Two children's books for TWOsday

Fairy Tales of Fearless Girls ~ by Susannah McFarlane, 2020, children's, 128 pages

This is an illustrated picture book of reimagined fairy tales with a feminist twist, perfect for fans of the classic stories.  Each story has a modern twist, a different illustrator, and all the charm of a classic storybook.  This accessible book is perfect for young princes and princesses learning to have courage and follow their hearts.

They may be small, but they’re big of heart—

kind and cheerful, brave and smart.

And so with courage, hope, and laughter

they make their own "happily ever after."

In this treasury of modern fairy tales, the heroines make their own way to happily ever after, and there isn’t a damsel in distress in sight!  Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Thumbelina don’t let fear or self-doubt hold them back.  Using their wits, bravery, honesty, and kindness, they problem-solve their way out of tricky situations.  See how Rapunzel invents her way out of her tower and how Red Riding Hood outsmarts the wolf!

Power to the Princess: 15 Favorite Fairytales Retold with Girl Power ~ by Vita Murrow, illustrated by Julia Bereciartu, 2018, children's, 96 pages

What if princesses didn’t always marry Prince Charming and live happily ever after?  Fifteen favorite fairytales have been retold for a new generation.  These princesses are smart, funny, and kind, and can do anything they set their minds to.  Focused on issues including self-image, confidence, LGBTQ, friendship, advocacy, and disability, these stories are perfect for sharing between parents and children, or for older princesses or princes to read by themselves.  They teach that a princess is a person who seeks to help others, is open to learning new things, and looks for ways to add purpose to their lives and to the lives of those around them.

Get reacquainted with these powerful princesses:

• Snow White — champion of real beauty
• Sleeping Beauty — specialist on sleeping disorders
• Thumbelina — music producer and advocate
• Rapunzel — world-famous architect
• Belle the Brave — undercover agent
• Elisabeth and the Wild Swans — fashion designer
• Cinderella — prime minster and businesswoman
• Star and the 12 Dancers — dancer
• The Goose Girl — stand-up comedian
• Princess Sevinah (and the Pea) — founder of the Fairyland Dating Service
• The Snow Queen — winter sports coach
• The Little Mermaid — advocate for peace between mer-people and humans
• Zade — storyteller (of 1001 tales) and businesswoman
• Evangeline (The Frog Princess) — natural historian
• Little Red Riding Hood — environmentalist and Princess of the Wolves

Power to the princess!

World peas, whirled peas, and giving peas a chance

Books I'm re-reading

All That Matters ~ by Jan Goldstein, 2004, fiction (California, New York, Maine), 198 pages, 9/10

Jennifer Stempler has nothing left to lose.  The love of her life left her, her mother died in a senseless car accident, and her Hollywood producer father started a brand-new family — with no room in it for her.  So, 23-year-old Jennifer decides to pursue (permanent) oblivion — in the form of Xanax and tequila — on the beach near her home in Venice, California.  But Jennifer's depression is no match for her nana's determination.

Gabby Zuckerman refuses to let her granddaughter self-destruct.  With her trademark feistiness, this force of nature whisks Jennifer back to her home in New York City, intending to prove to Jennifer that her life cannot possibly be over yet.  In fact, it has just begun.  Through jaunts in Central Park and road trips to Maine, Gabby tries to teach Jennifer how to trust and hope again.  But when Gabby reveals a secret — one that challenges Jennifer with a haunting and heartbreaking truth — Jennifer must find whether she has it in her to provide the final gift only she can give.

I have been culling my shelves before moving into a new apartment in February.  I've read this one before, but I've decided to read it again.  Then I'll donate it to our little Crown Center library, shown in this photo.

Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner ~ edited by Ellen E. Garrigues, 1895 and 1910, poetry, 46 pages

This is a slim little volume, with brown covers imprinted with slightly darker brown words.  That's why I photographed the title page instead of the cover.  It belonged to the aunt I was named for.  Bonnie Reynolds was my mother's only sister.  It was her textbook in high school, back in 1921.  This one is probably a collector's item, even though she marked in it as she studied.  It's another one I'm about to re-read.

Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way ~ by Lao Tzu, a new English version by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1997, religions, 126 pages

When I taught religions of the world at Chattanooga State, I took my collection of Tao Te Ching translations and asked students to find #11 and read it aloud to the class.  That's my favorite chapter, so the students got to hear several versions of it.  My own personal favorite translations were Stephen Mitchell's and Ursula K. Le Guin's.  Here's her version of number eleven, which I now have on my Kindle.

The uses of not

Thirty spokes

meet in the hub.

Where the wheel isn't

is where it's useful.

Hollowed out,

clay makes a pot.

Where the pot's not

is where it's useful.

Cut doors and windows

to make a room.

Where the room isn't,

there's room for you.

So the profit in what is

is in the use of what isn't.

Ursula K. Le Guin:  "One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny.  He's explaining a profound and difficult truth here, one of those counter-intuitive truths that, when the mind can accept them, suddenly double the size of the universe.  He goes about it with this deadpan simplicity, talking about pots" (p. 14).

 

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Saturday sign

How did YOU spend lockdown?

Lucy by the Sea ~ by Elizabeth Strout, 2022, fiction (Maine), 291 pages

A divorced couple are stuck together during lockdown.  As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton (the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton) is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by William, who is her ex-husband and sometimes her friend.  For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the sea.  The novel captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire.  At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we’re apart, like the pain of a beloved daughter’s suffering and the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one.  I've enjoyed other books by this author, so I'm looking forward to this one.

Mailbox Monday on Friday

Nine Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition ~ by Judith Nies, 1977, 2002, biography, xxii + 342 pages

In an expanded edition of her history of American women activists, Judith Nies has added biographical essays on feminist Bella Abzug and civil rights visionary Fannie Lou Hamer and a new chapter on women environmental activists.  Included are portraits of Sarah Moore Grimké, who rejected her life as a Southern aristocrat and slaveholder to promote women's rights and the abolition of slavery; Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who led more than three hundred slaves to freedom on the Underground Railway; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the first woman to run for Congress, who advocated for women's rights to own property, to vote, and to divorce; Mother Jones, "the Joan of Arc of the coalfields," one of the most inspiring voices of the American labor movement; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who worked for the reform of two of America's most cherished institutions, the home and motherhood; Anna Louise Strong, an intrepid journalist who covered revolutions in Russia and China; and Dorothy Day, cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement, who fed and sheltered the hungry and homeless in New York's Bowery for more than forty years.

Mailbox Monday encourages participants 

to share the books they received and also 

check out the books received by others.

I've been watching for this book all week, but 

it arrived later than promised.  I'm just happy

it's here and in better condition than I expected.

Do animals make plans for the future?

Beginning

One early November morning, while the days were getting colder, I noticed that Franje, a female chimpanzee, was gathering all the straw from her bedroom.  She took it under her arm out onto the large island at the Burgers' Zoo, in the Dutch city of Arnhem.  Her behavior took me by surprise.  First of all, Franje had never done this before, nor had we ever seen other chimps drag straw outside.

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? ~ by Frans de Waal, 2016, nonfiction, 352 pages

This book explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition ― in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos ― to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long.  Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame?  Reading this book will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal ― and human ― intelligence.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.