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Cultivating a mindful new year

Feature by Heather Seggel

As we greet the new year, many of us are not where we’d like to be in life. Whether that means personal relationships that could be improved or bad habits that need to be broken, progress begins when we lace up our shoes and take the first step. A handful of new books each have a different subject in mind, but share a common endorsement of mindfulness as the key to a happier, healthier life.

FRIENDS FOR LIFE

Bette Midler’s signature song used to be “You’ve Gotta Have Friends,” back before she got all wind-beneath-my-wings-y. Carlin Flora’s Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are seconds that emotion, noting the enormous health benefits of friendship along with the idea that our friends shape our personality and choices even more than families do. Flora, formerly the features editor for Psychology Today, discovers that one unexpected benefit of friendship is that it allows us to be altruistic and care about others. This may be why the kids who make friends most easily are those who can quickly change gears and empathize with a wide variety of personality types. (It also helps if their names are easy to pronounce.) If you’ve been thinking of starting a book club with your BFFs, here’s your first assignment.

COMPASSION IN ACTION

A professional relationship with a religious leader led to a great friendship for Victor Chan. He traveled with the Dalai Lama for many years, recording talks and meetings with everyone from sick children to two men on either side of the long-standing “troubles” in Northern Ireland. In The Wisdom of Compassion, Chan recounts a variety of these encounters as they relate to “Overcoming Adversity,” “Educating the Heart” and “Compassion in Action.” We get a good sense of what Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader experiences on a typical day, and his personality, which can be fiery but is more often full of effusive giggling, comes through nicely. Chan inserts himself into the narrative more than is warranted, but the overall message of the book is uplifting and inspiring: If we generate compassion within ourselves, then extend it to all people (not just the ones we like most), we hold the potential to alleviate much of the world’s suffering.

BOOST YOUR BRAINPOWER

If you think attention and mindfulness are just for the spiritually inclined, you may be shortchanging your own intelligence. Sandra Bond Chapman’s Make Your Brain Smarter leads with the advice to stop multitasking and utilize what she calls the “brainpower of none,” emptying the mind to allow your thoughts to sort and settle. From there, focusing on just one thing intently or working only on your top two priorities lead to increased productivity and a healthier brain. While it’s disappointing to learn that crosswords and sudoku do less for brain health than previously thought, Chapman’s program encourages thinking broadly and creatively to stimulate the frontal lobe. Considering that she created a program designed to sharpen the minds of Navy SEALs in the same way their elite training hones their bodies, you may want to toss the crosswords and give this a try.

FOCUS ON SUCCESS

The new year is when we often resolve to take up better fitness habits and put down some of our vices; after all, if you can stick with it for three weeks it locks in, right? Actually, no, says PsyBlog creator Jeremy Dean. In Making Habits, Breaking Habits he argues that one of the keys to changing a habit is—don’t say you weren’t warned—mindfulness. Despite the slew of books raving about the power of intention as the key to personal success, research finds that intention creates false expectations and leads more often to disappointment than to thin thighs or an Aston Martin. Instead, the practice of mindfulness helps us act on our intentions consciously, which reinforces new habits and makes it easier to break old ones despite the social cues that can trigger them. Thinking both abstractly and analytically can also develop the mind’s capacity and flexibility. Begin with the mind, then get on the treadmill, and you’re well on your way to self-improvement.

A PATH THROUGH THE DARK

Sometimes the urge to care for ourselves is slow in coming. When Katrina Kenison’s second son left home, she was confronted with an overwhelming sense of loss. It wasn’t just the empty nest or uncertainties of middle age, but also the shifting terrain of her marriage and the long shadow cast by the death of a friend that weighted her days. Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment follows Kenison for a year in which she gently plumbs her intuition to find new purpose and resilience in the face of sorrow. When her life seems most empty, she realizes, “I do at least know this: . . . I can either run away from my loneliness, or I can practice tolerating myself as I am.” Yoga proves central to her healing, and its focus on mindfulness helps even the darkest places to reveal their beauty.

DOWN TO THE ROOTS

Garden blogger (and Kenison’s writing partner) Margaret Roach pulls together the scientific and spiritual in The Backyard Parables: A Meditation on Gardening, but it doesn’t feel like work when you’re out getting your hands dirty. A year spent in her garden includes a glimpse of her “new spiritual practice—a moving meditation aimed specifically at dandelions, a ritual that brings me into touch with my own powerlessness, and also my own power.” By turns wise and witty, the book is also jam-packed with practical tips for gardeners, from the basics of succession sowing to winning a showdown with chipmunks. Roach, former editorial director for Martha Stewart, followed a passion, cultivated it devoutly and turned it into a career. She doesn’t need to discuss the how-to of mindfulness; her life is the best example of the way love and attention will make things bloom.

As we greet the new year, many of us are not where we’d like to be in life. Whether that means personal relationships that could be improved or bad habits that need to be broken, progress begins when we lace up our shoes and take…

NonfictionFamily & Relationships

The secrets of successful suitors

Feature by Amy Scribner

It’s hard enough to find someone worthy of a second date, let alone worthy of your heart. This Valentine’s Day, pick up one of these books for more insight into that most intangible and mysterious thing: true love.

In his truly fascinating history of online dating, Love in the Time of Algorithms, Dan Slater traces the concept as far back as the 1960s, when a geeky Harvard undergrad gave up on mixers and devised a $3 matchmaking questionnaire that was then transferred to a punch card and fed through an IBM computer the size of a bookcase. In fact, Slater’s own parents met through one such service, which spat out a printed list of matched college students and mailing addresses—a far cry from today’s sophisticated services, like Match.com and OkCupid, which use complicated algorithms to match up potential suitors. But doesn’t some valuable information get lost when we go online to find love? What about scent, a hair toss, a flirtatious look? Turns out, that doesn’t matter as much as we once thought. “People will use whatever communication tools they have at their disposal to connect,” Slater concludes. “A mood becomes an emoticon. A fast email response communicates warmth. . . . Of course, you can’t smell the person you’re looking at—until later—but meanwhile, the computer is crunching more information than you could ever gather in a glance across the bar.”

CASANOVA’S CHARM

Betsy Prioleau may be an academic, but she writes like a dream. A study of the history and science of seducers, Swoon is sharp, sexy and completely engrossing. Prioleau examines both why some men are great seducers and how they do it. And Paul Newman-like looks don’t factor into the equation as much as one might think. Take Luke, a 31-year-old Brit living in Baltimore: “Luke is a too tall six feet seven inches, with chipmunk cheeks, a receding hairline, and rectangular geek glasses,” writes Prioleau, who heard about Luke from no fewer than four women. “Yet he’s an erotic mage with a flair for the pleasures of the flesh.” (See the book for more on that—probably not suitable for inclusion in this family publication.) Whether Prioleau is writing about Casanova, Bill Clinton or the great French actor Gérard Depardieu (“I turn around, and it’s as though I’ve touched a live socket”), she brings to life those elusive qualities of the world’s great seducers.

