All Features

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…

Children's & YAPicture BookMiddle Grade

Having fun with rhythm & rhyme

Feature by Alice Cary

These six sparkling poetry books speak to young readers of all ages, addressing a symphony of subjects with creativity, humor and style.

STARTING SMALL

In the introduction to Wee Rhymes: Baby’s First Poetry Book, longtime collaborators Jane Yolen and artist Jane Dyer explain how vital poetry is: “Children who are given poetry early will have a fullness inside. Mother Goose rhymes, baby verse—that kind of singsong, sing-along rhythm—is as important as a heartbeat.”

In this charming collection, Yolen includes a few Mother Goose rhymes alongside her own poems for babies (such as “Five Little Fingers” and “Baby Snores”) and toddlers (“My Slide” and “Soap Dragons”). All are filled with warmth and sometimes a dose of well-placed humor, such as these lines from “Sitting in the Quiet Chair”:

When you’re bad
And make a riot
You must go
And be real quiet.

Dyer’s pencil-and-watercolor illustrations are lovingly sweet and a perfect blend of classic nostalgia and modernism.

THE NATURAL WORLD

Older children and even adults will be charmed by the short, thought-provoking poems in Pug: And Other Animal Poems. These short verses were crafted by the late poetic virtuoso Valerie Worth, whose talents are apparent in each selection. Take, for example, the last lines of “Fox”:

Streaking the
Dark like
A fabulous
Comet—
Famous, but
Seldom seen.

Illustrator Steve Jenkins’ bold illustrations are a vibrant match for each poem, filled with color, texture and depth. Never cutesy, Jenkins creates animals whose fur can practically be touched, such as an opossum “Staring with serious/Eyes at nothing.” The eyes of Jenkins’ creatures will grab your attention, including those of a soulful pug, a fierce fish and a singing wood thrush.

Although no one has ever seen the imaginary critters in Stardines Swim High Across the Sky, they are indeed intriguingly beautiful. This creative venture by the king of children’s poetry, Jack Prelutsky, and fine artist Carin Berger is presented as though it were a naturalist’s field guide.

As the cover flap cheerfully explains: “While many creatures (two dozen species in all) were discovered and recorded and their precise qualities examined, we are presenting sixteen here for the first time and for the enjoyment and education of the general public.” Berger’s illustrations continue the ruse, consisting of dioramas, shadow boxes and a variety of other materials, giving this book unique visual appeal.

“Chormorants,” for example, are birds who never stop doing chores, and you can easily guess the characteristics of “slobsters,” “jollyfish” and “sobcats.” Prelutsky brings humor and verbal acrobatics to his poems, as would be expected, while Berger has created perfect pairings of artistic wit and cleverness.

Very much back on terra firma, Forest Has a Song is a lovely compendium of woods-related poems by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater. A girl and her dog wander through the forest in a variety of seasons, inviting readers to share their discoveries.

Poems such as “Bone Pile,” “Colorful Actor” (about a cardinal) and “First Flight” (chronicling an owl) nicely convey the discoveries that an observant hiker might make. Gentle watercolors by Robbin Gourley add just the right suggestion of realism, while bringing the poems together into a narrative whole.

FOR OLDER READERS

The zany poems found in If You Were a Chocolate Mustache remind me of Prelutsky’s beloved antics. Instead, they are written by J. Patrick Lewis, the current children’s poet laureate. He is certainly deserving of the title, judging from the smiles you’ll see if you put this volume into the hands of any elementary student.

Fun is the operative word here, with plenty of poems, some very short, such as “Rules for Tightrope Walking Between Tall Buildings”:

1. Whatever you do, don’t laugh.
2. Avoid looking down at the traf—

Matthew Cordell’s simple line drawings add plenty of whimsy—in this case showing a terrified tightrope walker making his way over honking traffic.

There are riddle poems, too, to keep readers engaged, and slightly snarky humor throughout, such as the short and sweet “A Special Bond”:

Each time a child folds her hands,
She may be saying prayers for you,
Or else she just misunderstands
How to use the Elmer’s glue.

