Livingston, I Presume

You say lost, I say misplaced

I love the library. I also hate the library.

We are blessed here in Livingston with a wonderful library--one of the original Carnegie libraries, built in 1904:

"There were only a few public libraries in the world in 1881 when Andrew Carnegie began to promote the establishment of free public libraries to make a means of self-education available to the nation’s changing workforce. He eventually spent over $56 million to build 2,509 libraries throughout the English-speaking world."

So thank you, Andrew Carnegie, whose name was in my youth pronounced CAR-nuh-ghee but has now morphed to car-NAY-ghee for no reason I can discern.

The Livingston library opened a very nice new addition shortly after we moved here, and we have wiled away many an hour in its children's room. Unfortunately, I have also spent many unhappy hours wondering where in the hell a book that we checked out has disappeared to. Most recently we have weathered the disappearance of an Eric Carle book that we checked out for Emerson. I suspect she has hidden it to prevent our returning it. Frankly, I didn't think it was that good. The character development was weak and the surprise ending? Well, let's just say that O. Henry would not have been impressed. But she loved it, we lost it, and now we will end up buying a new copy for the library.

I have been reminded of this parental failing each and every morning via a new library service whereby they send you a helpful email reminder. "ITEM OVERDUE!" the email subject line reads, and I sink lower in my chair and hit the delete button as fast as I can.

I try to be a responsible library consumer. I really do. And in my life I've only ever had to buy one book for a library because I lost it. But that's mainly dumb luck. One day I came upstairs to the checkout desk to find two librarians talking about the tragedy of a book that had been found facedown in the gutter. It was a children's book about ducks. "Who would do such a thing?" I thought to myself. "Probably teenagers attacking some defenseless child for his lunch money." Turned out  that the last person to check out the book was...me. It had fallen out of my stroller when I was packing it up and heading home. I tried to kill the duckie book. They've never really looked at me the same way.

My cred was not at all enhanced when I showed up a couple of months back to pay for a book that Connery had checked out that I was sure I had lost. "Nope," the same librarian said. "Someone turned that in after it was left at a coffee shop." *ulp* Nice work, mom.

And just as I was finishing up this post? Chip bounded in to the office holding that Eric Carle book. It had been buried under some suitcases in our bedroom. All's well that ends well or just another reason why I should stick to reading books at the library? Could be difficult with the novels, but it's probably safer.

Finally

I've been looking for a while for a cookbook for Connery or some kind of "lunch idea" cookbook for us. Unfortunately, the books out there tend toward the "celebrity chef" side--please, God, save me from more Rachel Ray!--or toward the very specialty, i.e. when you are a gluten-free vegan who wants to eat only foods local to the upper northeast side of Berkeley. That's why I was glad to find this at the local Barnes & Noble last weekend. While it does feature a celebrity chef of sorts in that it features characters from Ratatouille, it also has classic French recipes given an easier twist to make it possible for kids to help out in the kitchen. We've already made three recipes from this book already, which has to be a new cookbook record.

In looking at other cookbooks either for kids or for parents cooking for kids, I've found other problems besides the aforementioned celebrity-specialty conundrums. There's a huge subset of "cooking for kids" books that make liberal use of the four kiddie food groups--hot dogs, chicken nuggets, pizza, and cookies--as if those foods are the only ones that will ever appeal to a child. The opposite extreme is the OMG CHILDHOOD OBESITY EPIDEMIC OF TEH FAT!?!?! cookbook designed to appeal to moms who want their kids to eat "healthy," wherein healthy means without any sugar, fat, or taste.

Now, I'm all for kids eating good food. In fact, if you ask my mom--who was in her day the strictest mom on the block in terms of what was in our cupboards--she'll call me a food nazi when it comes to what Connery gets to eat. I'll cop to being very, very label-conscious and anti-processed-foods to the extreme. But that doesn't mean I'm going to raise him on low-fat margarine and sugar substitute (See above: anti-processed-food.). What I love about What's Cooking is that I see nary a fake food anywhere in the book. Eggs, veggies, fruit, cheese, bread--basic, good food prepared in a tasty and imaginative way--predominate. Beyond that, food is presented as a real joy to prepare and consume. There are pictures of each recipe and an unabashed invitation to make the recipes together and enjoy them together.

Our society is so fraught with food issues that it's nice to see a cookbook that is trying to keep those out of our kids' heads. It's unlikely a single book can counteract the toxic celebrity culture that berates Britney Spears for being too fat and photoshops America Ferrara beyond recognition, but it's noteworthy that somebody is trying.

Why no Harry blogging?