LIFE AFTER ‘I DO’

In these times of disposable marriages, the story of Barbara “Cutie” Cooper and husband Harry inspires: They met in 1937 and spent the next 73 years together. “He thought I was special, and I agreed with him,” Cooper writes. “So as long as he thought I was the kingpin, what was there to discuss?” Their granddaughters Kim and Chinta started a blog in 2008 called The OGs (Original Grandparents), where they shared videos chronicling their grandparents’ love story. The blog translates nicely to their book Fall in Love for Life, a delightfully sweet mix of memoir and self-help. Cutie offers smart and surprisingly modern advice on love: “Make time in your busy life for romantic getaways,” she advises. “Turn off the cell phones and leave the computer at home. You’d be amazed what just a night or two away from it all can do for your love life.” Now in her 90s, and a widow since 2010, Cutie has clearly kept her perspective and her humor. “Harry was always five years my senior, which means that he had five years to sow his wildest oats before I came along,” she writes. “Maybe this means that the next five years are all for me to enjoy, so that we come out equal in the end.”

It’s hard enough to find someone worthy of a second date, let alone worthy of your heart. This Valentine’s Day, pick up one of these books for more insight into that most intangible and mysterious thing: true love.

In his truly fascinating history of online dating,…

NonfictionMilitary HistoryBlack HistoryAmerican History

The march toward freedom

Feature by John T. Slania

Although they examine three separate, significant times in the span of African-American history, these books share common themes: the struggle for freedom, the quest for equality and the achievement of these goals with the help of a great leader. Spanning more than a century, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement, these new volumes provide important perspective as we celebrate Black History Month.

THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR

Much has been written about Abraham Lincoln’s evolution from a president who simply sought to preserve the union to one who ultimately realized he must free the slaves. But James Oakes makes the case in Freedom National that even before the Civil War, Lincoln held a firm anti-slavery view and pursued that goal until his death. While January 1, 2013, marked the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Oakes writes that long before that historic order was issued, Lincoln and the Republican Party were orchestrating political and military maneuvers to free the slaves.

Oakes, a noted professor of history, provocatively sets the starting date of the emancipation at less than four months after the first cannon shot of the Civil War. It was on August 6, 1861, that Lincoln signed the First Confiscation Act, instructing the Union Army to seize any property and free any slaves owned by Southerners disloyal to the union. “[F]irmly convinced that slavery was the source of the rebellion, Republicans began attacking it almost as soon as the war began,” Oakes writes.

While experiencing some success with military action, Lincoln realized he needed a broader decree—the Emancipation Proclamation—to achieve full freedom for slaves. Thus, Oakes writes, the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t the beginning or end of Lincoln’s mission, but a more aggressive phase of his anti-slavery campaign. The final steps were victory over the South in the war, and then passage of the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery, which Lincoln shepherded through Congress. He was assassinated before the amendment was ratified by the states.

Freedom National is a refreshing new look at Lincoln because it refutes a growing body of work arguing that it was only after exhausting every other political and military tactic that he adopted an anti-slavery stance. Oakes’ conclusion: “[Lincoln] was neither the Great Emancipator who bestrode his times and brought his people out of the darkness, nor was he in any way a reluctant emancipator held back by some visceral commitment to white supremacy.”

GIVE 'EM HELL

It is altogether fitting that this Black History Month trilogy moves from one great military conflict—the Civil War—to another: World War II. In fact, the theme of Rawn James Jr.’s The Double V is how the nation’s military conflicts, and their use of African-American soldiers, reflect our attitudes toward racism and equality. “From exclusion and segregation, to integration and diversity, the armed forces, for better or worse, have always reflected our country at large,” James writes.

The Double V refers to the attempt by black soldiers to achieve two victories in World War II: on the battlefield and at home, where they sought to be treated as equals. James, an accomplished historian, writes that the Double V campaign was best described by prominent civil rights activist Roy Wilkins, who said that blacks should “fight on for the full freedom of 100 percent democracy at home while we are fighting a war for democracy abroad.” Providing critical historical context, James details how African Americans were mustered into the U.S. military beginning in the late stages of the Civil War. Yet it wasn’t true integration, he writes, since black soldiers often performed menial tasks in segregated units.

Two factors led to the complete integration of the military, according to James: the loyalty and heroics displayed by black soldiers in World War II, and the presidency of Harry S. Truman. As a U.S. senator, Truman headed a committee to investigate misappropriation of military defense contracts. Inspecting dozens of military bases and field operations, Truman grew to understand not only the nation’s vast military apparatus, but also its soldiers, including the bravery of its black soldiers. Once the war was over and the foreign enemies dispatched, Truman turned to combating the internal enemy of segregation.

On July 26, 1948, African Americans finally enjoyed the “Double V” when Truman issued Executive Order 9981, desegregating the armed forces. Of course, the order did not end racism in the military, James points out. But this bold decision by a conservative, white Missourian did establish a doctrine to bring equality to the military. While the struggle for equality continues, James concludes that evidence of progress can be seen six decades later with the election of Barack Obama, who, as president, is commander in chief of the armed forces.

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY

Not all wars involve the military. This is a lesson from Taylor Branch’s The King Years, which chronicles Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight for equality during the Civil Rights era. Here, the clash is between white supremacists—who refuse to allow blacks to eat at the same lunch counters, drink from the same water fountains or use the same bathrooms—and African Americans asking for the rights granted to all citizens by the U.S. Constitution. The offensive is conducted in a peaceful fashion by King, but frequently met with bloody violence.

The King Years is a distillation of Branch’s acclaimed trilogy, America in the King Years. The series totaled more than 2,000 pages, offering a comprehensive and exhaustively researched exploration of the Civil Rights movement. Branch was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for History for the first installment, Parting the Waters, and received praise for two subsequent volumes, Pillar of Fire and At Canaan’s Edge. Here, Branch selects 18 passages from the trilogy in an attempt to capture the essential moments of the Civil Rights era. Branch’s hope in publishing a condensed edition is to make history accessible to a new generation of readers. “Our goal in this edition,” Branch writes, “is to convey both the spirit and sweep of an extraordinary movement.”

Moving chronologically, The King Years begins with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, moves through the Selma March in 1965, and finishes with King’s assassination in Memphis in 1968. These condensed passages allow readers to grasp the significance of these and other key moments in King’s life and offer an invitation to Branch’s more complete writings.

In an interview with his publisher, Branch revealed the inspiration for publishing The King Years: “For all readers, I believe, lessons from the Civil Rights Era apply not to bygone forms of racial segregation but most urgently to a troubled future. . . . They show how ordinary people can work miracles against intractable burdens to advance both freedom and the common good.”

The war against racism is not over. But The King Years shows how King and others advanced the cause of equality in the same noble fashion as the great leaders who preceded them. It is Branch’s hope that a new generation who learn about King’s crusade for civil rights may be inspired to continue the fight.

Although they examine three separate, significant times in the span of African-American history, these books share common themes: the struggle for freedom, the quest for equality and the achievement of these goals with the help of a great leader. Spanning more than a century, from…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Overcoming the odds in stories of inspiration

Feature by Robin Smith

Just when I think there are no more stories to be written about African Americans in history, I am blown away by new and inspiring books. Each of these beautiful picture books tells a story of perseverance in the face of overwhelming obstacles.

