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on laura ingalls wilder (and the ALA)

on laura ingalls wilder (and the ALA)

when asked about the most influential books i’ve read, there are two series in my top ten: one is the harry potter series and the other is the little house series. i’ve written a few times before about LH, most often when reminiscing about my aunt colettie, who snagged me remainder books from her time at the rochester school system library. i also remember reading them very young, when the librarians at the small gradeschool i went to wouldn’t let me out of the children’s section to explore chapter books.

for me there’s a romanticism to reading the LH books – from laura’s time in the big woods, gathering food from the woods and eating maple syrup candy that had been poured onto smooth cold snow, to the endless prairies of south dakota and the harsh winters with grains stored in walls. i know it was rough going, but 7-year-old me wanted to live in that world.

this past week, the association for library service to children (a division of the american library association) voted to change the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award to the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

first, a little background on the LIW award. the award was established in 1954 when it was giving to laura herself and it’s been given every 5 years through 1980, then til 2001 every 3 yrs, then 01-16, every 2, and now every year, to a childrens author or illustrator whose books have made a substantial and lasting contribution to kids’ lit. past winners include maurice sendak, beverly cleary, eb white, and dr. seuss. the authors who receive this award have a “substantial and lasting contribution” and “occupy an important place in literature for American children and that over the years children have read the books and the books continue to be requested and read by children.”

the ALSC decided to change the name of the wilder medal because of the LHoP books’ racist themes throughout. they claim that the books are inconsistent with their core values. i have a beef with that. the books are a product of their time, just like mark twain’s books. they also reflect the thoughts of people around her: ma hated american indians and pa didn’t.

this line from pa in particular is pretty ahead of its time:  They “would be as peaceable as anybody else if they were let alone.” Pa says. “On the other hand, they had been moved west so many times that naturally they hated white folks.”

there was this line in the books when it was first published:

There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no people. Only Indians lived there.

laura was just mortified when someone pointed out the line to her. she wrote her publisher post haste:

You are perfectly right about the fault in Little House on the Prairie and have my permission to make the correction as you suggest. It was a stupid blunder of mine. Of course Indians are people and I did not intend to imply they were not.

that line now says settlers. i think that in itself is reason to keep the wilder name on the medal. the thing is, her books fully embrace the theme of the medal. and given the above, i think laura the author embraces the ALSC’s core values, “which include inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness.”

and if the ALSC really wants to embrace their values, well, they’ll change the name of the carnegie medal as well. despite his philanthropic ways, there were some controversies in his life. and perhaps we should pore over randolph caldecott’s illustrations to make sure they also embrace those core values? and dr seuss, who also has an award named after him, supported the internment of japanese americans during WWII! (afterward, he changed his mind a bit with horton hears a who as an allegory for hiroshima.)

this all said, i can understand how someone reading the books outside of the white person lens sees these books as a glorification of racism and stereotyping of native americans. but as a set of historical, semi-autobiographical fiction that was explaining the time and perspective, i don’t know how we can’t see that laura’s books aren’t still relevant and educational.

i was reading reddit’s books forum and saw this comment:

As a proud Native American and member of the Blackfoot tribe, I am disheartened to hear that children will no longer have it explained to them what our roots are.

Growing up in public school we often learned of the struggles minorities faced in the history of this country, but my Native ancestors were ether under represented or left out all together.

These books were my first experience of what non-res people heard about my people. It raised questions that were sometimes hard, but gave all the class the ability to look at our history through the lens of today. A reminder not to repeat the mistakes of hatred from the past.

