Book Review: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

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The summer of Calpurnia Virginia Tate’s 11th birthday was a hot one. Everyone in her large family suffered from the heat in their Fentress, Texas home, but as Calpurnia was the only girl in a family of seven children, she also found freedom during afternoon naptime. That’s when she stole away from her room and down to the river, where she floated dreamily in the cool water.

During her outings away from the noise of having six brothers, Calpurnia discovers the natural world and starts making observations about it in her notebook. She also screws up her courage to talk to her grandfather, a shadowy figure who spends most of his time by himself caught up in reading or scientific experiments. But when her grandfather discovers that Calpurnia’s interest is genuine, he begins to include her in his experiments and observations. When they believe they discover a new species of vetch, they send it in to the Smithsonian for judgment.

Calpurnia’s activities with her grandfather brings up a conflict with Calpurnia’s mother, who believes that in the year 1899 girls must prepare to be women who run households, and nothing more. That means cooking, sewing, knitting and tatting, all occupations Calpurnia abhors. As she struggles to follow her heart’s desire, Calpurnia must discover if there are options for women in her time who have interests other than the domestic.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is historical fiction that reveals turn-of-the-last-century times in rural Texas. It was a time not very far removed from the Civil War, and Calpurnia’s grandfather as well as many others in town fought in the war. The Tate family farms cotton, and they are wealthy by the standards of most people in town. They have a housekeeper and a cook as well as regular farm hands, and while the children have daily chores, they don’t have the responsibility of making the farm productive.

This was also a time when Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species was making an impact. It had been published for about 50 years, but his conclusions were still hotly debated, and as Calpurnia found out, some libraries refused to carry copies of the book. Each chapter begins with a quote from Darwin that’s applicable to the action to come. As the book progresses, Calpurnia grows in her ability to understand the people and the world around her through observations made with a microscope and her regular vision.

This book is sure to delight mother-daughter book clubs with girls aged nine and up. Discussions can center on the differences between life for girls and women in 1899 versus life now, living up to the expectations of your parents versus following your heart, and scientific experiences. Girls may even find inspiration for a school science project, and groups can even tie in craft or sewing projects. I highly recommend it.

Book Review: Forever Lily by Beth Nonte Russell

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When Beth Nonte Russell was asked to accompany a friend to pick up the baby girl she was adopting from China, she expected it to be an adventure. An avid traveler, Russell had never been to China, and she welcomed this chance to help a friend while discovering a new country.

But when the friend is presented with a frail baby who seems developmentally far behind her age, she balks at going through with the adoption. Russell finds herself responding in a way that will change her life forever: she agrees to take the girl herself once back in the U.S. Forever Lily: An Unexpected Mother’s Journey to Adoption in China is the memoir Russell has written about her experience.

Russell masterfully tells the story of her journey, which included other soon-to-be adoptive parents who had all planned for a long time to bring a new baby into their lives. Russell weaves tales of the groups’ sightseeing excursions to famous landmarks along with heartbreaking images of the babies’ orphanage when the group visits. She shares her conflicting thoughts of China, whose society is vibrant and modern, but also ancient and repressed.

An undercurrent of the story is Russell’s vivid dreams, some of which started before her trip began and lead her to believe she may have a stronger connection to China than she ever would have imagined.

While Russell’s decision to take the baby is clearly heroic, she doesn’t make herself out to be an unblemished hero, which makes her seem more human. She freely shares that her relationship with her stepchildren was reserved, and that she didn’t open herself up to love and the possibility of being hurt in the past. As she struggles emotionally to accept what she knows she must do, she shares with the reader her personal spiritual beliefs and her journey to get to those beliefs.

Forever Lily is a fascinating story that engrosses to the end, and it will have readers asking themselves, “What would I do if something extraordinary was asked of me?” While it’s most appropriate for moms, who will more easily relate to Russell’s story, older girls will find something of interest here too. Russell also makes book club discussion easy with a list of discussion questions and an interview featured in the back of the book along with a list of activities the group can consider.