THE LIGHT OF LITERACY

Most folks know that it was against the law for slaves to learn to read, but it’s clear that some were able to learn despite the prohibition. How did they do it? In Light in the Darkness, author Lesa Cline-Ransome and her husband, illustrator James E. Ransome, tell the story of pit schools—large holes dug deep in the ground where slaves would meet and learn from a literate slave, usually at night. The book’s dark blue palette is perfect for showing the fear of the slaves, hidden in the hole while patrollers are about. One especially chilling spread shows a slave being whipped—one lash for every letter she had learned. It’s impossible not to be inspired by the book’s portrayal of enslaved people and their dedication to learning.

A DRAMATIC RESCUE

Another husband-and-wife team, Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin, bring us a tale of stubbornness and bravery in The Price of Freedom: How One Town Stood Up to Slavery. Stirringly told by the authors and beautifully illustrated by Eric Velasquez, this is the story of John Price, an escaped slave sheltered by Quakers in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1858. The Fugitive Slave Act allowed slave catchers from the South to legally capture slaves and return them to their owners. When John was recaptured and imprisoned by slave catchers in a hotel in nearby Wellington while they waited for a train south, news of the capture spread. Hundreds of Oberlinians—students, teachers, shopkeepers and more—raced to rescue Price. And they did! Thirty-seven members of the town were eventually accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Act and jailed for three months. A moving archival photo of the rescuers adds much to the story. More people will now know of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, thanks to this dramatic book.

DREAMS FULFILLED

In Fifty Cents and a Dream, Jabari Asim and illustrator Bryan Collier depict the early life of educator and writer Booker T. Washington. Collier’s collage and watercolor illustrations are perfect for detailing the struggles the young man overcame to attend Hampton Institute and eventually to lead the new Tuskegee Institute.  One particularly moving painting shows Washington kneeling in prayer while the trees are filled with images of slaves, symbols of his older neighbors who told him their stories. “Booker listened, and carried their dreams with him.” The backmatter—timeline, author’s and illustrator’s notes and bibliography—add depth to this emotional tale.

SEEING RED

Perhaps my favorite new book of the season is A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin. Jen Bryant and illustrator Melissa Sweet, who partnered on A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, team up again with the tender tale of artist Horace Pippin. His story is one of dedication, loss and determination to create art. Using his own words as part of the design, Sweet’s gouache, collage and watercolor paintings tell of the boy who answered the call of his friends and neighbors, “Make a picture for us, Horace!” As Bryant recounts the triumphant day when Pippin won a magazine drawing contest, the reader can feel the excitement he must have felt when the prize of pencils, paints and brushes arrived. Now he could add his trademark splash of red. His life, which was filled with challenges, including a shoulder injury suffered in World War I, was not an easy one. Bryant and Sweet portray Pippin with honesty and heart, introducing this true American artist to a new generation. The back cover shows paints and brushes and includes a final quote from Pippin: “Pictures just come to my mind . . . and I tell my heart to go ahead.” Stunning.

HISTORY REVEALED

Kadir Nelson’s gifts as an artist are on full view in I Have a Dream. Words from the famous 1963 speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are interspersed with Nelson’s soaring paintings of the March on Washington and portraits of Dr. King in front of the Lincoln Memorial. This is no simplistic rehashing of the familiar words. Each page turn brings a new, glorious image celebrating one of the most important speeches of the 20th century.

Just when I think there are no more stories to be written about African Americans in history, I am blown away by new and inspiring books. Each of these beautiful picture books tells a story of perseverance in the face of overwhelming obstacles.

THE LIGHT…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Little lessons from our animal friends

Feature by Brooke Allen

Animals have always been nature’s teachers and they remain so in these three pictures books focused on the animal kingdom. Children will laugh at the antics of the animal characters as they make friends and explore the world around them.

ME AND MY SHADOW

In The Black Rabbit, author-illustrator Philippa Leathers’ charming debut picture book, Rabbit discovers that a big black rabbit (which children will recognize as Rabbit’s shadow) is following him wherever he goes. Rabbit does everything he can think of to get rid of his shadow and finally succeeds when he runs into the deep, dark forest—where he meets Wolf, a foe much more frightening than the silent shadow. Chased out of the forest, Rabbit waits for Wolf to attack him, but opens his eyes to find that Wolf, too, is afraid of Rabbit’s shadow and has run away. The lively watercolor-and-ink illustrations highlight the contrast between the cartoon-like characters and the lurking figure of the shadow-turned-friend in this gently reassuring story about conquering our fears.

THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP

Children will learn nature’s power to bring joy when they meet the unhappy title character of Brett Helquist’s Grumpy Goat. Goat “had never had a single friend in his life” and doesn’t want one now that he is at Sunny Acres Farm. Helquist’s colorful oil-on-paper artwork captures the scowling goat, along with the happy expressions of his counterparts. When the cow and pigs come to say hello, Goat angrily chases them away. But he discovers a lone dandelion in the grass, and his frown begins to disappear. Goat finds happiness with his friends all summer long when a field of dandelions blooms, making Sunny Acres once again “the friendliest little farm in the country.” Inspired by an illustration he did for a book in Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, Helquist has expanded the story to teach children how important it is to literally stop and smell the flowers.

A DAY OF FIRSTS

In My First Day, husband-and-wife team Steve Jenkins and Robin Page teach children about what animals experience in their first days of life, using Jenkins’ distinctive paper collage style to illustrate parent and baby. Wood Ducks, we learn, jump out of their nests and swim after their mothers on the day they are born, while Siberian tigers can’t even open their eyes. Giraffes are able to take their first steps just after birth, and Sifakas must ride on their mother’s backs for protection. Children will learn how unique each animal is, while parents may be prompted to reminisce about what their child’s first day on earth was like.

Animals have always been nature’s teachers and they remain so in these three pictures books focused on the animal kingdom. Children will laugh at the antics of the animal characters as they make friends and explore the world around them. ME AND MY SHADOW In…
Romance

Love that’s meant to last

Feature by Lois Faye Dyer

Valentine’s Day appears on our calendars amid the chill winds of winter, just when we’re apt to be longing for a break from cold and snow. It’s the perfect time to celebrate with heart-shaped greeting cards, decadent chocolate truffles and a sinfully delicious romance novel. We’ve chosen three such romantic tales from authors Anne Barton, Anne Gracie and Beverly Jenkins—each the perfect prescription to chase away the winter doldrums. So brew a hot mug of Tazo tea, break out the chocolates, settle into your favorite cozy chair, and prepare to be enthralled.    

