Seventh daughter of a seventh son and seventh daughter,
named for her birth-day, according to the traditional rhyme,
Sunday is accustomed to odd things in the Wood,
so a talking frog is rather expected.
But there’s nothing everyday about falling in love with him.
You’ll nod your head as you recognize the many fairy tales found in the early chapters of Enchanted, from the shape of the Woodcutter family home to the fate of sister Tuesday of the red shoes.
But there’s more to this tale than just homage to nursery rhymes and fairy tales, as Sunday strives to find her own way in the world rather than what’s been previously written, Rumbold tries to undo the actions of his impetuous younger days, and the King has his own sinister agenda.
Enchanted was just published on May 8, 2012, so look for it at your local independent bookstore or library now. Kontis tells us that book two is in the works, giving readers a preview with a short story featuring one of its key characters, Ashes-in-the-Wind.
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Book info: Enchanted (The Woodcutter, book 1) / Alethea Kontis. Harcourt, 2012. [author’s website] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My Book Talk: A talking frog, a cow traded for beans that grow a sky-high beanstalk, a house shaped like a shoe – for Sunday, it’s just life as usual in the Wood. But when her friend Grumble disappears and the King seeks a new wife, old tales of evil spells are remembered, and Sunday tries to change what has been foretold.
The ten Woodcutter siblings are children no more, although adopted Trix looks just as he did at age 12, thanks to his fairy blood. Ever since oldest brother Jack Jr. disappeared while in the King’s service, their family has stayed well away from the Arrilard palace, its sole prince, and its rumored curses.
Meeting Grumble by the fairy well was certainly more interesting than doing her chores, doubly so because the frog liked to listen to her stories, appreciative in his praise. Of course, any talking frog in the Wood must have been human first, so Sunday hopes that someday Grumble will tell her how he became cursed into frog form. She’d have to be careful about writing down his tale, as anything that she wrote had a strong chance of coming true, but he left the well without even saying goodbye.
Released from the froggy spell suddenly, Prince Rumbold finds himself in the palace, weak and confused. Who are his friends and who is against him? Why does he hear spirit voices in the palace night asking for death? What was the name of the girl who kissed him beside the well? His cold and regal father does allow Rumbold to invite all the eligible women of the kingdom to a grand ball at the palace, staying in his tower throne room to invoke magic for himself alone.
Will Rumbold find Sunday among all the people at the ball?
Will Sunday recognize Rumbold out of his froggy skin?
Will the Prince or the King choose a bride at the ball?
This bright-and-dark story about family, loyalty, and love in an Enchanted land reminds us that even the simplest fairy tales and nursery rhymes can carry the power of mighty words. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)
Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls, by Julie Schumacher (book review) – literature, swimming pool, awkwardness
Summer in the suburbs.
If you can get away, you’re gone…
these four girls are stuck in the sweltering, sticky heat
and in a book club together – with their mothers!
Mother-daughter book clubs can be a great opportunity for discussions, intellectual sharing, and true personal growth. But not this one, with its highly incompatible members, brought together solely by the AP English reading list and the moms recognizing one another from yoga class.
Lots of zany antics (usually instigated by CeeCee) between their encounter with each book (interesting insights there). The 19th century works are in the public domain, so you can read them online free; you can find print copies of all the books that Jill, Wallis, CeeCee, Adrienne and their moms discuss at your local library or independent bookstore of course.
“The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Gilman. Free download at Project Gutenberg.
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. Read online free at Project Gutenberg.
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin. Author’s website with some excerpts.
The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros. Author interview on its 25th anniversary.
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. Read online free at UNC Library of Southern Literature.
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Book info: The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls / Julie Schumacher. Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2012. [author’s website] [publisher website]
My Book Talk: One slip on the stairs, and her summer plans for adventure turn into a knee brace, rehab exercises, and required reading for senior English class. Adrienne couldn’t know that summer would also include midnight escapes, unlicensed drivers, epic chaos, and a dead body in the town swimming pool!
