Book Review: The Littlest Weaver (children's book, Applachia, mended families)(OT)

The Littlest Weaver, by Robin Hall (Familius, 2023, 32 pp HB, 4-6 years, preschool to grade 1, $17.99) Review by Skye Anderson

The Littlest Weaver's author sold and signed books at the 2024 Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival that took place in May at the Howard County Fairgrounds (May 4-5). 

I am so glad I met her! It is only June but I am considering the Weaver for my Book of the Year already!

It is a rather large book, large enough for little hands, with lovely watercolor illustrations by Stella Lim - and many pages have a little surprise or two if you look hard enough! Sometimes it is an 'almost' hidden bird or a deer or both.

And, too, you will find a rhyme that repeats so the littlest readers can remember it.

A Story of Loss and Love and Story Rugs Filled with Honeysuckle and Summer Sunshine. . . .

A stranger moves to town so Laurel and her father drop in for a welcome visit that turns out to be not so welcome. From the door Laurel sees a lonely doll and asks if the man has a little girl she can play with. "I used to," was the answer before the door closed in her face.

Can you find the lonely little doll?

And yet they try again. And again. And Laurel says, "He misses them [his family who died], Pa, like we do [Laurel's mother passed away, too]," Laurel said, kicking a pebble down the path. "He's at the cloudy days part. He needs rain showers to get to the rainbow."

And finally, Laurel and her dad find a way to help the new neighbor with an ending so unexpected and loving you will not soon forget it.

We eagerly await Robin Hall's next book!

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And I love the description on the inside back cover that says the author lives with her handsome husband, five children, four dogs, three weaving looms and too many chickens to count! 

Book Review: Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (a classic for young girls)(OT)

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume (Atheneum, 1973, grades 3-7, ages 10+, 172pp PB, $8.99) Now a major motion picture. Review by Skye Anderson

Who hasn't heard of Judy Blume or the phrase, "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret."

This reviewer missed not only the beginning of the Judy Blume craze but also grew up before Barbie dolls and McDonalds. But, she often says it's never too late to read, as she encourages adults to peruse the children's section of bookstores and libraries. You can always say you are picking out books for your grandchild! 

And try picking out what makes author Judy Blume an East Coast writer, besides the obvious settings of New York City, New Jersey and Florida along with New York concerts. Enjoy identifying 'old' things such as telephone books and nylons, along with numerous women's hats in church.

Criticism and Controversy, Yet Comfortable

In her third book, reviewed here, the author remembers what it's like to be 11 going on 12, new in town, discovering boys and starting a secret club with her three best girl friends. But what makes Blume an author for the ages is her magically seamless style of putting the reader smack dab into the storyline as well as a fast-paced story that keeps you guessing. Are You There, God is a fairly short book which ends gracefully but with so many loose ends that you just know there will be sequels.

Blume tackles arguing, lying, a first kiss, and changing bodies with aplomb and Margaret has simply the best parents in the world (too good to be true?) as she enters into the world of adolescence.

Blume has garnered more than 90 literary awards* but is also routinely nominated for the banned books list for her portrayal of issues like puberty, death, first love and many others.

If you read it as a youngster, read it again and relive your experiences!

Other Blume books include Deenie

and Tiger Eyes.

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*including an ALA award and an EBWhite award for children's and young adult literature.

Book Review: Panda's Story (OT)(told by a panda)

Panda's Story, by Keren Su (China Span, 128 pp HC, 2000, $29.95) Review by Skye Anderson

Mostly gorgeous photographs, Panda's Story is unforgettably playful and simply unforgettable by either children or their adults. 

We follow Panda in his own words as he is born, tiny and pink, until he becomes full-grown but not yet as big as his mother. We bask in the love of his mother whom he lovingly calls Mom

Panda Mom with Panda Child

We see him tumble down and probably bounce once or twice, we see him eat leaves,

Eating

we see him climb trees - all kinds of trees, not only bamboo, and in all kinds of weather, even snowy winters in China for Pandas have their own fur coats for keeping warm.

With chapters like My Birth, My Beautiful Home, My Childhood, I Grew Up, and My Future, Panda's Story spans the life of a baby panda who is playful as are all pandas - or perhaps we only see them as playful because they fall so often yet get up only to tumble again, leaving us with peals of laughter.

Our panda is endowed with the knowledge of his species' history and the hope for the future. Author Keren Su, of few words but numerous glorious pictures, has seen to that, spending 10 years photographing this shy 'unbear.'

Many of the photos are poster quality!  