ROMANTIC EXTORTION

In the normal course of events, it is highly unlikely that a talented seamstress such as Anabelle Honeycote would cross paths with a duke in London of 1815—unless, of course, she were so unwise as to attempt to blackmail him. Anabelle does just that in When She Was Wicked by Anne Barton, though she quickly rues her choice of victim when the Duke of Huntford captures her and does some blackmailing of his own. The seamstress quickly finds herself living in the duke’s beautiful Mayfair home and creating elegant wardrobes for his two younger sisters. But all is not as it seems, for Anabelle is not merely a seamstress, nor is she an unprincipled extortionist. The duke soon learns his life has become much more complicated—and enriched—by the arrival of the lovely Anabelle. Despite the strict rules of Regency society that forbid their friendship, neither Anabelle nor the duke can deny the attraction that draws them together. The question is whether they can find a way to bridge their worlds without mutual heartbreak.

This delightful debut novel introduces readers to the Honeycote and Huntford families and launches a series of stories featuring four sisters. These women are distinctly different but equally intelligent, and their heroes promise to be strong-willed and committed. Both Anabelle and her duke have a powerful sense of justice that make them irresistibly cheer-worthy. The romance between the two is passionate and Anabelle’s world of Regency fashion is well drawn and detailed. 

UNEXPECTED SPOILS

Survival is difficult for young women without family in Regency-era London, as we learn in The Autumn Bride by Anne Gracie. Late one night in 1816, Abigail Chantry finds herself climbing through the window of a rundown home—once elegant—to commit thievery. Abigail needs food, and she’s desperate enough to steal. To her shock, she finds the house isn’t deserted, for an elderly woman is in the bedchamber. They carry on a strangely normal conversation and Abigail learns that Lady Beatrice lives alone, with only servants to care for her. Appalled at the neglect and the bedridden woman’s fragile state, Abigail returns for a second visit. Unable to turn her back on the situation, she marches into the home to champion the sharp-witted old lady. All goes well until Lady Beatrice’s long-absent nephew, Max, returns home from the East Indies. Abigail is indignant that he had abandoned his aunt to the care of servants; Max is highly suspicious of Abigail’s motives for befriending his aunt. Despite their mutual antagonism, however, they’re drawn together by an attraction neither can deny.  

There’s action and adventure aplenty in this well-written story, together with a heroine to root for and a strong, honorable hero. The witty dialogue and humor, in addition to an interesting mystery for the hero and heroine to solve, guarantee readers will eagerly look forward to the next installment in the Chance Sisters Romance series. 

LOVE IN THE WEST

In Destiny’s Embrace, the first novel of a planned series, best-selling author Beverly Jenkins takes readers to a California rancho in 1885, where matriarch Alanza Yates wants her three sons to marry. The men aren't interested, but the oldest, Logan, reluctantly agrees to let his mother find a housekeeper for him. In Philadelphia, seamstress Mariah Cooper wants to leave behind an unhappy life as an unpaid servant, and the advertisement for employment in California seems heaven sent. But Mariah wasn’t expecting the handsome man that meets her at the railroad station. Despite Logan Yates’ good looks and charm, however, the two argue almost from the first moment they meet. Logan is a man accustomed to beautiful women falling at his feet, and for the first time in his life, he must contend with a woman who insists on respect. He quickly learns that Mariah inspires not only lust, but genuine liking, affection, and finally, love.

The hero and heroine in Destiny’s Embrace are endearing and it’s a pleasure to watch them struggle as they come to grips with an attraction so powerful that it creates a sea change in both their lives. Logan gives Mariah the acceptance she’s never before felt, while she makes him realize he’s ready for home and family. The novel is filled with interesting snippets of California history and life in the American West just before the turn of the century. Readers will be delighted to know future books in the series will feature Logan’s brothers.

Valentine’s Day appears on our calendars amid the chill winds of winter, just when we’re apt to be longing for a break from cold and snow. It’s the perfect time to celebrate with heart-shaped greeting cards, decadent chocolate truffles and a sinfully delicious romance novel.…

NonfictionWomen's HistoryMemoir

Forging new paths for women everywhere

Feature by Heather Seggel

A popular bumper sticker theorizes that well-behaved women rarely make history. While it’s true that sometimes swimming against the current is the only way to get where you’re headed, three new books show women making history in a variety of ways, from globetrotting, to taking on mysterious jobs, to smashing through political barriers—even if their behavior was sometimes less than ladylike.

ALL ABOARD

In 1889, Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days was hot stuff. So hot, in fact, that two New York publications sent female reporters on trips around the world to try and beat fictional character Phileas Fogg’s time. Matthew Goodman’s Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World recreates the race and shows how it shaped the women’s lives afterward. It’s also a dazzling tour of the world at a time when travel routes were just opening up; a look at sensationalist journalism and pop culture in pre-Kardashian America; and a testimony to how hard women had to fight to get work and achieve respect as journalists.

Bly perfected the art of traveling light for the sake of convenience, then went on a shopping spree in Singapore, after which she was saddled with a cantankerous monkey she named McGinty. Bisland, who agreed to race against Bly with less than one day’s notice, didn’t like the publicity that came with the challenge and squirmed at being hauled in rickshaws and sedan chairs, but she was otherwise a fearless competitor who continued to travel for the rest of her life. Their stories should inspire both writers and travelers today: If you finish this without laying out your own version of Nellie Bly’s one-bag, no-hassles travel case, don’t complain the next time you’re dinged $25 for an extra suitcase. She was vastly ahead of her time.

WOMEN’S WORK

The Girls of Atomic City details a story that seems impossible yet was true. Author Denise Kiernan brings a novelist’s voice to her thoroughly researched look at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a small city that housed 75,000 people, used as much power as New York City, yet didn’t exist on any map. During World War II, numerous women were recruited to work in Oak Ridge but were never told what their jobs were; each job was isolated from the others so a complete picture couldn’t be formed. All they knew was that they were working to help bring a swift end to the war. By the time anyone had figured it out, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been decimated and the war was over.

The story of the town is impressive and occasionally funny: Women disembarking from cars for the first time sank to their knees in mud, since there were no sidewalks built, and one resident persuaded a worker to make her contraband biscuit tins from scrap metal so as to avoid the cafeteria’s sub-par chow. There was camaraderie among the workers, yet everyone felt ambivalent about what they created and how it was ultimately used. Kiernan gives no easy answers, but the stories of the women will resonate with readers. If someone offered you double what you’re making now, would you jump on a train with no further information? That took guts.

HIGHEST CALLING

It’s great to look back and find undiscovered stories in our past, but the experiences of those who are still with us have much to offer as we go forward. Everybody Matters: My Life Giving Voice is Mary Robinson’s memoir. The first female president of Ireland and former U.N. high commissioner for human rights traces her political roots back to an early and radical questioning of her Catholic upbringing. Continually working and fighting for full inclusion on behalf of the poor and marginalized, she became a vocal opponent of U.S. President George W. Bush’s policies in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When journalists questioned her outspoken stance and willingness to jeopardize her U.N. job, she writes, “I replied that this was the job; it was better to do the job than try to keep it.”

Robinson is unsparing about mistakes she’s made in her political career, and unfailingly gracious and grateful to her friends and family in these pages, which puts her tougher stances in perspective. A critical thinker and fine writer, her life story is a pleasure to read, and one that will certainly inspire generations of leaders to come.

