Five Books Nif's Three-Year-Old Likes to Quote

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin and James Dean (HarperCollins, $16.99)
We even don't own this book (yet), but he was reciting it in a completely recognizable fashion. They must have read it to him in school.

Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner (Penguin, $17.99)
"Oh, I am Skippyjon Jones, and I bounce on my bed, And once or SIX times, I land on my head."
He's a cat. Who thinks he is a chihuahua. So much energy and silliness.

I'm a Frog! - an Elephant & Piggie book by Mo Willems (Disney Press, $8.99)
This one gets re-enacted from start to finish, as best as we can remember it. Pure gold.

Digger, Dozer, Dumper by Hope Vestergaard and David Slonim
(Random House, $15.99)
Poems about all kinds of trucks. Lots of fun to read aloud. I LOVE hearing my little one quote the verse about the cement mixer, "If he dawdles on the way, his slushy load will harden."

Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman (Random House, $8.99)
"Do you like my hat?" It might be a shirt in the process of being taken off, or a towel, or a toy, or maybe even an actual hat.
"No, I do not like that hat."
"Goodbye!"
"Goodbye!"

Jennifer Woodfin, July 2014

Quote: David Levithan (and Rachel Cohn)

"We believe in the wrong things, I wrote, using the same pen Boomer had used on his arm. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. we're just so damn good at reading them wrong.

"I wanted to stop there. But I went on.

"It's not going to be explained to you in a prayer. And I'm not going to be able to explain it to you. Not just because I'm as ignorant and hopeful and selectively blind as the next guy, but because I don't think meaning is something that can be explained. You have to understand it on your own. It's like when you're learning to read. First, you learn the letters. Then, once you know what sounds the letters make, you use them to sound out words. You know that c-a-t leads to cat and d-o-g leads to dog. But then you have to make that extra leap, to understand that the word, the sound, the "cat" is connected to an actual cat, and that "dog" is connected to an actual dog. It's that leap, that understanding, that leads to meaning. And a lot of the time in life, we're still just sounding things out. We know the sentences and how to say them. We know the ideas and how to present them. We know the prayers and which words to say in what order. But that's only spelling.

"I don't mean this to sound hopeless. Because in the same way that a kid can realize what "cat" means, I think we can find the truths that live behind our words. I wish I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We don't have the words for it, since we hadn't yet learned the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily."

- Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

This quote actually conflates learning to read with learning to talk, which makes the analogy a little inaccurate. However, while currently in the midst of the latter and heading for the former with my own child, I find the magic moment here still takes my breath away.

Quote: Jo Walton

I was rereading Among Others for this Thursday's Young Adult Book Discussion (for details see our book clubs page and/or the January YA newsletter), and I found this early passage, beautifully linking language and landscape and knowledge:

"The places of my childhood were linked by magical pathways, ones almost no adults used. They had roads, we had these. They were for walking, they were different and extra, wider than a path but not big enough for cars, sometimes parallel to the real roads and sometimes cutting from nowhere to nowhere, from an elven ruin to the labyrinth of Minos. We gave them names but we knew unquestioningly that the real name for them was "dramroads." I never turned that word over in my mouth and saw it for what it was: Tram road. Welsh mutates initial consonants. Actually all languages do, but most of them take centuries, while Welsh does it while your mouth is still open. Tram to dram, of course. Once there had been trams running on rails up those dramroads, trams full of iron ore or coal. So empty and leaf-strewn, used by nobody but children and fairies, they'd once been little railroads.

"It wasn't that we didn't know history. Even if you only count the real world, we knew more history than most people. We'd been taught about cavemen and Normans and Tudors. We knew about Greeks and Romans. We knew masses of personal stories about World War II. We even knew quite a lot of family history. It just didn't connect to the landscape. And it was the landscape that formed us, that made us who we were as we grew in it, that affected everything. We thought we were living in a fantasy landscape when actually we were living in a science fictional one. In ignorance, we played our way through what the elves and giants had left us, taking the fairies' possession for ownership. I named the dramroads after places in The Lord of the Rings when I should have recognised that they were from The Chrysalids.