Why is it that the world has fallen in love with this delightful creature? We don't know but after 'reading' Panda's Story, we are convinced all over again that the world has indeed, and Washington, D.C., particularly fallen in love, head over heels, all over again with pandas.

PS - Pandas are again popular at the Washington, DC, zoo!

Book Review: My Dog: The Paradox (The Oatmeal, comics)

My Dog: The Paradox - A Lovable Discourse About Man's Best Friend (Volume 3), by The Oatmeal and Matthew Inman (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2013, 32pp HC, $9.99) Review by Skye Anderson

Cartoons Never Go Out of Style

Should this book be labelled for adults only? And for boys in middle school who like scatalogical jokes?

Man's Best Friend, in this case, was a dog named Rambo who was half Shih Tzu and half Grizzly but, no matter what his mix actually was, in Author Inman's cartoons, Rambo looked like a roly-poly sausage with frog eyes. (Actually he resembled most of the mammals Inman drew.)

A collection of eye-opening truisms about living with a dog make up this little book, like how dogs are so afraid of cats and vaccuum cleaners but not garbage trucks. They will roll in poop or dead fish but several times a day will lick their own nether regions. They sometimes eat things twice: first, the normal way, and then they upchuck so they can eat things again. They are lousy at telling time: if you are gone for 6 minutes to go out and collect the mail or gone all day to the office, dogs will welcome you the same. They will apologize when you accidentally step on their tail. 

But do they really love us as we love them? They don't even know our names!

Dogs are true paradoxes. Is that why we love them so? Read Inman's book - or just look at the pictures - and find out. Then buy How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You.

Book Review: Dog Dad, How Animals Bring Out the Best In Us and Can Help Save the World

 Dog Dad, How Animals Bring Out the Best In Us and Can Help Save the World, by Topher Brophy (Vertel Publishing, $27.99 HB, 2022, 241 pp) Review by Skye Anderson

Slightly mistitled, Dog Dad could be divided into three parts: before Dog, life story until a revelation, and life after the revelation. We follow author Topher Brophy from New York City as a boy, through his college fraternity days, to his travels and tribulations around the world, ending up back in New York living with his parents and undergoing therapy.

Always a writer and a philosopher, yet also an introvert who shares his feelings of inferiority profusely, perhaps overly profusely, Topher Brophy does manage to find his lifelong mate and that is a story unto itself, but this book should be about being a dog dad and the bond between man and dog. 

Dog does manage to save Man and turn his life around, as dogs do for all of us. After all, we have to let them out a few times a day, exercise them, etc., but, in turn, they open up a new world for us to inhabit, the world of dog parks, and people wanting to pet our dog, and people wanting to talk about their dog, ad infinitum or so it seems!

Topher and Rosenberg

Perhaps you know of Topher? Starting in 2016,  photos of him and his dog Rosenberg appeared - dressed alike - all over. The woman photographer who created these photos turns out to play a major role in the rest of the book, but still, Dog Dad is written as if by a philosopher, not a storyteller. 

Murphy's Law

What can go wrong, will go wrong. As author Brophy succeeds in life and gains self-confidence, unfortunate things happen to him and his family - but he recovers. We especially (sort of) enjoyed the Pandemic snafus when Rosenberg runs off, the Brophys leave New York for a healthier rental house in the country only to have the landlord need it back to live in, himself - from getting stuck in snowstorms to getting soaked in rainstorms on the way to the hospital to welcome into this world a baby. These are things we just have to live through so we can reminisce about them ten years later.

Now, Back to Instagram

Invited to be interviewed on television, Brophy had to be convinced yet he had a wonderful time. Unfortunately,  the editor edited out all the good things and the slanted version that was televised almost made Brophy hide under a rock. He managed to survive because of the charities he believed in and donated to, plus realizing that photos of himself and Rosemberg just could change the world and make it better a little. See for yourself on the  book cover, on Instagram, on Facebook.

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Book Review: Pet Parents: A Journey through Unconditional Love and Grief

Pet Parents: A Journey through Unconditional Love and Grief, by Coleen Ellis (iUniverse Publishing, 2011, $12.95, 148pp PB) Review by Skye Anderson

The worst thing about dogs is that we outlive them, so we have to deal with their always-too-early demise and continue on with only memories. And if we get another pet, the same thing is bound to happen. The death of a pet is often the first time a child encounters death. Two-thirds of Americans have pets so they can empathize with you when a beloved family member passes away

But currently, since so many dogs (and cats) are literally members of the family, we want to do something special for them after they have left us. Did you know you can have their ashes put into a decorative urn to place on the mantel? Or did you know you can have a memorial service and invite your dog's friends to tell stories of remembrance?

