Book Review: Blue Light Hours (mother-daughter, college freshman)

Blue Light Hours by Bruna Lobato (Black Cat, 2024, $17, 178pp) Review by Skye Anderson

In a Word: Sweet

Our daughters teach us how to be mothers. 

Blue Light Hours is a story of five years in the lives of a mother and her daughter, separated by thousands of miles and by college for one and aging for the other. They chat nearly every night by Skype and share memories and hopes and dreams but mostly memories.

And yet, this is not a usual relationship but, nevertheless, a loving one, with the mother reliving the previous year with her dying mother while trying to understand her daughter's need to study in the United States while not being able to return to Brazil (living on a scholarship).

The reader will reminisce her own college experience, down to the furniture in her dorm room and life on campus, one of a very few students who stay on campus between terms while fellow students take summer jobs back home or volunteer in Asia or . . . but our daughter relishes the aloneness and the beauty of hot summers to contrast with the first cold deep snow and the colors of autumn.

Mother comforts daughter and tells her to be safe, tells her that riding a bike can be dangerous, while every time her daughter calls, she picks up as if she has no other life (except for the soaps).

We wait for the plot to thicken, but it doesn't. Instead, author Bruna Lobato leaves us with a feeling of love and calmness and the realization that things never change. . . even as they ever so slowly do

Book Review: This Motherless Land (OT)(girl in England and Nigeria)

This Motherless Land, by Nikki May (HarperCollins, 2024, 342 pp, $30), NPR's Best Book of the Year. Review by Skye Anderson.

If a book can be fun while being engrossing, this is it! 

We have two sisters: one good, one not so good, separated by a tragedy. Two countries on two continents. Their two daughters who become best friends and subsequently, also, separated by tragedy. Add a pearl necklace - or is it two, on the front cover?

We smell and taste Nigeria, we wilt in the oppressive heat, we inhale the tropics, rotting and yet beautiful. We experience having to live in a different culture but then return home - and it is the return that can be more difficult so that we never seem to fit in, in either country, on either continent, in either family.

A Sage of Time and Family

Well-written and impossible to put down, This Motherless Land is reminiscent of Persephone (about a girl growing up in revolutionary Tehran and spending her formative years alone in Europe, trying out everything) in covering two cultures but Motherless has a surprising plot within a plot followed by another.

This book will satisfy the OCD reader in that the front cover tells it all and the title is easily comprehendible. The prose is so good that you are not aware of it - the mark of a good author.

We simply loved this This Motherless Land!

Book Review: Honeymoon in Baghdad: The True Story of Two American Newlywed Soldiers Fighting Side by Side on the Battlefields of Iraq

Honeymoon in Baghdad: The True Story of Two American Newlywed Soldiers Fighting Side by Side on the Battlefields of Iraq, by Heidi Radkiewicz (Redwood Publishing, 2018, 250pp, $10.99)

I consented to review Honeymoon in Baghdad with some trepidation because so many war memoirs are too 'reporty' and not well-written but I was enthralled with Honeymoon! It is a fast read, one that when you have to put it down, you can't wait to return to it to see what happened in your absence. It is sweet, exciting and brought back memories of my own deployment, even with all the differences.

What's It All About?

A shy girl in Iowa drops out of college and joins the Reserves as a truck driver. She and her sister move to Colorado where she meets another Reservist and begins her new life as a married soldier, as unbelievable as it sounds to her hometown buddies.

Then the notice comes (nearly halfway through the book): her unit is being sent to Iraq! At least she will be with her husband.  But is that a good thing or not? Will they worry about each other too much?

What's Iraq All About?

Iraq is hot, hot, hot. And sandy. But the camaraderie is priceless and being able to see your spouse every day makes you the luckiest soldier in Iraq.

What Makes It a Good Book?

Author Radkiewicz has a knack for keeping the reader engaged even though there is a twinge that something bad will happen. Whether or not it does, I will leave up to you to discover.

The author also has the ability to keep you engaged with a cliffhanger at the end of most chapters and some unforgettable little gems along the way: "Amusingly, the road signs were in both Arabic and English, as if Saddam was expecting us and didn't want us to get lost. How thoughtful." (p. 137) And with truisms such as, ". . . as their tactics became more brutal, our defenses became more efficient." (p. 197)

All in all, Honeymoon is a delightful, sweet book about being in a war with your spouse. Although few readers share the exact same experiences, all share the same feelings and emotions. And, of course, the story (yes there are some dogs in Honeymoon) has its share of military cuss words but is also written by a woman who intensely believes in God. 

Apologies

Our book reviews have been absent for too long but we have been involved in a series-of-books review that, once begun, just seems to grow and grow like Topsy. As soon as we think we have written enough to cover the subject, we find more information to fill the holes. 

However,  we will continue as usual and post the series review when it is finally complete.

Thank you for your concerns about our absence!

