A New Book

Photo by Olena Bohovyk on Unsplash

A few weeks ago, I was at my dentist's office for a cleaning. Blanche, my dental hygienist of many years, and I talked about my most recent Mayo visit. Her mother-in-law died of multiple myeloma a number of years ago, so she is familiar with the disease and has stayed on top of my health status. When she heard the "very, very stable" and "may well have a normal life span" pronouncements, she was overjoyed.

I told her my own feelings: yes, I (and my family and friends) am delighted. Beyond delighted. Having that new prognosis just changes so much and Warren and I are still talking through those changes. Blanche nodded as she prepped for my cleaning. I then told her about feeling as if I have been reading a large book, all the bookmarks fell out, and I don't know where my place in the book is anymore.

Blanche didn't miss a beat.

"Then it's time to pick a new book."

As I was checking out at the front desk, Blanche stepped back into the hallway from her workspace and called to me. "Don't forget, April. Pick a new book."

Sometimes it takes someone else to point out the obvious.

Pick a new book. 

I am not sure what book I am picking but the message fits me to a tee, both figuratively in my charting the way forward and literally (and somewhat tongue in cheek) as I start a new year of library receipts. Our library system, like an increasing number of them nationwide, lets the borrower know how much they saved by using the library, printing the information on the bottom of the checkout receipt. In 2024, I saved a whopping $4243.78 by checking out books (I rarely check out anything else). That is probably my largest one-year amount since the library started tracking individual savings. I went to the library just yesterday, both to return and check out some waiting books, and my total for 2025 is already $117.89.

Pick a new book? I can't wait. 

Little Bits

Here are three little bits in the last few days that made me smile.

The book and the bookmark

1) Yesterday I was reading Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin, the stunning collection of essays by Andre Dubus III, and a bookmark fell out. A previous borrower at the library must have put it in to save a spot. In light of my recent thoughts about bookmarks, how cool was that?

Grandma's measuring cup

2) This battered measuring cup belonged to my beloved Grandma Skatzes. I keep it—have always kept it—in the flour canister and its sole purpose in my life (besides reminding me of Grandma every time I use it) is to measure flour. I clean it...occasionally. (Once a decade, maybe? Longer than that? Possibly.) Given that it is only used to measure flour and does not mingle with anything else in the kitchen, I long ago realized it didn't need to be cleaned on a regular basis. I mean, come on, it's flour. This past Wednesday, while refilling the flour canister, I took a hard look and saw just how caked with flour this poor little cup was. A warm soak, a good scrub, and I can now head into the holiday baking season with my beloved, battered, and now clean little cup!

Grapes! 

3) Many of us buy markdowns at grocery stores; I know I do, especially in the Kroger produce section. Some of us "trash pick" when we see a pile of stuff on a curb that was clearly put out in hopes that someone will take it away. I do that on both sides: occasionally both setting out stuff and  picking up stuff. So, here's the question. If you pick grapes out of the neighbor's compost bin (which they share with us), is that trash picking or getting a markdown of a markdown? Our backyard neighbors, David and Ashley, often leave for Thanksgiving weekend to visit family. Being conscientious about perishables, Ashley makes sure that produce hits the compost so they don't come home to a refrigerator of glop. I had forgotten that she does that, so when I took our compost out yesterday to dump it in the container (the bin is from the previous owner of their house, who we also know; we share the bin), I opened the lid and let out a yell of discovery. GRAPES! Big, fat grapes! You bet I picked them out! I carried them home, washed them thoroughly (they were mixed with coffee grounds, which made for some interesting flavors), and am enjoying Every. Single. Bite. 

Another One for the List

As I often vent to my friend Margo, how did I get to my age (almost 56) and not know about this or that book? How, I ask you?

The latest book to add to that list is The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, a Scottish writer in the nineteenth century. MacDonald was a friend of Charles L. Dodgson, and helped encourage him to publish Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. The Princess and the Goblin came out as a book in 1871, the same year as Through the Looking Glass.

1871. This book was long in print before I read it in 2012. As I raved to Warren over breakfast this morning, "Your mother probably read this book. My grandmother probably read this book. Heck, your grandmother probably read this book!"

Note: Warren is a most tolerant man when it comes to listening to me talk endlessly about whatever book has captured my heart at the moment. Add that to the very long list of his wonderful attributes.

The Princess and the Goblin is noteworthy, historically and literarily, for many reasons. I'll spare you that discussion. But I will share something about it that fascinates me, and that is the number of authors whom it influenced: J.R.R. Tolkein, C. S. Lewis, and Madeleine L'Engle among them. It was Madeleine, in fact, who lead me to The Princess and the Goblin, citing it as a very important book in her childhood pantheon.

I have already earmarked a number of books for Baby Sanchez. The Princess and the Goblin just joined that list. I am sure there are more to come. Other grandparents out there may knit blankets or build cribs. Me? I build libraries.

