Fifteen books ~ #7 ~ Miss Rumphius

In my series on "fifteen books that will always stick with me," Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney is the seventh, alphabetically speaking.

I love this book. I told you two-and-a-half years ago it's my favorite children's book. I wish I could show you every picture in the book. It's the story of a girl whose grandfather had told her to do something in her life to make the world more beautiful. Little Alice grew up, traveled, and settled by the sea, and what she did to make the world more beautiful was to plant lupines all over the place. To see more of the pages, see a beautiful miss rumphius.

This book is a favorite of teachers. When I was new to blogging, I found a blog called The Miss Rumphius Effect and knew Tricia was my kind of person. Some teachers use the book to help children learn how to Be a Good Citizen with Miss Rumphius. And here's another web page about using Miss Rumphius.

A school principal chose this book to illustrate respect for the environment. And a home- schooling mother wrote about Miss Rumphius and Me on her blog, teaching me that lupines don't flower until the second year. This photo is what her first year's growth looked like.

Miss Rumphius ~ by Barbara Cooney, 1982, won the American Book Sellers National Book Award. It's an excellent book that I couldn't simply read and put down -- I stared at the pictures and drifted off into imagination. I think I could do a doctoral dissertation on this book! I rate Miss Rumphius 10 of 10.


Isn't this beautiful? Miss Rumphius must have been here! So what could YOU do to make the world more beautiful?

"I read a book," she said

One Sunday many years ago, when I was shaking hands with people leaving church after the service, a woman said to me, "I read a book." I smiled and waited for her to tell me which book she had read or what she had gotten from it, and she could tell I didn't really understand the importance of her statement. "No," she said, "I read a BOOK." And again, as I raised my eyebrows in delight, "I read a book all the way through."

Think about what that must feel like, to tell someone who had read a hundred or two hundred books a year for most of her life, "I read a book." The woman was ecstatic. She was deservedly proud of herself, a school dropout who could now call herself a reader.

She wanted me to know because she had joined my Bible study class only after she was sure I didn't call on people to answer tough questions or ask class members to read aloud. She had quit going to Sunday school because that teacher DID have people read out loud, one after another. If you've ever tried to say some Bible names, you can imagine how daunting that could be for a non-reader. Because I made studying "safe," she had started reading and had now completed a whole book. It was a glorious day.


I don't remember if she ever told me the title of the book, but today I'm thinking about all the lists we book bloggers run across. On a web site for teachers, I found a Lifetime Reading List. There were 91 books on their list, which seems like an odd number. And I started wondering whether there are any books I think we should read.

So tell me, is there a book you think everyone ought to read before they die? Why that book?

A perfect blend

Vanilla has given me the "Perfect Blend of Friendship" award. Since I can't quite read what's written on the second cup from the left, I'm glad someone else could: TRUST, KINDNESS, HONESTY, CARING. Ah, these are some of the things I've learned from blogging.

One cup of tea is nice, especially when I need a pick-me-up. It sits there smiling, with a cloud of warmth hanging over it. But having four cups side by side says friendship, and that's what blogging means to me. I like sharing, for instance, my love of books with *bookie* friends. Care for a sip of tea, anyone? I'll pour. And while we drink to friendship, I'll expound on these four words with my *wordy* friends.

TRUST is always essential to friendship, especially when we share things about ourselves that make us feel vulnerable.

KINDNESS from friends allows us to open our lives to each other and share not only good things happening, but painful things as well.

HONESTY is what your kindness elicits from me; I want to merit your trust by sharing what I have learned, even if I fear you may disagree.

CARING is what I've felt as we share good times and bad; it's so great to have bloggy friends.

I'm passing along this award to these bloggers:

Beth of Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl
June of Spatter
Nancy of Bookfoolery and Babble
Colleen of Loose Leaf Notes
Susan of Patchwork Reflections
Jenn of Finding My Way

Fifteen books ~ #6 ~ Krakatoa

Continuing my series on "fifteen books that will always stick with me," my #6 in alphabetical order is Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester.

This book was published in 2003, a hundred and twenty years after the massive volcanic explosion of the island of Krakatoa. At the time I was managing a bookstore in Trenton, Georgia, and shouldn't have been surprised that few, if any, of my customers were interested in that long-ago event. Perhaps a better question would have been to ask myself why I was so taken by it. I think I know why.

Many years ago I read something about Krakatoa, a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. When the volcano erupted in 1883, two-thirds of the island disappeared. The explosion, the resulting tsunami, and fumes and ashes killed over 40,000 people. But the image that stayed with me was of darkened skies all around the world, making everything red.

