A Corner of the Universe

A Corner of the Universe

by Ann M. Martin

When you think you know everything in your life, guess what: you may not.  So goes the story of Hattie Owen, who, at the age of twelve, learns she has an uncle, Adam, whom she never knew existed.  So begins the summer of 1960 in Ann M. Martin’s book, A Corner of the Universe.  Hattie’s family takes in boarders as their primary source of income while her father works as an artist. Hattie helps with small tasks around the house, engaging with her housemates each day, which adds to the intrigue in this novel.  Hattie overhears her mother speaking to her grandmother of some impending concern.  She suspects someone is very ill but is later told by her parents of Uncle Adam, a mentally challenged twenty-one-year-old who is returning home to live with her grandparents due to his school’s closure.  Hattie befriends him and the two become close, though his presence results in her being teased by classmates more so than before.  All of this occurs as the carnival comes to town where Hattie meets a new friend, Leila, the carnival owner’s niece. Adam’s behavior challenges Hattie’s grandparents, who try to contain his emotional swings.  Adam loves to wander through the neighborhood and eventually falls for Angel Valentine, one of the boarders in Hattie’s home.  Hattie’s birthday present, a free trip through the carnival with Leila, brings near tragedy when she sneaks Adam with her away from her grandparents’ house.  Adam joins the two girls on the rides, the food, and the shows, but trouble comes when the Ferris wheel breaks down.  Adam has a meltdown.  The two girls try to calm him down, but he attempts to leave the seat and almost falls to the ground as the police are called.  Hattie is later grounded for taking Adam out of the house.  The final event that changes the lives of all involved is when Adam brings flowers to Angel, the boarder.  He goes to her room, opens the door and finds her with her boyfriend in a very compromising position.  This enrages Adam, who runs away.  After a long search, Adam is found behind the house, having hung himself. 

Mental health issues are around all of us.  Hattie’s journey is one in which she befriends a family member she never knew, and it ends with her speaking at Adam’s funeral. She stood up against the intolerance shown towards Adam as a result of his mental illness, instead describing why he was such a good uncle, even though she hadn’t known him long.  This is a beautiful story with a message of love, acceptance and personal growth.  One never knows what can happen over a childhood summer vacation.  A great story for youth and anyone else who needs to see the power of love. 

The Book of Lost Things

The Book of Lost Things
by John Connolly

Finished a heart-warming story by John Connolly in his book The Book of Lost Things.  Twelve year-old David struggles with the death of his mother.  A few months later, his father finds a young woman, Rosa, who was an administrator at the hospital that David’s mother died.  David, a quiet and reserved young child, spends his time reading books and traveling deeply into his own mind.  David’s father ends up marrying Rosa and they all move in to her family mansion, providing a new space for David to deal with his demons.  David experiences much grief with the loss of his mother, a new step-mother, and then the arrival of a step-brother, Gregory.  His relationship with Rosa worsens and, after a verbal fight, he is forced to give up reading books and punished by being sent to his room, where a voice calls him to the backyard. There, he enters a hole in the garden wall leading to ‘another world’.  The journey leads David to believe he can find his mother but, the longer he is there, the more he wants to get back to his real life.  The journey includes meeting a woodsman, a eunuch, seven dwarfs, the ‘crooked man’, a huntress, and the need to find the King, whom he is told can give him the book of lost things to escape this underworld.  During his journey, David finds the strength within himself to fight back demons and other evil spirits that attempt to pull him down.  In the end, he learns that the ‘crooked man’ can only live if he has the soul of a child captured in his hour glass, and David needs to make the decision to give up his step-brother Georgie, or save himself to go back home.  David triumphs in the end and is returned home!  The author provides a brief overview of the rest of David’s life and how he becomes a writer.  The journey is thrilling and has twists and turns throughout.  A coming-of-age story that leaves the reader imagining how David will escape each and every challenge he faces – which he does!  A thoroughly entertaining piece that reminds one that books have a lot of lost things in them, including emotions that get developed through great writing.  Great story!