Recently Alise asked me what I wanted to be called when the baby arrived? I laughed at the time, as that question had never crossed my mind. As I peruse my book list, though, I find myself thinking "Granny Books."

Granny Books. Yeah, that has a nice ring to it.

One Berry, Two Berry, Read Me a Newbery

Part 1 of 2

Back in September, for a lot of reasons I won't go into right now, I decided to read the Newbery Medal winners, or at least all of the Newbery Medal winners that I had not read recently (as in the last decade).

The Newbery Medal is given annually by the American Library Association to the "most distinctive contribution to American children's literature" for the prior year. One has been given every year since 1922. (The Newbery Committee also names "Newbery Honor Books" for the outstanding runners up for the year. No, I have not read all the honor books.)

Of the 90 Newbery books out there, I had previously read about 18-20 of them. That left all the rest.

I did not read them in any order, including chronologically. Our local library owns all but a scant handful of them, and houses many of them at the main branch here in Delaware. My selection method consisted of taking a printout of the list (found here) to the library, stand in the children's section (where most are typically found) and pluck a random bouquet. When the load grew heavy in my arms, I had enough. "Enough" usually meant that 15 books came home at one shot.

Over the 5 or 6 weeks it took me to read the Newbery Medal books, I heard some interesting comments from adults about my quest. One, a former school librarian, said he thought the list was put out by adults for adults, and that is why children don't read Newbery Medal books.(This theory has a number of vocal adherents, incidentally.) Another, a retired teacher, said he had rarely used Newbery books in his classrooms because the writing styles were too dated and the students wouldn't understand them (he taught primarily 5th and 6th grades). Another said she thought the Newbery had covered enough niches (homelessness, mental illness, drug abuse) and it was time to stop using "does this fill a niche?" as one of the selection criteria. A constant comment I heard was "but the process is so subjective."

Interesting theories all, and I now have my own thoughts on these points, as well as my own theory about the Newbery Medal books.

Is the Medal Book a book chosen by adults for adults? Other than a few winners in the earliest years, I would say they are not picked with adult readers in mind. I think we read the books differently as we get older, but I think almost all of them stand the test of time and interest to a young reader. (I'll write tomorrow about the ones that I think "fail" as selections.) In fact, my overwhelming response to many of them was to smack my forehead and say "dang, why didn't I ever put this book in my children's hands?" (Sorry, Ben and Sam, that we missed Lloyd Alexander, among others.) Watching my own children devour many of the Newbery Medal books of their generation (my copy of Holes came from Sam's insistence that we buy it) tells me a lot about the appeal of the books to children. I think we as adults either fail to put the books in children's hands or so sermonize about their value that reading a Newbery Medal book is seen as torture.

Are the styles of the older books dated? There are one or two books that I say time has not been kind to when it comes to style. I found myself reading all of them with a critical ear and eye for the style as well as the content. My test was whether I felt I could read the book out loud to a child. The vast majority passed. In fact, the very book that the retired teacher and I discussed (Rifles for Watie, 1958) is one that I would say still holds up when it comes to style, although I have other concerns about it. I don't think children are put off by style as much as adults are; we adults think something is tedious, and so we expect children to think so too. I think a child who is grabbed by a book will plow through it regardless of the style in which it is written provided the characters populating the story are engaging.

Are there too many niche choices? Hmmn, tougher question. There have certainly been some choices that could be considered niche selections. I look at the changing nature of the list as a reflection of the changes we as a country have gone through as we moved through the 20th century and into the 21st. (Although, surprisingly, the Newbery tackled mental illness as early as 1960.) I think ethnic and racial niches or selections point this change out the best. It took a long time for novels with believable African-American characters to crack the list, with Sounder finally doing so in 1970. True, a biography entitled Amos Fortune, Free Man, made the charts in 1951, and the beautifully written I, Juan de Pareja, about the Moorish slave of the painter Velasquez, made it in 1966, but Sounder was the first in which an African-American family living in America was featured. After that barrier was broken, others books featuring African-American characters followed.

What is glaringly absent from the list are books about modern day Latino, Asian-American, or Native American youth. I can make a convincing argument that a good book will captivate a reader of any age or ethnic background, because I believe that to be true. But I also firmly believe that, especially when you are young, it helps to be able to read a book in which the main character reflects your life experiences as someone of a different color or family origin. Louisa May Alcott established this beyond refute when she published Little Women and it became a runaway best seller on the strength of it being the first children's novel written about believable girls growing up in Civil War America.

I have my own little theory about the Newbery Medal books and why the older ones are not read more widely. I believe it is because we read, teach, and share those books with which we are most familiar. A 5th grade teacher in his or her thirties may be most familiar with the Newbery Medal books of the 1990s, when he or she was in 4th through 6th grades. They may have never been exposed to the works from the 1960s and earlier, unless they were either avid readers or had the good fortune to have had a teacher who knew the older winners and did not hesitate to make recommendations or read them aloud to the class. Otherwise, there is book after book on the list from every decade that I think stands up to the honor of being selected.

