SAVING BEN: A Father’s Story of Autism–A Book Review

Dear Reader,

SAVING BEN is a well written and candid memoir of a man whose teeter-totter life tips between caring for and searching for recovery for his young son who has autism and managing his sanity while his ex-wife temporarily loses hers, all while the author is coming to terms with his sexual orientation. Author Dan E. Burns, manages to fit all this chaos into 155 pages that often read more like a suspense novel than memoir. “What could possibly happen next?” (I used the book as a bribe to get me through some unpleasant home tasks. Once I completed a task, I could read another chapter.)

Parents with or without children who have autism will relate to Burns’ frustrations with doctors, the educational system, and well-meaning and not so well-meaning relatives. They will be reminded that children’s small successes are often the result of parents’ grand refusals to give up.

www.QuamEditorial.com

BEAUTY’S SECRET: A Girl’s Discovery of Inner Beauty—Book Review

Dear Reader,

Beauty’s Secret Talks To–Not At–Girls

Beauty is a much loved, intelligent, and mostly happy teen. And she is pretty. So when her less attractive best friend and she enter a contest to win the opportunity to be a spokesperson for a popular teen magazine, Beauty is a little anxious but still confident. Toward the end of the contest, though, her confidence gives way to jealousy and her obsession over her physical flaws. The more she looks at herself the less her inner beauty, her Heartlight, glows. (Yes, even pretty girls can be insecure.) Beauty goes on to examine her emotions and is reminded of a message she’s received throughout her life: “True beauty lies within.” She changes, but she does not win the contest. (Yay! This is not a fairy tale in which the girl gets what she most wants just because she’s “seen the light.”) She wins other things.

Many children’s book authors preach their message to children, tell them what to think, but author Debra Gano definitely does not. She has clearly made the decision to allow her readers to learn as Beauty learns, through experience. Gano does not say external beauty doesn’t matter, because it does. And she doesn’t deny girls are judged by, or noticed for, their looks. She encourages girls to enjoy their physical beauty and that of others, and to develop who they are on the inside.

The illustrations in Beauty’s Secret are sure to entice girls 10-14 to read the text. They feature pinks, purples, bold colors, pastels, and strong femininity, all which invite introspection, quiet, and calm. The book is beautifully packaged, and the message (what’s inside) is equally beautiful.

www.QuamEditorial.com

HUSH, HUSH, a Paranormal Young Adult Novel

Dear Reader,

The first two-thirds of Hush, Hush drags while author Becca Fitzpatrick builds narrator Nora Grey’s connection with Patch, a darkly bad and seductive high school senior, and strangers bent on harming her. Patch’s allure runs stereotypical but works okay as part of a young adult novel.

In the final third of the book, the author picks up the pace―and suspense—when she introduces a jilted woman who vows to avenge herself by killing Nora. Patch’s identity and past will determine how he will approach his future. With or without Nora? Read the book to find out what he chooses to do.

Note: Fitzpatrick writes great dialogue, although I often found the snarkiness (common in teen writing and teen shows) between Nora and her best friend annoying.

Half Mast: 9/11/2001

Dear Reader,

Eight years ago the skies over my house went beautifully silent; only bird wings split the air. Eight years ago I brought a bag of snacks to Boulder Bonfils Blood  Center, combined them with grocery carts full of already donated juice, crackers, cookies, and bottled water. A line of whispery calm blood donors wound around the block. Eight years ago I raised my first American flag, phoned my love to my brother Steve, a WI fire fighter, paced with unhelpfulness.  My need to do something led me to start to write:

Half Mast

9/11/01

for fire, its appetite only paralleled by man

for men and women crushed by duty

for the lone shoe on the sidewalk

for evil and blind allegiance

for fatherless children waiting

for agony only known

in a flicker before death

Half mast

for casual goodbyes

for those never said

for “I love you” over a phone

for the millions who scream “no!”