Young readers will also relish the abundant humor in Tamera Will Wissinger’s Gone Fishing: A Novel in Verse, also illustrated by Cordell. The poems here tell the story of a memorable summer day of lake fishing.

Young Sam is excited to spend the day with his dad, and righteously dismayed when his younger sister decides to tag along. What’s worse, she quickly catches eight bluegills while Sam still has none.

Happily, Sam soon lands a big one, and the trio ends up having an unforgettable day. Using varied poetic forms, Wissinger captures the fun and family dynamics of this fisherman’s tale.

These six sparkling poetry books speak to young readers of all ages, addressing a symphony of subjects with creativity, humor and style.

STARTING SMALL

In the introduction to Wee Rhymes: Baby’s First Poetry Book, longtime collaborators Jane Yolen and artist Jane Dyer explain how vital poetry is:…

Nonfiction

God, money and Enos Slaughter

Feature by John C. Williams

Baseball is a game of threes—three strikes to an out, three outs to an inning, three times three innings to a game. Here we present three new books with very different takes on the national pastime.

THE SACRED

Baseball as a Road to God by NYU president John Sexton, is one of the most unorthodox baseball books published in recent memory.  Indeed, it may be better not to call this a “baseball book” at all, but rather a peculiar entry in the counterattack against the new atheists of the Richard Dawkins stripe, arguing that baseball is a medium by which we can experience a “shining through of the sacred.” In a facile way, the game’s forms resemble those of a religion—stadiums its temples, the Hall of Fame its pantheon of saints—and Sexton draws on these analogies. But he goes beyond them to provide a comprehensive example of how the spiritual can manifest itself in the real. Sexton fills in his argument with plenty of familiar baseball history, and the book is shot through with exultation of the game. Its worshipful rhetoric matches the loftiness of the project, one with which it is worth engaging.

THE PROFANE

Leaving aside baseball’s sacred elements, Joe Peta’s Trading Bases: A Story About Wall Street, Gambling, and Baseball (Not Necessarily in That Order) represents the moneychangers in the temple. Profit is the name of the game here, and, untrue to its subtitle, the book takes as its subject Wall Street first, gambling a close second and baseball a distant third. The author, using his own experience as a stock trader, shares with readers—complete with clever pop culture references—a model by which to beat the Vegas odds and make a healthy return over a season of wagering. Readers keen on statistical analysis of baseball should take an interest, but others may find the technical language not worth the price of admission. The real revelations here are about the way gambling and markets work, not baseball. Still, Peta appreciates the charms of the game, and the book contains several nice reminiscences that suggest he and Sexton would find common ground over a beer.

CARDINAL RULES

With every April comes the return of baseball, and so too, it seems, comes a history of an individual season connecting the sport to the great issues of its era. This year the book is The Victory Season, the year is 1946, and the milieu is the struggle of the U.S. to adjust to peacetime. Many players had fought in WWII, and Robert Weintraub brings new light to the world of baseball within the military. After the war, key figures of the 1946 season include Jackie Robinson, preparing to break the color line; Larry MacPhail, overseeing the crassification of the Yankees; and especially Enos Slaughter of the Cardinals, a team destined to meet the Red Sox in the World Series. Under the weight of these personalities, the broader social history falls mostly by the wayside—Robert Murphy’s early attempt to unionize the players, for example, is only glimpsed. The detail can be a bit overwhelming, but those interested in this era of baseball will find a rich accounting in Weintraub’s book.

Baseball is a game of threes—three strikes to an out, three outs to an inning, three times three innings to a game. Here we present three new books with very different takes on the national pastime.

THE SACRED

Baseball as a Road to God by NYU president…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Kids celebrate Earth Day with a garden of picture books

Feature by Robin Smith

Tom Chapin’s children's song starts winding itself into my brain this time of year, making me think of the joys of living on our planet: “Happy, happy Earth Day . . .” Schoolchildren will play cooperative games with giant Earth balls and spend time cleaning up their environment and helping out with community service projects. It’s a great time to celebrate our planet and think of ways to protect the life it sustains. Here are some wonderful new books to help children connect with nature.

