Book Review: Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen

I'm such a sucker for a gorgeous book cover!  Over the course of 2011, I've heard several times from those also doing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge that Sarah Addison Allen was an author to check out!  I've had her debut novel, Garden Spells, on my radar for a while now and finally settled down just before Christmas to read it.  After whizzing through it in two days, I then followed it up with her second novel, The Sugar Queen.  Her style is very similar to Alice Hoffman and Garden Spells is reminiscent of Hoffman's Practical Magic.

Garden Spells opens on the house of Claire Waverly.  The Waverly family has always been special.  The townspeople have sought potions from their garden to help them with life and love.  Claire owns a catering business and has a special talent of making just the right food to make what her client's desires come true.  Her distant elderly cousin, Evanelle, has the gift of anticipation.  Evanelle is always giving people things she knows they will need down the road.  When Claire's estranged sister Sydney returns to town with her 5 year old daughter Bay, Claire's life is turned upside down.  What magic will happen when the Waverly women reunite?  

In The Sugar Queen, 27 year old Josey is trapped.  She lives with her elderly mother as her glorified errand girl, and she seeks comfort in her treasure trove of sweets, travel magazines, and romance novels she keeps in a secret room attached to her closet.  When Della Lee, a tough talking hard living waitress, takes refuge in her closet, Josey's life starts changing.  Is it for the better?

Both novels have similar plot lines---stifled heroine's life is up heaved when a mysterious person enters her life.  Both novels have love (and a wee bit o' sex), a violent ex-husband or boyfriend, and supernatural forces at work.  Both novels are also pleasant, mindless reads.  After all the heavy reading I've done this year, it's nice to end December on a fluffy, cotton candy like note.  If you need a pleasant book to tuck you in at night, Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen fit the bill.

Starting Oak Meadow Kindergarten with Tom Thumb

Back when I was in my Waldorf phase, I bought on eBay a vintage 1993 set of Oak Meadow Kindergarten curricula (here's a link to their current kindergarten offerings).  I used it in its entirety with Red the year she was four and we really enjoyed it so I dusted it off this week for Tom Thumb.  Although Oak Meadow is not considered "real Waldorf" by Waldorf purists (if you want "real Waldorf", look here or here), it has all the things I liked about the educational philosophy while still leaning mainstream.  The beauty of this curriculum is its simplicity and gentle pace.  For example, here's what they want you to do for language arts for week 1:


-Tell the story of The Magic Spindle to your child from the Fairy Tale book.
-Ask your child to use crayons to draw a picture of a haystack and the letter A in his main lesson book.
-Ask your child to make the letter A in beeswax.
-Help your child gather sticks and tie them in bundles to form an A.
-Ask your child to draw the letter A with a stick in the dirt.
-Help your child find tree branches that fork.  Tie a piece of yarn between the forks to form the letter A.  Find many branches and make many As.
-Teach your child the tongue twister "My Dame."


There are also short fun activities for mathematics, science, art and music.  I'm sure most kids could get all the activities done in one day and all in one shot if you let them.  The idea is to stretch it out and really let it sink in, not to mention have fun!


Tom Thumb has never been an artsy kid.  Red was always using crayons as a preschooler and got in trouble more than once for "decorating" her bedroom furniture.  Tom Thumb, on the other hand, has never shown any interest in drawing.  Even when I've offered to do it with him, he declines.  I was really proud of him yesterday when he gave it a try.  We've read The Magic Spindle three times already this week (he likes it that much!) so I asked him if he wanted to try to draw a picture of the spindle in the haystack with me.  That picture is supposed to resemble a letter A.  Here's the sample I drew back a couple of years ago when I was doing the curriculum with Red:

Tom Thumb picked up his crayons and with a little coaxing he produced his own drawing:

It was nice to see him give something he's not particularly fond of a try.

Then, of course, he was back to doing what he does love:

We're still plugging away at The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading.  When I started this book with Red, she was three months shy of being 5 years old.  Tom Thumb just turned 4 in September.  We started sooner so we're going at a much slower pace and my expectations are set right this time.  Doing this book at times was frustrating with Red because my expectations were all wrong.  I thought we could get a lesson completed every day.  That was completely unrealistic.  My goal this time around is 1/3 of lesson per day or finishing one or two lessons each week.  For the 4 year old with a short attention span, this seems to be the sweet spot.  Here's an example of the amount we might get done at one time.  This picture shows the second page of lesson #46.  This is equal to about 1/3 of a daily lesson:

Slow and steady wins the race, right?  