Isn’t it bad enough that Adrienne has to miss her long-planned canoe trek with best friend Liz this summer? Now her mom has gotten them into a mother-daughter book club in their dead-end boring suburb. Honestly, just because the moms take yoga class together doesn’t guarantee a compatible group for literature discussions…
Popular and pretty CeeCee is high school society-plus (her trip to France cancelled because she totaled another car), Jill works at the swimming pool snack stand, and Wallis is… Wallis – in their grade, but younger, recently moved to West New Hope with her mom (who is writing a scholarly philosophy book). The girls groan about having to write an essay over their summer reading. Such a strange bunch of characters in this book club, especially when you factor in the mothers, including Wallis’s mom, whom no one has ever met and who never comes to the mother-daughter book club meetings.
Meeting at Jill’s house to discuss “The Yellow Wallpaper” short story, the group chooses four books from the Advanced Placement reading list: Frankenstein, The Left Hand of Darkness, The House on Mango Street, and The Awakening. The girls see each other often at the pool (where else is there to go in their town in the summer?) and finally decide that “The Unbearable Book Club” describes this weird summer thing with the moms exactly.
CeeCee decides that Adrienne needs to get out of the house more, so she shows up at midnight for a road trip, and that’s just the beginning of the craziness. The summer heat rises, Adrienne’s mom has few answers for her questions about the father she’s never known, Wallis repeatedly appears for book club without her mother, then zips back to the woods where they live.
Is Adrienne going to let CeeCee run her summer?
Will Adrienne’s knee ever heal?
Does Wallis really have a mother?
What’s it like to play mini-golf at midnight in the rain?
Each chapter is headed by a literary term with Adrienne’s witty definition, as the girls’ discussions of each book underscore the tensions and dreams in their own lives. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
Silverhorse, by Lene Kaaberbøl (fiction) – guest post recommendation by Rachel Ward
Wild hellhorses,
A headstrong young girl,
Women lead society, men travel as they can.
Guest reviewer Rachel Ward brings us an exciting book about a chilling future on Blogathon2012’s Guest Post Day.
Silverhorse is the first book in the Katriona series, one of several written by Danish author Kaaberbøl, whose four-volume Shamer Chronicles fantasy series is published by Henry Holt Books in the USA.
Check WorldCat to find a library near you to check out Silverhorse or check your favorite bookseller for a copy of this London-published novel. Its sequel, Midnight, has also been translated into English, but book 3 remains in Danish only. Perhaps reader demand will interest a US publisher in getting the entire Katriona series back in print.
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Book info: Silverhorse / Lene Kaaberbøl. Macmillan (London), 2007. [author’s website in Danish] [author’s biography from Gale Biographies of Children’s Authors]
Rachel’s Recommendation *:
Silverhorse by Lene Kaaberbøl is set in a post-apocalyptic world where nobody is allowed to own the land, but it is passed down from mother to daughter. Women are the rulers with a duty to care for the land, and men lead an itinerant life. The main character is 12-year-old Kat, daughter of Tess, the maestra of Crowfoot Inn. Kat has a fiery temper and fights constantly with her stepfather.
In the end, Tess has no choice but to send Kat away, despite it being very unusual for a girl to travel in this society. After a disastrous apprenticeship to a dyer, she ends up at the academy for Bredinari, who ride the strange and dangerous hellhorses – wild nightmares crossed with sturdy mountain horses – and serve justice and law in the land of Breda. Here, Kat has to learn to control her temper so she can master the weapons and horses she will need to handle. Events come to a head when she gets caught up in power politics beyond her control or understanding, and finds herself fighting for survival.
The plot rattles along at a good pace and Kat is an engaging and sympathetic, if flawed, character. Her struggles with both authority figures and bullies her own age are all too recognisable and the book also tackles the reverse-sexism of her world, snobbery, loyalty, betrayal and true friendship.
Kaaberbøl’s writing is truly fantastic, in every sense of the word. This is an excellent and compelling fantasy story, translated from the Danish by the author herself – being able to write as well in another language as she can in her own is a skill of which I am frankly in awe!
*This review was originally posted on A Discount Ticket to Everywhere on Saturday 12th May, 2012.
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| Rachel Ward – guest blogger |
Since gaining her MA in Literary Translation in 2002, Rachel Ward has been working in Norwich, United Kingdom, as a freelance literary translator from German and French to English. She specialises in children’s and young adult literature as well as crime novels, fantasy and other contemporary fiction.