CHERISH THE SEA

Alison Formento and Sarah Snow add another excellent book to their series about nature in These Seas Count! Mr. Tate’s class gathers for a field trip to a local beach where they learn about pollution, trash and the need for beach cleanup. Part counting book, part ecological wake-up call for the young, this book gently informs children about animals who live in or near the world’s oceans. Glorious colorful collages grace each spread, allowing the readers to feel the movements of all the animals. I especially loved the jumping dolphins and swimming jellyfish. Mr. Tate and Captain Ned make the case for interconnectivity, giving the worried children a solution. Cleaning up the beach, counting the giant bags of garbage and scooping trash out of the ocean make the children think about the importance of the water cycle for all creatures.

THE LITTLEST CREATURES

Beginning readers with a penchant for eggs will love Lynette Evans' Whose Egg? On the left is a riddle, perfect for the youngest scientist to ponder: “My egg is emerald green. It lies like a jewel in the dry, red land. I will hatch with wings and feathers, but I will never fly. Who am I?” On the right is a clever piece of engineering—an open-the-flap book that slowly reveals the egg’s contents. This time, the egg contains an emu, but other critters are born from eggs, too—alligators, penguins, butterflies, platypus, snakes, turtles and plovers. The sturdy paper will hold up through repeated readings; it’s a good thing, because youngsters will read it over and over. Illustrator Guy Troughton's warm, highly detailed watercolors fill each spread, and sharp readers will notice little clues as to the animals' identities on the left–hand page. Is that a little turtle arm poking out? Yes, it is! This one is a charmer.

GREEN AND STRONG

Plasticine artist extraordinaire Barbara Reid has outdone herself with Picture a Tree. Just stop and take a gander at the end pages. Each little square is part of an illustration to come—a tiny hand-created paean to trees. Accompanied by sparse text, the illustrations are a marvel of movement, detail and emotion. Starting bare in winter, a nod to the cycle of the seasons, Reid asks the young reader to imagine trees as more than trees. They are shadows, drawings, tunnels, oceans, homes . . . even a friend. The scenes with children playing in the trees are particularly enchanting for young readers, and Reid's nod to the human life cycle grabbed this adult. The adolescent tree blooms next to a group of eye-rolling teens, making me smile in recognition. One spread shows a modern boy, reading in a tree over a river. The reflection is another child, from an earlier time, also reading. Every page invites the reader to look closely and marvel, “How did she make this art?”

IMPOSSIBLY CUTE

Older children love sloths. Why is that? Is it the fur? The smiling eyes? The long arms? Whatever it is, kids love sloths, and A Little Book of Sloth by Lucy Cooke has sloths aplenty! Costa Rica is home to Slothville, a sanctuary for sloths. Buttercup was the first sloth in Slothville, but now, 20 years later, she is the “queen of Slothville.” She lives in in her hanging wicker throne, watching other sloths hang around. Though there are interesting facts galore (Sloths are Xenarthrans, not bears or monkeys; their top speed is 15 feet per minute; wild sloths are actually green; some have an extra vertebrae; it takes four weeks to digest a meal), the photos are the stars. I found myself shouting “LOOK AT THIS!” when I turned each page. Like a viral video of puppies, these photos just are so dang adorable that your eye never tires of looking at them. Three sloths in a basket are accompanied by the text, “Baby sloths are the Jedi masters of the hug. Their innate hugability helps them cling to their moms for the first year of their lives. They love to hug so much; collectively, they form a cuddle puddle.“ Really? Cuddle puddle? That phrase alone makes me feel happy all over. Slide this onto the shelf with the puppy and kitten books, marked "A" for Adorable.

This earth is filled with all sorts of wonders, and it’s a deep pleasure to read books celebrating these wonders. Be like the sloths: Just chill out with these books and marvel at the magic of this earth.

Tom Chapin’s children's song starts winding itself into my brain this time of year, making me think of the joys of living on our planet: “Happy, happy Earth Day . . .” Schoolchildren will play cooperative games with giant Earth balls and spend time cleaning…

NonfictionParentingMemoir

A mother’s gifts last a lifetime

Feature by Alice Cary

How do you approach Mother’s Day? With reverence and joy, or sorrow and trepidation? Are you fulfilled, exhausted or both from being a dutiful child or caretaking parent? No matter what your emotions, these engrossing books about mothers, children and parenting are bound to speak to you.

