I don't often rant about a book I don't like because, as a writer, a part of me is always sensitive to the feelings of the person who wrote the book, even if I will never meet them, and they will never read my rant.  But I've been bothered by a book I finished this past weekend and sometimes when things bother me, they stay with me longer then they should--writing about them is often the only way to send them packing.

A few weeks ago a friend asked me whether I'd read this book by Jodi Picoult. I hadn't read any book by Picoult, actually, so I told her no. The particular book my friend asked about is about a young man with Asperger's, who ends up charged with a murder. I just wondered what you'd think about it, my friend said casually, in a way that implied that there would be something to think about.

So last week I stopped by the library and checked out the book. I read it in only a few sittings, but I found my desire to keep reading it waning each time I opened the book. 

I'm going to use this Friday post space to gush proudly here about how L. is on his school's Battle of the Books team. A couple of months ago in the van on the way to pick up T. he casually mentioned that he had gone to a BOB informational meeting at lunch.

"Oh really?" My heart jumped. Careful, I thought. Don't be too pushy. Don't get too excited or nosey about this. Sometimes L. trying something is like coming up on a wild animal in the bushes. If you make a sound, or move too quickly, he'll scurry away quick as a flash.

But L. continued to go to the practice meetings, and he tried out for the 6th grade class team and made it! His team placed second in the finals for his school and, encouraged by this, he went on to try out for the schoolwide team. This was big. Really, really big.

And he made it!

Now he'll get to compete countywide this month, and he stays after school for practices and everything. The other night I was telling someone on the phone about his BOB success. "He decided to do it all on his own," I told my friend. After I hung up with her L., who has supersonic hearing and hears every little conversation anywhere in the house, came out of the office looking a little sheepish.

"You know," he said. "I didn't decide ALL on my own," he admitted.

"That's okay," I said. "What do you mean?"

He'd gone to the first informational meeting, he told me, because he had been looking for a way to get out of eating in the cafeteria that afternoon.

"It was hot dog day," he said. "I hate the smell of the cafeteria on hot dog day."

I've shifted the time I swim laps at the pool from lunchtime (around noon) to 8:00 am. While others might shudder at the thought of jumping into a lukewarm pool at 7:45 or 8:00 on these wintry dark mornings, I like it. I hate feeling groggy, and a brisk swim workout first thing certainly gets my blood flowing. When I used to swim at noon, I found myself the youngest at the pool, surrounded in the locker room by elderly, white-haired ladies, all congregating there for a water aerobics class. Now that I go in the mornings, I find myself the oldest woman in the locker room, surrounded by girls from the local high school swim team.  The locker room always smells like Suave shampoo and hairspray. They must get to the pool by 7:00, because they leave shortly after 7:30 to make it into school by 8:00. They are wide awake and chatty, and they stand in front of the big mirrors blow drying their hair, applying makeup, discussing skin problems and hair lengths, and talking about their parents.

"My dad said my jeans were too tight," one girl said to her friend yesterday morning. "He said they were either too tight, or I'd gained weight."

I snuck a look out of the corner of my eyes while pulling my towel and swim goggles from my bag. The girl was pretty and dark-haired, with curvy hips that she was still growing into. 

"Do you think my jeans are make-you-fat tight, or looking-good tight?" the girl asked hesitantly and her friend set down her round brush and swiveled around to take a look, sizing her up.

"They are definitely looking-good tight," she said. 

That's what probably worried her dad, I thought. Those looking-good jeans might have looked too good for his taste.

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Every year for Christmas, I buy at least one book for L. and T. They love books, and it's not difficult to find one to please them. When I was growing up--and well into my twenties--one of my favorite parts of Christmas was getting a good book or two and spending those lazy, quiet days post-Christmas curled up on the couch by the fire, reading. I thought about those days when I watched L. seated on that same couch, absorbed in the new Steve Jobs biography, and when I happened upon T., on another couch, reading this book:

When I shopped for books for the kids this year I happened upon A Life Like Mine and I knew it would be perfect for T. She gobbles up all books--but lately non-fiction books about other children in other parts of the world, and she is fascinated by history and other cultures. She's our budding anthropologist-in-the-making. 

And I love this book! The table of contents is divided up by each child featured in the book. T. likes to read the blurb about each child, and then turn to the corresponding page with their story.

The book not only teaches about the lives and traditions of children all around the world, but it has sections on nutrition, education, and a fascinating section on how children with disabilities live in other cultures, and are treated in schools and communities.

