September 2013 - Page 2 of 3

Anna\’s Book

by Fynn

I don\’t know why I keep getting ahead of myself with these past-reviews, but here\’s another one. Anna was a little girl found abandoned on the streets of London and taken in by a fellow who calls himself Fynn, and his mother. The first two Anna books (on my shelf, easily accessible so I\’ll write about them later, probably after an enjoyable re-read) are collections of incidents revolving around Anna and the funny, curious and insightful things she would say. I loved those two books, and couldn\’t believe it when I found this one as well. Apparently Fynn kept a box full of Anna\’s own drawings and writings, and he later complied them into this book (she died young). If you ever wanted a look directly into the mind of a child, this is a delightful one. Anna\’s words (which charmingly, but also sometimes confusingly, include her prolific misspellings) describe her thoughts and feelings on various emotions (love and tears I remember in particular), God, kindness, her vague memories of her mother, and her own self. Some are endearingly silly stories she made up herself. They have the quaint, yet sometimes surprisingly wise perspective of a child. Anna\’s simple little stories and insights make me pause and think again.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 75 pages, 1986

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Past Reads

World of the Fox

by Rebecca Grambo

I\’ve always been very fond of foxes, and this book is one of the best ones I\’ve read about the beautiful animals. Although aimed at a younger audience, it\’s very well-written and excellently illustrated. It describes the biology and daily lives of foxes, their various skills and acute senses, their family habits, and how they have been alternately persecuted and revered by man. The book is full of fascinating information, especially in how the stereotypes foxes have for cunning and slyness have a rational, physical explanation. It focuses on five species in particular: the familiar red fox, the gray fox (which can climb trees), arctic fox, swift fox and kit fox. Oh, and did I mention the awesome photographs? If you like foxes, or want to learn more about them, this book is a must read!

Rating: 3/5 ……. 109 pages, 1995

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Juvenile Nonfic, Past Reads

Dinosaur Tracks

Curious George
adapted by Julie Tibbott

This is one of those \”modern\” Curious George books based on the tv series. I suspect the pictures are stills straight from the computer-generated animation; they have that too-smooth style that doesn\’t really appeal to me. But my kid loves Curious George and the stories are always fun and educational, so I overlook my nitpickiness on aesthetics here once again, and just enjoy it.

George, the ever-curious monkey, is going about with a camera taking pictures of animals. His friend Bill helps him look for a fawn to photograph, and George learns how to find and identify animal tracks. He finds some tracks that puzzle him, tries to guess what they are from, and decides it was a dinosaur. George is frightened at the idea of a dinosaur walking around, but he follows the tracks and finds out who really made them; quite a surprise! In addition to having a fun story that teaches some things about wildlife and basics of logical thinking (making a guess and testing a theory), the book also has a few pages in the back that give kids activities to match animals to their tracks, and how to make a casting of tracks you find yourself. I might just try that with my older daughter; we often find deer tracks in the nature park nearby, and once I thought I saw the footprints of a raccoon.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 24 pages, 2011

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Picture Books

Buster Bear\’s Twins

by Thornton W. Burgess

Another charming animal story by Thornton Burgess. This one is about a pair of young bear cubs and their early education. Their mother leads them through the forest, teaches them to be safe and stay where she puts them, and corrects them when they disobey. Mostly she allows the natural consequences of their own misbehavior stand in as sufficient punishment. I like that this book illustrates a lot of emotions and behavior young children will feel themselves. Desire to do their own thing, pride at small accomplishments, feeling unjustly treated when corrected for wrongdoing, pouting and wanting others to feel sorry for them. The little bear who does wrong even runs away from home and soon learns that he can\’t at all get along in the world by himself yet. He gets teased by Peter Rabbit, the blue jay, an owl and then has worse encounters with innocent folk who nonetheless teach him painful lessons when he is rude and overbearing: a porcupine and a skunk. You can guess what happens to the poor little bear cub who is relieved to at last find his mother, feeling sorely chastened by experience. He has yet one more lesson to learn from his family, though. As ever, I found the story a simple yet very entertaining read. It teaches a lot about wildlife and good behavior hand in hand.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 79 pages, 1921