A popular bumper sticker theorizes that well-behaved women rarely make history. While it’s true that sometimes swimming against the current is the only way to get where you’re headed, three new books show women making history in a variety of ways, from globetrotting, to taking…

NonfictionReligion & SpiritualityMemoir

Transformative accounts of faith and redemption

Feature by Kelly Blewett

For five writers from varied points on the Christian spectrum, God transforms dramatic circumstances into spiritual gain. From moving across the country to facing death itself, these authors amply illustrate that resurrection stories—far from being a thing of the past—are happening all around us.

LIFE-CHANGING SURGERY

For Steve Sjogren, author of Heaven’s Lessons: Ten Things I Learned About God When I Died, a near-death experience in 2000 led to an unexpected destination in his faith. Sjogren’s story is a humbling one. While pastoring a megachurch in Cincinnati, he went in for a standard hospital surgery that went horribly wrong. On the operating table, God told him that from now on he would “walk with a limp.” Following the surgery, Sjogren lost his position at the church, faced severely diminished health and was forced to re-examine some of the fundamental things he believed about God. He’s divided this book into 10 resulting lessons. “Though my experience with God in my near death experience was life changing, what followed it was depressing to me,” he writes. “If there is an option for a fast route, it seems I still always end up being placed on the l-o-n-g way forward.” This book offers readers the opportunity to benefit from Sjogren’s journey and to see how God turned a tragedy into a transformation. Sjogren, ever the pastor, is quick to provide applications of the book’s lessons to the reader’s life.

A PARENT’S STRUGGLE

In Beautiful Nate, Dennis Mansfield explores how his son’s drug addiction forced him to confront unwelcome truths about evangelicalism. Even though Mansfield tried to raise his son “by the book,” relying on experts like James Dobson, his boy still repeatedly rebelled and ultimately—in his 20s—died after an adverse drug reaction. Mansfield, a former Focus on the Family employee and lobbyist, loves Reagan, rhetoric and his family. His passions come through clearly, as does his pain. As Nate faced prison and life beyond, his father describes a softer side of their relationship: impromptu visits, staying up all night to watch movies and (most movingly) writing a novel the pair jointly penned during Nate’s incarceration. To his father, Nate was a follower of Jesus Christ forever torn by competing desires. While Beautiful Nate is certainly a sad story, Mansfield is consistently grateful for his son and the lessons learned about faith, parenting and life. He writes, “My hope is that you found [this] to be a poignant account of the realization that . . . things often turn out very wrong—and yet can turn out eternally right.” This is a good book for parents of faith who want to heal imperfect circumstances through the mercy of a perfect God.

NEW DIRECTIONS

In Landmarks: Turning Points on Your Journey Toward God, author Bill Delvaux describes a series of unexplainable choices that yielded satisfying results. He left a ministry position for teaching, and left his teaching position to write and speak about faith. A thoughtful writer, Delvaux was asked by a colleague to explain how his spiritual journey developed through these counterintuitive decisions. Delvaux responds that though he never knew he was going in the right direction, his Heavenly Father provided certain “landmarks” along the way. For frequent readers of evangelical nonfiction, the landmarks may seem unsurprising—giving up idols, addressing old wounds, seeking sexual purity. Yet Delvaux’s way of addressing these topics gives this slim book both gravity and purpose. When discussing idols, for instance, Delvaux shares his own former insistence that the details of his life be in order, right down to his junk mail. He realized that grasping toward perfection was ultimately idolatrous. As he reveals his own story, readers are gently guided to consider their own. A movie fan, Delvaux situates many of his lessons within the context of popular films. A small book that leaves a big impression, Landmarks tells how one man was transformed by embracing the principles he’d been teaching his whole life.

HEALING JOURNEY

For spiritual seeker and standout writer Beverly Donofrio (author of the memoir Riding in Cars With Boys) the pursuit of faith led to life in a small Mexican town replete with margaritas at sunset, yoga and plenty of time for writing. Yet Donofrio, a Catholic, felt herself drifting from God. Committed to rededicating herself, she planned an ambitious tour of monasteries around the country. Then a man broke into her apartment and raped her at knifepoint. In her new book, Astonished: A Story of Evil, Blessings, Grace, and Solace, Donofrio ponders the significance of the timing. What does the rape reveal about God? How do trials figure into God’s plan for our lives? What does it mean to heal and grow? Donofrio spends much of the next year completing her monastery tour and offering tentative answers to these questions and more. A nontraditional thinker who accepts parts of the “Jesus myth” and rejects other parts, Donofrio’s journey around the country and into her inner life is compelling material beautifully written. Perpetually humble, searching, honest and wry, Donofrio is a fine companion for a spiritual journey.

THINGS UNSEEN

Jack Perkins, best known as a longtime reporter for NBC News, left a successful journalism career to move to a remote island in Maine. In Finding Moosewood, Finding God, Perkins traces the spiritual lessons he learned, recounts favorite stories from his journalism days and offers a wholly appealing personal glimpse into his family life. In the wilds of Maine—reading the journals of Thoreau and following his spiritual impulses—Perkins’ personal journey with God truly begins. By rejecting the consumerist culture of Los Angeles, Perkins and his wife Mary Jo find what seems to be an incomparable happiness in island living and creative pursuits. Both read voraciously and explore their new home with enthusiasm. By embracing the blessings of God—in a sunset, in the view of the water at night, in spotting a passing lobster boat—the couple begins to appreciate His divine character. This fresh and invigorating story will help the reader appreciate her own life and, better yet, feel that anything is possible.

While these books vary in points of view, trials faced and solutions suggested, they share a common belief that God is in the midst of our circumstances. This divine God who resurrects new life from death is, they agree, more real than the world before our eyes. As Perkins writes in one of his poems: “Henceforth this is my plan: / Believe much more in what I can’t see, / Much less in what I can.”

For five writers from varied points on the Christian spectrum, God transforms dramatic circumstances into spiritual gain. From moving across the country to facing death itself, these authors amply illustrate that resurrection stories—far from being a thing of the past—are happening all around us.

LIFE-CHANGING SURGERY

For…

Fiction

Journeys to joy, contentment and renewal

Feature by Melissa Brown

At its best and most engaging, Christian fiction wrestles with issues of belief in a way that resonates with the reader, encouraging self-reflection and growth. These three novels present life in full, shining a light on its heartaches but also its opportunities for redemption and renewal. The truths the characters in each story learn, oftentimes painfully, can be applied to readers’ own journeys of faith.

In The Sky Beneath My Feet, Lisa Samson introduces us to Beth, a mother of two teenage sons and wife of a men’s pastor at a stereotypical megachurch.

Beth’s first-person narration, filled with questions and stream-of-consciousness shifts that at times resemble journal entries, indicates that all is not well. Beth is looking for more and not finding it. Her husband Rick is, too, but he’s decided to spend his one-month sabbatical from church duties holed up in the shed behind their house waiting to hear from God, rather than go on the beach vacation that Beth envisioned.

