbersome, nosey pup. Some real raucous events happen after Small and the Black Dog meet up on that snowy day.

I love this book for its storyline that includes fear, twisty life changes, and winter, all metaphors I totally am grappling with in my professional life. I love the illustrations which simply make me return to certain pages again and again. I love how accessible this book is....in fact, a kindergarten-teaching friend of mine read this through once and then reread it, as simply a picture walk. Let's just say she couldn't stop talking about what she noticed.

Oh, did I tell you the last name of the family is Hope? Ahem. Got your coat yet? Or your laptop/ipod/ipad with an order in? 

Black Dog by Levi Pinfold. Nothing to fear here.

Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad by Henry Cole

Looking for an absolutely mind-blowing book on the Underground Railroad? Did I mention that it is a true picture book--- as in wordless? Did I happen to tell you that the illustrations are some of the most attention-grabbing drawings I have seen in a long time?

I could go on and on, but you owe it to yourself to track this one down. Absolutely breathtaking. And just to make us want to know him more, author Henry Cole writes in his Author's Notes "...I wanted to tell-- or show---the courage of everyday people who were brave in quiet ways."

I often talk of the people I teach as brilliant. Doesn't matter if they are young kindergartners or graduate students. What matters is their brilliance, their amazing wisdom, presence, and grace as they maneuver learning. This Henry Cole was a teacher. I can imagine how brilliant he is through this text, as a learner, a writer, and a human. And brave.

Unspoken.

October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard by Leslea Newman

Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered by two homophobic men in Wyoming about 15 years ago. There is never a good time for a book about a young college student who is lured out of a bar, tied to a fence post in the middle of the country, beaten heartlessly, and left to die. The story makes my stomach turn just like it did when it first happened. AND I can't thank Leslea Newman enough for taking on this brutal story and crafting such a heartbreaking and direly important book.

Newman is well known for her work as an author, particularly in gay and lesbian lit circles. This time she seems to enter the work from a place of deep, painful wounding, from an obvious recognition of a tremendous wrongdoing and exquisite loss. Allow me to take you through my own experience as I read her writing...

At the library, upon seeing the cover, I immediately hoarded the copy into my arms. It was as if I didn't want anyone to take it from me, I needed to read it. I knew the story from newspapers and web stories, and I have witnessed the trials high-schoolers experience as districts and administration refuse to allow them to put on theatrical performances with Shepard's mutilating experience at the center. The gay issue simply and forcefully keeps snagging people; being a lesbian, I watch, listen, learn, question, wonder, read. At home, I stole away into the bedroom after making dinner, knowing I needed time alone. As dark descended into my room, my vision tunneled as I entered the graceful and painful words Newman creates here. I couldn't stop reading until the end.

With no answers and much, much pain, this story must be told. I am guessing that only Newman knew she had to write from such a heartbroken place of vulnerability. She writes like a mother reeling in the losses of a child. She creates voices of objects who witnessed what happened that awful night-- the fence post, the stars, the truck--  complete poems with their voices striking chords with compassion and clarity. It is as if she becomes those things, her writing so compelling to me I needed to hear her say more. So on I read.  And in doing so, she lifts Shepard up as a saint, cradling his loss with grace and kindness, tethering the harsh ways of the perpetrators with compunction that reminds us to find our breath again after moments like these.

Miracle by Elizabeth Scott

If you have been reading this blog for awhile, you have likely noted that I like to read young adult lit with rather grim story lines. This one by Elizabeth Scott enters that category but in a unique way that caught me and wouldn't let me go.

Megan survives a plane crash. Being the only one who walked away from that awful experience, folks call her "a miracle." But she doesn't feel like a miracle; rather she feels like she should have died too. And the ghosts of those who died keep coming around and talking to her. Burdened with her fear and anger, she grows more and more isolated and loses trust for most everyone. But she starts realizing that the boy next door doesn't seem afraid of her teeming emotions, and better yet, he even seems to understand. He shows up at all hours of the night, much like Megan does, either out in the middle of town or on some country road albeit the dark of night, being out in it himself. And then there's the solitary adult who figures out what is going on and who patiently waits for Megan to be ready to settle a bit.

As a teen, I kept searching for folks like this, but I never allowed myself to settle and let them in. I appreciated the gentle grace that Scott brings to Miracle, allowing me as a reader to fall into a character's life in the way she does. Powerful writing, gritty and raw. And worth staying in the discomfort the character is experiencing.