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Book Review: Cleavage: Breakaway Fiction for Real Girls Edited by Deb Loughead and Jocelyn Shipley

Posted on December 5, 2008 by Cindy Hudson

Cleavage: Breakaway Fiction for Real Girls. Just the name is edgy and designed to get our attention, and the stories inside live up to the title. In the foreword, editors Deb Loughead and Jocelyn Shipley say that the word cleavage has many meanings. There’s the image of the valley between breasts of course, but cleavage also refers to the division of a fertilized ovum from a single cell into a mass of smaller cells. It’s what they call the mom factor that shows up in the book. Cleavage also has contradictory meanings. On one hand it means to break away from, on the other it means to hold tightly to.

You’ll find stories relating to all the meanings in this delightful book of short stories that’s easy to digest and gives a lot to think and talk about. If you can think of an issue for women, it’s probably covered, including attitudes about weight, breast implants, tattoos, body image, make-up, clothes and more. These pieces will open the door for moms and daughters to talk about hard-to-bring up subjects that benefit from open discussion.

A short bio of each author, including a note about what inspired her to write her story, is a nice touch that adds extra meaning to each piece. Mother-daughter book clubs with high-school-aged girls will find a lot to like when reading Cleavage.

Reasons to Read

Posted on December 3, 2008 by Cindy Hudson

Last night I attended a meeting of the Willamette Writers, where my friend and mentor Christina Katz was speaking about building a writing platform. Christina has written two excellent books for writers—Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids, and Get Known Before the Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform. During her talk, Christina read a list of all the reasons she could find that people may want to write. That got me to thinking about all the reasons people may want to read. Here’s what I came up with. It’s a puny list to be sure, so I look forward to reading comments from readers who tell me more.

Reasons to Read:

To learn something new
To remember something forgotten
To relax
To laugh
To be enlightened
To gain perspective
To be entertained
To get motivated
To get sleepy
To be stimulated
To learn how to do something
To pass the time
To avoid housework
To gain insight
To indulge yourself

What’s your reason?

Book Review: Memo to the President Elect by Madeleine Albright

Posted on November 21, 2008 by Cindy Hudson

When I’m not reading for one of my mother-daughter book clubs or reviewing books for this blog and my Web site, I’m reading for a book discussion group that I’m in with my husband, Randy, and three other couples. Our group mostly reads nonfiction, and tomorrow night we’re meeting to talk about Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America’s Reputation and Leadership by Madeleine Albright.

Because Albright wrote the book before she even knew who the major party nominee’s would be, she’s writing to a speculative winner that could have been Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Mitt Romney, among others. Albright frequently references campaign promises, and it’s apparent that any of the candidates could have made the promises she recounts. It’s interesting to see that no matter how far apart their stated views are, the same words can be used to define separate stances.

What I really like about the book is that it focuses on foreign policy. Albright goes throughout the regions of the world and talks about the history of each one as well as the current status. As you might expect, she has a lot of praise for President Clinton’s policies and harsh criticism for President Bush’s, but she both praised and criticized past presidents regardless of which political party they were part of.

Whether you agree with Albright or not, you may find this to be an interesting look at the world and our part in it. It made me think of foreign policy as a long continuum, not just isolated events that occur to get our attention. I expect our discussion tomorrow night will be very interesting.

Book Review: Unraveling by Lynn Biederman and Michelle Baldini

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Cindy Hudson

Previously I’ve written about an interview with Lynn Biederman, author of unraveling, and her mom. But I realized I never wrote my official review of the book for my blog readers. So here it is, just in time for you to pick up and read while school’s out for Thanksgiving.

unraveling by Lynn Biederman and Michelle Baldini

Amanda Himmelfarb is starting high school and is ready to grab all she can of it. She wants to leave behind the loser image that got her the one-time nickname of Himmelfart. She’s contemplating having sex with a boy she met on vacation the year before. And she’s constantly at odds with her mother, who watches her like a hawk and comes down hard on her for all the things she imagines Amanda wants to do. The reader aches for everyone involved in the dysfunctional dynamics of this family: the mother-daughter pair who are constantly at odds, the mom and dad who argue over discipline and trust, the younger sister who takes advantage of it all to gain special privileges for herself. In short, everyone is unraveling, and the more threads that get pulled away, the faster the foundation continues to crumble. Just when everyone seems on the brink of coming apart, a surprising event helps them start to put the stitches of their lives back together.