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic

Never Use White Type on a Black Background

and 50 other Ridiculous Design Rules
edited by Anneloes van Gaalen

This has been my \”bathroom book\” for a while now. It\’s one that\’s easy to dip into, read a few pages, come back to the next day. It\’s a compilation of design rules- both those unspoken and those rigorously taught in schools (at least to my experience) alongside numerous quotes by various photographers, architects, typographers, fashion designers and other artists either agreeing with, expostulating on or simply further exploring said rules. There\’s often a source as well: who first made up the rule, or a famous quote it was derived from. Sometimes the rule has evolved a long way from its origins! I got a kick out of some of these; one of my favorite Golden Age illustrators, Norman Rockwell, gets a serious nod here. Nearly all the rules I have either heard in art school (although some phrased differently) or just known intrinsically, but there were a few I had never encountered before (if you don\’t know what to do- just make it big and red took me by surprise). The ones related directly to fashion weren\’t as applicable to what I do, but felt familiar regardless. And if you read between the lines you get a sense of the paradoxical relationship that often exists between designers, their clients or directors, the intended audience and so forth. It\’s all about the rules of good design, how to apply them and know when to bend or break them. (And the title rule? I happen to agree with that one, especially when applied to web pages! White text on black ground makes my eyes swim and I get a headache. I usually never revisit a website that has a black ground.)

My boyfriend brought this book back from a visit to Holland. I\’ve been really enjoying it. Some parts make me me think, others make me laugh, others I grin in recognition and agreement. And most of all, it makes me feel inspired to create again.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 145 pages, 2009

more opinions:
Greeting Card Designer
Battlefield Man

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Art, Current Reads

A Dance with Dragons

by George R.R. Martin

Warning: there are spoilers in this post

Well, not as spoiler-y as you\’ll get with readers who actually finished the thing; this mostly has my general impressions and suspicions about what is to come. Yes, I\’ve given up on the beast that is this book. I made it through just over a hundred pages and it just wasn\’t holding my interest any more. There is too much political scheming, talking and talking, not much action and again new characters I\’m not connected to yet. I didn\’t quite feel frustrated, but just found it dull- which is surprising in a way, considering how richly Martin has built this world and the intricate interactions of the characters who inhabit it.

The gist of what I read is that Jon struggles to hold his command on the Wall as Stannis tries to make things go his way, Theon comes back from the (supposed) dead and has a role to play again, and Tyrion gets smuggled away to safety but then ends up a pawn. He\’s lost his lust for women and scheming (for the time being at least) and seems bitterly resigned, at least as far as I could tell. I did flip through all the succeeding chapters to see if any of my favorite characters made a reappearance (I miss Arya, Sansa and Brienne in particular) and also to see where the dragons come up. No qualms about reading ahead of myself, as it were. What I found of Tyrion\’s situation intrigued me- reduced to slave status, alongside another of his stature, which gave him a completely different worldview of things. Also I found that Denarys\’ chapters are mostly about her efforts to rule the city she sacked, with very little mention of dragons until in the aftermath of a firey disaster she flies away on Drogon. I did read the entire sixteen pages near the end of the book that tell of Dany living in wild isolation on an island her dragon flies to; her struggle to survive there and master control of him. It was interesting, but not quite what I had hoped.

The threat of a years-long winter cold continues to loom in the background, while most of the characters go blithely about their regular lives, concerned with all the wrong things it seems to me. I have a suspicion that this series is aiming to pitch me into reading something I usually avoid from complete disinterest: zombies. Yep. What else are the walking dead, the wights, the Others and the white walkers they run into north of the Wall? And what\’s the difference between all those anyways? are some different names for the same creature, or is it four distinct kinds of dread things? That was never clear to me. I don\’t really want to read about zombies. It was bad enough the glimpse of what Catelyn Stark had become, and the strange things these various invented religions get into. Intriguing though. Mark of a very good writer: Martin makes me want to go on reading even though I detest half the characters, get bored with the politics and don\’t like the hint that a zombie invasion is coming over the wall (ha ha)!

End sum: I think I will like this book better in the future. It certainly has some things I want to read about, some character developments I want to follow, but not right now. When I have to pick up and continue a series after a gap I usually like to recap by reading the immediate prior book to the one that\’s newly published. So I\’m thinking I will wait until book six comes out, then read this one just before that.