Also a testament to the profound way Russell’s life was changed by her experience is the fact that she has started a new non-profit organization called The Golden Phoenix Foundation. Here’s a description of the foundation from the website:

“Motivated by the plight of orphaned children in China and elsewhere, Beth and Randy Russell founded the Golden Phoenix Foundation in 2006.

The mission of the Golden Phoenix Foundation is to end child abandonment worldwide. The Foundation supports existing initiatives, helps develop research projects and plans for future direct initiatives to help better the quality of life of children without families throughout the world.”

Russell hopes to raise funds for her foundation through product sales on the website, Good True Beautiful, which sells her book, an eau de parfum called Forever Lily, t-shirts and a tote baag.

Book Review: Artichoke’s Heart by Suzanne Supplee

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Rosemary Goode lives in Spring Hill, Tennessee, where her mother owns the busiest beauty shop in town. Her life is pretty routine: she goes to high school, works in her mother’s shop, and spends time on her own, but she doesn’t have friends to hang out with. Rosie is also a binge eater, sometimes eating huge amounts of food. Her crisis comes over Christmas break when she gains quite a bit of weight and can no longer fit in her largest clothes.

Rosie decides something has to be done, and she begins a liquid diet of weight-loss drinks to help her shed some pounds. But real change doesn’t come for Rosie until she starts to see herself as something more than a fat girl, the one the popular girls tease and call artichoke.

For the first time Rosie has a friend, Kay-Kay who is pretty and slim and athletic, and she hopes to have a boyfriend, cute Kyle Cox who is a super athlete. Slowly she begins to change her relationship with food, and all the other relationships in her life begin to change as well.

Artichoke’s Heart by Suzanne Supplee is about more than a high school girl trying to lose weight. The beauty shop scenes are reminiscent of Steel Magnolias, where everyone’s problems can be solved while they get their hair and nails done. There’s also an interesting mother-daughter dynamic. Rosie’s mother got pregnant in high school, and she raised her daughter on her own. Rose Warren (Rosie’s mother) has always had to be so strong, that she often forgot to let her daughter see any weakness. When she’s diagnosed with lymphoma and starts to undergo treatment, she finds she must let her daughter into her inner life more than before.

I recommend Artichoke’s Heart for mother-daughter book clubs with girls in high school. Issues to talk about include eating disorders, self-esteem and feelings of self-worth, family dynamics, and dating. The book provides no easy answers, which is why it should be able to generate great discussions.

Book Review: In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White

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In the mid-1990s Neil White defrauded creditors out of their money and was sentenced to spend time in a federal minimum-security prison. He recounts his time spent in that prison in his memoir, In The Sanctuary of Outcasts, which gives the reader a glimpse into two societies shut off from the mainstream: prisoners and leprosy patients. The story fascinates from the start, when White tells of his wife dropping him off at the prison gatehouse. He is early, and he has to wait to be checked in. Everything about his check-in procedure is designed to let him know the rules from outside no longer apply, and he is not in charge of his daily activities. White is strip searched, assigned a room, and given a job. He has no door on his room, no privacy, and he learns not to offer to shake hands with the guards. He also soon finds out that the prisoners are housed alongside Hansen’s Disease patients, more commonly known at lepers, and he must work serving them in the cafeteria.

Through White’s account we learn the history of the leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, a facility that started in the late 1800s as a place to isolate those with the disease. While Hansen’s Disease can now be treated in a physician’s office and patients are no longer isolated, those living at Carville predated treatment, and many remained at the facility even after it was no longer necessary for them to stay. Most had been there for half a century or more, and they had no other place to go.

At first White reacts as much of society has always reacted to these patients: he doesn’t want to breathe the air they breathe, touch them, or eat food they have been around. He is afraid he will catch leprosy, turning his short prison sentence into one with consequences for the rest of his life. Gradually, he learns he has nothing to fear. He begins to seek their company whenever possible, and the lessons he learns from them help him find redemption for his own crimes and misdeeds.

Through White’s eyes we also see the other prisoners serving time with him, a hodge podge of criminals who include doctors, lawyers and accountants as well as drug dealers and robbers. This bizarre co-existing of prisoners and patients came about as the federal government tried to decide what to do with the facility at Carville.

