The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

By Kate DiCamillo

Time for a real “tear jerker” children’s book with The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo.   Young Abilene cherished her little rabbit china doll, whom she named Edward Tulane.  Edward, in his own voice, presents himself as a stoogie, older professor-type character.  One day, while on a boating trip with two of her male cousins, Abilene’s world comes crashing down when the boys take Edward away from her and throw him across the boat…causing him to fall in the water.  The rest of the story follows Edward’s journey, being saved from the ocean floor by some fishermen, serving as a “scarecrow” on a farm, traveling with a hobo and his dog on a train across the US, being there for a dying young girl, and then helping a vagabond young boy earn some monies as a “dancing rabbit.”   Edward’s last travel ends at a toy store after his face was shattered by the owner of a diner when his owner couldn’t pay the bill.  When a young girl walks into the toy store and asks her mother to purchase him, all comes full circle.  The mother of the young girl is none other than Abilene, whom he recognizes, as does she, by the necklace she wears!  All is good once again.  Beautiful story of the journey of a doll’s life.  I’ll purchase this one for my niece.

Shark Tales

Shark Tales

By Barbara Corcoran

After a long break, I’m back on the RA Favorite Books list.  Fun to read a “rags to riches” with Shark Tales by Barbara Corcoran of the Shark Tank reality TV show.  Corcoran shares lessons learned being born into a family of ten children from Hoboken, New Jersey.  The lessons come from the wisdom of her mother, who stayed at home raising her kids while her father worked to pay the household expenses.  Barbara had little growing up but never felt she was born into poverty, mainly because of her mother’s approach to life: enjoy it and find the hidden goodness in things.  Barbara left home at the age of eighteen on the arm of a man (Ray Simond) double her age.  Ray offered her $1,000 to start her career, at which point she decided to focus on real estate. She made that back working alongside her partner, and then much more after the partnership ended when Simond decided to marry the secretary.  Corcoran then built the most successful real estate company in NYC, the Corcoran Group.  The book later details lessons Corcoran learned from her life after selling her business and moving on to the world of reality TV.  I enjoyed Corcoran’s stories because they are based on her concrete, real-world experiences, and they have immense value to any young entrepreneur.  Worth picking it up! 

Just One Day

Just One Day

By Gayle Forman

Well I don’t choose many “chick-flick” books, so when an RA suggests it, I’m often surprised it makes the list.  But, why not?  Another “coming of age” book, this time for an 18-year-old, Allyson, who is on a summer-before-college trip abroad with her best friend Melanie.  On the next to last day of the trip, Allyson meets a 20-year-old on the train, who flirts with her and offers to take her for a one-day excursion to Paris, the one city she was unable to visit on the excursion around Europe.  Her friend says “she will cover for her” while the rest of the group goes on to London.  Allyson does the one thing she never have done before, takes a high risk and follows the unknown young man, whom she had met during a performance in the park doing a Shakespearian production.  The next twenty-four hours are bliss, a ride on the Seine, dinner at an upscale romantic restaurant, an escape from a fight with three drunken Frenchmen in a park, and ending in a night together having sex in an old rustic art gallery floor.  Sounds like a book that an 18-year-old female gets from the grocery store stand?  Well it is!  And it gets better, Allyson wakes up and the guy is gone!  The rest of the book is her struggle to understand was he really in love with me?  How will I ever find out?  How do I deal with college life at Harvard (well that’s the school we are led to believe it is)?  (a funny side note is that her best friend goes to some school in NYC…. Which later we learn that the friend got an easy 4.0 in her fall semester at a school where you make up your own major called Gallatin!! – I wonder what my son will think?, Funny how the author  never mentions NYU, but Gallatin.)  Allyson learns through her near failure of pre-med in college, and an outreach by an advisor who tells her to change her course selection for the spring, that Shakespeare will help her find the answers!  And Shakespeare does, through a new friend, Dee (a gay African American male) who gets her to open up about her past during their meeting in the Shakespeare course.  Allyson defies the odds, tells her parents of her quitting pre-med and then venturing the following summer to find the mystery man so she can face her demons!  Guess what happens?  Well, you don’t need to because I’ll tell you… she finds him after a long adventure and also learns of a new woman in his life.  What will Allyson do?  I shouldn’t have thought the ending would be as it was expected, but it was.  Only in this romantic grocery store books does “happy ever after happen”….    If you find yourself on a beach around a group of tanning young people, drop the book off, they may like it.