She blogs on reading and translation at http://adiscounttickettoeverywhere.blogspot.com/and is on Twitter as @FwdTranslations. Her most recent translations, the Nea Fox books by Amelia Ellis, are available as e-books from Amazon and www.neafox.com.
Happy Mother’s Day (reflective)
This small boy in his “I’m the big brother” shirt is a grown man now.
His tiny baby sister recently became a bride.
These days, their worklife involves communication, crafting word pictures, using pictures to tell stories.
I read aloud to them before they were born, on long car trips, before bedtime, and just because, the way that my mother the creative writer read to me and my siblings, the way that her mother the journalist read to her and her brothers.
A house full of books, a house full of stories, a home full of memories.
Happy Mother’s Day!
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Ashfall, by Mike Mullin (book review) – volcano disaster, dangerous trek, epic determination
As volcanic ash fills the Iowa skies,
violent earthquakes rattle the cornfields,
booms louder than cannons go on for hours and hours,
it seems like the end of the world is now…
but the end is just beginning.
Yellowstone’s geysers and fumaroles have always hinted at its geothermal potential for destruction. The supervolcano eruption long feared by geologists has come at last, and Alex’s home 900 miles east is under attack from its furies.
The enormous ash plume will spread through the atmosphere, block out sunlight, cause sudden and long-lasting winter weather. No sunshine means no crops growing, no crops means no food, widespread famine and desperation. Imagine the damage that sharp corrosive ash will do to auto engine air intakes, aircraft jet engines, delicate lung tissue of people and animals.
And Alex heads out into this ashfall with meager supplies and no sunrise to guide him eastward, trying to reunite with his family, to survive.
Visiting Yellowstone National Park last September, I smelled the sulfur of its hot spring pools, saw entire forests killed by rising super-scalding water levels, watched Old Faithful geyser jet up hundreds of feet into the sky. Yep, this supervolcano potential is real, and scientists are closely monitoring it – but can’t stop it.
First-time author Mike Mullin describes a perilous apocalyptic world which is all the more frightening because it really could happen at any moment. Book two in the series, Ashen Winter, will be published in October 2012 – pre-order it as soon as possible at your favorite independent bookstore because you won’t want to wait a single extra day to read what happens after Ashfall!
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Book info: Ashfall / Mike Mullin. Tanglewood Books, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer] My personal copy of book. Cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My Book Talk: Alex wants to skip visiting his uncle’s goat farm, and his parents finally agree to let the 16-year-old stay home alone this time, on that September weekend when the whole world changed, when a supervolcano eruption rocked civilization to its core.
It’s not like Alex was planning a wild party in his parents’ absence – just computer games and junk food on the menu. But those teen pleasures are gone now, like clear air and electricity and sunshine and phone service and clean water and trusting other people. Even 900 miles from the Yellowstone supervolcano, earthquakes throw houses around like kids’ blocks in their Iowa hometown. Then the ash begins to fall from the sky…and fall and fall and fall, clogging car engines, making it hard to breathe, getting into every crevice of his clothes.
Determined to get to his family, Alex gathers whatever food and gear he can, then heads east cross-country on Dad’s skis. Driving to Warren takes an hour and a half – how long will it take now? Slogging through ever-deepening ash, running short of water and food, he avoids farmhouses where he can see rifle barrels glinting in the windows, tries to find shelter in this flat farmland it gets colder and colder.
He keeps moving east, encountering very few refugees, some even less-prepared than he is, one much more dangerous than anyone he ever wanted to meet. Wounded, he stumbles into the first farmyard along the road and is taken in by Mrs. Edmunds and her teen daughter. Luckily, Darla has enough veterinary training to sew him up, and there’s corn to feed them for a while. Unluckily, trouble is coming down the road toward them, fast.
Can Alex really get to his uncle’s farm under his own power?
Can he protect Darla and her mom if they go with him?
What’s their biggest danger – the ash searing their lungs, the sudden heavy snowfall, or the viciousness of other people?
