Staff Review: Rainbow Train CD for Kids, by Chana Rothman

Reviewed by Jennifer Sheffield

We are excited to announce the recent arrival of Rainbow Train, a CD of songs of gender liberation, created by local teacher and musician Chana Rothman. Chana was Micah's music teacher from 18 months until about age 3, and, along with her music and musicianship, I always loved the care and deliberation evident in her song choices and their presentation in class.

Next stop: free to choose; next stop: we've got love coming through...

One of the albums I loved growing up was Free to Be You and Me, with its fabulous and memorable songs and sketches celebrating friendship and cutting down gender stereotypes. So I was looking forward to sharing it with my own child...until I listened to it after he was born. Some songs had stood the test of time beautifully -- "Some Kinds of Help," "Glad to Have a Friend Like You," not to mention the title song itself. But in listening to many of the other songs, I found they were more likely to introduce the very stereotypes they were created to dispel. It seems we have moved forward since the '70s!

So then I was excited to learn, during one of our periodic post-music-class discussions of gender and language and music, that Chana was working on a project to create a musical update, of sorts, and to move the conversation even further along. And now, only a couple years later, we have an album full of fabulous and memorable music that celebrates being who you are, gender as a spectrum, rejecting gender stereotypes, being in charge of your own body, forging and standing up for your own identity, and transformation!

Next stop: turn another whirl; you don't have to be just a boy or a girl; you can be a beautiful blend and swirl...

Throughout the album, Chana works to transcend some of the difficult lines between rejecting a gender binary altogether (gender as rules imposed from outside) and recognizing/crossing it (gender as identity). One of the ways she does this is by focusing on kids and their own sense of self.

One of the most haunting songs on the album is "Holy," with an ethereal melody and a plea for letting people grow up to be their own amazing selves. One of Chana's friends (and a fellow music class attendee) compiled a beautiful photo-montage video with this song, to celebrate her own child's gender experience. (You can see the video at the end of a Huffington Post blog article Chana wrote about some of her experiences that inspired the Rainbow Train project.)

The other songs on the album continue this theme of letting kids (or anyone!) be who they are, as long as they're not hurting anyone. This includes playing what they want to play, liking what they like, and also trusting their own ideas of who they are. There's a strong focus on bodily autonomy, from "Your body is your own; you can decorate it how you like" to "Everybody gets to choose their own name" to "My body is mine, each and every day".

Next stop: pink and blue; anyone can wear these colors, it's true...

One thing I love about Rainbow Train is the way it responds to hurtful language without privileging the actual bullying and instead by getting to its root.

Free to Be You and Me has a song called "William's Doll," in which William persists in requesting a doll to love despite the dismissive or disparaging things his family tell him. This song has a corollary in Rainbow Train with the poem "Boy in a Dress". The new poem similarly presents different people's reactions, including a bullying kid, but, unlike the Free to Be song, the bully's reactions here are presented by providing the subtext ("I'm scared and confused, so I'll be mean to you"), rather than by saying any of the mean things out loud.

Earlier, in the song "Gender Blender," Chana suggests specific responses to hurtful things that people may say, either deliberately or without understanding:
"If they say, 'That truck's for boys,' say, 'Anybody can use this toy!'"
"If they say, 'Only girls wear pink', say, 'A color's just a color, don't you think?'"
"If they say, 'Girls look like this', say, 'There are more ways to be a girl than I could list!'"
"And if they tell you who you're gonna be, say, 'Thanks, but actually, that's up to me!'"

And, finally, she presents all sorts of encouraging/affirming comments directly from the mouths of actual kids: "There's no such thing as boy colors and girl colors." And "Anyone can play sports, no matter who you are, no matter how old you are."

Sometimes people tell you who to be...
They try to put you in a box that you can't even see
We're moving to a place where we're free...
And there's plenty of room for you, plenty of room for me...

The album has something in it for everyone. Along with its songs about kids and growing up, there's a welcome baby song (one of my favorites), and even a piece called "In Utero". There's a song that introduces Rosa Parks and Harvey Milk and links their struggles to those in the present. Folk songs, rap songs, lyrical, and laid-back songs.

Rainbow Train is certainly a sensation in my own household. Released in May, it stayed on nearly constant play in the car for two months. My four-year-old has worked really hard at learning the songs and the words -- something he's only done quite as consistently with the soundtrack to Cats. So, you know, it's (almost) "Better than Cats!" He sings along and asks me to join in, and then later, even on songs where I haven't heard him sing, he can fill in lines I've forgotten.

Next stop: tell us who you are; next stop: shine your star; next stop: we've come so far, riding on the Rainbow Train...