I think that this award for all its flaws sparked an important conversation. A conversation that is no more. One less source of truth about my nearly extinct people.

i think it’s important to hear those other voices. but did the ALSC just get complaints and decide to change the name based on those, or did they go out and find other perspectives from american indians, like the one above? and do the ALSC’s awards reflect the author or the author’s works? in EITHER case, if the ALSC is going to change the name of the wilder award, it needs to take a closer look at its other awards and how they relate to its core values.

i’m disappointed that the award has been renamed. while her award hasn’t been revoked and her works still widely published and read, stripping laura’s name from the long-time award does a disservice to historical viewpoints, a turn-of-the-century female author, and to the spirit of laura and other long-read authors.

book review: Out West

book review: Out West

what a FANTASTIC book. i picked this up on a random reddit recommendation and couldn’t have been happier i did.
written in the mid-80s, so much of duncan’s insights are still so relevant. with his road rules (never turn back. don’t stop to ask for directions.) and his stories of his traveling the same route of lewis and clark but in less time and better accommodations, this is such a pleasant read for anyone interested in the west, the lewis and clark expedition, or anyone who has an itch to travel. this book is dense but worth reading every word.
review tuesday: sleeping beauties

review tuesday: sleeping beauties

i feel like a bit of a poser whenever i read and review a stephen king novel because i picked him up so late in my reading life, and for reasons that are pretty dumb. he writes horror novels! he’s a weirdo! his writing is scary! he looks like a weirdo!
whatever. get over it. just pick up a book of his. 
want an easy place to start? “the green mile.” “shawshank redemption.” “the body (lean on me).” they’re all familiar to you. 
so, i picked up his latest book, “sleeping beauties,” which he co-wrote with his son. when i first started reading it, i thought, Oh! i can totally tell this is more owen than stephen king. but then i got more into the storyline and was like, ok – this has gone full stephen.
i’ll try to give an overview without getting into spoilers because this is a great book. what i love about SK novels is that i KNOW there is always going to be some supernatural thing crop up eventually at the root of any scariness, so it’s expected now.
sleeping_beauties_prop_embedso it was with sleeping beauties.
premise of the book: all women are made to go into a deep slumber and not awaken before this one thing happens. it’s a pretty telling story about society and what would happen if women did suddenly decide to take a vacation from life. 
there are characters you hate, there are characters you love, and there are characters that i wondered were really supposed to be written that way (writing female characters from a male eye is always a questionable thing in my mind. women are not THAT CONSCIOUS of their boobs. they’re just not. i’m not going to notice my shirt caressing the sideboob. not happening.)
but what was really exciting for me about this book was the build-up to the climax, which i don’t think i’ve gotten with any other SK novel quite like this one. i’ve gotten great build-up from other authors, just not him. it was really exciting to see how things came together and what was happening. i was glad when the baddies had it coming. i was sad when the good guys lost. and i was hopeful yet melancholy for the bittersweet ending. 
I keep telling people to pick up a king book. you won’t be disappointed. and if you want to get a story that you’re not familiar with for your first read, this is a good option. 

2016 reading challenge

2016 reading challenge

huzzah i met my reading challenge for the year! i set a goal of 60 books, and i met it. (not that the last two years haven’t been great reading years). 
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but what’s REALLY interesting is my pages read:
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first, i think it’s interesting that 2012 and 2013 were within 400 pages of each other. and this year, i read 2000 pages more than those two years.  (i don’t know what happened in 2014 or 2015.)
generally there are a couple books each year that i start and then decide, naaahhh, and toss aside. i mark them as “read” on my goodreads because otherwise they just hang out in my queue forever. i know in 2013 i started infinite jest – a lot of pages – and quit after less than 100 pages. so these numbers aren’t completely indicative of my reading habits. BUT this year, i know of two books i quit – one i was 3/4 done with (just couldn’t anymore) and the other i’d gotten about 1/4 of the way through – that one was “duma key” by stephen king, so it was pretty long. 
i wish i could set a goal by pages, not books read. i can choose books that are 250 pages or books that are 800 pages, and they both count as one. 