Vividly portraying a post-apocalyptic scenario that’s entirely too possible, Ashfall is first in a series, followed by Ashen Winter (book 2). (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)
Teen Boat, by Dave Roman & John Green (book review) – high school & high seas hijinx
Fitting in at high school is rarely easy,
but when you start breaking out (with barnacles),
and the cute new girl asks you to demonstrate your skills,
of course Teen Boat will transform into a small yacht,
right there in the high school hallway!
Ignatz Award winners Dave Roman (writer – you remember his 2011 Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity graphic novel) and John Green (illustrator) have finally published their popular webcomic in a full-color hardcover edition, including over 30 pages of new story. Don’t miss the “how we did it” section in the back of the book, detailing the creative team’s writing and illustrating process.
Just published this week, if you don’t find Teen Boat! at your local library or independent bookstore yet, be sure to ask for it!
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Book info: Teen Boat! / written by Dave Roman, illustrated by John Green. Clarion Books, 2012. [Dave Roman’s website] [John Green’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My Book Talk: Sure, every high school guy has some worries, but not every guy can transform into Teen Boat! When cute foreign exchange student Niña Pinta Santa Maria arrives, TB wants to impress her, so he agrees to help Harry by becoming a yacht for his party. TB’s longtime pal Joey (the girl next door) warns him that the big jock is only using him for some shady scheme, but the infatuated young man/boat doesn’t listen.
Offshore gambling, the Totally Pirates (seeking the legendary Tiene Bōt), and an iceberg attack make Harry’s party more memorable than TB would have liked. After-school detention, emergency rescue, student elections, and a part-time job all become adventures when Teen Boat is involved. Just imagine what the Yacht Club field trip to Venice, Italy, is like with this crew!
Will Teen Boat ever get over his paralyzing fear of entering a “land vessel” long enough to get his driver’s license?
Will he ever find the girl or boat or girl/boat who will love him?
Will the pirates ever stop chasing after him?
“The angst of being a teen – the thrill of being a boat” jumps off the pages of this graphic novel in vivid color, with new pages extending the webcomic storyline and an informative appendix that shows the step-by-step collaborative process that Roman and Green used in creating this sharply clever graphic novel. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)
Calli, by Jessica Lee Anderson (fiction) – foster sister or rotten apple?
Her boyfriend Dub is sweet,her moms are loving and supportive,
best friend Delia helps her keep away the blues,
so Calli thinks that having a foster little sister would just make things even better…
kissing Dub in the school hall,
spreading lies about Calli,
alienating her friends and stealing Calli’s things.
Now Calli wants to undo her wish for a foster sister and would turn back time in a heartbeat – but everyone knows that time only runs forward.
Jessica Lee Anderson brings us another highly readable story about a teen facing unusual challenges (see my no-spoiler recommendation of her Border Crossing here) and surviving, in spite of it all. Look for this 2011 book at your local library or independent bookstore.
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Book info: Calli / Jessica Lee Anderson. Milkweed Editions, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My Recommendation: Trudging home in the coastal Louisiana heat, Calli wonders why she ever wished for a foster sister. Everyone in the high school knows that Calli saw her own boyfriend Dub liplocked with Cherish, guesses he decided that he wanted action instead of affection.
Mom and Liz weren’t sure that they’d be certified as a foster family, but they’re such good parents that Calli never had a doubt (much better parents than her father who returned to France when she was born and never looked back). They’d requested young children, but consented to an emergency placement for “a teenager at risk.”
Whatever weird thing happened with Cherish’s family to get her into foster care, the ninth grader isn’t letting it stop her from hanging around with upperclassmen, wearing tighter shirts than Calli, more makeup than Calli, trying to get Calli to do her homework. The girls bicker constantly at home (thank goodness they don’t share a bedroom), which makes Mom’s lupus flare up. Verbal spats get physical, and now the whole family is at risk.
Cherish steals from Calli, alienates her friends at school – is there anything that Cherish won’t try to take away from her?
Is Dub lost to Calli forever?
Will Cherish’s willful behavior keep Mom and Liz from ever having a young foster child to care for and love?
Is Calli going to stay “plain old Calli” with braces forever?
An insightful look at less-traditional family life from the author of Border Crossing, this novel takes readers into that humid South Louisiana spring semester when Calli’s life changes for the worse, for the better, maybe for always.