Left alone to navigate the challenging lives of her sons and her own heart’s questions, Beth struggles to reconcile who she was with who she is. As in her novels Quaker Summer and Embrace Me, Samson assembles a motley cast of supporting characters for Beth to interact with on the way to finding God and herself again. I alternated between laughing and cringing at Beth’s onslaught of unexpected encounters: from watching an eccentric artist neighbor use Rick as her muse for a church mural, to joining up with peace marchers, to rescuing a girl from a drug overdose in an inner-city halfway house.

Besides entertaining the reader, Samson does an excellent job of relating the feeling of being stuck in place with the wheels spinning—something both believers and nonbelievers can relate to. As the novel draws to a close, Rick and Beth find themselves where they were desperately seeking to be, though it wasn’t achieved through their efforts after all.

SOUTHERN CHARM

Denise Hildreth Jones’ Secrets Over Sweet Tea revels in its Southern setting of Franklin, Tennessee. Much like her popular Savannah from Savannah series, this book is peppered with endearments and occasional outlandish “Southernisms” that will make anyone who’s spent time in the South—including this native Alabamian—feel welcome. 

Southern charm aside, the pain Jones’ three main characters are dealing with is real and universal. Grace, an early morning news anchor, is devastated by her broken marriage. Zach, a divorce lawyer, has lost direction and meaning in his life—and risks losing his twin daughters and wife because of his costly attempts to fill those voids. And Scarlett Jo, the lively pastor’s wife who loves to get up close and personal with everyone she meets, seems like the most open book of them all, until her secret surfaces at last. Jones unfurls each person’s story one piece at a time, revealing the fractures in her characters’ lives, the friendships they build and the steps they must take to reclaim their hearts.

As an author’s note attests, Secrets Over Sweet Tea grew out of a time of great pain and a journey to healing in Jones’ personal life. Her characters’ lives are not neatly sewn up or perfectly polished (as is too often the case with inspirational fiction), another reason to appreciate this redeeming story.

CHANGED BY GRACE

One Sunday by Carrie Gerlach Cecil also has a Southern setting—and is also partly drawn from the author’s experience. The story’s broken protagonist, L.A. socialite Alice Ferguson, is struggling to adjust to life in Nashville following a one-night stand with a Southern doctor that results in pregnancy.

Agreeing to have Burton’s child, and to move in with the good doctor, uproots Alice from a lifestyle of drinking, drugging and reporting on celebrity exploits via her online tabloid, Trashville. With her new husband on call more often than not, Alice turns to her neighbor Tim, a former pro football player turned pastor. Boredom and a hunger for his wife LeChelle’s fried chicken are her initial reasons for striking up a friendship with this conservative couple, but it becomes something more. Eventually she accepts Tim’s invitation to church, and we learn more about Alice’s past, via flashbacks, as she alternately smirks at and soaks up the worship service. 

Cecil writes in a fast-paced style that cuts from scene to scene like a movie, rifling through the fragmented memories of her displaced protagonist and bringing them into focus. (Her previous novel, Emily’s Reasons Why Not, became an ABC television series.) Pop-culture references abound, and Alice’s biting commentary is always at the ready. At times, the snark is a bit much, but as Alice sifts through her past, she starts to respond to the pain she’s bottled up and lets her façade slip. Cecil writes movingly about believing and trusting in God in prose that will touch the reader as the message sinks deep into Alice’s heart. This is a riveting story of profound change. 

At its best and most engaging, Christian fiction wrestles with issues of belief in a way that resonates with the reader, encouraging self-reflection and growth. These three novels present life in full, shining a light on its heartaches but also its opportunities for redemption and…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Brave women who made a difference

Feature by Alice Cary

Need a lift? You’ll feel inspired after reading about five women who accomplished big things, all subjects of engaging new picture book biographies aimed at young elementary school students.

A VOICE THAT ROARED

When a steamship pulls into the New York City harbor in 1903, a surprise is on board. So begins Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909. And never fear if a story about a strike doesn’t sound exciting; believe me, it is—especially in the hands of writer Michelle Markel. She begins by explaining:

“The surprise is dirt poor, just five feet tall, and hardly speaks a word of English.
Her name is Clara Lemlich.
This girl’s got grit, and she’s going to prove it.
Look out, New York!”

Instead of going to school, Clara joins other young women working long hours sewing in a factory under harsh conditions. Markel writes: “Clara smolders with anger, not just for herself, but for all the factory girls, working like slaves. This was not the America she’d imagined.” Thus the stage is set for Clara to lead the largest walkout of women workers in U.S. history.

Enriching this tale of might and right are fabulous illustrations by Caldecott Honor-winning artist Melissa Sweet, whose use of fabric and stitching within her art reminds readers that they’re reading about garment workers. In one wonderful spread, she creates an overhead shot of hundreds of tiny heads hunched over their sewing machines, while the adjacent page shows a timecard with notations of low pay and fines for being late. Sweet and Markel’s collaboration brings this strike to life in an immensely appealing way.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Michelle Markel for Brave Girl.

REACH FOR THE STARS

Henrietta Leavitt made an important contribution to astronomy, and Look Up! Henrietta Leavitt, Pioneering Woman Astronomer does a great job of explaining her role in a way that young readers can easily grasp. Robert Burleigh writes: “In an astronomy class, she was one of the very few woman students. But Henrietta wanted to follow what she loved, wherever it took her.” Leavitt’s journey took her to the Harvard College Observatory, where she and other women worked as “human computers” who counted stars for 30 cents an hour.

Studying stars became Leavitt’s life work, and thanks to a phenomenon she noticed, she helped scientists calculate how far away certain stars are. Burleigh’s lively text brings her discovery to life, while Raúl Colón’s illustrations are not only gorgeous, but inventively luminescent, filled with swirling cosmos, colorful stars and reminders of great astronomers like Copernicus and Galileo. This well-rounded portrait contains a nicely detailed afterword that includes a glossary and resources for additional information.

A DARING DOCTOR

Young Elizabeth Blackwell didn’t like the sight of blood, and was horrified when one teacher brought in a bull’s eyeball to show students how eyes work. These are the sorts of engaging details that Tanya Lee Stone includes in her lively ­biography, Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors? The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell.

When Elizabeth was 24, an ill friend lamented that she would love to have a woman doctor, and that Elizabeth would be perfect for the job. That suggestion changed Elizabeth’s life, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer once she decided to attend medical school. She first had to face 28 “no”s before finally getting a “yes” from New York’s Geneva Medical School. There, the male students ridiculed her, but she had the last laugh, graduating first in her class in 1849.

Stone repeatedly reminds readers that Blackwell’s hardships are unimaginable in today’s world, where more than half of the medical students in the U.S. are women.

Adding to the book’s appeal are whimsical, energetic illustrations by another Caldecott Honor-winning artist, Marjorie Priceman, whose style here brings to mind Ludwig Bemelmans and his famed Madeline books. This dynamic biography is sure to speak to a wide range of young readers.

TAKE THIS BOOK, PLEASE!