The album is also excitingly home-grown: Chana collaborated with numerous musicians from the neighborhood. A number of local kids appear as well, shouting "Rainbow Train!" at the beginning, or singing in the songs, or providing their own experiences and wisdom. And there were music and dance parties along the way, to which everyone was invited -- such an amazing amount of community support.

So take my hand, come along, and take a ride on the Rainbow Train!

See also Chana's Rainbow Train Resources on her website.
If you're not local to Philly, you can also order the cd/songs from cdbaby.

Staff Review - Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios

"What do a disabled superhero, a time-traveling Chinese-American figure skater, and a transgender animal shifter have in common? They're all stars of Kaleidoscope stories!

"Kaleidoscope collects fun, edgy, meditative, and hopeful YA science fiction and fantasy with diverse leads. These twenty original stories tell of scary futures, magical adventures, and the joys and heartbreaks of teenage life."

When the editors entitled this collection Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories, they were not kidding around. The book is full of difference -- in race, culture, gender, sexuality, ability, mobility, physical and mental health, religion, and economic status (not to mention species and style of magic) -- and one of the most notable things is that it's not the purview of the protagonist alone but woven into the fabric of each story. The diversity is so thick on the ground here that it's like walking through an Alison Bechdel comic strip -- or like walking through Mt. Airy. I confess to a fond partiality for "Signature," by Faith Mudge, set in a small indie bookshop in Queensland, Australia. The story starts out so full of cozy and familiar detail that I had to remind myself partway through that there would be fantasy coming!

There is also geographic diversity, though that's partly because the book is a multinational effort, with even the editors working together from opposite hemispheres. There are two Philly-area authors in the mix, whom we're hoping to bring to the store in the fall. "Krishna Blue" by Shveta Thakrar is filled with colors so vivid you can taste them, while Eugene Myers' "Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and Tell" delves into possible futures, drug interactions, and kissing games. Shveta and Eugene have both visited before, and we're looking forward to seeing them here again!

Some other favorites of mine:

"Cookie Cutter Superhero" by Tansy Rayner Roberts - Joey must leave school to become a superhero, and everything in her life will change. Well...maybe not quite everything.

"Vanilla" by Dirk Flinthart - A fascinating and sweet look at immigration and assimilation, and the meaning of friendship.

"Careful Magic" - Imagine being the only declared (and highly skilled) Order worker in a high school full of Chaos. Yeah, it's like that.

I read the stories in order, and I found the writing consistently engaging and compelling. As I scroll through the list of titles I keep seeing more and more stories I really enjoyed. So many different kinds of stories, so many different kinds of difference! Rather than try to describe them all, I will offer a list of odd pairings I noticed as I read through. I was entertained to discover that the highly disparate collection nonetheless contains...
2 lotteries
2 love spells
2 vampires
2 cosmic bridges
2 unpredictable machines
2 sets of daily protection rituals
2 interactions with alien species
2 strange types of four-legged animals
and 2 characters with veterinary interests.

Good luck with your own explorations! Kaleidoscope offers a wild ride to places both enticingly new and comfortingly familiar, and it's a great addition to the worlds of both YA and SFF.

-- Reviewed by Jennifer Sheffield
(Review originally posted in the August Big Blue YA Newsletter.)

A Staff Pick List Meta-List for the Holidays

Searching for a recommendation? We've been compiling staff pick lists, in print and on the blog, for a year and a half now! The lists are all collected in a binder at the store -- feel free to peruse whenever you're in and looking for inspiration.

Here, meanwhile, is a sampling of our lists -- some with gift advice! -- from current and former staff members:

Amy’s Five Children’s Books for Getting into the Spirit of Snow
Amy’s 5 Picks for Father’s Day Gifts
Amy’s 5 Picks for Last-Minute Mother’s Day Gifts
All of Amy's Picks

Claudia's 5 Winter Mysteries
Anatole's Five All-Time Favorite Books about Mice (by Claudia)
Claudia's Happy-Go-Lucky List for April
All of Claudia's Picks

Erica’s Five Seasonal Book & Beverage Pairings
Erica’s 5 Great Novels Under 200 Pages
Erica’s Five Maptastic Reads to Help You Find Your Orientation
All of Erica's Picks

Janet's Five Gift Ideas for December
Janet's Five Ideas for Mothers and Others
Janet’s Five OohOohOoh... Ahhhhh...Ohhhhhh...Books
All of Janet's Picks

Jen's Five Years of Resolve
Jen’s Five Books with Excellent Illustrations
Five Kids’ Books with Quirky Facts that Jen Loves
All of Jen's Picks

Kasey's Top Five Picture Books for Grown-Ups
Five of Kasey's Favorite Poetry Collections
Kasey's Top Five Cookbooks
All of Kasey's Picks