NB: This contains absolutely no spoilers, as I have not reached the end myself.

I love the Harry Potter books, and of course I had my copy by mid-Saturday, just like 8.6 million other people. (I feel so unique!) But I will not be blogging about it for a while, and here's why. Chip and I have a tradition of reading the Harry Potter books aloud to each other. We started with the first one in 2000, the summer that we moved to Prague. We brought the first three books with us, and I can still remember lying on the bed in our first apartment in Prague--a dismal affair, at least in location--and reading Harry Potter.

I can't remember exactly why we chose to read them aloud to each other, but I think it had something to do initially with realizing that we probably wouldn't have a television when we moved abroad, and even if we did, we wouldn't understand much. As it turned out, pretty much every furnished apartment in the Czech Republic comes with a TV, so we needn't have worried, but that didn't make the programming any better or more...you know...in English. So we read. Once we finished the three HPs, we tried to read some Bill Bryson to each other. The problem with his books is that there is a fair chance that you may end up laughing so hard together that you could be injured. This happened only once. Pretty soon we had started working and having a life in Prague and we stopped reading to each other. But we restart again every time a new HP book comes out.

That's why, even though I am almost literally dying to know what happens, I am resisting the urge to throw myself headlong into the book. And if I can keep from seeing what happens unti Friday, when we leave civilization, I just might make it through without having the ending spoiled. But that's the other advantage of reading this way. If I were reading the book on my own, I'd be through it almost immediately and then the HP experience would be done for good. I am physically incapable of slowing down and enjoying a leisurely read on my own. This way I have to.

So, if you're reading HP7, do me a favor. Keep it to yourself, OK?

Organic hysteria

It takes a lot for me to buy a book in hardback. Hell, it takes a lot these days to get me to buy a book. We have a good library and a big mortgage, so waiting until the LivPubLib decides to spring for it generally works for me. Still, when I picked up a copy of Organic Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck while accompanying Connery to his regular visit to the Thomas the Tank Engine set at Barnes and Noble, I knew I wanted to buy it. My cursory examination revealed practical, common-sense tips for making housekeeping greener by using natural ingredients such as baking soda and vinegar instead of chemical wonders like FANTASTIK and FEBREZE!

And, I have to say, for about half of the book, she really had me. She was self-deprecating about her own lackluster housekeeping, offered generally interesting and user-friendly advice, and made going green seem not only necessary but practical and do-able. I was even seriously considering composting.

But then she began to lose the plot and I began to have flashbacks to: 1) junior high shop class safety videos; and 2) local news in Connecticut.

My brother does this great impersonation of the safety lecture of his own junior high shop teacher which goes something like this," This is a drill press. You may be blinded. This is a band saw. You may lose a finger." (Oh, and for the record, we're allowed to make shop teacher jokes and enjoy shop teacher impressions because our dad was a shop teacher. The rest of you can shut up about shop teachers. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.)

Here's Ellen Sandbeck's impression of the junior high shop class safety lesson, offered on page 322:

"Malfunctioning gas appliances such as furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and clothes dryers can produce deadly amounts of carbon monoxide (CO), an odorless yet deadly gas that is produced by all kinds of combustion. Carbon monoxide displaces oxygen in the blood, causing disorientation that may prevent victims from escaping and--if they don't manage to escape--bright red corpses."

In other words, "Here is a kitchen range. You may be graphically suffocated and end up the color of a Flathead cherry."

Do I want to downplay the importance of carbon monoxide detectors and safe home heating? No way. Did I want to know that last bit? Not at all. It's one of those instances that I would wish for the ability to go into my brain and scrub a portion clean until I can no longer remember the specific wording used. Un-bloody-likely.

But then, the hysteria got worse.

Here's Sandbeck's take on electric blankets, or, as she calls them "electric wolves in sheep's clothing":

"Never put anything on top of an electric blanket while it is energized; enough heat can build up between the item and the blanket to cause a fire. This means no pillows, no coverlets, no bedspreads, no clothing, no dolls, no toys, no pets, no small children... Even the most sedate cat or dog can literally become a ball of fire if he naps on top of a heated electric blanket." (emphasis mine)

Sweet Buddha on a beach ball, people. Literal balls of fire? That's when I knew I would have to put the book down. You see, when I was living in New England, I was subjected to Connecticut News 30, the station that took "If it bleeds, it leads" to entirely new heights. My mom and I still joke about deadly Winter Storm Chuck, which hit while she was visiting me in New Haven and involved two gusts of wind and a snowflake. One night, probably while I was avoiding doing my Russian homework, the trailer came on with the lead story of "Pet Store Fire in Milford! Burning Bunnies and Flaming Puppies at 11!" Unfortunately, I am only exaggerating slightly.