Only White can answer whether he truly found redemption and learned to change his self-destructing habits for good. But his story of others who have learned to find grace and lead happy, productive lives despite being cut off from families and ostracized from the rest of society is inspiring as well as informative.

I had the chance to glimpse the inside of Carville myself when I was in college in 1980 and interviewed a patient who was editor of the newspaper the colony produced. I’ll never forget the feeling I had of a place that had been both sanctuary and prison for the patients. White captures the place well, and in writing about it, sheds a bit more light on this little known piece of American history that should not be forgotten. I highly recommend it.

Louisiana New Year’s and Cabbage Roll Recipe

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When I was growing up in southern Louisiana we celebrated many holidays with the same traditions each year: chicken barbecues and egg boxing for Easter, crawfish boils on Mother’s Day, fish fries and dances for my parents’ anniversary on the 4th of July, crab boils and German chocolate cake for my birthday in August, All Saints Day services and flowers in the graveyard on November 1, gumbo for Christmas Eve dinner. Now that I live far away in Oregon, a lot of those traditions are hard to maintain. The one I keep alive, without fail, is also one of my favorites, the New Year’s Day tradition of eating cabbage and black-eyed peas.

I know Louisiana isn’t the only place in the country with this tradition, and although I’m not sure of its origin, I believe it goes way back as a way to ensure prosperity for the coming year. Cabbage is supposed to symbolize the greenbacks that will come your way in the new year. Black-eyed peas signify coins in your pocket. I know lots of friends and family who could use more of both of those in the coming year. So once again, tomorrow morning I’ll be at my stove cooking cabbage rolls to eat for our dinner. It’s something everyone in my family looks forward to. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about the black-eyed peas. Every year we all manage to choke a few down, but as long as I’ve been eating them I still don’t really like them. I can doctor them up with bacon and hot sauce, but I can’t imagine ever looking forward to heaping a pile of black-eyed peas on my plate. I’m looking forward to ringing in 2010 this way.

Here’s my recipe for cabbage rolls. While I got this from my mom, who has been making them for as many years as I’ve been around or more, I think most cabbage rolls recipes are similar. Enjoy!

New Year’s Day Cabbage Rolls

  • 1 small cabbage
  • 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 cup chopped onions
  • 1/2 cup chopped celery
  • 2 cloves chopped garlic
  • 1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
  • 1-1/2 lb. ground beef
  • 1 16-oz. can chopped tomatoes
  • 1 egg
  • 2 cups cooked rice
  • Toothpicks

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Carefully cut stem from cabbage and steam for about 15 minutes over boiling water. Let cool. Loosen cabbage leaves.
  3. While cabbage is cooling, heat oil in large skillet. Sauté onions, celery, garlic, and bell pepper in oil until limp, about 7 minutes. Set aside in a bowl.
  4. Sauté ground beef in skillet until well cooked. Add reserved vegetables, tomatoes, egg and cooked rice. Mix well.
  5. Have a large casserole dish on hand. Take one cabbage leaf, place about a tablespoon of meat mixture at the base, fold over the sides and roll into a ball. Place the roll into the casserole dish and secure with a toothpick in the middle. Repeat until meat mixture is gone.*
  6. Place a 1/2 cup water over the cabbage rolls and bake for 45 minutes.

*If you don’t have time to put the rolls together, you can also layer the ingredients in your dish to make a cabbage casserole.

Book Review: A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck

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Grandma Dowdel’s back, only this time she’s known as Mrs. Dowdel to the Methodist preacher’s family that just moved in next door. The family, which includes three children, has been relocated from Terre Haute, Indiana to take over what is to be a new Methodist church but what is now a run-down building with no windows, a deteriorating roof and no congregation in a small Illinois town.

As family members work to adjust to a new life, gruff old Mrs. Dowdel next door seems to know exactly what each needs. Bob, who tells the story, is the middle child on the verge of puberty. He’s the easy target of bullies and in need of confidence as well as friends. Phyllis, fourteen going on twenty, is appalled at having to start high school in a place where she knows no one. Her obsession with everything Elvis leads her to take up with an unsavory character and start lying to her parents about where she’s going and what she’s doing. Six-year-old Ruth Ann is starting first grade, and she’s searching for someone to look up to. The dad, of course, needs a congregation, and the mom needs help keeping them all functioning well.