Members of mother-daughter book clubs will find unraveling by Lynn Biederman and Michelle Baldini a safe place to discuss mother-daughter conflicts and look at how they affect the whole family. So much of the conflict comes about through misunderstanding and miscommunication, it’s a primer on what not to say or do if you want to maintain good relationships between parents and children. There’s also lots to talk about, particularly on the topic of girls who feel unloved and unaccepted may be less able to set acceptable boundaries for all areas of their lives.

If you’d like to check out the interview, here’s the link to Good News Broadcast.

The Secret Life of Bees Movie/Book Comparison

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Cindy Hudson

Yesterday Catherine and I went to see The Secret Life of Bees with our book club. It was a school holiday and Madeleine joined us, since we had previously read the book with her book club too. We enjoyed the movie, and there were quite a few tears flowing during the show. We also had an interesting discussion comparing the movie and the book over ice cream afterward.

First I have to say we all liked the book hands-down better than the movie. The book is beautifully written, and it brings up issues of racism, familial love and acceptance of people for who they are. It’s not tidy, and by the end you know that the characters will go on trying to make sense of the times they live in and their reaction to them as well as to personal events in their own lives. There was lots of information about bee life that tied in as a wonderful metaphor to what the characters were experiencing.

While we liked the movie, we were very aware of things they changed from the book that made it flawed for us. For one thing, the movie seemed to add the bees as an afterthought, which seems strange. There were lots of scenes with August and Lily in bee clothing, but most of the bee talk seemed more informational about keeping bees and not metaphorical. Three other major differences between the book and the movie made up the bulk of our complaints about how the movie could have been better.

In the movie Zach ends up beaten up by white men for sneaking Lily, a white girl, into the colored section of a movie theater. This placed the blame on Lily and Zach for what came next. In the book, I was worried that something like that would happen because the two were so close, and I was glad when it didn’t. We all thought it was much better for the story for Zach to end up in jail, suspected of assaulting a white man even though he had done nothing. It showed how people tend to see faces different than their own as all looking the same, hence stripping the identity from an ethnic group. If you can get in trouble because all black people look alike to white people, then your individual actions cannot be counted on to set you apart.

Also, in the movie, Our Lady of Chains loses part of her story, and part of her significance. In the book, she is depicted as being a carved ship’s masthead that probably started out as a representation of a white woman, but through her trials and tribulations the color of her wood turned black. One of the girls mentioned she was a great symbol to show that we are all the same inside, regardless of the color of our skin, and she’s a bridge to heal racial issues. In the movie, she was depicted as being originally carved as a black woman, so the symbolism is lost.

The ending of the book was also much more satisfying than the ending of the movie, although we all got the feeling it was intended to be just the opposite. I won’t detail the endings except to say that in the book it’s not tidy, which is more like real life and more satisfying somehow. The movie wraps it all up in a nice tidy package that trivializes what’s come before. It felt trite to many of us.

Regardless of noticing things we liked or disliked about the movie and the book, we all thought it was a great discussion for our mother-daughter book club.

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Book Review: Savvy by Ingrid Law

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Cindy Hudson

I recently read Savvy by Ingrid Law with my daughter Catherine, who’s 14. We both liked it, and we thought it finds an interesting balance between realistic and fantasy fiction while giving the reader lots to think about. It’s most approachable for upper elementary and middle school readers, but older readers can appreciate it too. Here’s my review:

Mississippi Beaumont can’t wait for her 13th birthday, only days away, because that’s when she’ll officially get her savvy. All the Beaumont’s, except Poppa, have a savvy that is uniquely their own. Mama is perfect, Grandpa Bomba makes new land, Rocket controls electricity and Fish can create storms and move water. Trouble is, the savvy is hard to control when it first comes in, and Mississippi, better known as Mibs, is nervous about what will happen at her party.

