June 5, 2008

• In the Garden

  Who knew that bubbles actually lose their elasticity over time?  I did not.  At first, when the bubble bath in the library was decidedly not bubbly, I thought the fan was too fierce and blowing the solution right off the wand.  Nope, that wasn’t it.  Still  meager pickings in the bubble department.  Harumph.  I don’t know who was more disappointed me or the children. A quick run to the staff room allowed for the theft of dish soap and water (I didn’t have to steal the water but they get cranky when I use supplies for projects and then … forget that I used them for projects….) and those created mediocre bubbles so it wasn’t a total failure but still not the kind of wide eyed experience I like the bubble bath to be.  So one of our patrons who was on her way out of the Village and into civilization offered to pick up genuine bubble solution and we are in business for this afternoon.  I tested them yesterday just to reassure myself it wasn’t the fan and there will be bubbling this afternoon and evening at Ye Olde Library.

   

  Speculation about the Swuck:  A bird?  A vegetable?  A mineral?  An oil rich deposit somewhere off Lake Erie?  Hmmmmm.  Perhaps tomorrow, my curious friends, perhaps tomorrow.

   

  Book Reviews

  It is interesting, once book award season is done for another year, to think about the also rans.  For some reason or another, there are certain authors who ought to win awards but because of the competition in a particular year or some other unfathomable and bizarre turn of events never do win the big ones.  Barbara O’Connor is one such author and one of my favorites. I first met her characters with the novel Moonpie and Ivy, a little bit of a book with a wallop of class and style and language that touched me deeply.  Each book of hers I read after that was a pleasure and an experience well worth having.  I just finished Greetings from Nowhere and I am compelled to say, quite emphatically, READ THIS BOOK. O’Connor weaves a multi-generational tale like no one else around.  The relationships are real.  As I move closer and closer to being one of the Elders I understand how real those relationships are.  As each of the characters grows into a new awareness of self through knowing the others, they each begin to understand that Nowhere becomes Somewhere when hope is involved.

   

  Kevin Henkes is probably best known for his picture books.  Kitten’s First Full Moon won the Caldecott Medal in 2005 and a well deserved win it was too.  I love that simple little book.  But one of my favorite thing about Henkes’ writing happens when he moves from picture books to novel.  It is then that he uses words to create the pictures and what a master he is.  I loved Olive’s Ocean, winner of a Newbury Honor, and so did my mother.  It was a book I read to her on one of her infrequent hospital stays before she died.

  His latest offering, Bird Lake Moon, is breathtaking.  The language is simple and descriptive giving a clear and poignant picture of a friendship, a family, and a lake.  There are no unnecessary adverbs or adjectives weakening this prose.  Bird Lake Moon is as clear as a night sky, as full as the moon, and as clear as the bark of a dog on a cloudless night.  Kevin Henkes writes much better than I do – thank goodness!

   

  And so it goes.

  • 6:08 pm
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