I'm hopeful that we'll be on target to complete the book in June 2013, right before Tom Thumb enters 1st grade.  My mom-in-law arrives tomorrow for a week long holiday visit.  I'm off to do battle with some dirt! :-)

Book Review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

I fell completely off the horse in terms of my goal of finishing 52 books in 2011.  This last month has been a struggle.  I know it's not technically winter, but it certainly feels like it, and I always struggle with being motivated to do anything once the days get shorter and darker.  I've pumped up my Vitamin D intake and the Cobbler has insisted that I take out my Happy Light so I have an inkling of hope that I can still make it!


Bearing that in mind, I have been wading my way through The Elegance of the Hedgehog over the last month.  It was my book club's pick for our December meeting so needless to say I didn't finish it in time, but the woman who is charge of getting our books back to the library took pity on me and let me keep the book a few extra days.  Thankfully, I completed it today--- my 46th book!


Just so we're clear here---the book is not about a hedgehog.  Well, not literally.  The Elegance of the Hedgehog has two narrators --- Renee, a 50 something concierge for a high end apartment building in Paris, and Paloma, a 12 year old girl who lives in one of the apartments.  Because she finds life to be pretty meaningless, Paloma is planning to kill herself and set her apartment on fire on her 13th birthday.  While the two characters don't have any interaction until mid way through the book, they have much in common.  Renee and Paloma both feel trapped in what they view as a sea of mediocrity.   They both feel they have to hide their intellect from those around them, and they both despise the airs put on by the wealthy people who live in the building.  Renee goes to such extremes to hide her intelligence so that she seems a "normal" concierge that she purchases poor quality food (apparently, a concierge wouldn't eat filet mignon) and rigs her TV to appear that it's on all the time to maintain the facade.  Everything changes when the food critic who lives on the fourth floor succumbs to a heart attack and his apartment is sold to a Japanese man named Kakuro Ozu.  Ozu immediately sees Renee and Paloma as they are and attempts to befriend them.  His actions ultimately change the course of their lives.  


Overall, I was charmed by this book.  Unlike the pretentious 15 year old narrator in the book The Beginners that I read earlier in the year, Paloma's 12 year old voice is actually believable.  She wants to find a reason to live in this world and hunts relentlessly for it.  Renee is also a very sympathetic character and you root for her to come out of her shell as the book progresses.  It's been common in many of the books I've read this year for the authors to have their narrators alternate chapters.  This is the case in this book as well.  One interesting twist though is the use of different fonts.  Renee has a font similar to Times New Roman, while Paloma has a tinier version of what appears to be Arial.

My only complaints with the book (which really are minor) are its long passages about philosophy and its apparent political agenda.  In this book, with the exception of Ozu, if you're rich, you're stupid.  The rich people in the book are educated, but about things that are pointless in Renee's view.  Paloma feels the same way about her entire family, which is justified by how they're portrayed, but it rang a little forced to me.  In addition, there were a few points in the book where the author was trying to make a point about the level of Renee's intelligence by having her go on and on about Kant and a couple other philosophers' theories.  That really made the book drag.  If those passages had been tightened up a bit by the book's editor, this book could have gone beyond charming to amazing.


In the end, The Elegance of the Hedgehog leaves you with a wonderful message --- that there is beauty to be found in our broken world.  And at this time of year, that's something that I needed to hear.

Deck the halls...

...literally.

Here's my grocery list, Mom...

Last night, Red was complaining to me about how I never send money with her to school to buy snacks.  I'm really picky about what I want the kids eating and the "snacks" offered in her school cafeteria include a variety of chips and gummy fruit snacks.  In an effort to compromise, I said that when I make up our next grocery list she could tell me what she wanted me to buy for her lunches.  Our scanner is on the fritz right now so I can't post a photo of the original list, but here is a type written version of the list she emerged with about ten minutes after our conversation.  I have corrected the phonetic spellings for the ease of your reading:


Donuts
Propel Zero Water
Candy and graham crackers
Sun chips flavor cheese
Cheez-its
Purple foot wine for you or another kind
spicy chocolate
yogurt from Yoplait
thing for shoe for the dolls
things for star of the week poster
knitting kit
Puffs Plus tissues
Blanket or things to make blankets
more super friend coloring books
Books like rainbow magic
costumes for me and tom thumb
thing for doll clothes
thing for my wall
patches for my snow pants
decorations for the inside
decorations for fan
jewelry making kit
thing to decorate my closet
princess pink paint from either lowes or home depot
computer for me in my room


What is this?  A grocery list or a Christmas list?!?!?  I was especially amused by the addition of a bottle of wine for me and the thinly veiled request for me to paint her bedroom.  Is she really planning on decorating her ceiling fan and closet?  Only time will tell...