And finally, are the Newbery Medal Book selections subjective? Absolutely. They often reflect the times and the makeup of the selection committee. And the selection committee is only human. Look at the fact that neither Stuart Little nor Charlotte's Web, both of which are established classics, ever won a Newbery Medal. This is largely due to the fact that for a long time Anne Carroll Moore held sway over the committee, even when she wasn't a member of it. Moore, who all but created the concept of children's librarians and children's sections of public libraries, is remembered by many not for her significant contributions but by her intense and profound dislike of White's children's literature. In the end, although she won the battle and kept E. B. White from collecting a Newbery for either, there is little question as to who won that war. The 1946 winner (the year that White would have won for Stuart Little)? Strawberry Girl, by Lois Lenski, a period piece that has not held up well. The 1953 winner (the year White would have won for Charlotte's Web) was Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark. The 1953 winner is an oddly mystical, haunting fantasy that blends the ancient Incan past with the modern world, but it's no Charlotte's Web. I would have awarded the medal to White each time.

Sometimes I have to remind myself (while I am carping about subjectivity) that the Newbery is not the Nobel, in that the Newbery Medal is given to the most distinctive contribution published the previous year and not to an author for his or her body or literature. (More head smacking moments: what do you mean Beverly Cleary never won a Newbery for any of her Beeezus and Ramona books?)

In the end, the Newbery Medal selection is subjective. And so am I, as you will see in my free ranging critique of the Newbery Medal Books in part 2 of this post.

Books and Tomatoes

I have the day off today; when your schedule is only 24 hours a week, it is easier to slide one in every now and then. It promises to be a humid but cooler day than we have had for some time. All the same, I walked to the library first thing this morning before it got any warmer.

Going to the library is like walking into a garden this time of year. My garden (overgrown, wild green mass that it is this summer) is just starting to get serious about churning out tomatoes. I go out to pick the three ripe ones I saw earlier, but in bending over to pluck them, I see another! And another! And oh, look, that one is ready to pick too! So I come in with the bowl, which was big enough for the three tomatoes I had in mind originally, overflowing and one more tomato in my hand for good measure.

There is always another ripe tomato.

The library for me is the same way. I always set out with the thought of getting just one or two books; often I have a call number or two scribbled on a piece of paper. But only one or two. After all, I have to lug them the seven blocks back home. The fewer books to tote, the happier my arms are.

It rarely works out that way. It didn't today either.

I had meant (really, truly) only to get one book that another blogger, Darla at Bay Side to Mountain Side, had recommended. The library had it in the stacks.

But to get to the stacks in our library, you have to walk right past the new books.

I never just walk past the new books section. I didn't today. And therein lay my downfall.

Like newly ripened tomatoes, new books winked at me. I picked them up, I squeezed them, I weighed them in my hand - not for the physical weight but the emotional. Is this something I want to read now? Can this wait?

A few went back on the shelf, maybe not quite ripe, maybe not what I was looking for. Several more went into my arms. The book I had originally set out for was added to the stack, as were two videos. When all was said and done, the tote bag was packed tightly, and I still had seven blocks between me and our front door.

I used to read and walk at the same time. I probably hold the local record, dating back to my youth, for simultaneous reading and walking the greatest distances. I don't do that these days, thanks to aging eyesight. So while I walked home, I instead thought about the books I was carrying and how soon I would be back here, cooling off with lemonade and cracking open the first one.

As I finish this post mid-morning, I hear the cicadas starting their daylong chatter. The sun is in and out of clouds, so the heat is milder. I have a fan blowing on me as I sit here typing. The books are one room away, scattered on the kitchen table. There is lemonade in the refrigerator and ripe tomatoes on the window sill.

Books, tomatoes, and a summer day. Heaven in my household.

Happy Birthday, Beverly Cleary!

Childhood Memory #7: The Library

Walking to the books -
How many miles did I log
going back and forth?

**********

One of Louis Darling's wonderful drawings; this one from Beezus and Ramona

I thought I was done posting haiku during this poetry challenge, but then I discovered that author Beverly Cleary is 95 today!

As a child, I lived a little less than half a mile from the library, which was then at the north edge of downtown, right next to the courthouse. The library loomed large in my childhood: it was my safe haven, it was my gateway to the world, it was one of a very few places where I felt cherished, safe, and totally free to be myself. I was a weekly visitor at any time of the year. During the summer, it was not unusual for me to make three or four trips a week to the library, sometimes two in the same day, usually on foot.