When a hardback book that I have purchased begins to emulate Connecticut News 30, it is not pleasing. I will still take her good advice, but I'm ignoring the flaming pets--at 11 or any other time.

Copping out

I know I've mentioned several times my intention to do regular children's book reviews on this site. Unfortunately, I keep getting sidetracked by teens doing the nasty at the prom and buying a house and other unavoidable, must-comment-on-them life events.

How nice for me, then, that Touchstone at 4 & 20 blackbirds has written a great children's book revue-review. That takes me off the hook for a while, right?

Besides, you probably don't want to hear about Connery's latest favorite book, which is a puffy Snoopy and Woodstock book with only animal names on each page. It's hardly a great work of the canon. But it squeaks!

Updates large and small

Thanks to everyone who has asked about my dad. He's recovering well in the hospital after a silent heart attack last Thursday and a bout with a chronic digestive problem. I'll just say that I have no desire to blog about this. It's too scary to put it all into words, and so I'm currently enjoying my time on that Egyptian river.

I did call the man who was angered by my column, and he was quite reasonable. No harm done.

I got another assignment for a major national women's publication, which makes me very happy.

Connery has been fairly cooperative, at least as far as two-year-olds go. I was able to control him with a moderate degree of success in the grocery store by using a trip to the library as leverage. May he always be motivated by books!

We checked out a real winner while at the library, and I will try to post a review. The book is called I Wanna Iguana, written by Karen Kaufman Orloff and illustrated by David Catrow. Connery would read it day and night if we would let him stay up that long. I also checked out Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad for myself after losing my battle with Bill Clinton. (It was interesting, really, but in three weeks I ought to be able to get farther than the 1992 presidential elections. Not a GAP dress in sight by the time I needed to return it. As it was, I owe a $.40 late fee just because I had to read far enough to get to the actual first election win.)

It's also been surreal to read the news. From the Cheney shooting to Bush threatening his first veto to make sure we put out ports in the hands of the United Arab Emirates, I sometimes feel as if we have landed in some kind of alternate Bizarro land, where up is down and treason is patriotism. Still, it's good to know that in the grand scheme of things, the biggest threat facing the United States is *not* lax port security, bird flu, ever-widening civil strife that we helped to create in Iraq, or the rampant rise of theocracy and fundamentalism around the world. It's gay people making lifelong commitments to each other and to children who would otherwise have no parents. Oh, and it's women who have to make the wrenching choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.

And maybe Bode Miller.

Watch this space

I've decided to do book reviews on this blog. Now, I'm not looking to compete with the New York Review of Books or any other high-minded literary fora. While I am not going to claim to be one of those mothers who is so engrossed in the education and development of her baby that I lack even a spare moment before bed to read a book, I do know that my ability to read novels well has really dropped off. A chapter here, two pages there--it's not terribly conducive to picking up the Christ figure symbolism or, indeed, even following the plot too well sometimes.

All of this is a long way of saying that the books I read obsessively are the ones chosen for me by the toddler in my life. And there is a decided qualitative difference in what's on offer, let me tell you. Some children's books are a joy to read, even the 1000th time and even for the adult reading them. Others make me groan inwardly in despair at the thought of transferring the written to the spoken (My First Book of Tractors, which I once described as having been written as if designed to win a boring contest, leaps to mind. Thank heavens the still-not-released-even-though-the-editor- said-end-of-November travel book is still beating it in sales rank, if only slightly.).

I am frankly looking forward to bringing you the best of what we're reading, because children's literature has come a long way from Dick and Jane. I hope to have the chance to start tomorrow with Connery's current favorite, How I Became a Pirate.

Let me give you a sample of what I won't be writing in my reviews. I found this one on Amazon for Pirate and had to read it because I was flummoxed that anyone could give this book one star:

After reading the book once, I threw it away. I beleive the morals in this book are all wrong. First, the boy is on the beach with his parents, the parents aren't paying attention to him so he goes off with some strangers (pirates). FIRST RED FLAG! The strangers (pirates) then teach him how to be foul mouthed and belch. They also teach him that he doesn't have to eat his veggies. I think this book is awful and it should definately not be marketed to preschoolers.

I am at a loss to explain this woman's apparent lack of even the most rudimentary sense of humor. Also, I don't think there is any actual belching, and the swearing doesn't reach much past "landlubbers."

I pledge to try to do better, ye scurvy dogs.