Don't go into The Hazel Woods

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert - a review.

Alice and her mother, Ella, receive word that Ella's mother, Althea Prosperpine, has died.   Until this note reached them, Ella and Alice found themselves beset with bad luck - fires, mold, weird messages written on walls.  They moved often and secretly, running, Alice thought, from her grandmother.

Althea Prosperpine was famous for writing one book, The Tales of the Hinterland.  Alice had only ever seen one copy of the book, owned by a red-haired man who took her for a ride when she was small.  The book of fairy tales had a rabid cult following - fans who hunted Ella and Alice down in hopes of reaching Althea. 

With Althea's death, Ella and Alice settled down.  Ella even married - a very rich man with a teenage daughter of his own.  It is here, in Manhattan that the story really begins.  Alice finds someone who has read the book, and who tells her the tales.  And the stories are dark, twisted and hopeless.

Then, Ella is kidnapped.  And characters from the book appear on city streets.  Alice will do anything and go anywhere to retrieve her mother - even to the Hazel Wood, Althea's estate.  This is the one place Ella told Alice never to go.

The first two thirds of the book read like a horror story.  Alice and Finch, the school mate who knows the stories, try to find Hazel Wood.  Finch recognizes the ghouls that appear in the city, and then later in upstate New York, from the book and tells their stories.  Despair deepens.

Alice is thrown into an alternate reality, a dream that may never end.  If you have those dreams, where you are chased and never get farther away, in which you turn corners and end up back where you started, dreams where everything is off kilter and you don't know why and your heart quickens and you step into something awful - if you have those dreams, think twice about reading this book.

However, if you love fairy tales, the light and the dark, if you are fascinated with how stories inform our concept of the world, well, turn on all the lights and keep reading.  Alice is on a journey of transformation and redemption and it's a wild ride.

LBB Reviews The Wizards of Once

Hi!  Little Blue Bunny here!

I'm not much of a reader.  Turning pages is not so easy when you are only 4 inches tall.  But, wow!
That kid, Xar, is AWESOME!!  He is totally my favorite kind of hero.  Who needs to think before acting?  I mean, that's so over-rated.  Xar just jumps right in.

Like me, he is in trouble ALL THE TIME. So, if I met him, I think we would hit it off.  Also, a lot of his friends are little sprites and they are small.  I am small. See?  We have so much in common.

Oh, wait.  The book is The Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell.  Nana says I have to put that in.  Blah.

This crow is a big know-it-all!

So, anyway, Xar's dad is this awesomely powerful wizard and the wizards and magical people live on ONE side of the Badlands forest-y area.  But Xar doesn't have any magic yet and he's tired of waiting.

So, anyway, he goes into the foresty area to try and capture a WITCH - whoa!  This dude isn't afraid of anything - probably because he doesn't waste time thinking about conchy?  consy kenc - you know, what MIGHT happen if you do something.  NANA!  Help me out here.

Nana:  Consequences.

Those.  Yeah.  Well, Xar has an older brother.  Me, too.  Looter makes my older brother look like an old softie - which he is - which is fine - because Looter - BLEECCHH!  Mean and bossy!

Oh, back to the book.

SO, ANYWAY!  Xar meets up with this Warrior girl, Wish - and her softy bodyguard, Bodkins.  I forget why they were in the woods but they shouldn't have been there either.  Warriors HATE, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate times a lot, any kind of magic.  But Wish has "borrowed" the Queen's Witch killing sword which is magic and iron and that never happens  - magic and iron mixing, I mean - and Xar takes the sword and something really scary happens and then Xar sort of kidnaps Wish and Bodkin but the Warriors kidnap Xar's giant friend.... 

(Deep breath).  And there are explosions - a bunch of explosions - and trickiness and meanness and some bravery and courage, too.

I was a little worried that Xar would become boring and goody-goody.  YAY!!!! He didn't.

Read the book.  The pictures are all scratchy and awesome, too.  I will read another book about Xar and Wish - because that girl has SKILLS! - when it comes out.