I may have been nine when I first discovered Beverly Cleary. Whether I found her on my own or whether Mrs. Judd, the archetypal librarian of my childhood, steered me Cleary's way, I cannot recall, but I do remember the first Cleary book I ever read. It was Ellen Tebbits, the story of a third grader who found her best friend in a janitorial closet where they were both hiding while they changed in and out of their dance clothes. (Read the book if you want to know why Ellen and Austine, her friend, were hiding.)

One book by Cleary and I was hooked. Otis Spofford (the wonderful bullfight chapter!), Beezus and Ramona (the applesauce!), and all the rest then available soon followed. Cleary's early works were illustrated by Louis Darling, whose detailed pen and ink drawings fascinated me almost as much as Cleary's words did. 

I missed out (the first time) on the rash of Ramona books Cleary wrote in the late 70s and early 80s. As luck would have it, after we moved back to Delaware, the girl next door one day brought over a sack of books she had "outgrown" and thought my boys might like to read. I was thrilled beyond words to find the bag was full of Beverly Cleary novels (including my beloved Ellen Tebbits), and thus I had the glorious opportunity to catch up on many of Cleary's later works that I had missed the first time around. I still have the twelve volumes we got that day and still dip into them frequently. I can never thank Bethany, then the girl next door and now a cherished friend, enough for that grocery sack of wonder.

In the 1990s, Cleary wrote two autobiographies, A Girl From Yamhill and On My Own Two Feet. These portray her childhood and adulthood up through the publication of Henry Huggins, her first book. Cleary wrote with clarity and honesty about her struggles to get an education and lead her own life despite constrained finances and the constant disapproval and opposition of her mother, themes which resonated deeply with me. They are as easy to read as her novels and I have returned to them more than once as well.

There is a wonderful line in the movie Hook (a favorite of mine), in which Captain Hook (the Captain Hook of Peter Pan fame) proclaims "What would the world be without Captain Hook?"

What would be it be indeed? That line rings true for all of the great characters of children's literature. What would the world be without Jo, Stuart, Charlotte, Laura, Harry, Dorothy, Jane, Pauline, Petrova, and Posie, Alice, Meg and Charles Wallace, Sara, Sam, Milo and Tock, Stanley, and Caddie? (Can you name the characters and the books?)

What would the world be without Beezus and Ramona?

Happy birthday, Beverly Cleary!

One for the Books

There was a countywide library levy on yesterday's ballot and I am delighted to record that it passed. "Squeaked by" would be more accurate; the unofficial results say it won by 202 votes. But a win is a win and I am thrilled that Delaware County voters supported the measure despite the Great Recession, despite the job losses, and despite the economic uncertainties that color everything these days.

Libraries are among my favorite places in the world and ours is no exception. Libraries have served as safe havens for me throughout my life. My earliest journeys by myself outside of my immediate neighborhood were to the Delaware library, which then was across the river and up the Central Avenue hill. At that time, the library was housed in a magnificent Neoclassical structure, built in 1906 as one of the 2500 Carnegie libraries that dotted this nation. I did not know the name of the architectural style when I was little, but I appreciated the mood the imposing façade set. The goal of a Neoclassical building is to impress upon the citizens the importance of the civic realm and to encourage them to participate as a matter of right and responsibility. Our library did that in spades.

To enter the library, you walked up the outsides steps, past two massive columns topped by capitals featuring the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian order. The columns were echoed in the brick pilasters, also topped by Corinthian capitals, that formed the outer edge of the portico. Within the portico were the main doors; beyond them a small flight of marble stairs leading to the atrium. Entering the library was like entering a temple.

I had a troubled childhood in too many ways and the library was a place of refuge. I was always safe at the library, both in person and in spirit. I was fortunate in that the head librarian, Mrs. Judd, sensed that the library was really special to me. On summer days, if I showed up before the 10:00 a.m. opening time, she would allow me to come in early. Sometimes she directed me to books, more often she just wanted to know what I was reading. Back then, there was a rule that you could not leave the children's side of the library until you had completed 4th grade. One of Mrs. Judd's many kind acts to me was to give me permission to slip into the adult stacks a year early.

I didn't recognize it then, but going to the library and reading brought an order and peace to a world that didn't always make sense to me. Books soothed me, instructed me, enlightened me, and healed me. I am now old enough to realize that books do that, and more, for so many of us out there.

There is a beautiful moment in the movie "The Shadowlands" when C. S. Lewis questions a student as to why he reads. The student responds, "we read to know we are not alone." As a child, as a young adult, and even today, I still read to know I am not alone.

I am who I am today in large part because of the libraries in my life, starting with the one here in Delaware. That is one reason I am so happy the levy passed yesterday. Although we are mired in an economic mess and all of us are counting our pennies, sometimes twice, enough voters felt books and access to them are important enough to a community to pay a little extra for them.

Thomas Jefferson said "I cannot live without my books." Apparently, neither can we.