Rolling the R's

There are some of the favorite reads you immediately connect, and others, you don’t.  This is an “in-between” book for me.  Not that I didn’t like the very unique way in which the other discusses the issues, it was the format of jumping around, less linear, that at times lost me.  Rolling the R’s by R. Zamora Linmark is written in the late 1970s in the midst of the cultural immersion of music and TV.  Zamora’s writing style is in short 1 to 3 page chapters that connect through the story of the young friends who are maturing at a time where everything is connected to “what’s playing” on the radio or on tv.  The cultural icons of the 70s, singers: Donna Summer, Captain and Tennille, and the Bee Gees; and TV fame: Farrah Fawcett (Charlie’s Angels), Scott Baio (Happy Days), set the stage for the world these Hawaiian children grow up.  The book shares the various highlights, through the music/tv and their own development such as, report cards for the four children in 4^th grade, moments of how they started thinking about their connections to others, and then the exploration of their own heritage as immigrants and understanding their sexuality.    It is a forerunner to today’s oft-discussed “intersectionality” of gender, sexuality and ethnic identity.  A complex set of issues for any reader, and certainly harder to concentrate on a 15-hour flight.   I was humming the songs and thinking about the celebs and how old they have gotten throughout the read.  I may need to give this one another chance down the road.  Known as a cutting edge book in sociological circles. 

Rules

What a way to celebrate one’s birthday, a 26 hour flight to Tasmania.  But it gives me time to read RAs favorite books.  Just finished a beautiful story by Cynthia Lord called Rules.  It is the story, told by Catherine, who lives with her brother (David) and her parents.  It is one of the first books from a sibling’s perspective on how to live with her brother’s autism.  Catherine is a twelve-year-old who struggles with having to grow up in assisting her parents with David, ten years old, with everything from setting boundaries, to rolling the video cassette that he continually breaks.  It is summer break from school and Catherine has a new neighbor, a twelve-year-old, and feels she can finally have a new best friend, but how will David and his autism stand in the way?  This is a heartwarming story that includes the villain, the nasty neighborhood boy who also wants time with the new neighbor, the boy who provides Catherine with her learning moment (not her brother, but a disabled young boy who falls in love with her, and the parents who expect so much of Catherine.  Sometimes growing up is painful, especially when you fight the idea that sometimes worrying about what other people think, just doesn’t matter.  Thank you Taylor, our new RA, for sharing your beautiful story.  Your brother is lucky to have you as a sister!

The man who mistook his wife for a hat.

It’s always exciting to open a new RA Favorite Book not sure what to expect, especially with a title like: The man who mistook his wife for a hat.  When I saw the author’s name, Oliver Sacks, a British neuroscientist, I was confused as I had read his books and thought it a strange name for a scientific book.  It doesn’t take long to understand the book’s title, as Sacks shares his early life through case studies his patients.  The man who mistook his wife for a hat, really did.  He was a well-known musician and teacher but had an inability to judge items and objects as he got older.  He provided a series of twenty-four cases ranging from “cognitive-loses” to “excesses of cognition,” such as people with Tourette’s syndrome.  There were very few people who recovered from their illnesses for full recovery, but many were able to live with the problem to some level in their life.  Each story was a first for Sacks and he worked on each case with the same level of curiosity to try and answer the symptoms with something that would help the person, whom most times were ‘normal’ and changed over a short period of time.  For neuroscience and future-physicians it is a good approach to medical inquiry, seeing symptoms, but not being tricked that they are the same for each person, as he shows they never are for two people.  I enjoyed reading the cases and have even a greater sense of appreciation for those who study the brain.  Good read.

God, NO!

Try reading a book attempting to convince you that the Ten Commandments are ridiculous as you fly to Abu Dhabi on Easter Day.  I guess, wrong book to have in one’s bag for a trip lasting twelve hours.  Enter the world of Penn Jillette’s God, NO!  Jillette uses arguments of how the Bible actually doesn’t preach the commandment, “treat others as you would treat yourself”, for example, “If God told you to kill your child, would you do it.  If your answer is no, in my booklet you’re an atheist.  There is no doubt in your mind.  Love and morality are more important to you than faith.  If your answer is yes, please reconsider”.  Jillette goes through each commandment and attempts to demonstrate that each one is flawed in their own way.  He actually makes solid points on how ‘humanism’ is the way to go.  He weaves in stories of his trajectory as a magician and reality star throughout the book, providing his followers a view of how he developed his own thinking and strength as a man.  He also has no problem in “tempting” religious people to come to a new belief.  For instance, he shares the story of a devout orthodox man who decided to contact Jillette and ask him to be there when he breaks being kosher for the first time.  Jillette revels in the experience of watching he man eat his first bacon burger, among other foods against the religion.  Besides living a rather hedonistic life, Jillette is a dedicated son, husband, and father.  He illustrates the traits of being a good human being to others whom he loves.  For fans of Jillette, you are introduced to a serious and thought-provoking guy who wants to convert and overthrow religious followers…. Of all God following people, he doesn’t discriminate.  While the stories and arguments are palatable, his inconsistent action makes me wonder is he serving his truth, or trying to make a buck selling a book that demonizes those who use faith as a way to live a better life.  A quick read, so isn’t a hug investment in time should you not enjoy the argument.