Let's Not Forget - Julius Lester

Today, I want to remember Julius Lester.   The books that make me happy as I think of Julius Lester's work are Sam and the Tigers, a brilliant retelling of Little Black Sambo, and John Henry.  I can't deny that the illustrations are a big part of my love for the books.  HOWEVER, it is Lester's words that make me tear up at the end of John Henry, almost ever single time.

As a child, I loved the story of Little Black Sambo.  Face it.  It has everything a story needs, a likeable character, a series of impossible situations that are cleverly dealt with, and a satisfying conclusion.  BUT, the original words and illustrations were/are problematic and insulting to huge groups of people.

And along came Julius Lester, like a hero on a pony, to put this story into a more relatable context.  Once again, Jerry Pinkney's illustrations are wonderful.  It's the story I can carry with me!  I don't need the book to remember the words.

The most popular version of Uncle Remus in my library was Lester's adaptation of Joel Chandler Harris' original.  Lester came out with his version, The Tales of Uncle Remus, in 1987.  He followed with Further Tales of Uncle Remus, Uncle Remus: The Complete Tales,  and The Last Tales of Uncle Remus, as well as picture books featuring individual Brer Rabbit stories. 

Folklore, especially the folklore of Black people, was not the only thing Julius Lester wrote about.  He was an academic, who taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amhurst, for over 30 years.  He wrote about history, religion, culture and sociology.  He penned novels that are based in the Black and/or urban and/or Southern milieus.  Check out the Wikipedia article to see the impressive list of published works.

As I looked over his published works, I picked out half a dozen books I want to read, books on racism, God, Judaism, writing.  He even co-wrote a book with Pete Seeger, The Folksinger's Guide to the 12-string Guitar as Played by Leadbelly!

 I close with this quote from the man himself.

"History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”

Unforgettable! The Green Brothers

John Green is impossible for book lovers to forget.  He wrote "The Fault in Our Stars", for heaven's sake!!!

But before the amazing event that "The Fault in Our Stars" became, John was - and still is - one half of the Vlogbrothers!  The other equally AWESOME half of Vlogbrothers is the clever, lyrical, amazingly fast-talking, Hank Green.  HANK WROTE A BOOK!  Must. Pre-Order. Now.

NOTE!  NOTE!  NOTE!    THIS IS NOT "LET'S NOT FORGET"!  NOTE!  NOTE!  NOTE!
Mainly because, these guys are UNFOGETTABLE!

I remember those days, back in, oh 2007 or 2008, (Vlogbrothers began their YouTube odyssey in 2007 according to this Wikipedia article), when I stumbled on the online community, Nerdfighters.  I had just read "Paper Towns" and was suitably impressed.  (Also, "An Abundance of Katherines".  I laughed so hard.) I wanted to know more.  John and Hank had moved their Vlogbrothers videos to this online group.  I was hooked and became a Nerdfighter so I, too, could "fight world suck" and DFTBA. (Don't Forget To Be Awesome).

Life sometimes intervenes.  In John Green's case life was the overwhelming success of "The Fault In Our Stars" and the movie of the same name.  The Nerdfighter online social media outlet gently went away.  (Actually, nerdfighter.ning.com is still in existence.  It's just different and not very communal.)

In my case, I got distracted.  I retired.  I became a grandmother.  My Dad got sick; then he turned 90; and then he died.  My Mom turned 90 - still here.  I got another job.  My brother came home from Japan.  (Check out what we did while he was home.  I work this in WHEREVER I can. )  Then he moved back to Japan.  And I wondered what happened to Nerdfighters.   I needed their craziness, their nerdiness and their good-ness. (I miss my brother, Dan.  I feel a Barry Manilow song - or an Elton John song - coming on.)

NERDFIGHTERS DO NOT GO AWAY!

No, World, we are still out there, doing our best to survive and remain steadfast in our pursuit of knowledge and all things Nerd!  We also volunteer, donate, create projects that fight world suck, though Project for Awesome or in other ways.  You have heard what I've been up to.  Under One Sun Benefit and Chiles' Play.  There are so many other people out there, enjoying books, helping to make a better world.