Helpful and factual chapters are interspersed with others depicting what families have done for their pets, including police departments and how they have honored their beloved K-9 partners.

What Would I Change?

First of all, I would have this book edited. Doing so might drastically cut its length and decrease the repetition.

Author Coleen Ellis has a warm writing style and uses the newer terms "pet parents" and their derivatives "pet mommies" and "pet daddies." She writes as if she were in the room counseling you and shows how to find the people you need to help in planning what to do, what you want, and how to celebrate your pet and keep him in your heart.

This was the first book I have read on this topic and, as always, the first book leads to others, especially since Pet Parents is more than 10 years old. Included is an excellent start of a library on the subject of pet grief.

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Dog Heaven by Cynthia Ryland is a lovely book for children

Book Review: Who is Jane Goodall? (OT)

Who is Jane Goodall? by Roberta Edwards (Penguin (Random House), 2012, 112pp PB, $5.99, ages 7-9, grades 3-7) One in a series of 222 titles. Review by Skye Anderson.

You have seen these books in the bookstores but perhaps not all 222 of the titles. You have walked past them because with 222 books, how does one choose which one to buy first?

Maybe you could find one about the man or woman your child is learning about in school. Or maybe you can find one in a used bookstore of Little Free Library about someone worth reading about.

Jane Goodall is probably a typical Who is. . . ? book. I hope so. They have unique front covers, and line drawings throughout the book that children will want to color. For the older crowd of kids, inside are several pages of non-fiction enclosed within a square. With, of course, the requisite list of other books on the featured person.

Can you image going off to Africa and living with the animals in the jungle - and your mother?

Jane is everyone's hero, from young girls who love animals to older adults who teach children about nature and animals.

What Do We Know and Remember About Jane?

Jane's younger sister was born on her fourth birthday. Her first stuffie (stuffed animal) was a chimpanzee and she still has it. She has always had a  blond ponytail. When she moved to Africa in her mid-20s, her mother had to come with her!

We even know the names of some of Jane's chimps: Graybeard and Flo and Flint and Pom and, of course, Roots and Shoots.

Jane is a short book that adults can read in perhaps an hour or at least in one evening.

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For more reading about Jane:

Primates 

and

My Life with the Chimpanzees 

and

Walking with the Great Apes 

Book Review: Returned

Returned, by Amy Gilvary (Amy Gilvary, 66 pages, 2022, $10.99) Review by Skye Anderson*

Read this Book! Over and Over Again!

I needed to read this book. You do too!

I had been reading months of books for national literary awards as a judge and most of those books are not ones I would have chosen for me to spend time with. Most are not light reads so I was ready for a good book like the memoirs I love. 

Big Things Come in Small Packages

I didn't look at the page count until I had this little tome in hand. At first disappointment set in: it is hard to value a book with a price tag larger than the number of pages.

When the book came in the mail, I was disappointed in its littleness, its brevity. That is, until I opened the book and saw what seemed to be a collection of poems that I generally would not choose to read unless I had to. 

But then, I turned to page one and was hooked.

These are mostly one-page essays, word poems, truisms and unforgettable stories.

One Good Book

Every once in a while I find a book so good that I start the review before I have finished reading. Returned is one such book. 

Are these poems or short essays? It doesn't matter because I will keep this book! Other books that I receive to review I donate to rescues or shelters but not this one.

Author Amy Gilvary spent years learning her craft, working in shelters, and it shows. She knows what it's like and she knows how the dogs feel and live and love.

Returned

What can one say about a topic like 'returned'? We know what it means, thanks to the front cover of a dog's sad face behind a chain link fence. But how can one person write 53 stories or poems about 'returned' and have each of them be unique gems?

Returned is a book not many can read in one setting: I certainly could not. Yet, something clicked within me when I finished a page and I said, "Right on!  She knows what she is talking about. She has lived it."

The Dog on the Cover

So, tell me about the dog on the cover, EveryDog. He (or she) is wearing a collar - why? And one eye is blue while the other is brownish yet this Everydog is not Nordic from the coloring on his face and his freckles. 

Have you ever been so enthralled with a book that you look up the author and want to meet him/her? I have. She is a singer/songwriter - of course! That makes sense.

And would you believe for the 53 chapters, I "dogeared" 22 of them?

*Returned won the Dog Writers Association of America (DWAA) award for books on rescues or adoptions in 2022 and the recipient of the Maxwell Medallion.

For samples of the writings, see Dogwise.

