Library Loot ~ January 18-24

Winston of Churchill: One Bear's Battle Against Global Warming ~ by Jean Davies Okimoto, 2007, children's picture book, 10/10

Winston is worried because the ice of the Hudson Bay is melting sooner each year and he and his fellow polar bears have less time to hunt for food, but he comes up with an idea that will make the tourists who come to see the bears realize what is going on.

Winston wrote a book for the other polar bears.  It includes this sentence:  "People need to burn less gas, make less garbage, and plant more trees."  Some polar bear asked, "But what can we do?"  Winston's answer:

"We can't do anything ... We are bears.  We don't drive cars or burn coal.  We like it cold."

And then came the refrain, repeated often in the book:

"Yes, ice is nice," everyone agreed.

So they must convince people to change, and that's what they proceed to do.  Winston has a plan for a polar bear protest.  Everyone said yes, except for one bear who said, "No."  It was Winston's wife.  Notice the bear is named "Winston," and these polar bears live near the town of "Churchill" in the Canadian province of Manitoba.  Kids who "read" picture books won't make any connection when they hear Winston and Churchill, but their parents will.  The book even quotes Winston Churchill's war rhetoric with the words, "We shall defend our island..."  One cub (smart kid) speaks up:  "We don't live on an island.  We live in Manitoba."  Winston tells him it was "just a figure of speech."  Uh-huh, Churchill's speech.

(click to enlarge this back cover)

Oh, yeah, Winston's wife, says she won't join the protest unless he quits smoking.  Just like the man in England, he smokes a cigar.  But his wife says,

"That thing in your mouth is an instrument of pollution."  Then she adds, "No cigar or I'm not going."

The next morning, the bears marched across the tundra with signs saying, "Solar Power" and "Freeze Please" and "Save our Home."  And Winston?

And the fierce, brave bear they were following ... was chewing a twig.

Find yourself a copy and read it to see what happens next, okay?  This great story book rates 10 of 10 with me.

(I think I'll have to cross-post this review on Greening the Blue Planet.  When I started blogging five years ago, one of my blogs was about environmental issues, and I faithfully posted there as well as here on my book blog. Click the link to go take a look, if this subject interests you.)

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe ~ by Glynis Ridley, 2010, biography

The year was 1765.  Eminent botanist Philibert Commerson had just been appointed to a grand new expedition:  the first French circumnavigation of the world.  As the ships’ official naturalist, Commerson would seek out resources — medicines, spices, timber, food — that could give the French an edge in the ever-accelerating race for empire.  Jeanne Baret, Commerson’s young mistress and collaborator, was desperate not to be left behind.  She disguised herself as a teenage boy and signed on as his assistant.  The journey made the twenty-six-year-old, known to her shipmates as “Jean” rather than “Jeanne,” the first woman to ever sail around the globe.

The Night Circus ~ by Erin Morgenstern, 2011, fiction

The circus arrives without warning.  No announcements precede it.  It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.  Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements.  It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.  But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway — a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors.  Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing.

Library Loot is a weekly meme co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.  If you would like to share a list of the loot you brought home from the library, Claire has the Mister Linky this week.

Can we talk about it? ~ Sunday Salon

"No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says:  he is always convinced that it says what he means."
— George Bernard Shaw

I like this quote that I ran across yesterday.  And the  painting.  Yes, I know most people would show the man's face, but I figure if you are interested, you'll google his name and find lots of photos of George Bernard Shaw, young and old and in between.  This one, with his hair blowing in the wind (enlarge by clicking on the image), epitomizes for me the winds of dissension that often arise when people discuss religion.  Nevertheless, let's talk about it, shall we?

This morning, the Seekers Class at St. Luke United Methodist Church, a group of folks I've been teaching off and on for more than five years now, will be looking at a chapter of the latest book by John Shelby Spong.  Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, published in November, is one of twenty-some books the bishop has written.  I told you about this one after I went to hear him speak a couple of months ago, but Sean was the only one who left a comment on that post.

"I appreciate what Spong is doing.  Speaking from the non-religious, non-god-believing side — [Sean, not Spong, believes] the Bible is a book and Jesus is a figure of history.   I don't place much value on the Bible beyond its place in history and as a piece of literature.  I am far more concerned that whatever group/religion we belong to, that we are doing good and being helpful to one another, the rest is merely dressing."