When her dad ends up in a coma in the hospital after a car accident and her mother leaves the family to be with him, the preacher’s wife organizes a birthday party for Mibs, making all the Beaumonts nervous about what will happen on the big day. But the fun really starts when Mibs decides to stow away on a broken down Bible-delivery bus, hoping to reach Salina, Kansas, where she believes she can wake Poppa up. Along for the ride are her older brother Fish, her younger brother Samson, and the preacher’s children, Bobbi and Will Junior.

Mibs has a great, down-to-earth voice, and readers will happily follow her as she explores issues of family, friendship, budding romance, and finding the things that are special inside each of us. You may just find yourself looking for your own special savvy. You can also look for games and a discussion guide at the publisher’s Web site, www.penguin.com/teachersandlibrarians.

The Secret Life of Bees – Mother-Daughter Book Club Meeting

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Cindy Hudson

This past Sunday Catherine and I went to our mother-daughter book club meeting to talk about The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Ellen cooked a great southern-themed dinner to go with the book; we feasted on ham, biscuits, corn fritters and green beans. Of course there was honey. It’s hard to read this book and not start to crave honey on the comb. As a southern-born-and-raised girl I was as happy as could be.

When the book was chosen, I was a little worried that I would be bored reading it. I had already read it twice: first in a women’s book club I used to belong to and the second time with Madeleine for her mother-daughter book club. But I need not have worried.

I started to read the first page to Catherine and was instantly reminded of how much I love the book, and how much I admire the way Sue Monk Kidd writes. The characters are well developed and their emotions leap off the page as real, not just words written about what they are feeling. I ache for Lily in so much of the book, and it’s easy to see that her need to have a mother who loves her influences everything she does.

We all talked about a favorite character, and it was interesting to note that nearly every character in the book is developed well enough to have a following. Some of us thought that August was too perfect, and that the pink house was too much of a utopia. But we also recognized that the issues dealt with were very complicated, and the story needed August’s wise voice to sort through them.

Racial tension and the civil rights movement was also a large issue underlying the story. It’s interesting how relevant that issue is today in light of the presidential campaign and election. When I shared some of my stories about growing up in the south during those racially turbulent times, the girls looked on as though I was talking about a foreign country. In many ways, that era does seem foreign, and Obama’s election is testament to how far we’ve come since then.

We plan to see the movie as a group next week. We’re looking forward to talking afterward about how the two compare. I highly recommend The Secret Life of Bees for mother-daughter book clubs with girls in high school.

Book Review: Masterpiece by Elise Broach

Posted on October 31, 2008 by Cindy Hudson

I recently read Masterpiece by Elise Broach and was totally delighted with the story and the characters. Mother-daughter book clubs with daughters aged 9 and up should enjoy reading it—there’s a sprinkling of art history scattered among the broader theme of friendship, and you can even pair it with a trip to a museum. Here’s my review:

Masterpiece by Elise Broach is a delightful story of the unlikely friendship that develops between a lonely young boy named James and a beetle named Marvin. In the tradition of E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and The Trumpet of the Swan, Broach takes this human/insect encounter out of the wild and into New York City, where Marvin lives with his parents and other relatives behind a kitchen cupboard in James’s home.

The two characters meet when Marvin draws an ink rendition of the skyline outside James’s window as a birthday present. When everyone thinks that James is the artist, of course he can’t tell them who really drew what’s being hailed as a masterpiece. The two are drawn into a staged art heist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where officials hope to recover previously stolen masterpieces by a well known artist from the early Renaissance.

You’ll happily follow the adventures as James and Marvin work to unravel the complications of their deception while they learn the true value of art and friendship. The publisher, Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, also features an excellent companion discussion guide on its Web site, www.HenryHoltKids.com.

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