Want to jam out to some Christmas music for free?

Just a quick FYI ---Amazon is giving away a free Christmas song on MP3 everyday through Christmas.  Yay!  You can get such greatest hits as Twisted Sister's Deck the Halls.  I hurt my neck from all the head banging I just did. :-)


There's also some more normal ones too like Mannheim Steamroller's gorgeous rendition of Greensleeves, a pretty version of O Holy Night by someone named Leigh Nash, and Celtic Woman (they're always on PBS!) singing Ave Maria.  


Enjoy!

In the land of obnoxious Christmas letters...

The Cobbler and I in our 2003 Christmas letter photo during the end of my blonde phase.

Do Christmas letters annoy you or do you love them?  I fall into both camps depending on who the letter is coming from.  I have read about literally everything from won horseback riding tournaments and soccer games to a cancer diagnosis.  Yep, I once received a generic Christmas letter from a friend announcing she had cancer.  I debate every year about whether or not I'll write one, but then I look back at all the ones I've written going back to 2003 and think about how much things have changed since then.  Each letter is like a year put on ice for me.  It cracks me up how the letters were initially all about me and the Cobbler and what little we did aside from our jobs to all about the kids today.  Just for kicks, here are some highlights from our letters of the past---


2003:  With both of us working and no kids, I actually devoted an entire paragraph to our job descriptions.  That must have been a thrilling read for the relatives.


2004: We went to Italy for two weeks that fall and found out Red was on the way.  We got our cats too and I described them as "challenging---as baby animals tend to be."  That also was the Christmas that Pumpkin climbed the Christmas tree and took up residence there.


2005: Red is 6 months old when this letter goes out.  Here are my favorite sentences.  This one is regarding Red --- "Her musical tastes range from classical to the great nap inducer Celine Dion to disco.  Her current favorite song is “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen."  And about the cats I write--- "We were initially nervous about how they would react to Red, but we are relieved to report that they have adopted her as one of their own...Oliver is constantly trying to groom her (licking her head would be one of his favorite pastimes if I let him), and Pumpkin watches Red take her bath every night (although it may be just so she can drink the bath water)."


2006: A whole paragraph is devoted in depth to Red's vocabulary (again, probably a snoozer for the relatives), declaring her favorite words to say as "cracker and cookie."


2007: Tom Thumb was born this year.  There's a paragraph gushing about how he "lights up any room with his smile" and Red's room was clearly a fire hazard because "her bed is so jammed with books there is hardly room for her to sleep!"


2008:  My fave passage about Red  is "Her obsession with pirates is entering its eighth month.  She just finally let me remove the skull and cross bones tattoo that she has had on since Halloween."  About Tom Thumb I wrote "He also likes anything that has buttons (e.g. TV remotes, the telephone).  If we didn’t watch him like a hawk, everything would be broken.  We are now convinced that he is either going to be a professional singer (he is constantly making yodeling noises) or the next Olympic gold medalist in swimming."  I wrote about how I was reupholstering our living room furniture and I hoped I would finish before the kids entered high school.  On a good note, that is one unfinished project that has actually been completed since then...but I don't think I actually finished until the following summer.


2009: "The Queen of Mischief has found a perfect minion in her brother.  If there’s crayon on the wall, cookies missing from the jar, or the shampoo bottle is empty even though it was full before their bath, Red's first response is “Tom Thumb did it!”  And he probably did do it, but definitely with some help from his big sister. "


2010: "Red spends her free time singing loudly, interpretive dancing (it’s a hoot), reading, and making art out of anything and I mean anything.  Tom Thumb practices daily to be a future super spy by climbing on counters, discovering new ways to eat peanut butter, stealing bananas then jamming them in his mouth to destroy the evidence, and commandeering any available electronic devices (including the Cobbler’s cell phone, the GPS, etc.) for his own secret missions.  At his side through it all is Blue Blankie, his well worn baby blanket which he loses every single day and then cries until I find it.  I told the Cobbler for Christmas I want a tracking device for it so I don’t lose my mind."