wait for it

wait for it

lots of driving = lots of time. normally i just turn on the radio and listen to mpr or some pop song while i drive to work, but on the weekends i’ve got 3 hours of driving time that could be filled by…
podcasts? yes. audiobooks? yes. mostly audiobooks. i’m multitasking! kind of.
reading a book book and listening to an audiobook are completely different experiences. a book book holds your attention undivided. a book book will let you zoom over words as fast as your brain processes them. a book book will let you reread a sentence over and over without having to fiddle with controls.
an audiobook, unless you’re sitting in your living room, raptly staring at your playing device, does not have your undivided attention. while i’m driving, i listen, then i’m worried about that guy coming up awfully quick on my bumper. then i’m listening, and then i’m seeing some weirdo trying to merge in a 75-mph lane at 35 mph and trying to move over. i’m listening, then i’ve got to figure out how to handle all this traffic. oh! an orange cone! but, for the most part, i know what’s going on.
if i want to reread something or skip ahead, i need to mess around with my controls. in fact, i don’t know if i want to skip ahead, ever, because i can’t do that overall skim with my eyes on a page while i’m mid-paragraph. plus, it’s frowned upon to mess around with your phone while driving.
an audiobook has one pace: spoken word. now, granted, i can scrub it up: 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, etc., but i find that anything faster than 1.5x is just too scrubbed to make sense of the words.
that said, some books were just made (written?) for audiobook.
i just finished neil patrick harris’ autobiographical choose your own adventure, and i would HIGHLY recommend checking out the audiobook. while you’d think that a choose your own adventure would not lend well to the audio format, he and the producer worked to make it absolutely great.
he reads it himself, and while you might be able to infer certain things from written word, it was great to hear his inflection as he intended in his writing. it was great hearing him say “LEGEN – wait for it – DARY.”  it was even better hearing him intone “THEEEE EENNNDDD” whenever you met your untimely demise in one of the “adventures.” 
the best part? HE KNOWS HOW TO PRONOUNCE MISCHIEVOUS*. wtg, nph.
four stars: would choose to adventure listen again!
*where is that I after the v? THERE IS NONE. quit inserting it. say mischief. now add an “ous” after it. TADA. mischievous. 

Review: The Flight of the Silvers

Review: The Flight of the Silvers

The Flight of the Silvers
The Flight of the Silvers by Daniel Price
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
the time quandries. the parallel universes. the paradoxes. ugh! it’s hard to wrap your head around these things, but this book tackled them head on. the linearness of time is so hard to dismiss when trying to think about the ideas of parallel universes and how endless they must be. i liked how this book was all about the weirdness of time, plus an apocalyptical plot to boot. unfortunately for me, i came to the end of the book before the story was done; i didn’t know this was a trilogy! that’s fine by me – more books to look forward to.
a couple weird things that stuck out at me: naming the characters by their professions and/or relationship status was a little odd to me. the artist? we know his name is zack. the sisters is ok, but to call amanda the widow? like her entire character was driven by the fact that her husband is dead? at least calling hannah the actress didn’t drive attention to the fact that everyone thought she was a slut (and so what if she likes to have sex? that’s her prerogative. no need to call it to attention). it’s kind of weird that theo, david, and mia didn’t have such nicknames; consistency would be nice if omnisciently calling the main characters by nicknames.
and if it weren’t for another review on goodreads that brought my attention to the reiterative nature of hannah’s chestal area, i may not have noticed it, but man, attention is brought to her boobs and figure quite a bit.
BUT. the plot is great, and i’m looking forward to the next book.
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fangirl review

fangirl review

pfft, rainbow rowell, i said. meh, who cares, i said. she can’t be that good, i said. 
well, i read a rainbow rowell book. and i take it all back.
maybe it was the hipsterishness that i feel surrounds eleanor and park, or maybe it’s the hippie name (you’d think i’d be on board with that!), but i poopooed her as a YA author that i just would choose not to read. 
but i was in the library looking at the YA section, and there was her book “fangirl.” the protagonist writes fanfic of what is essentially the equivalent harry potter in her world. why not? well, it was like reading about my first year of college, the way she described her introverted, shy heroine. i was ok with it. and it’s not just fluff; the writing is eloquent. flowy. just right. 
so i guess i’ll get my hipster on and check out eleanor and park next time i’m at the library. 