I found Hank and John Green again.  I am so happy.  They are fun to watch, fun to listen to.  I have to dig my Hank Green CD out and listen to "Accio Deathly Hallows", again.

Check out their twice weekly YouTube channel where they discuss EVERYTHING in 3 or 4 minute blasts.  John posts on Tuesday.  Hank posts on Friday.   Check the right hand sidebar; the first three and four are productions of these overactive men.

Or just head over to Nerdfighteria to catch up with all that the Green Brothers have done.

Just remember, they are human, after all.  And life, like I said, intervenes.  So if things aren't as up to the minute as you might like, browse the archives.  Or go find a Project to be Awesome with.

And read their books!  John's latest is Turtles All the Way Down.  Hank's first book, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, comes out this year.

Thanks, Hank and John Green!

All Little Blue Bunny - All the Time

This post was written on Tuesday, January 16, 2018.

 Early dismissal meant more time for Little Blue Bunny to get in trouble.  That guy!

First there was the bread pie crust experiment.  D and I actually did that but LBB tried to stick his nose in the filling - pumpkin butter.  (It needed a little something.  Like maybe real pie crust.)

We took the crust off a slice of bread and rolled the slice out flat.  Then we lined a small custard cup with the flattened bread.  We added egg and milk mixture to the already sweetened and seasoned pumpkin butter and stuck it in the oven.

While it baked, we washed the dishes and here's where Little Blue Bunny ended up.

He needed a bath.

Then, Nana reminded Dulci of the time Little Blue Bunny thought putting an addition on the house would be nice since his family lives on a window sill.  BUT after dragging the scrap lumber, the hammer, the nails and the, YIKES! saw from the garage, his Mom called him because it was dark.

Well, in the morning, the paper guy thought he was supposed to deliver a paper to the apartment - no one lives there - just us - and he tripped over all that junk and ripped his new designer jeans on the saw!!!  I had to pay him a lot of money.  (THIS IS A FICTIONAL STORY.)  D wanted to know if it was really true and when I told her it was just a story she got into the spirit of things by insisting that it happened (wink wink) the night she slept over.

NEXT, D is perfecting her balloon blowing skills but she discovered not too long ago that those little foot pumps you get with air mattresses work GREAT! for blowing up long skinny balloon sculpture balloons.  We decorated three snakes and then D decided they had to EAT LITTLE BLUE BUNNY.  I did argue for clemency.  And she countered that he was just a toy and it was all pretend anyway.  So, he got gobbled up and put in a grave with the word RIP on it.  D did that.  I folded a piece of paper for LBB's grave and then she wrote "Rip!" on it.  "Because it's a grave", she told me.  Where does she get this stuff?  I mean is this what they teach in first grade these days?

Well, all right then.  You want the snakes to eat LBB.  Then he can be a ghost.  I grabbed some cheesecloth that I was going to discard anyway and made Little Blue Bunny into a ghost and then we ran around scaring each other for a while.   D turned into a ghost.  I turned into a ghost and Gramps got scared - a lot.

Next, she grabbed my apron strings and pretended I was a horse and she was on a sulky or wagon and off we went.  I got some active exercise today.  Little Blue Bunny sat on my head and told me where to go and D shouted "Go!" and "Stop!" Luckily, we have a house that has a circular traffic pattern.

I did not mention the Lincoln Log building episode where we acted out Chiles' Play's (see how I work that in everywhere) version of little Cabin the Woods.

What else did we do?  I mean we had almost 3 hours.

Oh, the pie!  I dropped it right side up into the drawer under the oven. Not on purpose. But the custard - made from the same recipe - was edible but not great.

They are calling for snow tonight.  When will I ever have time to do book reviews again?

 SNOW DAY on Wednesday, January 17th, 2018.  I can't remember what we did!

Little Blue Bunny is a STAR!!

Yep.  He truly is.

Yesterday, in a panicked attempt to get everything done RIGHT NOW, Dan and I tried to take a lot of photos for the Chiles' Play CD.  LINK TO COME.  Seriously!  Here.  And again, at the end of this post.

