Turkey Lurkey! It's time for Thanksgiving books!

Here are our family's picks for fave Thanksgiving books we've read this month---

When a town is reduced to considering shredded wheat as their Thanksgiving dinner, they hatch a plan to catch their "plump and perky turkey" by recruiting a turkey as a model for a turkey tribute art festival.  Hi jinx ensue!

The ugly pumpkin is devastated when he isn't picked to be a jack o' lantern for Halloween, but things start looking up around Thanksgiving when he realizes that he's a SQUASH!

Speaking of turkey, Thanksgiving dinner will be at my parents' house like every year.  And like every year, I must assume that we won't be offered any leftovers.  I know it's shocking, but they like to keep all the leftovers for themselves!  As a result (and by the Cobbler's request), Thanksgiving the Remix will be happening at our house on Friday.  If I was going to cook a turkey, it wasn't going to be one that's jacked up on hormones and antibiotics and raised in the equivalent of a dark room. Amazingly, I was able to find a fresh, free range, organic turkey in the city!  It was a little bit weird having Tom Thumb socialize along the fence with some turkeys that are going to be on someone's dining room table on Thursday, but we had a pretty awesome experience at Roperti's Turkey Farm.  One of the employees even carried our turkey to my car!  As my vegetarian alternative, I'm planning on making this yummy looking veggie streudel on Thursday.  Let the good times roll!

Book Review: Let the Great World Spin

Before I get into my review, I have to share a few images with you---

It always amazes me the variety of covers a book may have depending upon the country of its release.  Why the red-orange line drawing of the New York City skyline topped off by the tightrope walker on the U.S. cover, while Europe gets the guy doing the back bend or the man lying down on the tightrope?


When I first found out my book club was reading Let the Great World Spin for our November meeting, I was under the impression the book was about tightrope walking.  I guess that's a logical conclusion since there's a tightrope walker in all the cover art.  So when I started reading the book and the author opened the book with two Irish brothers Corrigan and Cieran, I kept trying to figure out who was going to end up being the tight rope guy.  It turns out the answer is neither.


Let the Great World Spin is set in Vietnam era New York City.  Corrigan is a member of a monastic order and he lives in the projects trying to help prostitutes.  His brother Cieran comes from Ireland to live with him.  The first seventy pages of the book sets up their relationship and Corrigan's relationship with others.  A tragic incident occurs at the end of the chapter.  I was waiting anxiously to see what happened next, but I didn't get to find out just then because the next chapter was about Claire.


Claire is a woman who lives in a Park Avenue penthouse who lost her son in Vietnam.  She's a member of a group of women who have all lost children to the war who periodically meet for coffee and breakfast.  It really was an abrupt jump for me.  What about Corrigan and Cieran?  What happened to them?  At this point, I was a bit frustrated with the author but decided to read on.  I didn't get to read anymore about Claire though because the third chapter was about Lara and Blaine.


The book continued this way---each chapter from a different character's perspective.  The one thing that seemed to unite them was them all seeing or hearing about a tightrope walker up on a line between the World Trade Center Towers.  The more you read, however, the more you find out that it isn't the tightrope walker who is connecting them all.  They were all already connected.


Let the Great World Spin is one of those books that when you finally realize what's happening (in this case, that all the characters are linked in some way) you can't wait to get to the next chapter.  I was a fan of the TV show Lost when it was airing and it had a similar format as this book.  In each episode, you would get some background on a character and then it would turn out that they're linked to someone else on the island.  It's the same situation here.  The author Colum McCann does an amazing job describing people and locations.  I'm not a person who normally can hear a character's voice in my head.  It's usually my own voice just reading the text.  While reading this book though, I actually felt like I could hear the characters speak.  He described New York City in such a way that the location actually became a character for me.  Because the characters develop more and more in each chapter (some that were mere supporting actors in the beginning get to tell their own story later in the book), you feel like you really know them by the end.  A hardened prostitute named Tillie becomes a grandmother desperate to see her grandchildren.  A rich white woman from the Upper East Side becomes close friends with a black woman from the Bronx.  A man can walk the tightrope between the twin towers and live.  Everything that is impossible is suddenly possible...or is it?  Ultimately, the book's message for me was that there is hope in all things no matter how dark the outlook is at the moment.


Even though it's the 44th book I've read this year, Let the Great World Spin is my favorite book so far.  It hands down beats everything else I've read and I highly recommend it.


I leave you with a line that comes near the end of the book that sums up the book's message for me:


"The world spins.  We stumble on.  It is enough."

Up to my ears in SAGE!---Harvesting and freezing herbs

Tom Thumb poses with the giant sage bush while opening his bag  to collect the herb harvest.

I'm a little tardy for the party this year in terms of harvesting herbs.  We have a small herb garden in our yard that is home to all my favorites --- parsley, basil, rosemary, thyme, chives, mint, oregano, and sage.  Our sage went absolutely BONKERS this year and became a small bush.  I finally cut it back today with Tom Thumb's help and also cut some of the remaining rosemary, thyme and oregano.

Here's the monster sage---

 My baby stick of rosemary...

 A ton of thyme...

I also learned my lesson about oregano---bury the pot it comes in underground with it.  My oregano is now a ground cover in the herb garden!


The real question though is what to do with this overabundance of sage?  I'll probably freeze most of it, but it has also inspired me to try to make my own smudge sticks.  My kitchen certainly could use some purification.  Maybe the kids would complain less about my cooking?  Ha ha!  So I'll hang some to dry as well.  I also found this link to 45 things to do with fresh sage.


