CAROLE E. BARROWMAN

Earlier in the month on WTMJ4's The Morning Blend, I suggested summer thrillers for adults. A couple of viewers asked if I'd suggest some books for the younger readers in our lives so my segment on July 12th was about just that–a few suggestions for younger readers. My daughter, Clare, a teacher (K-8th grade) in the Twin Cities, helped with my choices. Each book, in some way, reinforces the importance of learning and having a good imagination. Children won’t care about that, though. They’ll just like the clever storytelling and intriguing characters. I know I did.

“Skippyjon Jones” by Judy Schachner (ages 3 to anyone with a heightened silly gene)

According to my daughter, this series was her 1^st graders favorite to read aloud. It won the prestigious ‘EB White Award’ for literature when it first came out (and award which is all about children’s books that are the most fun to read out loud). Skippyjon Jones is a Siamese cat who thinks he’s a Chihuahua (Holy Guacamole! He’s El Skippito Friskito). In this first book, El Skippito Friskito joins up with a gang of Chihuahuas called Los Chimichangos (they love mice and beans) and he saves them from the Bumblebeeto Bandito. This series is whimsical and silly and extols the importance of an active imagination. If you're going to read this aloud, I’d suggest reading it a few times on your own first so you can practice doing all the possible voices and the clapping rhymes. If you speak Spanish or can do a decent Spanish accent, even better (mine sounds like a drunk Frenchman).

“Listen to the Wind: The Story of Dr. Greg and Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth (1^st grade+)

Lots of adult readers enjoyed Three Cups of Tea. The NYTimes bestseller is about a nurse, who after a failed Himalayan climb ends up lost and injured in a tiny village in Pakistan. He eventually builds a school for its children (he has now built 100s of schools in the region) This is the same story told from the perspective of the children of that village. The story is illustrated with beautiful collages and includes lots of pictures and maps of the village and its real children. Book has an important message about education and about the value of a school to a community. It's a good book to use to talk about compassion and difference. Plus if you’re stuck inside with your children you could gather all your scraps of material and construction paper and copy some of the collages (on the other hand, you could just make them take naps).

“Evil Genius” by Catherine Jinks

My nephew, who is 11, read this pick three times. Like Skippyjon Jones this would be a great read aloud book if you have a road trip coming up soon with tweens. Have everyone in the car who can read, take turns (encourage sound effects from the other passengers as its being read. The kids will think its lame…at first). The story is about a genius kid, Cadel Piggott, who at 9 is arrested for computer hacking and by 13 he’s being manipulated into the art of "Infiltration, Misinformation, and Embezzlement" by the Axis Institute for World Domination. Kids who like computers and technology will especially like Cadel. He’s super smart and very resourceful. This is a high-tech thriller with lots of clever plot twists and great villains. 

“The Mysterious Benedict Society” by Trenton Lee Stewart (9-12)

Again, this is the first in a clever series featuring four resourceful children (two boys and two girls) who answer an ad in a newspaper for “gifted children looking for special opportunities.” The four heroes are able to solve a series of “mind-bending tests” and they are then recruited to join Mr. Benedict’s society and help him with a far more mysterious and dark mission at a secret school, the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened. The cool thing about this book is that the clues and the puzzles are presented to readers in such a way that they can solve them along with the heroes, who are interesting, and smart boys and girls. This reminede me of some of my favorite childhood reads (like Enid Blyton's The Famous Five or The Secret Seven).

What are your children reading this summer?



My suggestions for books as gifts will appeal to the person on your list who has everything, wants nothing, but expects something.

1. “Is This Bottle Corked? The Secret Life of Wine” by Kathleen Burk and Michael Bywater

I was hoping this book came with free samples. This would be a great gift for the wine lover or the oenophile in your family (or just your aunt who’s the lush). You could always wrap this with a nice bottle of wine and a cute corkscrew (you know the kind that come in different shapes and sizes). This would be my favorite gift: wine and a book!

2. “The Captain Frederick Pabst Mansion” by John Eastberg (available at http://pabstmansion.com/giftshop/)

This is an elegant and beautifully produced coffee table book about the history and the collections in the Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee. A wonderful treat for the history lover in your family and it would be a great gift to pair with a tour of the mansion itself.

3. “American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood” by Marc Eliot 

This entertaining biography of one of the most “enduring actors of our generation” will appeal to anyone interested in Eastwood or in movies in general. One of the more interesting sections traces how Eastwood transition from actor to director. You could give this book along with one of Eastwood's movies.

4. ”Talking About Detective Fiction” by P.D. James

P.D. James is one of the most gifted and famous writers of the detective novel and this lovely little book would be a perfect gift for any mystery lover on your list. In a charming chatty but also really smart way she examines the history of the genre and explores some of the writers who influenced her own work. It’d be fun to give someone this book and also pair it with one or two of the classic mysteries that she writes about so well.

5. “Odd and the Frost Giants” by Neil Gaiman

This is my family’s Christmas read aloud book for this year. It would also be a perfect stocking-stuffer book for a reluctant young reader (6-10) in your family. Gaiman is the author of Coraline and The Graveyard Book (both terrific reads too).



On my last visit to WTMJ 4's The Morning Blend I picked the following reads in honor of the Halloween season. Since I'd picked Anne Rice's The Witching Hour, one of the creepiest books I've ever loved, last year, it's not on my list this time, and neither is Jennifer Egan's The Keep, which I also love. But if you haven't read either one of these novels ... what are you waiting for?

This year, I decided to go with a few classics of the gothic and horror genres, and one quite distubing debut (in a really good way). If you have a minute, share your scariest reads with me (your recent 401K statement doesn't count).