A recent study has come out suggesting that multitasking is bad for you--in all the ways I expected, of ourse. I was disappointed to read about the study, though. I not only multitask all the time, but I pride myself on my ability to multitask well, thus achieving the impossible over the course of one single day. I don't know how I could accomplish everything I needed to if I weren't able to creatively and efficiently switch between tasks: grading papers, returning phone calls, helping students, answering e-mails, dipping briefly into writing projects, picking up kids, dipping back into projects, checking homework, answering e-mails, planning dinner, cleaning the house, switching laundry loads, feeding animals, answering e-mails....you get the picture. Maybe, of course, the answer is simple: if you do so much that you need to multitask, maybe you're doing too much. And of course I probably am; we all are, aren't we?

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I'm reading this book now. I started it, thinking it would be similar to Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safron Foer, a book that really affected me on many different levels. But Herzog's book is very different. For starters, he is not a vegetarian, and he is pretty honest and up-front about this early on. His book is meant to challenge our bizarre and illogical approaches to how we view animals; how we don't think twice about eating animals who have suffered tremendously to become the fried chicken in a family dinner, yet we will go to great expense over the care of other animals we deem worthy of great love and attention. We fought with great energy to stop the clubbing of baby seals, for instance, yet were satisifed with legislation allowing the slaughter of seals once they reached a certain age: coincidentally the age at which they stop looking so young and appealing, with their huge dark eyes and baby faces. Herzog points out that we have damaged dog breeds in our effort to accentuate the baby-like characteristics we react to (English bulldogs, for instance, can't even give birth naturally because they have been bred to have such oversized heads. The mother dog can't even push her pups through the birth canal, and the pups must be born through a C-section). Herzog's book looks at our relationship with animals using over two decades of research in the field of anthrozoology, a relatively new science of human–animal relations. While I don't agree with everything Herzog presents in his book (especially his stance on owning cats!), I am finding it a fascinating and thought-provoking read.

A good friend of mine e-mailed me recently to ask if I had any good mystery book suggestions for her son (a 4th grader). As an adult reader I love mysteries, personally, but my love affair with them started a long time ago, when I was little. My all-time favorites when I was a child were the books in the Famous Five series by British writer Enid Blyton. I think I was reading Agatha Christie mysteries by the time I was nine, and I wrote my first mystery book when I was about eight (about an abandoned old house--in the days when there were houses in Athens and not just apartment buildings--not far from the apartment where my Greek grandparents lived). T. seems to be developing quite an interest in mysteries as well, and she especially likes the Cam Jansen mysteries, and the Capital Mysteries series as well as the Nancy Drew notebook series. L. tends to enjoy futuristic science fiction more than mysteries, but he has read quite a few whodunits, and I thought this post could be a good place to share the list with my friend, as well as with other parents looking for good suspensful reads for their older elementary school kids--especially boys.

So here is my link-filled list of good mystery reads for elementary school kids--just in time for the weekend, and a chance to hit your local library!

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We're in Washington, D.C. today for a quick, jam-packed visit. Since finding time to write a post has been nearly impossible, I'm re-posting one from two years ago, on favorite reads to go along with trips. This trip we're adding an American Girl book to our list (the Meet Addy book in case we can try and squeeze in a visit to this exhibit) and we've dusted off our copy of George Washington's Teeth in preparation for a visit to Mount Vernon.

Until we get back...happy reading!

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On the way to pick T. up from school. L. and I stopped into Barnes & Noble so I could buy a copy of the movie I was planning on showing my students in class today. I told L. he could pick out an inexpensive magazine, if he hurried. At the doctor's office a couple of days ago he'd been completely engrossed in some issue of Reader's Digest and I had to sit down and wait another ten minutes after our appointment was over so he could finish it. He wanted to find that exact same issue at Barnes & Noble so we embarked on a frantic hunt to track down where the store kept those small-sized magazines. We enlisted the help of a nice Barnes & Noble lady who then had to get the help of a nice Barnes & Noble man to track down the elusive magazine. Finally, we found one last Reader's Digest, nestled next to Popular Mechanics. Unfortunately, this month's issue features a large hot dog on the front, with the word America written in curly, curvy mustard.

L. hates hot dogs, with a passion. He hates mustard even more. "I don't want that one," he said. "Could I get another?"

Barnes & Noble, apparently, doesn't keep back issues of Reader's Digest on hand.

As I mentioned several posts back, T. will be switching schools next year. We are so excited about her new school, and the opportunities it will provide T., but we've felt the burden of carrying around the news, knowing that while she will be excited about this school, leaving her current school will make her sad. T. is a sunny, flexible, social child, but she often buries her burdens, and I wanted to tread carefully. What complicates the situation is that T.