"It's amazing how large the things are that it's possible to overlook."

- Jo Walton, Among Others

Quote: Adrienne Cecile Rich

When Adrienne Rich died at the end of March this year, I delved into my college diaries to find out what I'd said about reading The Fact of a Doorframe in Intro to Literature, and what I'd said the first time I saw her read. What I found was a poem called "Bears," which I hadn't remembered copying in ... in fact, I hadn't remembered it at all until I reread it, and the words washed over me once more with power and longing and the memory of unknown losses.

At the store last week, I took The Fact of a Doorframe off the shelf to write this post, and I couldn't find the poem. I searched the pages, the table of contents, the index ... and finally I looked at the front cover and realised that this was not "Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984" but instead "Poems, 1950-2001". Reissued and revised to include the whole of her career to that point, and clearly not just expanded, but shuffled -- some poems in, some poems out.

So here is one of the poems now lost from the collection. Who keeps it now?

Bears

Wonderful bears that walked my room all night,
Where are you gone, your sleek and fairy fur,
Your eyes' veiled imperious light?

Brown bears as rich as mocha or as musk,
White opalescent bears whose fur stood out
Electric in the deepening dusk,

And great black bears who seemed more blue than black,
More violet than blue against the dark--
Where are you now? upon what track

Mutter your muffled paws, that used to tread
So softly, surely, up the creakless stair
While I lay listening in bed?

When did I lose you? whose have you become?
Why do I wait and wait and never hear
Your thick nocturnal pacing in my room?
My bears, who keeps you now, in pride and fear?

-- Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe: New and Selected Poems, 1950-1984, originally from The Diamond Cutters, 1955

Quote: Mary Pipher

Insomnia sucks. I've had nights when I felt so awake that I couldn't remember what it felt like to be sleepy or to fall asleep. Nights when I've had to remind myself that with one deliberate exception as a kid and once or twice in college, I have in fact succeeded in falling asleep every night of my life.

A few years ago, I was late getting to bed, sitting (in fact, possibly standing) in the dining room leafing through a pile of Advance Reader Copies of soon-to-be-published books. I read a paragraph of one, a hundred pages of another...and then I opened Mary Pipher's upcoming memoir Seeking Peace to the following passage:

"Emotionally we were opposites as well. Jim was as steady and calm as I was easily rattled and changeable. For every decision, I was the gas; he was the brakes. I wanted ten children; he was quite happy with only Zeke. Many years after we married, we had this interaction: I had terrible insomnia, and after several hours, I woke Jim to ask him what he thought about in the two minutes it took him to fall asleep. He said, "Pie." He wasn't joking. Then he asked me what I was thinking about. I answered, "The Holocaust." That about sums us up."

- Mary Pipher, Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World

What a revelation! I had certainly lain awake trying not to think of things like the Holocaust, but I hadn't thought of replacing it with something so simple and homey. The next night I told Nif this story and asked her to tell me her recipe for pumpkin pie. Sweet, soothing, and relaxing ... and it worked!

The following night I asked for biscuits.

Erica’s Five Books: You Just Can’t Trust a House

What is it with houses? You kill someone in one of them and they’re just like elephants—they never forget. They go on about their business providing shelter and whatnot, but they’re irrevocably imbued with some kind of evil. What’s the deal, houses? Can’t we all just get along? Here are five novels starring real estate you definitely don’t want to own.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Riverhead, $16.00)
Demented domicile: Hundreds Hall.
“I first saw Hundreds Hall when I was ten years old. I remember its lovely ageing details: the worn red brick, the cockled window glass, the weathered sandstone edgings. They made it look blurred and slightly uncertain—like an ice, I thought, just beginning to melt in the sun.” Downton Abbey, it ain’t.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Penguin, $16.00)
Demented domicile: The Angel of Mist.
“As I neared the mansion I noticed that one of the statues, the figure of an avenging angel, had been dumped into the fountain that was the centerpiece of the garden…The hand of the fiery angel emerged from the water; an accusing finger, as sharp as a bayonet, pointed to the front door of the house.” Nota bene: when avenging angels point in one direction, it's best to walk in the opposite.