Fans of A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder will be happy to read more about Grandmas Dowdel’s schemes to influence her small town and the family next door for the better. She’s just a gruff as ever, but older now. The gifts she bestows are not the kind you can wrap and put under a Christmas tree, but they are the kind no receiver would seek to return. Peck is a master of subtle storytelling, letting the reader reach conclusions about the characters along the way. He’s also superb at bringing bygone times to life, and in A Season of Gifts he deftly captures life in a small town during the late 1950s.

I read this book aloud to the whole family, which includes my husband and two teen daughters. We all loved it, something rare for the four of us with our different tastes in books. I highly recommend it for family reading as well as for children aged nine and up. Buy this book now, even though Christmas has just passed. Then pack it away with your Christmas decorations and be pleasantly surprised when you pull it out next year.

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Tea for Book Lovers

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I recently discovered a line of teas I think make great gifts for readers. It’s called Novel Teas and it’s packaged by Bag Ladies Tea. For the past few days I’ve been sipping on my own cups of tea made with Novel Tea bags. The tags are stamped with sayings by writers, such as the one in the photo above from Louisa May Alcott, who says, “She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.”

English Breakfast tea is in the bag, and although I’m a coffee drinker for breakfast, English Breakfast tea is my choice for lunch and to sip during an afternoon of writing. I know we’re just past Christmas and gifts may not be the on the top of your list today, but there’s bound to be a gift-giving occasion in your future that these teas will be perfect for. Bag Ladies has collections for teachers, sisters, gardeners, mothers and more. Any of them can make a whimsical gift. It’s so refreshing to find something out of the norm that you know will be enjoyed by a tea drinker.

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Book Review: Fern Verdant and the Silver Rose by Diana Leszczynski

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Both of Fern’s parents, Olivier and Lily, are world-famous botanists. In fact, Lily’s uncanny ability to help nearly extinct species keeps her constantly on the go to exotic locations. But Fern isn’t happy always playing second fiddle to plants. For many years she has wanted nothing to do with nature and the outdoors.

That’s especially true once her parents move to the fictional town of Nedlaw (a play on Walden?), Oregon, where Fern feels out of place among the more glamorous students with cosmopolitan working mothers at her school. She’s downright embarrassed by her mother’s clothes, and the fact that her hair always seems to be a bit wild. So when Lily leaves on another trip to help another plant, Fern doesn’t even say goodbye—something she regrets when Lily disappears and is presumed dead.

Soon, though, Fern discovers that she shares a gift her mother passed down to her. Plants can talk to her, and she can talk back. She finds out that her mother is alive, being held captive in a cave somewhere far away by an evil man who wants to manipulate her gift. How will Fern find her, especially when her father has her committed to an institution after he sees her conversing with a willow tree? And how can she make anyone understand her certainty that her mother is still alive, when she can’t tell anyone about her ability to communicate with plants without losing her gift?

Fern Verdant and the Silver Rose by Diana Leszczynski recounts Fern’s adventures as she seeks to save her mother and nurture her blossoming gift. Her travels find her in the clutches of a deranged psychiatrist who hates children, and on a boat at sea with a group of orphans. During her search she is both hastened and hindered from reaching her destination by members of the plant world. Along for the ride is a single petal from the silver rose Fern’s mother was helping when she was kidnapped.

There’s a strong message of respecting nature and all it has to offer, and the book won the 2009 Green Earth Book Award Honor. To be certain, there are many “green” messages, but Fern Verdant doesn’t feel at all preachy as it shows Fern learning how to use her talent for good.

You’ll be happy to accompany Lily on her quest to find her mother, be reunited with her father, help the orphans and save the silver rose. While girls aged 9 to 12 will enjoy Fern’s adventures, their mothers can also appreciate how Leszczynski pokes fun at many aspects of the adult world, including psychiatrists, psychiatric facilities, lifeguards, spy agencies and scientists who may be too smart for their own good. Moms may also be able to prompt discussion of why teen girls often get embarrassed to be seen with their moms, and how moms and daughters can learn to appreciate the things that are important to each of them.

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