Abandoned …….. 1016 pages, 2011

more opinions:
You\’re Entitled to My Opinion
In a Bookshelf
Temporary Escape
Lulu\’s Bookshelf

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Fantasy / Sci Fi

more TBR

books I am likely to read as they have a local presence (the library):

HHhH by Laurent Binet – Reading the End
Being Caribou by Karsten Heuer- Ardent Reader
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell- Things Mean a Lot
Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson- The Lost Entwife

books I might never read, as they are sadly absent (from the library):

Song of the Dodo by David Quammen via Shelf Love
My Leaky Body by Julie Devaney – Indextrious Reader
Nature Cure by Richard Mabey- A Work in Progress
Mud Season by Carin Siegfried- Caroline Bookbinder

Tags: TBR additions

winner

The winner of my bookmarks giveaway is Susan from You Can Never Have Too Many Books! (I love her blog title. That\’s my sentiment, for sure). Congrats, Susan! Send me your postal address and I\’ll mail them to you promptly. Happy reading!

The Custer Wolf

Biography of an American Renegade
by Roger Caras

In the 1920\’s (and surrounding decades, as far as I understand) regular war was waged between ranchers and wolves, to the point where wolves in North America were pretty much exterminated. Poison, baits, traps, dogs, shooting- whatever it took. People were eager and passionate about killing off these intelligent predators. Quite a number of individual wolves gained notoriety with the public as being regular killers of livestock- not just for sustenance but large numbers of animals being found dead and just left there. Whether the wolves were actually responsible for wanton killing of cattle and other livestock remains a question in my mind, but this animal certainly got blamed for a lot of it.

The Custer Wolf, also called Lobo, became legendary for how much livestock he supposedly killed and for his ability to escape all attempts by man to kill him. The first part of this book describes the wolf\’s early life, patterned after wolf behavior the author observed first-hand when he spent time with a captive pack and also viewed films made of young wolves being born and raised by their parents. This part was enjoyable reading and reminded me a lot of how White Fang commences, with the unfolding of the young wolf\’s awareness, its learning through instinct guided by the parents, its experiences encountering other wildlife and exploring the world. The white wolf soon meets with mankind and witnesses the death of both its littermates and parents until it remains a solitary animal and eventually becomes known as a killer of livestock and hunted down.

The firsthand accounts of people actually witnessing this wolf destroying livestock were nil, a few people glimpsed the animal briefly, and stories of its size and ferocity were greatly exaggerated. It mostly gained fame from being able to avoid traps that took hundreds of wolves and other wild animals in the vicinity. When the Custer Wolf was at last shot, men were surprised at its relatively small size. The author was careful in his account to point out which stories were probably fabricated and which had shreds of the truth. He also includes a lot of native american folklore that praises the wolf, as well as recounting ancient cultural fear and loathing of wolves that people brought with them from Europe when they came to America.

It was interesting reading for me, and reminded me of why I enjoy reading these kinds of books.

Rating: 3/5 ……… 175 pages, 1966

more opinions:
John Vernon\’s Reviews
Society and Natural Resources
wanderingref

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books!

by Lucille Colandro

I read this book to my kid last night. Do you know the rhyme There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly? and each successive creature she swallows is after the one before it? This is another version of that, but with the old lady swallowing school supplies- a pen to write in the books, a pencil case the hold the pen, plus a ruler, folder and chalk until she finally swallows a bag, cheers for the school bus coming around the corner, and coughs up a backpack with all the stuff in it ready for school. I remember the tune that goes with the original rhyme, but when I tried to read this book in that singsong, it didn\’t quite fit. A lot of the lines have uneven rhythm, and the refrain I don\’t know why she swallowed the books / but she didn\’t get any looks feels particularly awkward to me. Perhaps it wasn\’t meant to be read to the tune, but when I tried to just read it straight, it didn\’t go any smoother. So for that, I didn\’t really enjoy sharing this book with my daughter. Plus she seemed really puzzled as to why an old lady was consuming all these non-food objects! She didn\’t get the humor. So… I didn\’t enjoy reading this one, mostly because the words came out awkwardly.

I do like the illustrations by Jared Lee. They\’re done with ink lines in a scribbly style, with some color medium. Really fun. There\’s a dog on every page frolicking with the old lady, but whenever kids appear in the picture they\’re standing there looking uncertainly at the old lady, with shocked expressions. I see that there are numerous other old lady swallowed books by the same author/illustrator where she starts out by ingesting leaves, snow, a baby chick, a sea shell, a rose… I\’m a bit curious about those, and my library has quite a few, but I think I\’ll wait until my kid is older and will giggle at it instead of frown.

Note: some kids might find the premise alarming. Especially if they read the original my mother had, where the old lady swallows a fly, spider, bird, cat, dog, pig, cow, horse and the last page ends with I don\’t know why she swallowed a horse / she died of course!

Rating: 2/5 ……… 32 pages, 2012

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Current Reads, Picture Books

Month: September 2013

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