Beloved by Toni Morrison (Vintage, $15.00)
Demented domicile: 124.
“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.” Dude, angry ghost babies are the pits. And you know what’s even worse than angry ghost babies? Angry ghost babies of ex-slaves.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (Vintage, $16.00)
Demented domicile: The Hanging House.
“I had never seen a vacant house before, so I didn’t know what an ordinary vacant house looked like, but I guess I figured it would have a sad, beaten sort of look, like an abandoned dog, or a cicada’s cast-off shell. The Miyawakis’ house, though, was nothing like that. It didn’t look 'beaten' at all. The minute the Miyawakis left it got this knowing look on its face…You just can’t trust a house.” Tell me about it, they’re always telling your secrets and airing your dirty laundry in their backyards.

The Shining by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster, $8.99)
Demented domicile: The Overlook Hotel.
“The Overlook was built in the years 1907 to 1909. The closest town is Sidewinder, forty miles east of here over roads that are closed from sometime in late October or November until sometime in April. A man named Robert Townley Watson built it, the grandfather of our present maintenance man. Vanderbilts have stayed here, and Rockefellers, and Astors, and Du Ponts. Four Presidents have stayed in the Presidential Suite.” Guess what? I’m still not booking my next vacation there.

February 2012, Erica David

Erica’s Five Novels Starring Philadelphia

What with all the jibber jabber about Paris in the pages of recent indie bestsellers, I got to thinking about Philly and how it rarely gets top billing as the star of those kind of Eat, Pray, Love type books—as the romantic city so steeped in literary history and gastronomic inspiration that it can shake a life to its foundations and EFFECT GREAT CHANGE. It more often has a supporting role as the backdrop of a gritty crime drama. But here are five books where Philly and its neighborhoods get the star treatment, where like the New York City of Sex and the City, it gets to play the all important “fifth lady” in a stellar ensemble cast.

Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone (Harper Perennial, $13.99)
“The black predawn air was filled with movement. Its thin coolness rushed through the streets of South Philly, encircling the tight, sturdy row houses.”

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos (Plume, $14.00)
“…Mr. Fringer inclined his head to shoot a look over the tops of his glasses at us. His shop was not one of the truly elegant ones on Pine Street, no mint-condition eighteenth-century writing table posing tiptoe like a ballerina in his window. No mint-condition anything. But a good shop—my favorite.”

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Picador, $16.00)
“Here in the heart of Chestnut Hill, needless to say, the sheet-metal currency of Neverest and Western Civil Defense and ProPhilaTex signs in every front yard was backed by the full faith and credit of floodlights and retinal scanners…but elsewhere in northwest Philly, down through Mount Airy into Germantown and Nicetown where the sociopaths had their dealings and dwellings, there existed a class of bleeding-heart homeowners who hated what it might say about their “values” to buy their own security systems…”

In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner (Washington Square Press, $15.00)
“The sum total of her big-screen experience might be the three seconds that a sliver of her left hip was visible in Will Smith’s second-to-last video. And she might be just barely bumping along, while some people, namely her sister, Rose, went whizzing through Ivy League colleges and straight into law schools, then into law firms and luxury apartments in Rittenhouse Square like they’d been shot down the water slide of life…”

If Sons, Then Heirs by Lorene Cary (Atria Books, $24.00)
“Jewell Thompson nosed her sedan into the narrow Philadelphia street… Outside her noisy mind, rows of identical two-story brick houses squatted beside Cobbs Creek Park, muffled by heavy fog and a cold, early-spring, early-Sunday-morning quiet.”