Particularly wonderful is a collection gathered by Elizabeth Benedict, What My Mother Gave Me. Benedict, who had a trying, distant relationship with her mother, found herself surprised by the intense feelings she had about a long woolen scarf her mother gave her in the last years of her life. She began to wonder: “If this one gift meant so much to me, if it unlocked the door to so much history and such complicated feelings, might other women have such a gift themselves?”

Indeed they do, and their answers come to life in stories from such writers as Ann Hood, Mary Gordon, Elinor Lipman and Mameve Medwed. Lisa See’s mother taught her to pen “a thousand words a day and one charming note,” a work ethic that involves writing steadily and aiming high. Joyce Carol Oates describes the first days of her widow­hood, when she wrapped herself in a rainbow-colored quilt made by her late mother. The quilt became “a sign of how love endures in the most elemental and comforting ways.” And Emma Straub ponders gifts less tangible, such as tickets for a rainy, rather miserable but memorable cruise around a Wisconsin lake. Straub writes: “My own happiness during every terrible minute of the Betty Lou Cruise came from knowing that when it ended, I would get to tell [my mother] about it.”

BIG FAT GREEK LOVE

For some, the road to motherhood can be fraught with formidable roadblocks, as was the case for actress Nia Vardalos, the famed actress and writer of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. She tells her story in Instant Mom, which is as compelling, witty and wonderful as her now-classic movie about Greek family life. While Vardalos filmed the movie, went on press tours and was eventually nominated for an Oscar, she was desperately enduring a series of fertility treatments and heartbreaking miscarriages. Her dream of becoming a mother was finally fulfilled in 2008 when she and her husband became the unimaginably proud parents of a 3-year-old daughter that they adopted via the foster-care system. “After years of praying to be parents,” Vardalos says, “this little miracle simply appeared.”

The first few months involved exhausting efforts by all to acclimate and build trust, and Vardalos never sugarcoats the details, though she always buffers them with her and her husband’s complete joy and adoration of their headstrong, vivacious little girl. Vardalos brings readers along for a delightful ride as she navigates the toddler and preschool years, ending the story with a helpful question-and-answer section about the adoptive process. Her goal is to educate her readers about adoption, and she achieves it in an endlessly entertaining fashion.

SHARED LAUGHTER

Comedian Carol Burnett also has a powerful mothering story to share. Like many, I grew up watching “The Carol Burnett Show” and still grin at the thought of her Tarzan yell and the unflappable Mrs. Wiggins. Now Burnett bares her soul in her touching memoir, Carrie and Me.

Carrie Hamilton was the oldest of Burnett’s three daughters, a young woman who shared both her mother’s looks and her wide-ranging talent as an actress and singer. Burnett highlights the great triumphs and tragedies of her beloved daughter’s life, filling in details with stories, diary entries and letters. The pair went public in 1979 about Carrie’s adolescent struggle with drugs and alcohol—a multi-year battle from which she ultimately emerged victorious. Mother and daughter later collaborated on a play about Carol’s early life, and the adult Carrie lived in a Colorado cabin while writing a story called “Sunrise in Memphis,” which is included in the book.

Sadly, Carrie’s bold spirit and artistic talent were cut short by lung cancer in 2002. Carol and Carrie were lucky to have each other, and their ironclad bond shines through in this short but sweet memoir.

A LIFE RENEWED

Like Nia Vardalos, Glennon Doyle Melton became something of an instant mom, but in a very different way. On Mother’s Day 2002, this unwed 26-year-old was shocked to discover she was pregnant. What’s more, she was battling bulimia, alcohol and drug addiction. Happily, her life of struggle has become one of triumph, which she describes in Carry On, Warrior.

Becoming a wife and mother was a turning point for Melton, who is now the mother of three and the successful creator of the blog Momastery.com, some essays from which are collected here. She calls herself a “reckless truth teller,” and like Anne Lamott (one of her favorite writers), Melton has dedicated her life not only to her family but to religious faith and humor. She explains that once her husband and first child entered her life, she realized, “If two such good, kind, full people needed and wanted and loved me, could I really be so worthless? Suddenly, it seemed that there might be parts of life that were beautiful and good and meant for ME.”