for pink innocence turned to ash

for a vase of flowers left on a desk

for mothers stopped from bearing life

Half mast

for tears

for horror

for compassion

Half mast

for blood pulled from volunteers’ veins

for a stranger’s body another’s shield

for prayers unanswered

for twisted reason

for empty graves

for food on firefighters’ lips

for the badge on a dead officer’s chest

Half mast

for struggling pilots

for fighting passengers

for irony

for un-reached destinations

for fear crawling through sleep

for shovels, cranes, pails, hands

for souls deserving peace

for dying alone

for unheard hearts

Half mast

for dust

for steel

for cement

for flesh

for love

for black

for light

Half mast

for burning candles

for loved ones’ paper smiles

for corpses unidentified

Half mast

for a god

for a belief

Half mast

for surviving

dreams

(From Scarf Dancer, available at Amazon.com)

More Than A Drug Addict: Glen’s Letter To God

Dear Reader,

Glen O. wrote the following letter while he was in a drug rehabilitation center in Denver, Colorado.

Dear God,

Thank you for my moment of sobriety, this moment

Thank you for the dirty toilets and my desire to clean them

Thank you for my heart that wants to love and be loved and isn’t afraid to love

Thank you for every woman you have placed in my path

Thank you for the breath I take, and the miracle of my human body

Thank you for my children, Paul and Hannah

Thank you for the God spirit in me that wants to be reborn, that wants to be a man

Thank you for my mind and the talents and the forgiveness of who I am

Thank you for my sense of humor and willingness to see the humanity in me

Thank you for my addictions and the special yearning and seeking challenges they present

Thank you for another chance to get back up here at safe harbor

Thank you for the forgiveness and mercy I feel through your love

Thank you for the belief that pushes me to find something to believe in

Thank you for this world and the resolve around me

Thank you for my loneliness

Thank you for everything I haven’t thanked you for

But especially thank you for right now, this moment of doubt, faith, fear, confusion, love, anger; many of these emotions are states that were within me that let me know that I am still alive and that it isn’t over yet

I’m still alive, that it isn’t over yet

That I still want to grow and not just exist, that I still have a mission and purpose for which I am blind

Thank you Oh Lord for the possibilities

Glen

(©Sept. 2002)

Glen died in a crack house two weeks after he wrote this letter. His friends glow with Glen-ness whenever they talk about him. His outrageous  sense of humor, his artistic genius, his innate need to  go all out.

Glen wasn’t an addict. He was addicted to drugs.

Dear Glen,

It isn’t over yet. You still exist.

You still exist.

God

DEMON CHICK: A YA novel with laughs

Dear Reader,

I just read Demon Chick, a paranormal young adult novel written by Marilyn Kaye (Sept. 2009), in which 16-year-old narrator Jessica Hunsucker is snatched by a demon and transported to hell. Why is she taken? Because 16 years earlier her mother, an aspiring politician, “made a deal with the devil”: mother’s successful political career in exchange for her daughter’s eternity.

The book is entertaining but thin and so-so. Jessica never really balks at being in hell or seethes about her mother’s assholeness, so I wasn’t convinced she was real. And then she decides, for no reason apparent to me, to stay in hell, rather than remain on Earth after she’s given the opportunity to do so. (I guess being cared about by a demon in hell is better than being cared about by no one on Earth.)

What I liked about Demon Chick is Jessica’s hell: life on Earth minus choices. The only books to which she has access are Functions of Photosynthesis; Renal Failure in Sedentary Populations; Dictionary of Legal Terminology; and Cholesterol-Free Cooking―not too thrilling for a 16 year old. And the only television programming is realty shows, not scripted reality shows, either. Looking in on a rock musician preparing to use the toilet, Madonna sleeping, and other stuff like this. And then there are fast-food restaurants, which Jessica doesn’t think are hellish; her demon says they’re foodies’ torture.

Makes me wonder what else could be considered hell.

THE TRUTH ABOUT TRUMAN SCHOOL is a Page-Turner

Dear Reader,

I never expected The Truth About Truman School (March 2009) to be a page-turner, but its story of cyberbullying grabbed my attention from the beginning and it held me until the end. It showed how the noblest idea–a kid run website in which Truman Middle School students could state their opinions without threat of censorship–can go wrong when rules of use aren’t established–in this case, no bullying or gossip.