After doing my research, here's the skinny on freezing fresh herbs:

First, wash those little stinkers.  Literally!  It smells so good in my kitchen!)

Then, pat dry.

Pick off all the wilted or brown or spotted leaves, if you haven't done it already.

Remove the rest of the leaves off the stems (except for thyme.  Leave those leaves attached).

Bag 'em, tag 'em, and toss 'em in the freezer.  

Voila---fresh herbs to add to recipes in the winter!

I finished the rosemary, thyme and a bit of oregano.  I think I could harvest oregano forever and still not run out.  The sage is resting peacefully on my counter awaiting my next move.

Tonight is Tom Thumb's belt test in karate for yellow belt---woo hoo!  Can't wait to report how that turns out.  

One more quick thing --- if you live near a Kroger grocery store, you must partake in some store brand salted caramel truffle ice cream.  Happiness on a spoon!

Preschool Read Aloud of the Week: Katie and the Sunflowers

I love books by James Mayhew!  I heard about them when Red was 3 or 4 and couldn't wait to check them out at the library.  At the time, I was really committed to the Charlotte Mason method and one of the things her philosophy advocates is picture study of great works of art.  Katie and the Sunflowers, along with Mayhew's other books, incorporates the works of famous artists into the book's plot.


I've been reading Katie and the Sunflowers to Tom Thumb this week and he loves it!  He wants to read "the sunflower book" before his nap everyday.  I don't mind because I love the story and the illustrations too.  In this book, Katie goes to the art museum with her grandmother.  She comes upon Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers, 

reaches out to touch it, and accidentally topples the vase of flowers out of the picture.  She enlists one of the dancing girls from Paul Gauguin's Breton Girls Dancing to help her put things back together.  

Things go from bad to worse when the dancing girl's dog runs off into the museum.  Fun and mayhem ensue with them stepping into more paintings to recover her dog before putting everything right again.  What a great book!  While our library has two of Mayhew's other Katie books (Katie Meets the Impressionists and Katie and the Mona Lisa.  Red especially liked the one with Mona Lisa!), I've been perusing his other Katie titles on Amazon and like what I see.  I think I may have found a Christmas gift or two for Red and Tom Thumb.  Yay!

A new reading practice plan for Red

First grade has turned out to be much more intense than I anticipated.  I really don't remember it being this crazy when I was 6!  Red has homework nearly every night.  In addition, her teacher has requested that she read to me 15-20 minutes each evening.  Before we were only doing read alouds at bedtime.  With everything we already have going on, what's a mama to do?


I finally figured out what we're going to try and we gave it a shot for the first time last night.  I picked out two books for her at the library this week that are at her reading level.  I gave her the choice of Catwings or Sarah Plain and Tall.  She chose Catwings and read me a chapter last night.  I asked her some quick comprehension questions about the story (i.e. What's the name of the kittens' mom?  What's different about the kittens?  Why does their mother want them to leave the neighborhood?).  Then I read her a chapter of Princess Academy, the new read aloud chapter book we just started.  I'm hopeful that this new reading plan will work for us and help her reading improve even more.  


What do you do for reading practice at your house?

Book Review: The Mysterious Benedict Society

Red received The Mysterious Benedict Society as a a birthday gift from my sister Christy earlier in the year.  Christy is the relative who gives books for every occasion (she's notorious for trolling used book stores) and usually makes good selections.  This time she picked another hit.


The book opens with protagonist Reynie Muldoon living at an orphanage.  Reynie is an extremely bright child who longs for more challenges in life.  When his teacher Miss Perumal comes across a curious newspaper advertisement soliciting gifted children looking for "special opportunities" to take a test, Reynie decides to check it out.  Only four brilliant children make the cut after the testing---Reynie, the obsessive compulsive Sticky Washington, the MacGyver-esque Kate Wetherall, and the annoyingly stubborn Constance Contraire.  They come together under the tutelage of the peculiar Mr. Benedict to form "The Mysterious Benedict Society" and begin a dangerous adventure to save the world.


The author's tone had a Roald Dahl feeling to me, which I enjoyed.  As a read aloud, this book was LONG.  It clocks in at 485 pages and the print is on the small side.  Because of the length, the book at times dragged.  Sometimes I felt that the writer could have tightened the plot up a bit and made it clip along a bit faster.  That's from an adult point of view though because Red LOVED it.  She couldn't wait for a new chapter each night.  We took a few nights off here and there to read other things so it actually took us nearly two months to read it.  In fact, she was so into the book that she wants to start the sequel, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey.  I'm pushing for a break to read another Aunt Christy gift, Princess Academy.  It looks right up Red's alley, not to mention it won the Newbery Honor in 2006.


I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things with blogging and life in general this coming week.  Last week was kind of a mess with Halloween (had a great time, but it was a little piece of crazy), jury duty, and being sick.  Yes, jury duty actually made me sick.  After they picked my panel for a trial, the deputy escorted us to a spare court room where we sat for hours with no water.  There were no drinking fountains on the floor and the bathroom was extremely filthy.  I resorted to drinking from the bathroom tap at one point out of desperation.  By the time I got home, my headache was bad from the dehydration that I threw up.  So I can say with confidence, jury duty makes me sick.  In the end, the defendant plead guilty to a lesser charge so they didn't need us anyway.  Sigh...


And Christmas is officially on it's way whether I like it or not.  It drives me batty when the local radio stations start playing Christmas music the day after Halloween.  Grrrrr....  
On a good note, you all will get sneak peeks on all the projects I'm working on for gifts in the coming weeks.  


Cheers!