All four of these books will make readers laugh and cry in recognition, and think more deeply about their own roots and relationships.

How do you approach Mother’s Day? With reverence and joy, or sorrow and trepidation? Are you fulfilled, exhausted or both from being a dutiful child or caretaking parent? No matter what your emotions, these engrossing books about mothers, children and parenting are bound to speak…

Fiction

Moms in fiction: The perils of parenting

Feature by Stephanie Gerber

Every woman facing motherhood asks herself a million different questions: Who will I become after having children? What if I never have children? How will life change after a baby arrives? As Mother’s Day nears, two novels offer very different portraits of motherhood, allowing readers to see themselves reflected in these honest and moving stories.

The Sunshine When She’s Gone, Thea Goodman’s debut novel, explores what happens when everything in life is suddenly divided into “before” and “after.” The big event? Having a baby.

When Dad bundles up the baby for an early morning walk, an impulsive whim takes him to the airport and onto a plane bound for Barbados. It’s a rash decision compelled by his desire for his wife of “before” to reappear—maybe rest will do the trick? As a father who “had never done anything without first asking [his wife] Veronica” struggles with a sick baby and a search for a complicated goat-milk formula, he begins to better understand his overwhelmed, overtired wife.

Meanwhile the new mom finds herself unexpectedly free from child and husband for a weekend—an eternity!—and she revisits the woman she was before becoming consumed with naptimes and nursing. But her impulsive actions take her down a path as misguided as her husband’s.

This dreamlike story is told from the alternating points of view of the young couple, whose life-altering decisions can only be attributed to sleep deprivation. You may laugh at their absurdity, but author Goodman brings compassion and humor to the domestic struggles of new parents trying to come to terms with the changes to themselves, their spouses and their marriage “after baby.”

ADOPTION AGONY

Told with brave humor by acclaimed author Jennifer Gilmore, The Mothers is the raw story of one couple’s seemingly endless journey to become parents.

After abandoning IVF attempts, Jesse and Ramon decide to pursue domestic open adoption. And the process is bureaucratic, baffling and often heartbreaking.

The author, who wrote about her personal struggle to adopt a child in Vogue, said she turned to fiction to make the process “interesting instead of just emotionally devastating.” And she succeeds. Both brutally funny and honest, Gilmore confronts Jesse’s “obscene wanting” for a child: The hope that never ends. The anger, self-pity and panic. When friends try to tell her that motherhood “doesn’t solve everything,” it does nothing to diminish her need. Yes, Jesse is stubborn, but Gilmore gives her compassion and optimism, even as her world is reduced to pregnant bellies and babies that can’t be escaped.

The path to adoption forces Jesse and Ramon to confront issues of race, drug use and mental illness. It exacts an unknown toll on their marriage even as they forge unlikely friendships with other prospective parents. The process becomes even more tortured when Jesse attempts to build relationships with the birth mothers. She talks for hours with women who may or may not “choose” them—and who might not even be pregnant!

The novel is filled with such keen insight that the ending of this intimate ride is abrupt. Perhaps the author, who hasn’t reached the end of her own story, can’t quite give it to her characters either.

Every woman facing motherhood asks herself a million different questions: Who will I become after having children? What if I never have children? How will life change after a baby arrives? As Mother’s Day nears, two novels offer very different portraits of motherhood, allowing readers…

Nonfiction

Getaways for armchair travelers

Feature by Heather Seggel

Will you be vacationing at an exotic locale this year or staycationing in your own backyard? If your journey is limited to armchair explorations, consider these four travel memoirs, reviewed with tips to help you find the perfect read, be it a dip into history or a high-speed adventure.

FUN ON TWO WHEELS

Amsterdam is widely known for its relaxed laws where drugs and prostitution are concerned, but it’s also heaven on earth for cyclists. In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist recalls Pete Jordan’s simple plan to spend a semester abroad, which immediately gets complicated when he falls in love with the city and its bike-friendly ways. Instead of returning to his wife, Amy Joy, he convinces her to move to Amsterdam and they work at building a life and starting a family. While Pete enjoys their freewheeling moves from one sublet to the next, Amy Joy discovers an aptitude for bike repair that leads first to a job, then a place to stay, and ultimately a family business.