I think the book is a great means to show kids what can happen when they “put things out there” for the fun of it: their words can cause a chain reaction they can’t stop.

Author Dori Hillestad Butler convincingly allowed different characters to state their side of what happened. I think this is a fine way to teach without preaching. It’s written for readers 9-12.

Note: One reviewer complained the author clumsily wrote middle schoolers’ text messages. Actually, the kids were instant messaging. I wonder why the author didn’t use texting. Anyway. . .

Boys Will Like MATISSE ON THE LOOSE, An Energetic Story of Mistakes and Mishaps

Dear Reader,

I just read Matisse on the Loose, a novel written by Georgia Bragg for readers 8-12. Matisse is an average 11-year-old boy with an embarrassingly UN-average family.

“My family is like the sun. It’s dangerous to look right at them. You have to look at them through a little hole in a box.

“For starters, Dad has his barbecue. It was specially made out of two oil drums welded together. Then Dad added the wheels with shock absorbers. It can hold a sixty-pound pig… He wheels it to pool parties, soccer games, and funerals—whatever—if someone’s paying him, he’ll be there.”

Matisse likes to kill time by forging the paintings hung in the museum where his mother works as head of security. His paintings look like the real thing, too real, so when he impulsively switches his painting with an original by Henri Matisse, he sets off a chain of problems that will take a genius–or a barbecue?–to resolve.

You’ll laugh at the predicaments Matisse gets himself into and smile as he “thinks” his way out of them.

ALSO KNOWN AS HARPER is an Excellent Novel

Dear Reader,

I loved Also Known as Harper, a novel written for readers age 10 and older. Author Ann Haywood Leal captures 11-year-old Harper Lee Morgan’s southern-tinged voice, her desire to win her school’s poetry contest and thereby read her poems into a microphone, to shield her little brother from their father’s abandonment, and her desire to lessen their mother’s stress over being evicted from their home. By the way, her mother’s favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee.

Leal lets Harper poetically and clearly describe what she experiences. For example, Harper has a stare down with an elderly woman pushing a wheelchair, and then Harper says: “She slowly turned and wheeled off across the parking lot, as if she was starting out fresh with another day.

“The thing is, a person getting stared down like that would be downright creepy. But not from this old lady. I didn’t know what it was, but looking at her got my brain going every which way, thinking about this and that, and it put me in the right mood for some good poetry writing.”

She describes dilapidated houses she finds: “They were definitely old houses I could see peeking through the trees up ahead. But not good ones. They weren’t just the used kind of old. They were the broken-up forgotten kind of old. The kind that smelled like a closet in the basement.” (I think “broken-up forgotten kind of old” is an amazing phrase.)

Harper goes through plenty of hard times, but in the end she’s able to step away from her own misery and empathize with her arch enemy’s pain. Harper changes, and so will Leal’s readers.

THE LAST OF HIS KIND: THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF BRADFORD WASHBURN, AMERICA’S BOLDEST MOUNTAINEER, a dull biography

Dear Reader,

Author of The Last of His Kind David Roberts clearly knows his mountaineering history, and mountaineering fans will clearly appreciate it. He ties Bradford (Brad) Washburn’s climbing adventures to what is happening in the greater world of climbing during those times, including lots of names and places and expeditions. He’s thorough, and kind of boring, until the last third of the book when he writes with vigor about his interactions and friendship with Washburn.

I read Robert’s book because I wanted to learn what made Washburn “the last of his kind,” what made him put himself through what he did. He was driven, demanding, socially awkward with women, intelligent, single-minded, practical, a visual thinker, and competitive. He loved his wife lots.

I didn’t learn what made Washburn tick. I think I would have been more entertained and informed if I’d read instead his wife’s memoir The Accidental Adventurer: Memoir of the First Woman to Climb Mt. McKinley.