Reach a Child – A Good Cause

http://reachachild.org/

We just wanted to make all of you aware of the fastest growing youth outreach initiative in the country called REACH a Child.org . What this non-profit organization does is collects and donates children’s books to kids in crisis situations through the local Police, State Partol, Sheriff, EMS and fire departments staff and volunteers. These officers hand out these children’s books ( one book at a time) to children that they meet at the scene of an accident, fire or other domestic crisis situation where children are involved. The books play an important role in giving the child an opportunity to redirect their focus away from the troubling situation and on to something more positive …like a story in a children’s book! Please visit our website at http://www.REACHaChild.org and find out how you can get this program going in your own community! We look forward to hearing from many of you in the days ahead! Help us to “Put a smile on the face of a child in the time of need!” like our mission statement reads!

Respectfully,

Paul S. Gilbertson, Co-Founder/CEO
Author/Public Speaker
paul.gilbertson@REACHaChild.org

The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz by Michelle Cameron

Pocket Books, 2009 ISBN: 9781439118221

Written by a descendant of Rabbi Meir Ben Baruch of Rothenberg, a noted Talmudic scholar and commentator of the Middle Ages, Cameron explores Baruch’s life, and the life of the Jewish communities of Medieval France, Germany, and England, through the viewpoint of a fictional character: the Rabbi’s wife, Shira, about whom nothing (not even her real name) is actually known.

The imagined character of Shira is an intelligent and lively daughter of a Rabbinic scholar who runs a yeshiva in their home. To the disapproval of the community, Shira’s father teaches his motherless daughter to read and write, and to study Torah, something that gets harder for her to do as she gets older and becomes more and more responsible for overseeing the household and the running of the school. Shira and Meir meet while he is studying at her father’s school, and theirs is a love match, but Meir’s expectations of Shira to be a traditional wife often chafe at her.

Despite their occasional differences, and perhaps because of the challenges faced by the Jewish communities in Medieval Europe: anti-Semitism that ranged from restricting people’s lives to violent attacks, to the burning of every copy of the Talmud in a community (a real historical event on Meir Ben Baruch’s life which is recounted here), to accusations of witchcraft, mass imprisonment for imagined crimes, or the crimes of others, Shira and Meir pull together and build a rich life together.
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Well-researched, and rich with both historical detail, and emotion, this is a book that readers of historical fiction will find informative and deeply satisfying.

National Book Critics Circle Finalists Announced – Winners to be Announced March 11th

Autobiography:

Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End (Norton)
Debra Gwartney, Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Mary Karr, Lit (Harper)
Kati Marton, Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America (Simon & Schuster)
Edmund White, City Boy, Bloomsbury

Biography:

Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (Knopf)
Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor (Little, Brown)
Benjamin Moser, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector (Oxford University Press)
Stanislao G. Pugliese, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin Press)

Criticism:

Eula Biss, Notes From No Man’s Land: American Essays (Graywolf Press)
Stephen Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry (Graywolf Press)
Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (Norton)
David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture (Da Capo Press)
Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Faber)

Fiction:

Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)
Marlon James, The Book of Night Women (Riverhead)
Michelle Huneven, Blame (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Holt)
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Knopf)

Nonfiction:

Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (Penguin Press)
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books)
Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon)
Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remain (Random House)
William T. Vollmann, Imperial (Viking)

Poetry:

Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan)
Louise Glück, A Village Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
D.A. Powell, Chronic (Graywolf Press)
Eleanor Ross Taylor, Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960–2008 (Louisiana State University Press)
Rachel Zucker, Museum of Accidents (Wave Books)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing

Joan Acocella

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award

Joyce Carol Oates

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? banned in Texas Schools

The Texas Board of Education banned the picture book by author Bill Martin, Jr. because they were concerned about a book he had supposedly written for adults, entitled “Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation.” Trouble is, the Bill Martin who wrote the latter book, is a completely different person!

Of course, I want to know why it would matter if they were the same person. It’s not like a bunch of picture book readers are going to go out of their way to read a book on Marxism.

Read more here: .

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary Banned from 4th and 5th Grade Classrooms in Southern California!

When a parent complained that Merriam Webster’s 10th edition had a “sexually graphic” definition of oral sex, the district decided to remove the dictionaries from all classrooms. Fortunately, school board members are concerned that they weren’t consulted about the decision. Read more: .

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword of Avalon by Diana L. Paxson

Roc, 2009 ISBN: 9780451462923
Paxson envisions here the circumstances of the creation of the sword, Excalibur, which will later come into play in the King Arthur legends. Based on archaeological evidence of technology, she sets the time period in the latter part of the Bronze Age / into the beginning of the Iron Age when iron-smithing was a technological possibility.

The tribes of the British Isles are descending into war with each other as the climate is increasingly hostile and food becomes scarce. What is needed, believes Anderle, the current Lady of Avalon, is a King to lead the tribes back into unity. She believes this to be the destiny of the infant Mikantor, who she rescues from the fiery destruction of his tribe by that of a marauding band of renegades.

She does what she can to keep his existence hidden, but ultimately, the boy’s enemies realize that he is living. When he is finally captured, his life is spared when his captors sell him into slavery instead of killing them as they have been ordered to do.

Mikantor then spends some years in the Mediterranean, as the slave, and then companion and friend of Velantos, the smith of the soon to fall City-State of Tiryns. Mikantor learns the art of weaponry, and together with Velantos, who has had a vision that he is to forge a sword to be wielded by a mighty king, returns to the British Isles to take up his destiny.

Paxson’s character development does not live up to that of Zimmer Bradley’s, and the episodic, plot-driven story ultimately falls short of expectations, providing a quick read that doesn’t have a lasting impact.