book review: "red rising" trilogy

book review: "red rising" trilogy

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i’ve been waiting for so long for the final book of this trilogy to publish and get to my doorstep. ok, so it was only a year, but still. 
i reviewed the first book of this series, “red rising”, back when i finished that. i was enamored. i was not as enamored by the second book when i first read it, but now i reread them in preparation for the final book, i liked it a bit more. anyway. let’s talk about these books.
it’s hard coming into these books right after a very frilly, very thorough writer*; pierce brown’s style in these books is very frank, honest, and gritty, and comes in the first person of our hero, darrow. but as you get in a little deeper, you understand that this man can write action, and the compact sentences help create a world of class war. 
we’re in a world(s) where the elite have their heels on the tiers of lower classes and have the technology and bodies to back it up. our hero, helped out by a cast of characters along the way, rises from the very bottom to the very top to make mayhem and tear down the classes. 
like i wrote in my first review, brown’s influenced by many writers, and you can tell as you read through the plotline, but it’s so mashed up and in such an exciting package, you push that aside.
plus, how can you go wrong when the hero’s nickname is “the reaper.”
the last 100 pages or so of “red rising” is still my favorite section of the books. it’s raw, animalistic, and really when darrow sees what he needs to do and how he needs to act. he understands that to make this work, he needs to rely on and trust his friends and make real relationships. while that’s my favorite, the end of the third book was really close; i was grinning like a fool as i read the end of “morning star.” without giving too much away, let’s say i felt what i felt at the end of HP7. 
wholehearted five stars to this trilogy. the last book is what i wanted “mockingjay” to be. it’s on par with HP. it’s the end of every star trek film on steroids. if they decide to make a movie, i will be very terrified and very excited at the same time. 
* the typos. my god, the typos. and ORIENTATE is NOT a word. i had to wonder where on earth the copy editors were. i’ll forgive him though; he did use farther correctly every single time. also, just a note: these are adult books, not YA. mr. brown himself has said that these are adult books. i think a lot of teens read them, but a lot of teems read other adult books as well. 

delving into the deep

delving into the deep

i just finished up the short story patrick rothfuss wrote for a collection by george rr martin, which means i am once again rothfuss-less. i just read 2000+ pages and now i’m wallowing in book grief. 
this is part of the reason i’m avoiding reading harry potter again – there is so much a person gets invested in in a series like that, and when it’s over, it’s such a loss. i’m friendless, storyless, worldless. 
this is not to say i won’t pick them up again. if that were the case, i’d never read again. to take the time out of your day to visit a world not your own, a life not your own, and recreate it with your own scenes is something pretty incredible. i really do feel sorry for those people who watched the HP movies before reading the books. or any books, really. to experience those stories with your own imagination is a pretty powerful thing. (it’s also a huge disappointment when it hits the big screen and the scenes play out nothing like you’d expected.)
rothfuss had his books optioned for a film/tv adaptation, and i’m scared outta my pants, one for the adaptation itself and two because how will this dent his time with book 3? (i know; i know. that’s the selfish side of me.)
but there are always more books. so i’ll keep on reading.

second time through

second time through

i just finished reading pat rothfuss’ “name of the wind” for the second time, and it was even better the second time around! 
i love his writing style. what i remember the first time i read this book was that i was not too excited to start reading it. i felt like fantasy reading had stopped being really alluring to me. but i gave it a shot and decided to read a couple chapters. once i got past the first few pages, i was hooked. and it wasn’t necessarily because of the plot or the genre; it wa because rothfuss is perhaps the most beautiful prose-ist i can think of. 
they say fitzgerald had a way with words. i would argue rothfuss is the fitzgerald of our time. there are sentences that are just beautiful, and each one makes you want to read the next. there are double meanings as well as lovely, tumbly jumbles of words. 
he’s got the first two of the kingkiller chronicles done, and he wrote ” the slow regard of silent things” a while ago. there’s a short story in a george rr martin book i’ve got to get ahold of so i can read that. but we’re still waiting on book three of the kingkiller chronicles, which is rumored to be in editing process. 
i can’t wait!