When You Reach Me

When You Reach Me
by Rebecca Stead

Rebecca Stead is the author of When You Reach Me, a book that chronicles the life of Miranda Sinclair, a twelve-year-old girl, who lives in NYC with her mother. Miranda receives some cryptic anonymous notes asking her to track her future actions.  She is unsure what this will mean but does becomes more conscious of her actions. She also pays attention to what happens to her good friend, Sal, who mysteriously removes himself from regular contact with her after being beaten up by fellow classmate Marcus after school one day.  While on the home front, Miranda’s mom and her boyfriend, Richard, spend time prepping her to be a contestant on the TV game show The $20,000 Pyramid.  They believe the winning funds would help them escape their current financial challenges, living in an apartment complex that is falling apart.  Miranda meets and engages with a homeless man, whom she dubs the “laughing man,” who later plays a pivotal role when Sal runs away from Marcus.  The “laughing man” saves Sal’s life when he runs in the street to an oncoming truck but loses his own.  Miranda realizes there is more to this man’s presence and starts to reflect on the cryptic notes she received earlier.  With the help of the concept of time travel, Miranda eventually realizes that Marcus and the “laughing man” are one in the same!  There was a lot put into this story, and it seems pretty complicated for a book aimed at young teenagers.  I did enjoy the chapter titles, which were the same as the categories in the $20,000 Pyramid.  Otherwise, a lot of build up for a story that just wasn’t all that interesting.

Mystical Poems of Rumi

Mystical Poems of Rumi
by Jalal al-Din

A book of poems written in the 1200’s AD by Jalal al-Din, best known as Rumi.  The book is a series of translated poems, aptly called Poems. Rumi was a teacher and he shares his philosophy, wisdom, and life’s lessons through a collection of religious proverbs, imagery, and understanding of the human condition.  His work is deeply entrenched in the Muslim tradition. There are over 100 short poems and two-page stories.  Listed below are some of my favorite lines taken from his work:

If you don’t have enough madness in you, go and rehabilitate yourself

Fear is an attribute of the slave to lust and appetite

Listen when your crown reminds you of what makes you cold toward others, as you pamper the greedy energy inside

How many an evil that you see in others is but your own nature reflected in them

Rumi’s poems focused on what it means to be a human, frail and impure.  His poems give opportunity for reflection on how we can improve ourselves using a higher being as a guidepost for our own spiritual journey through life. 

The poems’ brevity allows the reader to quickly focus on the content and its meaning, unlike many of the books of poems I have read previously.  I never lost my focus reading and thought the translation into English was clear and easy to comprehend.  It provides great context into what was going on in the minds of the leaders in the day it was written.  A good read.

Yes Please

Yes Please

By Amy Poehler

I really enjoy reading (and listening, in this case) to books from comedians.  This time I entered the world of Amy Poehler through her book Yes Please. The book was published in 2014 and describes her rise from a college improv group (while attending Boston College), to waitress, to the Upright Citizens Brigade in Chicago, to bit parts in movies, to hitting it big on SNL, and then on to her TV show Parks and Recreation.  Poehler, who is not afraid to share her drinking, drugging, and sex-filled days, also shares the difficulties associated with being a working mom, going through a divorce, and growing up with a snoring problem.  She breaks the book into three sections: 1.) Say: whatever you want; 2.) Do: whatever you like; and 3.) Be: whoever you are.  For those who are Poehler fans, you get a ton of tidbits about her days struggling as an improv artist, her behind the scenes moments from SNL, and how she approached award nights and lowered the stress level for nominees.  Poehler doesn’t take herself seriously, but she takes her work seriously.  She offers insights to those looking to make a career in comedy and opens herself up to criticism.  I had many hearty laughs with this one and encourage others who need to smile to listen to her early development as an artist.

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!