Sean also left this comment on one of my Library Loot posts:

"I haven't read any Spong but then I have probably moved along from the questioning/investigation of my religion of birth. I do still enjoy the history aspect of things but I am a humanist now and don't really see much value in continually examining the bible as a guide book for life. I try to be hands-on in community service and be broader in my philosophical outlook. But I will check out the link."

I've been meaning to respond to Sean for weeks, so now is (finally) the time I'll "get a round tuit."  I hope Sean isn't the only one to speak up today.  Frankly, my dear(s), I appreciate Sean's willingness to be engaged in dialogue.  But first, let me clear up a few things.

(1)  I wouldn't call the Bible "a guide book for life."

Would a guidebook say this?  "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?  I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies."  That's the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of Psalm 139: 21-22, if you want to check your translation.  I hear some Christians saying they follow Jesus who said, "Love your enemies."  That's from Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27, and Luke 6:35 (NRSV).  But how many Christians have acted full of pride, just like the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14 who considered himself so much better than that tax collector over there?  How many have kept women "in their place" because of the words in First Corinthians 11:7?  "For a man ... is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man."  The Bible is not a rule book, and Paul (who wrote First Corinthians) is not God.

(2)  I do NOT agree with Bishop Spong on everything, but he does get people talking!

But not always in good ways.  He said, "People don't need to be born again; they need to grow up."  That's a blunt statement that some may feel as a slap in the face, making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to be open to any sort of discussion.  I want us to be able to talk about what's important, whether it's in the Bible or not.  Sean sees no need to keep investigating the religion of his birth (and I admit I don't know whether he grew up Jewish or Christian or something else).  I still work at understanding the Bible (the Jewish and Christian scriptures), and also the Tao te Ching (Taoism) and other books sacred to various faiths.  I do that partly because I teach religions of the world, but also because I have learned that at the base of all religions is compassion.  What's not to like about that?

(3)  We need to be clear what we mean by the word God (or god).

I studied philosophy in college shortly after this Time magazine cover hit the stands.  The words are from Friedrich Nietzsche and got the religious world all in an uproar.  About that time, I read Your God Is Too Small by J. B. Phillips, who cited a bunch of "unreal gods," such as resident policeman, parental hangover, grand old man, managing director, and assorted others.  (Click on the title to see the text of the book.)   There's no way I can "believe in" a god like those portrayed by cartoonists — you know, the white-bearded old white-man god wearing a robe and sitting on a cloud "up there."  If that's your idea of god, I say it would be good to let "him" die.  What does "God" mean to you?  How would you describe or explain who or what God is?

Sean, I also believe the Bible is a book, which I continue to study.  I also believe Jesus was a man, which is what I think you mean by "a figure of history."  I also think we should look at the Bible's place in history and recognize that different parts of it are different kinds of literature, and not all historical fact:  some parables (stories), some history (though not as we write history books), some apocalyptic literature (big words, huh?), some rules (many of which are no longer appropriate — for example, the Jews quit practicing animal sacrifice, no matter what the Bible says).

If anything here interests you readers of my blog, let's talk.  Ask me questions, and I'll do my best to answer honestly.  For now, let me leave you with a quote from page 15 of Spong's book:

"I am not the enemy of the Bible.  I am the enemy of the way the Bible has been understood and the way the Bible has been used."

Me, too.

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Beginning ~ lost limb

Kindred ~ by Octavia E. Butler, 1979, fiction (Maryland), 9/10

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.

Wow! What a beginning.  Of course, I wanted to keep reading.  This is a time travel book.  (I'm on a roll, since the last novel I finished was 11/22/63, about a man who went into the past hoping to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK.)  Here's a synopsis the back cover of Kindred, which I got from my library:

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South.  Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him.  Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

If you want to share the first lines of a book you are reading, click on the link and visit Katy at A Few More Pages.  (Today's list.)

Browse there to find interesting books for your own reading list.  And don’t forget that Katy and all the contributors to this meme (including me) love comments.

Will the real Elizabeth please stand up?

