A book about words in my library loot

The Boy Who Loved Words ~ by Roni Schotter, illustrated by Giselle Potter, 2006, children's picture book, 40 pages

Some people collect shells or stones; young Selig collects words. Whenever he hears a new one he likes, he jots it down on a slip of paper and stuffs it into a convenient pocket, a sock, a sleeve, or a hat. The words he collects are ones that stir his heart and ones that make him giggle.  What should he do with so many words?  After helping a poet find perfect words for his poem (lozenge, lemon, licorice), he decides that his purpose is to spread the word to others.  And so he begins to sprinkle, disburse, and broadcast them to people in need.  This book won the Parents' Choice Gold Award.

Two friends on TWOsday

A friend from the community called this morning to suggest we get together for lunch in the Cafe at noon.  A few minutes later, she called back to say she had also invited another of her friends, who happens to be a resident here.  That's fine with me, since she's also my friend.  So there's my TWOsday angle for today.  But what about books?  Of course I'm still reading!  Every day.  Maybe not every minute, though it sometimes seems that way.

 

I'm still in the middle of re-reading Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, 1997, and reading through a couple of magazines (TWO, again) from the Crown Center library:

1. XPLOR from the Missouri Department of Conservation for July/August 2025.
2. Audubon, (Summer 2025 issue) which celebrates 120 years of Audubon.

Starring Grace as Peter Pan

Amazing Grace ~ by Mary Hoffman, illustrated by Caroline Binch, 1991, children's picture book, 32 pages, 10/10

Grace loves stories, whether they're from books, movies, or the kind her grandmother tells.  So when she gets a chance to play a part in Peter Pan, she knows exactly who she wants to be.  The watercolor illustrations fully express Grace's high-flying imagination.

Grace wants to be Peter Pan, but her classmates tell her:  "You can't be Peter -- that's a boy's name" and "You can't be Peter Pan ... He isn't black."  But Grace kept her hand up.  Before the class auditions, Grace's Nana told her:  "You can be anything you want, Grace, if you put your mind to it."  Re-read my title.

1. On Monday, I posted another version of Mozart's Bassoon Concerto, my favorite piece of music, HERE.
2. On Tuesday, I asked for your opinion about children's books, HERE.
3. On Wednesday, I wrote about a children's book, HERE.
4. Thursday's post was philosophical, about buying something on sale and about what TL;DR means, HERE.
5. Friday's post was about a memoir of a family moving to Gaza in 1948, HERE.
6. On Saturday, I wrote about two sole survivors, HERE.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

What does sole survivor mean?

The other day, I had to ask myself, "What does 'sole survivor' mean?"  I always assumed it meant there was only ONE survivor in an accident or disaster.  I looked it up and got this answer:

The term "sole survivor" refers to a person who is the only one to live through a disaster, accident, or other event where many others died.  It can also be used more broadly to describe the only remaining member of a group or the only one of its kind.

Now I'll tell you why I'm looking up something so obvious to most of us.  Two people survived a boating accident on Lake Tahoe recently, and the headlines (HERE:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/sole-survivors-lake-tahoe-boating-204221207.html) said:

Sole survivors in Lake Tahoe boating accident had one thing in common.

Two survivors?  Then there is no "sole" survivor.  There are TWO, not ONE.  Whoever wrote that article needs to take a refresher English class.

Oh, you want to know what those TWO people had in common?  They were wearing life jackets.

Beginning ~ with her name and village

Beginning

The month is May.  The year is 1948.  A girl named Siham is 15 years old.  Her village is al-Majdal ... Siham will leave al-Majdal this month.  This week.  Tonight. ... Her family will live in a house in a new town, in a neighborhood in Gaza ...

I'll Tell You When I'm Home ~ by Hala Alyan, 2025, memoir, 272 pages

The rich and deeply personal debut memoir by award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan, whose experience of motherhood via surrogacy forces her to reckon with her own past, and the legacy of her family’s exile and displacement, all in the name of a new future.

After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate.  In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman — the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn — to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance.

As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling — a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis.  She turns to family stories and communal myths:  of grandmothers mapping their lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon; of eradicated villages and invading armies; of places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men that left and women that stayed; of the contradictions of her own Midwestern childhood, and adolescence in various Arab cities.

Meanwhile, as the baby grows from the size of a poppyseed to a grain of rice, then a lime, and beyond, Hala gathers the stories that are her legacy, setting down the ones that confine, holding close those that liberate.  It is emotionally charged, painstaking work, but now the stakes are higher:  how to honor ancestors and future generations alike in the midst of displacement?  How to impart love for those who are no longer here, for places one can no longer touch?

A brutally honest quest for motherhood, selfhood, and peoplehood, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a powerful story of unraveling and becoming, of destruction and redemption, and of homelands lost and recreated.

The book was published this month.  Although I just got it, it has already pulled me into her story.  I found the book's description online.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

A couple of things to think about

Just because something is on sale doesn't mean you have to buy it.  A deal isn't a deal if it wrecks your budget.  Retailers use sales to make you feel like you're missing out — but the truth is, you're not saving money if you weren't planning to spend it in the first place.  In that case, buying a $100 item at 25% off does NOT mean you saved $25; it means you spent $75.  But did you really need it?

TL;DR stands for "Too Long; Didn't Read."  It's a slang term used to introduce a summary of a lengthy text, or as a comment indicating that a piece of writing is too long.  Essentially, it's a way of saying, "Here's the short version because the original was too long."

Where does rabbit live?

Missing Rabbit ~ by Roni Schotter, illustrated by Cyd Moore, 2002, children's picture book, 32 pages

While shuffling back and forth between her Mama's house and her Papa's house, Kara's favorite toy, Rabbit, asks to stay at Papa's house.  Kara must leave her toy behind while she is at Mama's house, where she misses him terribly.  This heart-warming tale for children whose parents are divorced captures the true meaning of home and parental love.