And now we're up to our 2011 Christmas letter.  For those of you among my readers who know you'll be receiving a hard copy of this, you can close your eyes.  As for everyone else, I unveil our very own obnoxious holiday letter---the 2011 edition:

"Red entered first grade this year.  She wishes she could go to school for a couple of hours and then spend the rest of the day at home playing with me and Tom Thumb.  She enjoys taking jazz and Hawaiian dance classes weekly and has joined her school’s Girl Scout troop.  Red spends her spare time singing and dancing in front of the mirror in our living room, reading, drawing fairy castles, and building forts out of couch cushions with Tom Thumb.  At the top of her Christmas list are “minerals and diamonds.”  Obviously, she thinks she’s been extra good this year!

We don’t know how Tom Thumb continues to grow taller when it seems like he never eats!  His latest hobby is disagreeing with everyone about everything.  If he asks us if a stop sign is red and we say yes, he’ll say, “No, it isn’t.”  His other favorite is “No, I willn’t.”  Some days I feel like we’re trapped in a Charles Dickens’ novel with his choice of archaic English.  Tom Thumb started taking tae kwon do in August in a preschool class called “Little Dragons.”  He earned his yellow belt in November and was thrilled since his favorite color is yellow.  When at home and not debating me, Tom Thumb likes playing board games and covering the floor of his room with train tracks.  Tom Thumb is asking Santa for “a yellow dump truck and a yellow gumball.”

The Cobbler completed building his electric car using a 2001 Focus body in the spring.  The Cobbler and his car with its “ELECTRC” vanity plate were the talk of the neighborhood all summer.  My time was spent in an unending battle against dirt and laundry, while running the kids to their classes and volunteering at Red's school.  I had a goal of reading 52 books this year and I’ve finished 44 so I still have a remote shot at making it.  If not, there’s always next year!  My favorite book this year was “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann.  Read it. You’ll like it!

So what do you think?  Obnoxious or just right?  Too late!  It's already printed---ha ha!  

In the end, I like our Christmas letters.  This letter is like my very own time capsule.  Is it gushing?  Yes.  Does it leave out some of the harder moments?  Definitely.  But what do you want to remember most?  I choose the beautiful moments 2011 has given me.

Getting ready to celebrate St. Nicholas Day

Our family has celebrated St. Nicholas day on December 6th since the children were small.  My husband and I LOVE Christmas!  He loves to decorate the outside of the house (I think Clark Griswold is his inspiration), we have a large Department 56 Village that we've collected over the years, and we especially love Santa Claus.  Although I figured out my mother was Santa because they had the same handwriting, the Cobbler was told by a Sunday School teacher that Santa wasn't real when he was in 1st grade.  


I always wanted our kids to grow up knowing that Santa Claus was a real person so they weren't in for a shock when they were older.  Over the years we have emphasized that Santa Claus or St. Nicholas actually lived and that people do kind things for each other or give gifts at Christmas to emulate him.  Every year we read them the same books from the library about Saint Nicholas around this time of year.  


Our first pick is usually The Legend of St. Nicholas by Demi.  This book is the most religious in tone of our three books we read and focuses on St. Nicholas's sainthood.  It covers St. Nicholas's entire life, including his childhood and also some of the more macabre stories like the murder and pickling of the boys who St. Nicholas then resurrects.  Red, who is a kid who really digs church, loves this one.  She even insists on saying the prayer to St. Nicholas that is printed the end of the book---and we're not even Catholic!

Our next pick is a biography by Ann Tompert simply titled St. Nicholas.  This book is in more of a biography format and has some really interesting illustrations that are intended to look like mosaics.  Again, this book covers his life in its entirety and discusses his miracles, but takes a much less religious approach and explains his life in a more "here's the facts ma'am" narrative.

Finally, my favorite is Santa Who? by Gail Gibbons.  It talks about the origins of Christmas and its legends.  The author talks about who St. Nicholas was, how his persona was developed into Sinter Cleas in Holland and then Santa Claus, how December 25 was chosen as the date for Christmas, and how Santa Claus is depicted in America and in other countries.


I so look forward to December 6th.  We usually read all three books, but particularly stress the story of the three impoverished maidens, from which the tradition of hanging stockings comes.  Then, Red and Tom Thumb put their shoes on the fireplace mantel before they go to bed.  We fill their shoes with gold chocolate coins and they get a new Christmas book.  This year's book is The Twelve Days of Christmas in Michigan.

I'm really looking forward to reading it to them!  If you want a treasure trove of information about St. Nicholas and different ways to commemorate his day (December 6), go to The St. Nicholas Center website.  It's fantastic!