Travel Tip: The memoir is at most 10 percent of the story here; this is really a meticulously researched history of cycling, in both Amsterdam and the U.S. Dig in for the stories of bike theft (even Anne Frank wasn’t exempt from having her bike stolen) and the wartime use of bikes to ferry the injured to safety. Before long you’ll be dusting off your Schwinn and trying to “dink” your sweetheart on the back (that is, carry her seated sidesaddle behind you). Just watch out for fire hydrants.

GLOBAL ROAD TRIP

When Dina Bennett felt the intimacy fading from her marriage, it seemed like throwing herself into a project with her husband, Bernard, would be the perfect fix. Some couples take up swing dancing, some study gourmet cooking; these two chose to participate in an 8,000-mile road race from behind the wheel of a 1940 Cadillac LaSalle. Peking to Paris: Life and Love on a Short Drive Around Half the World follows the pair as they break down and rebuild not just the car, but their ideas about one another. Bennett agrees to the rally despite having no mechanical aptitude and a propensity for carsickness. When it’s all over, she misses the cramped quarters of their beloved Cadillac (nicknamed Roxanne) so much that they take to the road again—this time in a rental car. The camaraderie between participants in the race is a secondary character: “I look around the table and note Americans, Swiss, French, Dutch, Greek. And the one nationality we now have in common: Rally.”

Travel Tip: Start at the end. The book’s glossary and numerous appendices spoil nothing, but give you a clear sense of what goes into a project like this, which only enhances the fun once you actually hit the road. And get out a world map, just to put one finger on Peking (Beijing) and one on Paris to visualize the distance these cars crossed, often over no road whatsoever.

A PERSONAL JOURNEY

As the author of the Frugal Traveler column in the New York Times for four years, Matt Gross focused on getting where you want to go as cheaply as possible. In The Turk Who Loved Apples: And Other Tales of Losing My Way Around the World, his concerns are more philosophical as he examines why we travel and what our travel experiences can tell us about ourselves. The narrative gathers stories from his stops all around the globe, but strings them along a continuous thread: the tale of his first solo sojourn after college, a trip to Vietnam where he lived for a year and began to eke out a living as a writer.

Travel Tip: While this book makes more far-flung stops than any other here, it’s less about any of the people and places Gross visits than about how they shaped his growth as a man, a writer and a traveler. What has kept him on the go for so long? “I want to be uncomfortable, to be an outsider not just in my own mind but in the eyes of everyone who glances at my awkward, bumbling self,” he writes. His accounts here bear much of that out, from engaging the services of a Southeast Asian prostitute to suffering through numerous bouts of giardia, a vicious intestinal parasite. There are sweet moments as well, as when the Turk of the title refers to the author as both friend and brother after their brief time together. After confirming the meaning of the second word by consulting his phrasebook, Gross is suitably wowed.

ONCE MORE TO AFRICA

The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari follows noted travel writer Paul Theroux on a final tour of the African continent, winding north from Cape Town into Botswana, Namibia and Angola, often despite warnings not to bother. At the age of 70, Theroux reflects on changes he’s seen in Africa—for every improvement in one area, the poverty and pain seem to have grown elsewhere—while also taking stock of himself and his fitness for further travel. Initially dismissive of travelers who go “animal watching in the early morning, busybodying in the afternoon,” he revises his view after visiting Tsumkwe, an outpost long ignored by the Namibian government, whose language and oral history would not have been preserved but for the efforts of outsiders.

Travel Tip: Theroux is a master storyteller; his prose seems workaday, but every scene is alive on the page, and he delivers travel and memoir in a near-perfect balance. Read this book if you enjoy getting lost in language as much as scenery. You’ll hate coming to the end, but it’ll be a beautiful journey.

Will you be vacationing at an exotic locale this year or staycationing in your own backyard? If your journey is limited to armchair explorations, consider these four travel memoirs, reviewed with tips to help you find the perfect read, be it a dip into history…

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