Salem’s Lot by Stephen King and Interview With A Vampire by Anne Rice

If you’re loving the resurgence of vampires in current popular culture as I am (Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries), you owe it to yourself to read (or re-read) the mother and father of the modern reincarnation of the vampire. Both Interview and Salem’s Lot are brilliant in their ability to make us believe vampires linger among us and, particularly, in Rice’s novel, to feel some empathy for them. Rice’s book is lush and lusty and lascivious (kinda dirty) in its bloody detail (and way better than the film adaptation). King’s book is just in-your-face terrifying. Years ago when I first read SL, I made my husband close every drape and blind in the house so in a weak moment I wouldn't be tempted to invite a vampire into the house.

Peter Straub's Ghost Story

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

From this great opening line through to the story’s end, this book haunts you. Straub is originally from Milwaukee (many of his books are set in a fictional city of Millhaven, which is his substitute for my fair city). I first read Ghost Story when it came out–right as my daughter turned two–as if that wasn’t scary enough. It’s a book that demands re-reading because the ghostly questions it raises are open to alternative possibilities as solutions. In their youth, five men accidentally kill a woman. Fifty years later when one of them dies of fright, they realize her ghost is looking for revenge. Why has she waited so long to come after them? And what can they do to stop themselves being scared to death?

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

One reviewer described this dark debut novel as “the mad spawn of Stephen King and Anne Rice.” What more can I say? After the narrator is left horribly scarred from a terrible car accident (the result of his drinking and drug abuse) in a hospital burn unit, a mysterious woman comes into his life insisting they were lovers in medieval Germany. The woman is a sculptress of grotesque things like gargoyles and she seduces the narrator into her–well, is it madness or not? You decide.  

I think a book club book must do the following things (with or without a glass of wine … or two).

1.    Stimulate interesting conversation among everyone in the club. To do this it helps if a book stirs some extremes in us (passion, pleasure, anger, sadness, empathy whatever)
2.    Offer some insight into a aspect of life (or the world) most of the club may not know much about
3.    Must be a fast and enduring read (one that you keeps you chatting about it as you head to your cars–or cabs, of course, if you had that second glass of wine)
4.    It shouldn’t feel like homework

Read on for my choice picks for a book club this fall. Post a comment if you want to *chat* about my choices or anything worthy that you're reading.

Hot House Flower and the 9 Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin

First of all, any novel with a title as sexy as this one is worth a read, and this one lives up to the heat in its title. Plus even though the sum total of my knowledge and interest in plants could fit in a Dixie cup, I was so enthralled by this book that about halfway into it I found myself Googling the plants and flowers in the story (sooo not me). Lila, the main character, works in advertising, which everyone thinks is glamorous, but her life is not. Her journey into the world of plants and love and adventure starts with a Bird of Paradise and the nine plants of desire (they are real plants-I googled them, remember) that are hidden in a secret room in a New York Laundromat. If you know something about tropical plants and their habitats, you’ll really love this book, and if you don’t you’ll learn everything you’ll ever need to know about their myths and their magic.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

In the 1980s a hotel in Seattle was being renovated when the owners uncovered possessions belonging to Japanese Americans forced into internment camps during WWII. These possessions had gone unclaimed for decades. The author, Ford, puts this real historical event at the heart of this really lovely love story. Henry, a retired widower, spots a parasol amongst the abandoned possessions and it carries him back to his childhood and his first love, a Japanese American girl. The story shifts from Henry’s childhood and America in the 1940s to Henry in the late 1980s as he uses the possessions to discover what happened to his first love and her family. The novel will give you lots to talk about, including the nature of patriotism then and now, but after I finished it I couldn’t help thinking about what would be the one possession in my life that, like the parasol in the story, might trigger such bittersweet memories of love and loss and family. Mu husband, Kevin, is seriously considering this to use in one of his classes at Alverno.


Hurry Down Sunshine: A Father’s Story of Love and Madness by Michael Greenberg

This is a heart-breaking and gut-wrenching memoir (so my one non-fiction pick this month). It’s about the summer the author’s fifteen year old daughter, Sally, “was struck mad." I read this in one sitting (you could too–trust me) and I had to call my college-age children immediately when I finished. The author approaches metal illness and its effects on a family without any sugar-coating, but he writes so lyrically and with such compassion I think any book club would find lots to talk about from this book.

Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg

During a garage sale Eve’s second husband, Chuck, literally chucks their marriage out the window when, during a garage sale, he walks out on her. Eve so didn’t see it coming, and now she has to deal with two teenage children and a house and heart in disrepair. This novel is full of men and women and children a lot like us, and it’s a novel full of big and little surprises. If your book club has enjoyed Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Berg or Anita Shreve's novels, I think you’ll really enjoy this book too.

Cheers,
Carole




 

I'm writing this with a view of the beautiful Welsh coastline and the sea in front of me. Sun is shining and it's not too windy. A few windsurfers dot the horizon, a couple of fishing boats, and every now and then a ship passes on its way out through the channel. 

First, thanks to all of you who sent me emails and good wishes after the Torchsong convention. They were all very sweet and much appreciated. There were just so many that I couldn't get to them before I left for the UK to work with John on a few projects. But I read them all. I also appreciated the pics that a few of you sent too. Thank you.

So second, an ankle update. John's ankle is healing well. He's been going to regular therapy and by the end of the week his leg was released from its full 'David Beckham' boot. He's now wearing one that looks a bit like small shin guards–a mini Beck. He has to limit his side-ways movements with his ankle so dancing the slosh with my mum and dad is out for awhile. He should, however, be able to get back to full shopping speed today. I think we're heading to Costco to make up for lost time.

Cheers,

Carole