Circle of Gold, by Guillaume Prevost (fiction) – kidnapping, time-travel, treachery
A treatise on magic,Seven special coins,
Stone statues as time-travel portals,
One villain intent using them to loot the world’s treasures.
For World Wednesday, this concluding adventure in the Book of Time trilogy pits fourteen-year-old Sam against the shadowy Archos man in a final battle for control of the time-travel gateways that only a few can travel.
Sam always seems to be putting the safety of others first, from his cousin Lucy to the lovely Alicia to his grandparents and his father. Now he’s determined to learn enough of time travel’s secrets to stop his mother’s car before her fatal crash three years ago. Can the avenues of Time stand the strain of this potential paradox?
Whether visiting the vast tomb of an ancient Chinese emperor or walking through an Egyptian pyramid’s secret passageways, author Guillaume Prevost‘s background as a history teacher brings fascinating perspectives to Sam’s many journeys through Time.
Get the whole story at your local library or independent bookstore, starting with The Book of Time (book 1- my recommendation) and The Gate of Days (book 2 – my recommendation), then join Sam on his search for The Circle of Gold.
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Book info: The Circle of Gold / Guillaume Prevost; translated by William Rodarmor. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2009. (Book of Time trilogy #3). [author interview] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
My Book Talk: The time-traveling talent shared by Sam and his father may be their undoing, as the Archos man tries to wipe them out and plunder all of Time’s riches for himself. But he underestimates Sam’s desire to make the world’s time-stream right again, even if the teen loses himself in the process!
Alicia, the girl that Sam adores, has been kidnapped from their Quebec hometown by the mysterious Archos man. Of course, the ancient book that the villain demands as her ransom is located far, far away in Renaissance Rome. Rescuing Dad from Vlad the Impaler’s dungeon and surviving the eruption of Vesuvius seemed difficult at the time, but this time, Sam will have to travel back in time alone, as his cousin Lucy is away at summer camp; her great problem-solving skills would help so much!
So Sam must use the ancient stone statue in the basement of his father’s bookstore to open the Gate of Days again, using a certain combination of special coins to land in Rome – just as a battle begins. The book is inside the city walls, and Alicia is being held prisoner by attacking forces who offer Sam a different option for redeeming her life.
Will her captors really try to double-cross the Archos man?
All of the time-journeys and trials which Sam experienced in The Book of Time (book 1) and The Gate of Days (book 2) lead him to this final race for The Circle of Gold. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)
Girls Don’t Fly, by Kristen Chandler (book review) – dreams, family, blue-footed boobies
A chance to study far away instead of babysitting all summer…
Maybe go to the university instead of dental hygienist school….
Prove to ex-boyfriend Erik that she’s better off without him.
Myra imagines herself in the Galapagos Islands with its Darwin’s finches and blue-footed boobies, famous tortoises and amazingly blue sea waters, even as her little brothers break things and mud-wrestle, her big sister drops out of college and moves back home pregnant, both parents work long hours, the family’s carpool schedules look like battle plans – no wonder that Myra feels like she’s holding everything together, even when Erik breaks up with her.
Visit Myra’s study group site at Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake in the author’s slideshow, watch for the next little brother disaster, and cross your fingers that Myra wins that scholarship!
Find Girls Don’t Fly at your local library or independent bookstore; if you order from the author’s favorite local indie bookstore, be sure to request an autographed copy!
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Book info: Girls Don’t Fly / Kristen Chandler. Viking, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer]
My Book Talk: Oh, how Myra feels trapped! Her perfect big sister is suddenly pregnant, her three little brothers are a constant noisy mess, and now Erik wants “some space” – this isn’t how spring of senior year should go!
When their AP Biology teacher announces a scholarship to study birds in the Galapagos Islands, Myra decides to go for it, even if it does require early morning Saturday excursions to Great Salt Lake Marina’s bird observation area and a “high level” scientific study proposal write-up and… $1,000 toward travel costs. Maybe she can scrape together that much money in just 3 months working part-time at the ice cream shop, right?
Saturday 6 a.m. really is early, but the University of Utah graduate assistant who’s leading the bird studies is enthusiastic enough to wake everyone up. Pete is excited that two high school kids from his hometown have a shot at this scholarship, so he helps them all with their project proposals as much as the rules allow.