August 2011, Erica David

Erica’s Five Last Lines That Seal the Deal

Oh, you know you’ve done it. You open a book and flip right to the end. You read the last line first, you impatient, spoiler-loving son of a gun! I do it because I like an author who knows how to close. If you can nail the end, then at least I know you’re good for a beginning and a middle.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
(Harper Perennial, $14.99)
“Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south west, south, south-east, east…”

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
(W. W. Norton, $13.95)
“And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lipmusic brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal.”

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
(Riverhead Books, $15.00)
“He wrote that he couldn’t believe he had to wait for this so goddamn long. (Yabón was the one who suggested calling the wait something else. Yeah, like what? Maybe, she said, you could call it life.) He wrote: So this is what everybody’s always talking about. Diablo! If only I’d known. The beauty! The beauty!”

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
(Little Brown & Company, $6.99)
“If you want to know the truth, I don’t know what I think about it. I’m sorry I told so many people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
(Harper Perennial, $14.99)
“Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes. She called in her soul to come and see.”

August 2010, Erica David

Quote: M.T. Anderson

Feed is a dramatic and disconcerting futuristic look at the pervasive effects of the media on our brains and on society, and I'm looking forward to discussing it at our September Young Adult Book Discussion (Thursday, September 23, 7pm). The following exhortation doesn't appear in the story; it's from an interview with the author in the back of the book:

    What would you say to kids today who are aware of being manipulated by the media? How can they avoid being sucked in?

    First of all, I know that going against the norm can be very isolating. When I was a teenager, I listened to really obscure music. In some ways that isolated me, because teens tend to watch and engage each other very, very harshly when it comes to questions of taste. In fact, I think musical taste among teenagers is often more about self-definition than it is about the actual music.
    Even so, I'm clearly in favor of trying to extend your knowledge into areas that are obscure and eccentric, as a way of exploring your self and your place in the world. Instead of responding to media messages by getting anxious -- thinking you need to get some piece of clothing that suddenly comes into fashion, or that you need to gain or lose weight or change your musculature in order to look like the romantic lead from some movie you've just seen -- start exploring all the peculiar corners of the world that are out there. Because that's the one thing the media does not encourage: a real sense of curiosity. Ultimately, in writing Feed, I wanted to say to kids who are already doubting what they see around them, "You already think in ways I'll never be capable of, and are dreaming things I can't conceive of. Keep it up. We're counting on you."

- M.T. Anderson, Feed, Reader's Guide

Maleka's Five Poetry Collections to Sink Your Teeth Into

Grit and tender membrane by Samantha Barrow (Plan B Press, $13.95)
"I will be wearing the stench of celestial love in the morning"

The World is Round by Nikky Finney (InnerLight Publishing, $14.95)
"I turned around held up my shirt and brought my smooth belly into her scarred one; our navels pressing, making out some kind of new equatorial line."

What the Living Do by Marie Howe (Norton, $13.95)
"and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless: I am living, I remember you."

The Republic of Poetry by Martin Espada (Norton, $13.95)
"I don't like to be still. I want to climb the steps at Macchu Picchu. I want to talk about poetry all night. I want more wine."

New and Selected Poems: Volume One by Mary Oliver (Beacon, $17.00)
"I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."

-July 2010, Maleka Fruean

Quote: Gail Carriger

    "Alexia finished her repast, gathered up her dispatch case, her latest parasol, and her long woolen coat, and wandered out the front door.
    "Only to discover exactly where everyone had gone--outside onto the sweeping front lawn that led up to the cobbled courtyard of the castle. They had managed to multiply themselves, don attire of a military persuasion, and, for some reason known only to their tiny little werewolf brains, proceed to engage in setting up a considerable number of large canvas tents. This involved the latest in government-issue self-expanding steam poles, boiled in large copper pots like so much metal pasta. Each one started out the size of a spyglass before the heat caused it to suddenly expand with a popping noise. As was the general military protocol, it took far more soldiers than it ought to stand around watching the poles boil, and when one expanded, a cheer erupted forth. The pole was grasped between a set of leather potholders and taken off to a tent."

--Gail Carriger, Changeless, an Alexia Tarrabotti novel.