The Paper Bag Princess: The Story Behind the Story ~ by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko, 2005 (25th anniversary edition), 9/10

Robert Munsch's tale of a dragon, a princess named Elizabeth, and the bum of a prince she rescues has sold over three million copies since it was first published in 1980.  I learned in this "story behind the story" that there really was a girl named  Elizabeth.  She is now an adult, is married, and has two children — a son and a daughter.  And she says (p.14):

"It's amazing to me now that the book is read by so many people.  It's even studied in feminist literature classes!"

Yes, people love The Paper Bag Princess!  I loved it when I first read it in 2010 after Helen of Helen's Book Blog told me about it in a comment:

"I love children's books that go against the norm.  One of my favorites is The Paper Bag Princess where the princess is the strong one and doesn't marry the goofy prince in the end."

It's true.  Princess Elizabeth is a spunky little girl.  The dragon smashed her castle, burned all her clothes, and carried off Prince Ronald (p. 28).  The only thing the princess could find to wear was a paper bag, yet she bravely went after the dragon.  Was Ronald grateful when she rescued him?  Oh, no!  He said (pp. 46-48):

"Elizabeth, you are a mess!  You smell like ashes, your hair is all tangled and you are wearing a dirty old paper bag.  Come back when you are dressed like a real princess."

"Ronald," said Elizabeth, "your clothes are really pretty and your hair is very neat.  You look like a real prince, but you are a bum."

They didn't get married after all.

Girls are more than the clothes they wear, and that's why the original book is studied in college classes on feminist literature.  Bob Munsch, the author, says (p. 51):

"There are no princes but there are a lot of bums, and you don't want to marry one."

The same page (p. 51) of this "story behind the story" reports:

"The story has now crossed generations — those who loved the book as kids are reading it to their own children — and has even traveled around the world.  Not bad for a girl dressed only in paper."

Best illustration, where she ducks but doesn't run away. (Click to enlarge.)

Christopher Garcia, an educator in El Paso, Texas, says (p. 53):

"Our young princess's handling of pesky dragons and arrogant royalty inspired my students and me.  Self-respect and confidence in one's self are her gifts to girls and boys alike."

I rate this book about the book 9 of 10, because it's fun to read.  And I'll give the author the final word here (quoting from p. 62):

"A paper bag
Does not last long,
It burns or blows away.
But now that mine is 25,
I think it's here to stay."

I agree, especially since it has now been seven more years (32 so far) and is still attracting readers like me.

Portal to the past ~ 11/22/63 by Stephen King

What's this look like to you?

Would you believe it comes close to being my review of Stephen King's latest novel?  When 11/22/63 was published in November 2011, I found "A brief history of time travel literature" which describes the book like this:

An example of an alternate history style time travel novel, thirty-five-year-old high-school English teacher Jake Epping is leading an ordinary life when his friend Al, who runs the local diner, reveals that his storeroom is a portal to 1958 and sets Jake on a mission to prevent the JFK assassination.

The article divides time travel literature into five ways people got to the past or future — I added number six, based on my favorite time travel book.

1. Mechanical, as in The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, 1895 (a machine that controls time travel)
2. Portal, as in 11/22/63 by Stephen King, 2011 (a place you go through)
3. Fantastical, as in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1843 (Scrooge went into his past and future)
4. Magical item, as in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling, 1999 (Hermione's "time turner")
5. Unexplained, as in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, 1889
6. Mind, as in Time and Again by Jack Finney, 1970 (get to the past by imagining yourself there)

Stephen King

I found a couple of other reviewers who agree with me on King's "irritating writerly habits."

Rob:  "He’s still aggravatingly windy, still repetitious in a way that I always found insulting; phrases that he repeats and repeats and repeats, over and over and over until you want to hunt him down and beat him to death with his own hardback — which is entirely possible with this damn brick of a book. Go ahead, drop it on your socked foot. I double dog dare you."

Overall, I think the book was too long and needed to be tightened up.

Susie:  "Pacing. There was a whole lotta boring going on in this book. Not to say that the book itself, in its entirety, was boring, but there was a lot of extraneous action that either dragged out longer than it needed, or it didn’t need to be in there in the first place. Some of these scenes didn’t give us any kind of payoff as far as creating suspense in their own right; I would have been happier if the more perfunctory scenes happened 'off-camera.' ... There was also a whole construct that actually created more predictability, 'harmonics.'  Harmonics allowed not just me but also Jake Epping to predict the future. Boring, boring, boring."