Erik makes yet another mistake at the ice cream shop and expects Myra to cover for him like she did while they were dating. When she doesn’t and the manager insinuates that she’s irresponsible like her big sister, Myra just quits.
Now she’s got to find another job in this little town. Mom and Dad think she’s saving money to go to dental hygienist school; Myra hasn’t exactly told them that the scholarship requires that $1,000 travel fee, and they don’t seem too optimistic about her winning it anyway, especially when future-dentist Erik is also a competitor.
When the marina secretary quits, the Lake ranger offers Myra the job, part-time till school’s out, then full-time in the busy summer. Alright! A chance to earn the money she needs, do some extra bird-watching for the seminars, and Pete is at the marina whenever he’s not in class.
But can Myra really get away from this town where her family is judged because they don’t go to church like everyone else?
Can she come up with a scientific study idea that’s better than Erik’s so she can win the scholarship?
Can she keep thinking of Pete as only the group’s study leader instead of something more?
Everyone knows that Girls Don’t Fly, but Myra is determined to change all that in this story of family, dreams, life, and longing. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
Lessons in blogging from classic movies (reflective)
Today’s Blogathon2012 theme is “5 movies that have inspired my blogging,” so here are 5 classic movies that remind me of what to do and what NOT to do on BooksYALove – the movie title links go to Internet Movie Database.
Coincidentally, these movie-based lessons also reminded me of Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science, the pithy truths that underpin everything I do as a “librarian-at-large” on BooksYALove, as a contributor to www.abookandahug.com, and when I recommend books to family and friends.
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| Clipart courtesy of webweaver.nu |
1) Blue Hawaii – yes, the Elvis movie. During a family visit in spring 1969, all the kids got packed off to see this movie so the grownups could have some time without us. It didn’t matter if we liked Elvis or not, we had to go. Decades later, I still regret those 102 minutes spent at the Saturday bargain matinee when I could have been reading! So I want to make sure that I never say that “everyone will just love this book” on BooksYALove – because it just isn’t possible! Ranganathan’s Second Law states “Every reader his/her book.”
2) Planet of the Apes – wow! Seeing this movie as a young teen in the late 1960s was powerful and disturbing- because I had absolutely no idea of what it was about until we were in the theater watching it (another well-meaning extended family outing with all the kids, regardless of their ages). Ranganathan’s Fourth Law is “Save the time of the reader,” so BooksYALove aims to give enough taste of each book that readers can decide whether or not it’s one they’ll want to try.
3) Star Wars – the first one, the real one, the one that I saw 7 times (twice in French!), and I still have the 1970s t-shirt. The power of story was evident in this movie (known as A New Hope to youngsters)- classic struggle between good and evil, between doing the expedient thing and the right thing, choosing friendship and loyalty over the easy way out. Hmmm… sounds like the best themes in young adult books today. Ranganathan’s Fourth Law = “Every book, its reader.”
4) The Empire Strikes Back – We took my youngest brother to see this movie for his birthday during its first theatrical release (long ago…). As the opening filled the screen, he leaned over and whispered “You know that Darth Vader is Luke’s daddy.” No, I did not! Why would I want to know the ending? Ruined the whole movie for me (at the time, it was the last in the Star Wars saga). So I will never give away special plot twists or the ending in any book recommendation on BooksYALove – a no-spoiler site by design and choice! “Books are for use” says Ranganathan’s First Law, not to stay on a shelf or be locked away – and I never want to make a book stay unopened because I spoiled that delicious journey of discovery for even one reader.
5) The Sound of Music – My Girl Scout troop went to see it on the big screen in the mid-1960s (and broke into song during meetings regularly thereafter – “the HILLS are aLIVE with the sound of muuuuuuusic”) – we thought we were just going to see a nice musical. But we also got a glimpse into war’s perils, not graphically or violently, but at age ten began seeing that there were many unfair things that happened to good people, that there was a big world outside our Air Force base housing, and that ordinary people can make a difference. “The library is a growing organism” is Ranganathan’s Fifth Law, and I hope to help readers grow their personal libraries through BooksYALove, as we discover other worlds and other lives through books together.
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