Beloved Animal Rescue Pilot is Buried with a Puppy He Tried to Save - Pilots 'n Paws

In light of the recent deaths of a Pilot 'n Paws pilot and one of his canine passengers, we are reposting a blog article we wrote 10 years ago about this very worthy endeavor. For more information, here is a Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/12/08/seuk-kim-pilot-rescue-dogs-crash/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------EverythingDogBlog #186: (Nearly) Wordless Wednesday: Pilots 'n Paws, A Promising Partnership

It’s Raining Cats and Dogs And We’re Flying Dogs and Cats

The other week, I wrote all week (five times) about my (mis)adventures ‘rescuing’ a four-pound three-legged poodle named Pierre on his way to the Poodle Rescue of Vermont, thanks to a wonderful organization called Pilots and Paws (PnP).

Since this is (Nearly) Wordless Wednesday, and since I had promised to feature the Pilots and Paws logo, here we go!

The Need

What could be better than the marriage of pilots who love to fly and dogs who need transportation to new homes – and the countless people who bring them together.

The Logo

Designed by a pilot, the PnP logo says it all, with a small plane superimposed on a paw print. Shop here for logo products and the new book, Radar’s Dream, for children.

To read a review of the inspiring book for adults (with plenty of dog and plane photos), Dog is My Co-Pilot, click here.

Pilots and Paws - PilotsnPaws - Pilots 'n Paws

An idea conceived almost by accident in 2007, Pilots ‘N Paws has grown exponentially to transport dogs and other needy animals mostly from the South and Southeast, places of high density homeless pupsters, to the MidWest and Northeast, where dogs are dearly wanted.

Pilots ‘N Paws is a 501(c)(3) organization so the pilots are true volunteers of their time, fuel, and planes. Thousands of pilots have registered to save dog-lives, flying short hops of a hundred miles to longer flights of more than two thousand miles with some requiring up to 10 legs, including automobile shuttles.

Each pilot in the air and the myriads of dog people working on the ground are truly “angels in the sky” for these very lucky and very deserving dogs.

Sponsored by Subaru* (“Love. It’s what makes a Subaru.”) and Petmate (for kennels, collars, leashes, and seatbelts), Pilots n Paws is a ‘paw-worthy’ organization!

(logo courtesy of Pilots and Paws)

*For a cute Subaru story, read this EverythingDogBlog    

Book Review: The Girlhood Journeys (similar to the American Girls books, dolls, etc.)

The Girlhood Journeys series is like the American Girls series: several girls, each with books. We read Juliet, Book One, and Marie, Book One. The girls depicted each have a talent or a special animal, from dancing to raptors, but they also are typical growing girls, learning how to be patient along the way. In addition, some surmount obstacles as a result of growing up such as getting lost, but finding their way home again.

Juliet: A Dream Takes Flight, by Anna Kirwan (Aladdin Paperbacks, 1996, ages 7-11, 71pp, $9.99, grades 3-4) Review by Skye Anderson

Juliet, loyal and courageous, and Marguerite, a young lady of the manor, live in medieval England in 1339. One is destined to live a life in court and the other, to become a servant. Best friends, they are nearly of the age to marry but will they have to part ways?

Marie: An Invitation to Dance, by Kathleen Kudlinski (Aladdin Paperbacks, 1996, ages 7-11, 71pp, $8.99)

Marie, a graceful young dancer in the stylish and dangerous city of pre-Revolutionary Paris in 1775 takes dancing lessons and is quite talented but needs a sponsor in order to continue her career path. Read about the trials and tribulations in pre-civil war France of Marie, her best friend Joelle, and a young girl from the American colonies, Prudence. 

Both books relate real history of the times in the back of the book, with facts and illustrations.

----------------

Other Girlhood Journeys books include Kai, a determined young girl on an important journey for her Yoruba tribe in southwestern Nigeria in 1440,

Shannon, a lively, spirited Irish immigrant making new friends in bustling Victorian San Francisco of 1880, and

Isabella, in A Wish for Miguel, Peru 1820

Book Review: Avenging the Owl (Oregon, California surfer boys, raptors, recovery)(OT)

Avenging the Owl, by Melissa Hart (Sky Pony, 224 pp 2016, $15.99HB, grades 5-8, ages 11-13) Review by Skye Anderson 

About Family and Everything Else!

You live the ideal life of a 13-year-old boy, surfing it up in California when, all of a sudden, to save your writer dad, your family moves to Oregon and lives frugally. The boy next door has Down Syndrome and is a pain in the you-know-what, your mom can't find a good-paying college teaching job, and your dad succumbs to depression. 

To top it all off, an owl commits a "crime" and for revenge, you make a serious mistake and consequently have to spend summer days volunteering at a raptor (bird) sanctuary under bossy Minerva (whom we never really get to know) and know-it-all Lucas. You don't like birds and, as a matter of fact, are afraid of raptors.

Avenging the Owl is a book you will read faster and faster as the pages fly by about a dysfunctional family or two, and a myriad of facts about raptors woven in seamlessly so you don't realize how much you are learning amidst the backdrop of a move to the country, leaving friends behind. Only when a crisis occurs and turns out OK, does everyone value our protagonist, Solo Hahn (yes, it's a play on words - Hans Solo).

And yes, there is a slight foray into boyfriend-girlfriend at the end, helped along by our budding screenwriter and truant-turned-savior. 

You will also want to read Wild Within by prolific author Melissa Hart, the true tale that started her love affair with raptors.

Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls Inspired a Family