Anne Frank, The Book, The Life, The Afterlife by Francine Prose

HarperCollins, 2009 ISBN: 9780061430794

In this latest book on the life and diaries of Anne Frank, Prose challenges the idea that the diaries were simply the immediate outpouring of a young teen. She takes on the diaries as literature, written by an author who had an eye toward a future audience, and who showed growth and development as a writer as she revised her work over time. Prose illustrates the refinement of Anne Frank’s skill, showing us versions of the same entries, which almost always show a more mature and literary eye, and emphasize her skill at dialogue and humor.

Prose describes how the members of the annex gathered around the radio, listening to the exiled Dutch Minister of Education who calls for the “establishment of a national archive to house the ‘ordinary documents’ – diaries, letters…and so forth – written by Dutch citizens during the war.” The members of the annex are suddenly aware of the importance of Anne and her diary, and Anne “took his speech as a personal directive,” (pp. 11-12).

She also shows how the diaries served as Anne’s safety valve: her release from the pent up energy and emotion and stress of living in a small, cramped space where she could never be alone.

Prose describes the awful scene in which the Franks are discovered and taken away, delves briefly into the questions of who betrayed them, and then moves on to discuss the life of the diaries following the war, when Otto Frank returned, the only member of his family to survive the concentration camps. Prose discusses the various versions of the diary that have been published, the editing, the restoration of edited parts, and the controversies surrounding these decisions. She then goes on to discuss the diary as a play, as the movie featuring the memorable performance by Shelley Winters, and the less than memorable portayal of Anne by Millie Perkins.

Finally, Prose looks at how the book has been taught in school, discussing the difficulties of presenting it with enough context for students to grasp the importance of the the diary given a 2008 study that showed only 25% of students could identify Hitler (p.254). She reviews the study and classroom aids available to teachers, and finds them wanting, and then discusses how she would approach teaching the diary, ending with descriptions of her experience doing so at Bard College, and the responses of some of the students.

For those readers who have turned back to the diary at various times, and who have poured over the definitive edition in which all three versions of the diary are laid out side-by-side, Prose’s work is a welcome addition to our understanding of Anne as a writer, and of the work she left behind her.

The Unit: A Novel – by Ninni Holmqvist

Other Press, 2009 ISBN: 9781590513132

In this dystopian near-future novel, society deals with population control and the use of limited resources by defining anyone over the age of 50 who is unpartnered and/or doesn’t have children, as dispensable.

The story is told by Dorrit, a Scandanavian woman who has just reached her 50th birthday must give up the little house she is so proud of, and worse, her beloved dog to report to the mysterious “Unit.” Residents at the Unit are given small apartments, provided with good meals, entertainment, a gym, an indoor garden — anything to make them comfortable except their own lives. In exchange, they must participate in medical experiments which may or may not be safe, and ultimately they must begin donating organs and skin to the younger population, until they are called to, or volunteer to make their “final donation.”

When Dorrit falls unexpectedly in love, everything changes for her.

Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit by Mercedes Lackey

DAW, 2009 ISBN: 9780756405854

In this Arthurian novel, Lackey focuses on the Welsh tales of Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere), in which King Arthur has three wives in succession, each named Gwenhwyfar. The Gwenhwyfar of this novel is one of four daughters of a Celtic King. Intended by her mother to go and serve the Ladies, learning the magic of the old pagan rites and becoming a Priestess, Gwenhwyfar is much more interested in horses and in becoming a warrior. At the encouragement of Braith, one of her father’s warriors, and because she has a sister with the gift, who will go to the Ladies in her place, Gwenhwyfar is permitted to become a warrior.

She works hard at her lessons, and over the years earns the position of leader of her father’s scouts—all talented horsemen and trackers who are physically too small to be of much use in direct battle.

When Saxons invade one winter, King Arthur sends his best tactician, Lancelin (Lancelot) to consult on battle plans, and Gwen is included in the discussion with all the War Lords as they plan an attack. Gwen has already managed to terrify the Saxons by appearing to them as a white spirit, and calling out the names of those she seeks. When the battle finally takes place, the victory comes easily, though not without bloodshed.

Meanwhile, Gwen finds herself attracted to Lancelin, but is forced to accept that he can see her only as a warrior, or as a woman, not both together.

Gwenhwyfar’s life changes dramatically when the second Queen Gwenhwyfar dies, and Arthur is still without a legal heir: she is forced to accept the duty of a princess and serve the land by becoming Arthur’s third wife. However, her adventures do not end, but rather change, as she is thrust into the midst of intrigue and plotting, and she once again acquits herself as a warrior and meets up again with Lancelin.

As always, Lackey spins a good tale, and her foray into the world of Arthurian legend is a welcome addition.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Random House, 2008     ISBN: 9781400062089

These thirteen linked stories are set in a small Maine coastal town where everyone pretty much knows everyone else and where everyone definitely knows Olive Kittredge, school teacher, parent, wife, and grandmother, who figures into each story.

Each story, while revealing the ups and downs of the town’s inhabitants, their passions, depressions, dreams, and failures, reveals a little bit more about Olive. We ultimately come to know her as a complex person: prickly, judgmental, occasionally generous, contradictory, manipulative, loving, disappointed, frustrated, and wholly human.

The roles she plays in each story vary from irritation at the demands on her, to her need to feel integral to the ongoing life of the town. While something of a loner, she resents feeling left out, and craves knowing the sometimes cruel secrets others have to tell, and insinuates herself into situations where others might have left people to sort out their own problems.

Olive’s relationship with her son is the relationship in which she feels most powerless, and she is unable to comprehend how it came to pass that he has so little to say to her.