Pale View of Hills

It’s that time of year again. Today marks my first finished RA Favorite book for 2017. It has been over ten years since I started this project and I continue to enjoy hearing about the new RAs and their journey to NYU. I continue to ask about their favorite books as well. This year there are 186 new RAs to meet, so I should receive about 75 new books to read this year. The first book is kazoo Ishiguro’s book Pale View of Hills. It is a curious read from my standpoint. The story is placed in Britain (at first), but focuses on the main character Etsuko, who has left Japan, the bombed town of Nagasaki, and reflects on her life there, especially her interactions with Sachiko, who is the epitome of a horrible mother. Etsuko and Sachiko become ‘friends’, rather they seem to be co-dependent on one another, though it’s hard to tell why. Sachiko is an absent mother for her daughter Mariko, who walks around the village at all hours of the night. As I re-read parts of the short novel, I realized maybe the Sachiko/Mariko relationship mirrors Etsuko’s own relationships with her daughters, one which commits suicide. Or maybe it is a bitter dream (the Sachiko/Mariko parts) to haunt Etsuko of how she too was an absent mother. As the novel ends, if is clear that there’s a certain depth of pain that is within Etsuko, of her own inability to mother the dead Keiko. There is also a shroud of mystery about her husband and her second daughter, feeling like more is missing from the story. There are very deeply disturbing moments where Etsuko stands by and witnesses her ‘friend’ Sachiko drown her daughters prized pet cat in the river and allowing her daughter to disappear in the muddy riverbanks at midnight alone and hungry. So the whole narrative strategy of the book was about how someone ends up talking about things they cannot face directly through other people's stories. I find within some people a dark side of regret and utter sadness about something they failed to do, or wished they had done better. Ishiguro presents these similar characters who long to better understand the journey they have lived, but never actually get there. In many ways it is a sad and incomplete story for me as I tend to like some level of conclusion. I’m afraid Etsuko will never get that, or learn the lesson that she was supposed to gain from the lives of those around her.

And the mountains Echoed

My last “Extra book” for a long time as I begin meeting with the RAs of 2017-18 starting tomorrow.  I’m looking forward to the long list of new books that I will review in the coming months.  This is a fun time of the year.  My last Facebook friends favorite books was a good one, And the mountains echoed, by Khaled Hosseini.  Yes, the same author who wrote Kite Runner and A thousand splendid suns.  Hosseini is a wonderful storyteller.  He leaves the reader wanting for more.  Once again, his stories tear at your heart strings.  He is able to ‘move the reader’ from one emotion to the next.  Brilliant writing!  His new technique is using nine chapters and having nine different characters each tell a bit of the story, from their perspective, culminating in an ending that brings it all to an end.  Chapter one introduces a father who has to give away one of his children, a son (Abdullah) or the younger sister (Pari) to the evil spirit in a dream sequence, which is a premonition of what is to follow… fast forward to 1952 when Pari’s father (Saboor) takes the two siblings on a trip to Kabul from their impoverished surroundings in the rural village area.  Pari is left behind, sold to her uncle Nabi’s employers, a wealthy couple (the Wahditis) whom he runs their household.  The rest of the chapters have tangential characters each having some connection to Abdullah and Pari which leads to the last chapter where the brother and sister reconnect across the globe after 60+ years apart.  Can sibling connections remain intact forever?   It is a story of missed opportunities, lost love, and heartbreak.  Worth every minute, though I was confused as the years went forward and back through the voices of multiple characters.  After I figured things out, easier to understand the author’s intent.

David and Goliath

Read one of my favorite sociologists, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, David and Goliath.  Gladwell uses the historical biblical tale of Goliath, the giant soldier who is donned with a golden helmet, to fight the small and slender, David, who volunteers for the battle. And who wins?  The story has been used for centuries to note that underdogs should not be overlooked.  Gladwell highlights these “underdogs” in war, such as Lawrence of Arabia and how they won a war they had no reason winning.  Vivek Ranadive’s basketball team, his daughter’s seventh/eighth grade Junior BB team from Redwood City in California won the National championship by playing an unheard of defense for the entire game, player to player press!  Full game press would be something the opposition would never think of doing, but they did, and won, and won, and won!  Doing the unexpected can lead an underdog to the elite status.  Gladwell draws upon changes in our society and measures the outcomes of those changes, such as, increase in hiring school teachers to lower classroom size and notes that it may improve student learning, to a point… but overdo it, and it’s costly and it doesn’t work.  Same with California’s crime reduction approach, “three strikes” rule that put repeat offenders in jail.  This law certainly responded to drug usage etc., but now the jails are overrun!  Has it really helped?  How about Monet and his band of artists?  How they became famous?  Or Dr. Freireich and saving children who had cancer?  I won’t give you all of his examples, but they are compelling and gives us all a chance to best understand that just because the deck may be stacked against us, don’t give up so quickly.  There are always exceptions for every rule.  Gladwell is on top of his game again in this one.  Read it and learn!