!!SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION!!!  LISTEN!  DOWNLOAD! SHARE!  (The downloads will cost you but honestly not by much.) https://chilesplay.bandcamp.com/album/i-can-make-it-myself

We took photos, and more photos, and yet more photos.  Dan is a perfectionist.  When he produces a CD on Bandcamp, he wants illustrations for every single track.  He wants them to have something that ties them all together; a style, a visual, an embedded phrase.  He makes himself crazy.

I understand this.  Ask the people I worked with.  I had BIG ideas whenever I produced a program and I wanted things done a certain way.  Luckily, Dan and I can step out of the way of each other's obsessions.

Here are some photos.

 

There are five more but I think Dan must have taken those.  This is not what the finished products look like because Dan has one of those clever "fix up my pics to look awesome" apps.

Do you want to see the finished photos?  Do you want to hear some superlative kids' music??  Here is the promised link to Chiles' Play.

3 Things I Did With My Week

Thing 1.  Dan helped me create a Bandcamp site and I posted my story, "Ambrose's Gift" up there.  Check it out. 
https://karenmaurer.bandcamp.com/releases

Thing 2.  Played with D - A VERY MUCH LOT!!!  Delayed NYE overnight on Saturday and Sunday, early dismissal on Monday and a 2 hour delay on Tuesday.  Thursday was the same old schedule.  Yesterday, Little Blue Bunny and I mysteriously switched voices.  D's cure for that was very simple.  We (Little Blue Bunny and I) had to smoosh a big pink balloon between us and kiss over the top of it.  It WORKED!!

LBB in the NYE photo booth

Thing 3.  Worked with Dan on our Chiles' Play CD, "I Can Make It Myself", which will also be offered on Bandcamp, very, very soon.  We did hope to get two more dragon stories recorded but time ran out.


About Dan:
Our time together is running out, Dan and I.  He goes home to his boys on January 21st.  They need him.  And he needs to be the best dad he can be.  Also, he has teaching jobs in Japan.  Here, he would have to go back to school, spend money and time, as his boys grow up without him.

My youngest brother is a good man.  I hope things go better for him in Japan.  I hope we continue to work on our crazy songs and ideas.  He got me to do so much more this year because he made everything so much more fun.  

This thing called Gender

Some people will tell you, there are TWO genders - only TWO ways of being.  How could that be? There have been billions of people born on this earth since people started being.  How could they all fit into TWO categories?  That's like saying there are only TWO types of music, or only TWO sports that anyone should play; or only TWO foods that everyone should eat.  It's like saying there are only TWO ways to be spiritual or only TWO branches of science with any merit.

I say be who you are! (Unless you are someone who has to hurt people, then, I say, get some help.) There are a billion ways for people to be.

I also say that I heartily approve of books that gently, and with good humor, introduce different ways of being - the ways that fit the "general consensus" and the ways that don't.

(You saw this coming!!!) Books like the LUMBERJANES: Unicorn Power by Mariko Tamaki.  Book review time!

Tamaki's book is a middle grade novelization, an addition to the Lumberjane graphic novel franchise created by BOOM! Studios.  I, alas, have never read the graphic novels. NOTE TO SELF: check these out of the library stat!

Tamaki makes her slant of gender acceptance a little obvious in the first few pages of her book.  But once we get to know all the campers in Roanoke Cabin and meet a few unicorns, the reader just keep reading.  AAMOF (As A Matter Of Fact) young readers won't notice much of anything - slant wise - except the long complicated name of the Lumberjane camp, and the titles of the badges which are rather punny. (I am not a young reader. I notice slants.)

ADVENTURES!!! and Excitement in many of its glorious forms, result in the ladies of Roanoke embarking on a quest to help one of them earn a coveted medal.  Not all five girls are good at these jaunts, and at least one of them wishes she were anywhere else.  But the most important thing that Lumberjanes learn is FRIENDSHIP TO THE MAX.  Also Unicorns! and a rather peculiar unicorn characteristic that other stories about unicorns have failed to mention. Let's not forget the importance of weather as fodder for conversation! 

Friendship to the Max, everyone, and this friend wants more Lumberjanes.