My, how the world has changed. Miss Moore Thought Otherwise: How Anne Carroll Moore Created Libraries for Children describes a time when children weren’t allowed inside libraries. A young woman from Maine became one of the leading forces of change, a pioneer in her position as head of the children’s rooms in the New York Public Library system, beginning in 1906.

Jan Pinborough’s biography unfolds in storybook fashion, with the title serving as an often repeated refrain. Miss Moore allowed children to borrow books, and she got rid of the “SILENCE” signs that hung in many libraries. When the New York Public Library opened its doors in 1911, Moore had designed a warm, welcoming children’s room brimming with the best books she could find, child-size furniture and art by the likes of N.C. Wyeth. Pinborough brings this literary crusader to life, explaining that upon retirement, Moore hit the road in an effort to improve libraries across the country.

Debby Atwell’s folk-inspired art perfectly suits this story of a little girl whose big ideas helped change how children live and learn. Atwell’s final tableau, showing Miss Moore setting off across America as the countryside spreads before her, is particularly charming. No doubt Miss Moore herself would give this book quite the stamp of approval!

A LITERARY NURSE

Older students will be mesmerized by Louisa May’s Battle: How the Civil War Led to Little Women. Award-winning writer Kathleen Krull focuses on a life-changing slice of Louisa May Alcott’s life, when she headed to Washington, D.C., to act as a Civil War nurse.

Krull paints a rich historical portrait of both Louisa and the desperate times, infusing her text with quotes from Alcott’s own account of her experiences, Hospital Sketches. Krull describes the extraordinary difficulties Louisa experienced while traveling from New England to Washington, and Louisa’s jubilation on the night she looked out her window and saw African Americans celebrating the ratification of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Carlyn Beccia’s illustrations are equally radiant with historical details, showing Louisa’s long hair reaching down to her ankles, the broad expanse of Pennsylvania Avenue, the unfinished Capitol Building without its dome and the lush countryside around Washington as Louisa ran up and down its hills.

The impact of Louisa’s experiences stayed with her forever, leading directly to her success as a writer. While much has already been written about this famous author, Louisa May’s Battle is a fascinating contribution to the canon.

Need a lift? You’ll feel inspired after reading about five women who accomplished big things, all subjects of engaging new picture book biographies aimed at young elementary school students.

A VOICE THAT ROARED

When a steamship pulls into the New York City harbor in 1903, a surprise is…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Four picture books worth clucking about

Feature by Brooke Allen

The popularity of raising backyard chickens and other poultry is on the rise in our part of the world (and probably your part, too), which lends new relevance to children’s books about our feathered friends. We’ve taken a look at a flock of new picture books featuring chickens and ducks and selected four of the best. These books show poultry in their daily lives: laying eggs, taking care of little ones, learning lessons and bringing joy to their human caretakers.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME

In Mama Hen’s Big Day, written and illustrated by Jill Latter, Mama Hen sets out to lay an egg in the “loveliest, safest, most peaceful place of all.” But she realizes that finding the best place isn’t an easy task. Among the places she rejects are a rattlesnake’s cave, a patch of tall grass where a fox lies in wait and a pile of leaves that turns out to be a porcupine’s nest. Determined to find a safe place for her egg, Mama Hen searches the whole town until she finds a soft patch of grass “on the tippy-top of the tallest mountain.” But her most important discovery is that the best place to lay her egg is wherever she is. Balancing the hen’s anxious search are happy watercolor blues, greens and reds and loose outlines to create a playful atmosphere. Mama Hen’s Big Day tells the simple tale of a mother whose greatest gift to her newborn egg is her presence.

FREE FALLING

Janet Morgan Stoeke continues her delightful series about the Loopy Coop Farm with The Loopy Coopy Hens: Letting Go. Little readers who are new to the series can jump right into the hens’ adventures without the need for catching up. Apples are falling from the tree and that can only mean one thing for these anxious hens: a fox must be throwing them. The hens summon the rooster who runs from the problem, but Dot is determined to get to the bottom of the apple throwing. She dons a helmet and climbs to the top. What she finds is a beautiful view of the countryside and no fox. After Midge and Pip join her in the tree to survey a beautiful view, all three decide to let go like apples and fall ungracefully to the ground. Fun sketch-like pencil outlines and fresh pastel colors accompany the antics of these ditzy chicks as they discover that apples fall from trees and so can they.

MISSING CHICK

Nora’s Chicks, written by Newbery winner Patricia MacLachlan and illustrated by Kathryn Brown, uses lyrical text and muted watercolors to tell Nora’s story. In Russia, there were beautiful hills and trees, but on Nora’s new farm in America, only one cottonwood grows by the river. Her brother Milo is not old enough to talk, and her neighbor Susannah is too shy to call a friend. “I need something all my own,” Nora tells her parents. When Nora’s father brings home some chicks and two geese for eating, Nora insists on keeping them as pets. Later, one of the treasured chicks goes missing, an event that serves as a catalyst to bring shy Susannah and Nora together as friends. Nora’s Chicks is the heartwarming story of one girl’s assimilation to America, and a reminder that animals can be true friends in lonely times.

PULLING TOGETHER

Based on a true story, Lucky Ducklings recounts a real-life duckling rescue in Montauk, New York. Nancy Carpenter’s illustrations pay homage to Robert McCloskey’s classic Make Way for Ducklings, though her bright colors and detailed faces instill the book with a modern sensibility. Eva Moore’s narrative focuses on the struggle of baby ducklings caught in a storm drain and the rush of the townspeople to help them. With each new development in the crisis, Moore repeats a phrase: “That could have been the end of the story. But it wasn’t, because…” This structure propels the story along nicely and gives readers and listeners a sense of just how lucky these ducklings really were. Eventually, Mama and her ducklings make it safely back to their pond, and we learn in a brief note that the town later replaced the drain for safer duck crossings. Lucky Ducklings is an inspirational tale of cooperation and a quiet meditation on the importance of family and community.

The popularity of raising backyard chickens and other poultry is on the rise in our part of the world (and probably your part, too), which lends new relevance to children’s books about our feathered friends. We’ve taken a look at a flock of new picture…

Picture BookCookbooks

Hands-on fun with paper engineering

Feature by Robin Smith

Is it just me, or are there a lot more fancy-schmancy engineered books being created today? By this, I mean pop-up books, books with unusual structures and even books that ask a child to do something that “changes” the book. If you want to see what I’m talking about, look at the book trailer of children reading the best-selling Press Here by French author Hervé Tullet.

That was so 2011! But Tullet and others have some captivating new books that will amaze readers and keep them crawling up on their parents’ laps, asking for more.

WORMING YOUR WAY IN

For the youngest book enthusiast, Tullet’s Let’s Play Games board book series is sure to please. My favorite of the newest bunch is The Finger Circus Game. With a hole drilled through the book, the reader’s own fingers (with eye and nose and mouth drawn on if desired) become the “world famous finger worms,” swinging on trapezes, juggling and even putting their little worm heads in a lion’s mouth. One can imagine older children drawing the worms themselves and making up adventures outside of the circus.

A child’s finger becomes part of the action in Herve Tullet’s The Finger Circus Game.