Book Review: Just Ella (And they lived [happily] ever after! Or did they?)(OT)

Just Ella, by Margaret Haddix (Simon and Schuster, 240 pp PB, 10-14 year-olds, grades 5-9, $4.99, 2001) Book 1 in the Palace Chronicles series. Review by Skye Anderson.

Unhappily Ever After

Ever wonder what happened after Prince Charming finds Cinderella? Wonder no more! Just Ella is the story of Ella (Cinderella) and "Charm" (Prince Charming) in the time between the ball and the wedding but our heroine is a modern day gal used to working, not used to conversing with ladies-in-waiting about the anticipated most stylish color of the next season.

Ella won the heart of Charm by being beautiful and she fell in love with the handsome Charm but they hardly know each other and Ella is busy with classes on decorum, religion, needlepoint, and so on.

About halfway through their engagement, Ella realizes she doesn't know enough about Charm to like him, let alone to love him - and the wedding looms. . . .though she and Charm do have dinner together every other night.

At war with the neighboring country and with 15-year-old Ella being cooped up in the palace all day, life is not as she had imaged it and when she loses her temper, she is imprisoned (shades of Henry the Eighth).

Just Ella is a fast read that neither middle-school girls nor adults will be able to put down until it is finished. 

Although this is primarily a book for the younger set, it was written in a style that appeals to adults and it finally explains what really happened to Cinderella to enable her to attend the ball - was it her fairy godmother who turned a pumpkin into a carriage and mice into horses or was it the industrious Ella herself who talked a carriage drier into driving her to the ball.

Book Review: Moments with Baxter (therapy dog)

Moments with Baxter: Comfort and Love from the Worlds' Best Therapy Dog, by Melissa Joseph (Greenleaf Book Group LLC, 2009, 224pp HB, $24.95) Review by Skye Anderson

14-year-old Dog* Starts a New Job

Baxter is a funny-looking dog who will steal your heart away: I dare you to read this book without shedding a tear or two. On every page!

In his book, Moments with Baxter, 18-year-old Baxter looks back on his still-continuing therapy dog career, and the families he has loved who love him back. 

Dr. Love

Baxter looks like a cross between a stuffed teddy bear and, well, something else, with the cutest little bear ears. He is actually a golden chow (golden retriever mixed with chow chow) with teddy bear ears. And his face is simply magic: golden blond with stand-up ears always ready to listen. Small enough to fit on the bed with the hospice patients he visits and cuddles with - if they want to. And they do. And they talk to Baxter who listens attentively and returns petting with gentle kisses. 

Learn how Baxter became a therapy dog, almost by mistake, before you read the 36 'moments' depicted in words and plenty of photos. And I dare you to read more than a few stories in one seating without the tears flowing. So, don't read this book on the subway or in the doctor's office or any other public place unless you want stares and offers of kleenex.

Hospice volunteer Melissa Joseph has included helpful information in the back like just what therapy dog training consists of and the characteristics a therapy dog must have (p 211). She emphasizes the human-dog team aspect of the 'job.'

The author has written in short sentences that are calming and just the antidote for families.

"He looks deeply into each person's eyes and creates a light in the room that. . . will glow long after we depart." (p. 81)

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* ". . . older dogs need . . . something to do, or they will sleep more than they will live." (p 213) ". . . he lives to love," (p. 236)

Book Review: Voyage on the Great Titanic (YA - 13-year-old English girl, iceberg, ocean liner)(OT)

Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, RMS Titanic, 1912, by Ellen White (Scholastic, $10.95HB, 2010, 197pp, ages 8-12, grades 4-6), a book in the 55-book Dear America series. Review by Skye Anderson. This book is available in the Howard County, Maryland, libraries.

Imagine you are a 13-year-old English girl living in a convent and you receive a life-changing invitation as companion to a wealthy woman who has booked passage on the Titanic to America! You jump at the chance to join your brother in the New World, since both your parents have passed away. Oh, what adventures await you, a working class girl on a first class voyage!

You begin writing a diary and onboard ship your first-class (yes, first class!) stateroom steward is a young teenage boy who you befriend. 

Your readers learn about the clothing of the early century, the class system (especially onboard ship), the food, and daily life on the world's greatest ocean-going vessel.

Your companion is a bit stuffy, stodgy and even a bit selfish - typical in the wealthy class but nevertheless the ocean journey is fairly easy and relaxed for you.

The Night the Titanic Sank

Of course, all that is before the night as you are writing in your diary that you feel a bump and the bump turns into an iceberg.

Author Ellen White has penned an exiting tale that takes you back more than a hundred years to experience how people lived - and a traumatic historical event. White has included photos in the back, a timeline, an epilogue, and a historical note about the ship.