Soulless, Changeless, and the upcoming Blameless are part of the Parasol Protectorate series, a lovely alternate history and comedy of manners set in Victorian England. Supernaturals such as werewolves and vampires, who carry an apparent excess of soul, are fully integrated into English society, but much less is known about preternaturals, those apparently born without a soul and known for negating supernatural powers with a touch. Alexia Tarrabotti is one such preternatural, practical and with no patience for nonsense. Or for large officious werewolves. And yet so much nonsense comes to call...

Five Books: Janet's Quotes for June

Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg (Harper Collins, $13.99)
"Change was the only constant. The rest was mysterious. Maybe that was why people loved mystery novels and detective shows, loved trying to solve crossword puzzles. It was time to walk the dogs, lift their leashes from the hook behind the door, put on her winter coat. The world waited, cold, grim, alive, beautiful. There was no saying no to it."

The Empty Chair by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
(Jewish Lights Publishing, $9.95)
"Know! A person walks in life on a very narrow bridge. The most important thing is not to be afraid."

Unraveled by Maria Housden (Three Rivers Press, $13.95)
"Happiness, contentment, and love were not experiences we could give each other, they were simply experiences we could share or be."

Anh's Anger by Gail Silver (Plum Blossom Books, $16.95)
"Anh and his anger sat together silently. They sat. They breathed in. They breathed out."
(Check out the mindfulness opportunities for families listed on the last page of the book.)

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli (Laurel-Leaf Books, $6.99)
"When a Stargirl cries, she does not shed tears, but light."

June 2010, Janet Elfant

Quote: Theodore Gray

I have been enthralled of late with a big coffee table book called The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, which I think should be installed in every chemistry class. It's got amazing pictures, and I'm learning all sorts of cool random stuff. I'm learning to distinguish the colors of light from the different noble gases. I've learned that cesium explodes on contact with skin (and most other things). I've learned that oxygen is a beautiful blue liquid at -183° C. Who knew?

And the writing is lighthearted and entertaining.

    "If carbon (6) is the foundation of life, then oxygen is the fuel. Oxygen's ability to react with just about any organic compound is what drives the processes of life. Combustion with oxygen also drives your car, your furnace, and if you work for NASA, your rockets. (Actually, the term "fuel" usually refers to the thing that is burned by an "oxidizer," so I'm speaking metaphorically when I say oxygen is the fuel of life. Technically speaking, oxygen is the oxidizer of life.)"

More on cesium and its fellow alkali metals:

    "The other elements of the first column, not counting hydrogen, are called the alkali metals, and they are all fun to throw into a lake. Alkali metals react with water to release hydrogen gas, which is highly flammable. When you throw a large enough lump of sodium into a lake, the result is a huge explosion a few seconds later. Depending on whether you took the right precautions, this is either a thrilling and beautiful experience or the end of your life as you have known it when molten sodium sprays into your eyes, permanently blinding you.
    "Chemistry is a bit like that: powerful enough to do great things in the world, but also dangerous enough to do terrible things just as easily. If you don't respect it, chemistry bites."

At the end of the introduction, Gray sums up the universe:

    "This is all there is. From here to Timbuktu, and including Timbuktu, everything everywhere is made of one or more of these elements. The infinite variety of combinations and recombinations that we call chemistry starts and ends with this short and memorable list, the building blocks of the physical world.
    "Almost everything you see in this book is sitting somewhere in my office, except that one thing the FBI confiscated and a few historical objects. I had a great time collecting these examples of the vibrant diversity of the elements, and I hope you have as much fun reading about them."