Yesterday I reviewed a book and mentioned my father's father; this book brings to mind my mother's mother. I don't have a digitized photo of her (like the one of him), but I do know that she was slightly under five feet tall and -- more importantly for this tale -- was born in December 1880. Notice the date when Krakatoa blew up. Little Inez Geneva Underwood, who would one day be my grandmother, was two-and-a-half years old. She was THERE, in that world, when Krakatoa exploded. When the book came out, I wanted to read about that world-shattering event.




It's easy to see that the two drawings were made from the black-and-white photograph above them, which was taken at the beginning of the eruptions of Krakatoa.

When I learned about this book, I wanted to read it immediately. The maps were helpful, especially since the author gives not only details about the seismic events of that day, but also what happened to people on ships and on land all around the Javanese island that vanished in a volcanic eruption of almost unimaginable force, heard as far away as Australia.

I probably got more from reading this book because I discussed it with my friend Margreet as we read. And maybe because I kept thinking that someone I can remember (even though Inez died when I was three) was alive during the greatest volcanic explosion of modern times. Rated: 10 of 10, couldn't put it down.
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I wrote about Krakatoa again after the eruption of the volcano in Iceland whose ash wreaked havoc with air travel in April 2010.  Click here to read that post.

Fifteen books ~ #5 ~ Honest to God

Continuing my series on "fifteen books that will always stick with me," #5 in alphabetical order is Honest to God by John A. T. Robinson, 1963.

I read this book nearly four decades ago, and its freshness and honesty was like opening a window and being able to take a deep breath. It showed me a new way of thinking about God and religion. It falls between the books Your God Is Too Small by J. B. Phillips and The Heart of Christianity by Marcus J. Borg.

Phillips came up with a list of inadequate god-concepts we hold, such as Resident Policeman, Parental Hangover, Grand Old Man, Meek-and-Mild, Managing Director, and Pale Galilean.

Borg points out two ways of being Christian: an earlier paradigm concerned with right beliefs and an emerging paradigm which focuses more on transformation.

Robinson, who was Bishop of Woolwich (England) when this book was published in 1963, was as dismayed as I am about the vehemence (which shows the insecurity) of those who feel they must defend God and their faith against anyone who disagrees with them. God doesn't need to be defended, but I very much needed a way to evaluate things I'd been told all my life were not only important, but required of me. This was one of the early signposts that helped me sort the worthwhile ideas from the hollow words, the clearly life-affirming wheat from the worthless chaff.  I highly recommend this book.

Rated: 10 of 10, couldn't put it down.

Family Matters ~ by Rohinton Mistry, 2002

The title says it all: family matters. We could take it either of two ways, as an assertion that family DOES matter, or that the book takes a look at family business, family stuff. This book says both. And reading it made me consider both aspects of my own family. Having been through major surgery earlier this year, I could empathize with 79-year-old Nariman Vakeel, who had Parkinson’s disease and a broken ankle, because neither of us could take care of ourselves. He was totally dependent on his family in a way I never was, because of his broken ankle, but I could certainly relate to his feelings. He ended up in the home of his daughter Roxana, her husband Yezad, and their two sons, all crowded into a small home in Bombay. I could also relate to Yezad, who was fascinated by photographs his boss showed him, old photos of Yezad's neighborhood:

"The photographs had made him [Yezad] aware how much the street and the buildings meant to him. Like an extended family that he'd taken for granted and ignored, assuming it would always be there. But buildings and roads and spaces were as fragile as human beings, you had to cherish them while you had them" (p. 197).

I don't have the photos that Yezad studied, but I have photos of my town, Chattanooga. This one is dated 1942, when I was two years old.


It looks nothing like Chattanooga today, except of course for Lookout Mountain in the background serving as an orienting landmark all of my life. Everything changes as buildings are demolished to make room for new ones, as dying parts of town come back to life and new businesses crop up. "The way things used to be" is a fragile sort of thing, as the quote above says.

Yet looking at our old photos sparks memories and, sometimes, helps us see new things. This photo of my grandfather when he was sixteen reminds me of my recently married grandson, the high forehead, the nose, the eyes. I am amazed at the resemblance. My grandfather -- William Elmer Setliffe, Sr. -- died in 1944, when I was only four and the town still looked a lot like that photo of Chattanooga above.

Let me close with two more quotes from the book. Both are from Yezad's boss:

"Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories -- your life, my life, old Husain's life, they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, and loss, and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different" (p. 197).

"From three pictures, so many memories. And this can happen with every single photo -- each one conceals volumes. All you need is the right pair of eyes," he made the gesture of turning a key, "to unlock the magic" (p. 197).

Family Matters ~ by Rohinton Mistry, 2002
Rated: 8 of 10, a very good book.

Today's teaser ~ An Altar in the World

Today's teaser comes from An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor, 2009.

"In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life" (page xvi).