 

THE WORLD OUTSIDE

For slightly older readers, author-illustrator Lizi Bond creates a child’s world on brown Kraft paper in Inside Outside. The book is a festival of amazing die-cuts that work together to wordlessly tell the story of a boy—inside and outside his home—and show the range of his creativity. The story begins in winter, and the unsuspecting reader might not even notice the cunning die-cuts until she turns the first page. Here we see snow people looking into the boy’s window. With so much to notice—the muted blue and red gouache paintings on the wall, the mittens on the floor, the mice driving the play cars—it’s easy to miss that those are real openings in the page, not just drawings of windows. But, with the page turn, the boy is now outside with the snowmen and the paintings are visible inside that same window.

This homey book is carefully constructed so that each turn of the page brings a real surprise. The pieces fit perfectly and the pacing is gentle. As the seasons change, the boy enjoys the beauty of nature outside—splashing in puddles, planting a garden, raking leaves—and creates art for the walls of his house that reflects what he has experienced. This is a clever book about the child’s need to create and the inspiration that nature can provide. Children will want to turn the pages back and forth again and again—and perhaps grab a piece of their own Kraft paper to see what they can create.

Lizi Bond's Inside Outside uses die-cuts to create windows on the page.

 

GOTTA DANCE

Molly Idle, who spent five years as an animator for DreamWorks Studios before turning to children’s book illustration, brings us another sort of carefully constructed book, using flaps and foldouts to tell the story of Flora, a chubby little girl wearing a pink leotard and a yellow swim hat who wants to be a ballerina. Flora and the Flamingo is a must-have for children who are just learning to dance. Flora’s mentor is one very confident flamingo. At the beginning, we see the flamingo looking straight ahead and Flora imitating him. Bend down the flaps and both dancers look behind them. Flora is wearing swimming flippers, which make her moves appear ungainly, but her spirit is (pardon me) unflappable. The vast amount of white space—the page is just the two dancers with a frame of pink branches—serves as a stage for Flora and her pink friend, for dancing or falling or encouraging. One magnificent gatefold at the end is so joyous that youngsters will want to waltz around the room, just like Flora and the flamingo.

In Molly Idle's Flora and the Flamingo, flaps conceal a second view of the figures.

 

A RAINBOW OF BOOKS

Open the first page of Jesse Klausmeier and Suzy Lee’s amazing new book, Open This Little Book, and you might be tricked. Is this a book with just two pages? No. Inside the page is a little purple book and inside that is a smaller red and black polka dotted book and inside that is a smaller green book . . . all the way down to a teeny little rainbow book! A giant’s hands are too huge to handle this tiny book, so all the critters who have read the rainbow of books (for that is what the edges of the books have formed) help turn the pages and close all the little books, until “Ladybug closes her little green book . . . You close this little red book . . . and . . . open another!” The final illustration shows all the animals from the little books reading, reading, reading. The grey raindrops from the opening endpages have turned rainbow colored as well! This is a magical book that pays tribute to books and reading in a way that is neither preachy nor silly. Open This Little Book has the feel of an instant classic.

One little book lies inside another in Open This Little Book, written by Jesse Klausmeier and illustrated by Suzy Lee.

 

Clever paper engineering adds to the appeal of each of these books, drawing children into the stories, or inviting kids to create their own. These kinds of books are intriguing to read and will stand the test of time. It’s a good thing too—they will be requested by children over and over again!

Robin Smith teaches second grade in Nashville. She reviews children's books for several publications and was a member of the 2011 Caldecott Committee.

 

Watch a demonstration of Flora and The Flamingo.

Watch a trailer for Open This Little Book.

Is it just me, or are there a lot more fancy-schmancy engineered books being created today? By this, I mean pop-up books, books with unusual structures and even books that ask a child to do something that “changes” the book. If you want to see…

Fiction

Eye-opening, visionary verses

Feature by Julie Hale

Poetry has a capacity that other literary forms lack—the lightning-quick ability to provide a sense of connection on an intimate scale. These new collections will open your eyes to the ways a skilled poet can conjure fresh meaning from our familiar language.

POET AT PLAY

Named England’s poet laureate in 2009, Carol Ann Duffy writes linguistically extravagant poems that mix an appealing sense of play with a disciplined awareness of form. In her new collection, The Bees, she examines nature and history, relationships and politics through the lens of her visionary sensibility, deftly capturing the abundance of everyday experience.

The pieces in this accessible collection celebrate the poet’s transformative urge—the practice of remaking in words whatever meets the eye, a theme Duffy mines in “Poetry”: “I couldn’t see woods/for the names of trees—sycamore,/yew, birch, beech.” Elsewhere, elm trees are “green rhymes” and birds “verbs.” In “Invisible Ink,” Duffy turns the urge on the air itself, presenting it as a “fluent, glittery stream”—a communal medium we all inscribe with a “vast same poem.”

Duffy is a calculating and precise poet, a genius when it comes to line design. Positioned to produce the maximum amount of sound, words rub elbows in her work, and the results are often lavish, like these verses from “Virgil’s Bees”: “each bee’s body/at its brilliant flower, lover-stunned,/strumming on fragrance, smitten.” For Duffy, poetry’s purpose is to “pursue the human.” As The Bees proves, the chase can produce glorious associations.

NAVIGATING THE PAST

Complex and symphonic, with sections and movements that unfold slowly and inform each other, the poems in Rick Hilles’ lovely second collection, A Map of the Lost World, examine the nature of memory and the trials of coming to grips with the past. Many of the poems are narrative-based—story-like, plotted and wonderfully compelling. In “The Red Scarf & the Black Briefcase,” Hilles takes on the daring persona of real-life French Resistance activist Lisa Fittko, who reflects on her experiences during World War II: “Red, the color of my hat but also the way my walking/with it through the raging Brownshirts still causes/them to part around me like the Red Sea.”

Throughout the collection, the past invades the present—often quite literally, as in “Nights & Days of 2007: Autumn.” Written during a stay in the apartment of the late poet James Merrill, the piece chronicles the author’s attempt to contact a dead college buddy via Ouija board, a device “whose ghost-galleon absinthe-glow rides the dark.” Whether sifting through his own memories or channeling the voices of the past, Hilles composes poems that, ultimately, honor history and the personal stories that lie behind it.

BEST OF THE BEST

Think of it as American poetry’s hot 100: Spanning a quarter of a century, The Best of the Best American Poetry: 25th Anniversary Edition collects 100 classic pieces from the yearly anthology The Best American Poetry. This indispensable volume, with its rich mix of voices, forms and techniques, serves as a melting pot of contemporary American verse. Curated by former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, this diverse anthology is filled with some of literature’s most respected names, including Adrienne Rich, James Merrill and Jane Kenyon, as well as newer writers like Kevin Young and Meghan O’Rourke.

Poetry has a capacity that other literary forms lack—the lightning-quick ability to provide a sense of connection on an intimate scale. These new collections will open your eyes to the ways a skilled poet can conjure fresh meaning from our familiar language.

POET AT PLAY

Named England’s…

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