Quote: John Green

Most young adult books don't come with footnotes. When they do, you can expect entertaining randomness, as in this section, including awesome footnote, from An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (known also for his correspondence as one of the Vlog Brothers along with his brother Hank):

"Over the years, people had occasionally sought to employ Colin in a manner befitting his talents. But (a) summers were for smart-kid camp so that he could further his learning and (b) a real job would distract him from his real work, which was becoming an ever-larger repository of knowledge, and (c) Colin didn't really have any marketable skills. One rarely comes across, for instance, the following want ad:

"Prodigy
Huge, megalithic corporation seeks a talented, ambitious prodigy to join our exciting, dynamic Prodigy Division for summer job. Requirements include at least fourteen years' experience as a certified child prodigy, ability to anagram adeptly (and alliterate agilely), fluency in eleven languages. Job duties include reading, remembering encyclopedias, novels, and poetry; and memorizing the first ninety-nine digits of pi.³³
---
"³³Which Colin did when he was ten, by making up a 99-word sentence in which the first letter of each word corresponded to the digit of pi (a=1, b=2, etc.; j=0). The sentence, if you're curious: Catfish always drink alcoholic ether if begged, for every catfish enjoys heightened intoxication; gross indulgence can be calamitous, however; duly, garfish babysit for dirty catfish children, helping catfish babies get instructional education just because garfish get delight assisting infants' growth and famously inspire confidence in immature catfish, giving experience (and joy even); however, blowfish jeer insightful garfish, disparaging inappropriately, doing damage, even insulting benevolent, charming, jovial garfish, hurting and frustrating deeply; joy fades but hurt feelings bring just grief; inevitable irritation hastens feeling blue; however, jovial children declare happiness, blowfishes' evil causes dejection, blues; accordingly, always glorify jolly, friendly garfish!"

- John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

Oh, except...shouldn't the first "garfish" begin with "f"? (Not an easy fix, though.)

Quote: Tamora Pierce

    Suddenly I felt a shimmer in my magic, like sunlight glancing off water. This time I didn't care if Rosethorn rode on without me. "Mica!" I yelled and jumped off my horse. "There's sheet mica here!"
    Mica lay scattered over a heap of rocks that had tumbled from a cliff face. It lay to the right of the road in sheets of a single thickness, delicate amber-colored glass that would chip away at a breath, and in clumps of different sizes, some of a hundred sheets or more. I picked up a few thick clumps to keep.
    "You like this stuff?" Jayat had followed me. "What's it good for?"
    "Scrying, if you need to have a use for everything." I showed him glittering flakes that fell from my hand like snow. "But mostly it's just wonderful — so delicate, and yet it's stone."
    I flicked a tiny burst of magic up the slope. Flakes, sheets, and clumps of mica flashed, thousands of flat crystals in the sun. Everyone who rode by would now see the stone as I did, glittering in the light.
    "Beautiful." Jayat liked what I had done. "I never thought of it like that. It was always just glassy stuff, laying around."
    Luvo looked at Jayat. "That is what magic is for, Jayatin. To help us think of the world in new ways."

- Tamora Pierce, Melting Stones

Hurray, mica! Mica is particularly resonant for me, living in this city with the Wissahickon Valley and its miles of glimmering trails... This quote is from Tamora Pierce's newest book in the Circle of Magic world -- which is particularly noteworthy for having been released first in full cast audio format, a year before its release in print.

Quote: Ursula K. Le Guin

The three passages below are from Ursula Le Guin's recent Annals of the Western Shore series. It's not actually one quotation from each book; two are from Voices (book 2), which I have now declared my very favorite of her books that I've read. The third is from the third book, Powers. The whole series, starting with the first book, Gifts, touches on questions of power: what it means, how to recognize it, and how to use (or not use) it. The books all have different main characters, in different places, but those characters are significant in the following books (rather like the Earthsea Cycle), letting it feel more like continuity than a loss of it.

"I'm sorry, now, for that girl of fifteen who wasn't as brave as the child of six, although she longed as much as ever for courage, strength, power against what she feared. Fear breeds silence, and then the silence breeds fear, and I let it rule me. Even there, in that room, the only place in the world where I knew who I was, I wouldn't let myself guess what I might become."