By the way, that's Susie's drawing at the top of this post — one commenter said it "looks like a 3-year-old’s drawing of the Loch Ness Monster eating a bunch of people."  (Looks more like Nessie is eating a bunch of loose grapes to me.)

Another annoyance — I didn't mark the page (and in this long book, I'd never find it again) — King had someone in the 1960s say something about a "rugrat," meaning a small child.  He or she may have been referring to Junie Oswald, but I'm not sure.  The term rugrats didn't appear until decades later, maybe when the "Rugrats" cartoon premiered in 1991.  That sort of thing was jarring for me, since I remember the 1950s and 1960s.  I was there!  Okay, maybe Stephen King couldn't cross-check everything, but that out-of-place stuff happened too often.  Still, the book was a good enough to keep me turning the pages.

When got to the end of the book, in the author's Afterword (pp. 848-849), I laughed at the last lines:

Jack Finney

I want to thank one other person:  the late Jack Finney, who was one of America's great fantasists and storytellers. ... he wrote Time and Again, which is, in this writer's humble opinion, the great time-travel story.  Originally I meant to dedicate this book to him, but in June of last year, a lovely little granddaughter arrived in our family, so Zelda gets the nod.  Jack, I'm sure you'd understand.

Was I prescient, or what, when I added Finney's Time and Again to the list above?  After reading 11/22/63 (which I rated 9 of 10), I still think Time and Again is better (I rated it 10 of 10).

Questions for you

1.  If you could go back in time and change history, would you do it?  If so, which part of history?

2.  What do you think about the ethics of using "future" knowledge to make money in the past?

3.  Al and Jake are nervous about triggering Ray Bradbury’s butterfly effect, when they go back in time.  (Click the link to read my post about that.)  Do you think changing something in the past would change the future?

Library Loot ~ January 11-17

Kindred ~ by Octavia E. Butler, 1979, fiction

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South.  Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him.  Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

Zeitoun ~ by Dave Eggers, 2009, history (Louisiana)

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, longtime New Orleans residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast into an unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.  In this startling and deeply humane work of nonfiction, readers will witness our country's worst natural disaster through new eyes, encountering all the hope and contradiction of a unique moment in American history.

Because of Winn-Dixie ~ by Kate DiCamilla, 2000, middle grade fiction (Florida)

One summer day, Opal goes into a supermarket and comes out with a scraggly dog that she names Winn-Dixie.  Because of Winn-Dixie, her preacher father finally tells her ten things about her absentee mother, and Opal makes lots of unusual friends in her quirky Florida town.  And because of Winn-Dixie, Opal grows to learn that friendship — and forgiveness — can sneak up on you like a sudden storm.

The Paper Bag Princess: The Story Behind the Story ~ by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko, 2005 (25th anniversary edition)

Robert Munsch's tale — of a dragon, a princess named Elizabeth, and the bum of a prince she rescues — was first published in 1980.  It was an instant success and has since sold millions of copies in dozens of languages all over the world.  Readers will discover how Munsch — once on a path to becoming a priest — became one of the most famous children's authors of all time.  They'll learn how an extra space on a gallery wall landed Martchenko his first, and most legendary, children's book gig ever.  And they'll meet the real Elizabeth and see what she's up to today.  Never-before published sketches and paintings take readers through the process of the book's creation.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian ~ by Sherman Alexie, 2001, YA fiction

Junior is a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation.  Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.  This story, based on the author's own experiences, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he thought he was destined to live.  Won the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ~ by Rebecca Skloot, 2010, science (Maryland)

Henrietta Lacks, a poor Southern tobacco farmer, was buried in an unmarked grave sixty years ago.  Yet her cells — taken without her knowledge — became one of the most important tools in medical research.  Known to science as HeLa, the first "immortal" human cells grown in culture are still alive today, and have been bought and sold by the millions.  Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to East Baltimore today, where Henrietta's family struggles with her legacy.

Library Loot is a weekly meme co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.  If you would like to share a list of the loot you brought home from the library, Claire has the Mister Linky again this week.

What a fun bookstore!

Nancy (Bookfool) posted this on Facebook, and I love it. Enjoy!