- Voices (Annals of the Western Shore, book 2)

"I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for—so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house? The tale tells how the Lords of Manva hunted and gathered roots and cooked their suppers while they were camped in exile in the foothills of Sul, but it doesn't say what their wives and children were living on in their city left ruined and desolate by the enemy. They were finding food too, somehow, cleaning house and honoring the gods, the way we did in the siege and under the tyranny of the Alds. When the heroes came back from the mountain, they were welcomed with a feast. I'd like to know what the food was and how the women managed it."

- Voices (Annals of the Western Shore, book 2)

"The first true leader I knew was this boy of seventeen, Yaven Altanter Arca, and I have judged others by him. By that standard, leadership means personal magnetism, active intelligence, unquestioning acceptance of responsibility, and something harder to define: a tension between justice and compassion, which is never truly satisfied by one without the other, and so can seldom be wholly satisfied."

- Powers (Annals of the Western Shore, book 3)

Quote: Frances Hodgson Burnett

"And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles. In the robin's nest there were eggs and the robin's mate sat upon them, keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and careful wings. At first she was very nervous, and the robin himself was indignantly watchful. Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves -- nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them -- the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end -- if there had been even one who did not feel it and act accordingly there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it and felt it and the robin and his mate knew they knew it."

- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

About two weeks ago, Nif and I discovered a pair of cardinals nesting right outside our house! The female cardinal would arrive from elsewhere, hop around the branches, alight on a small clump of brush, and then go absolutely still. It's been very exciting. Sometimes when she takes breaks, the male cardinal comes and sits on a wire or a tree nearby, or hops from branch to branch in the same tree, singing and "cheer"ing. And then in the past two days we've been able to see, when she's off the nest, a little tiny head and mouth waving around!

A note about the quotation: if you're wondering why the robin's mate isn't also a robin...she is. It's just that the male robin has been a particular character in the story thus far, and his mate is a relative newcomer to the scene.

Quote: Trenton Lee Stewart

    The children nodded uneasily. All this talk of danger and emergencies, without explanation, was beginning to wear on them.
    "I'm sorry to put you ill at ease," Mr. Benedict said. "And I haven't much to say to comfort you. I can finally offer some answers to your questions, however. Who wishes to begin? Yes, Constance?"
    To the great exasperation of the others, Constance demanded to know why they couldn't have candy for breakfast.
    Mr. Benedict smiled. "A fine question. The short answer is that there is no candy presently in the house. Beyond that, the explanation involves a consideration of candy's excellent flavor but low nutritional value--that is to say, why it makes a wonderful treat but a poor meal--though I suspect you aren't interested in explanations but simply wished to express your frustration. Is that correct?"
    "Maybe," Constance said with a shrug. But she seemed satisfied.
    "Other questions?" said Mr. Benedict.

- Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society

Speaking of orphans (or virtual orphans) who end up going on dramatic adventures... They get to practice Morse code, too! And through the tests they pass to join the "Society" -- and through working together -- they come to appreciate the many different ways there are to be "gifted".
.-    .-.. ... -    ... ..-.    ..-. ..- -. !

Quote: Lois Lowry

"METICULOUS means extremely precise and careful. Surgeons have to be meticulous. Some people think great cooks are meticulous, but they are wrong. Great cooks read a recipe, maybe, but then they ignore the instructions and add extra garlic if they feel like it. Surgeons can't do that."

- Lois Lowry, The Willoughbys (ARC edition)

Lois Lowry's newest book, The Willoughbys, comes out at the end of March. This excerpt is from the glossary at the back of the advance reading copy. You probably can't tell from this quote that the book is about a lovely "old-fashioned" family where the parents don't particularly like kids, and the kids think they would be better off as orphans. (This potentially disturbing premise is mitigated by the book's general silliness.)

Remember: No adding extra garlic during surgery!

Quote: George Washington

Here is an excerpt of a letter from George Washington to the Jewish community of Newport, RI, in 1790:

"All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunity of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens....May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."

- George Washington, cited by Susan Jacoby in Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

I was really excited to see this; I think it's an excellent example of the ideals to which our nation should continue to aspire. Our "founding fathers" were full of contradictions (Washington was a slaveowner), but sometimes they did get it right.