Kate’s Five Books That Changed the Way She Thinks About Society
Kate's 5 Favorite Novels That Take You To Exotic Places
Kate's Top Five Favorite Kids’ Chapter Books with Plucky Heroines
All of Kate's Picks

Five Children's Books That Made Maleka's Heart Burst Wide Open
Maleka's Five Poetry Collections to Sink Your Teeth Into
Five Books That Made Maleka Want to Eat
All of Maleka's Picks

Minter’s Five Recommended Books About Writing
Minter’s Five Writers’ Journals That Illuminate the Writing Process
All of Minter's Picks

Five Books That Taught Mo a Thing or Two about Philadelphia
5 Kids' Books That Mo Likes to Recommend to Adults but that Kids Generally Like Too
5 Cookbooks Mo Thinks Are Pretty Great
All of Mo's Picks

Nif's Five Books to read to Micah (age 5 months)
Nif's List of Six Books That Changed Her Life Over the Last Four Years
Three Garden Books That Nif Refers to Over and Over (Plus Two More She Covets Dearly)
All of Nif's Picks

Sheila’s Picks: On Beyond Heather Has Two Mommies! -- Picture books featuring LGBT themes or family members
Five Jewish-y Books that Sheila Likes a Lot, for Many Ages
Six of Zivia's favorite books of mythology, folk tales, and gods and goddesses
All of Sheila's Picks

Staff Book Review: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

jie: u totally have to read this amazing book, will grayson, will grayson. there's this guy, will grayson, whose bff is this huge sweet,but self-centered gay dude, tiny. tiny falls in and out of luv everyday. will's rules are shut up and don't care too much...except that he starts to totally like this girl, jane. in comes the 2nd will grayson who is destroyed by an e-mail relationship which is not entirely fake. then comes this reference to this physicist dude, schrodinger, who does some kind of experiment with a cat in a box that may or may not kill the cat. so while the cat is in the box, no one knows if the cat is alive or dead or both at the same time. and that is totally the analogy for all of us who are caught in a box. jane knows all about this experiment. she is totally smart. then u find out about falling, falling in a big, tiny way. dude, it's a book about life. i know how cheap you r but buy it anyway at bbmb.

p.s. the ending is cool but i can't tell u about it.

Reviewed by Janet Elfant

Staff Book Review: The Blue Orchard

The Blue Orchard by Jackson Taylor

Jackson Taylor's novel The Blue Orchard is just an amazing book. It's destined to be a classic. Not only is it incredibly well written, it is a powerful story based on a true family secret. Taylor spent over ten years writing and researching this book, including compiling oral histories of his grandmother who helped perform illegal abortions before Roe vs. Wade. Jackson was part of my Writers in the Process Author series and he had the entire Big Blue Marble store in awe of his writing and the powerful story he tells. Every where you go in Mount Airy you see people reading this book!

-Reviewed by Minter Krotzer

About Minter Krotzer: Minter Krotzer's writing has been published in Many Mountains Moving, the Saint Ann's Review, the Arkansas Review, Upstreet, Night Train, Before and After: Stories from New York (WW Norton 2002), Louisiana in Words (Pelican Press 2007), God Stories (Random House 2008), and the upcoming Norton anthology Hint Fiction. She has taught creative writing at International House and Teachers and Writers Collaborative in New York City and privately in Philadelphia. She has received writing fellowships from the New School, where she received an MFA, Bennington College, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Squaw Valley Writers Conference. This summer she will be a Visiting Fellow at the Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France.

Award-winning poet Hal Sirowitz, who moved to Mount Airy from New York City three years ago, will be teaching a poetry workshop with the accompaniment of his wife, Minter Krotzer. Hal and Minter moved to Philadelphia from New York City with the intent of teaching and sharing what they have learned from being part of the literary community in New York City for the past 30 years. In this workshop Hal and Minter will focus on poetry drawn from one’s life stories mostly in the forms of free verse and various poetic forms. Selected poetry texts will be read and discussed. There will be in class writing and optional sharing of work. The class will be supportive and encouraging, beginning poets are especially welcome. The workshops will be held on Sunday afternoons from 2-4pm from April 25th- June 27th (not including Mother’s Day and Father’s Day). The cost is $150 and this includes a reading materials fee and a private writing consultation.

Staff Book Review: The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

What happens when we die? Do our souls watch over the people we left behind? Are we, on earth, guided by the messages we receive? What happens if the messages come from a fourteen-year-old who is brutally molested and then murdered by a neighbor on her own block?

Alice Sebold writes her version of this scenario in her heart-wrenching, yet redeeming novel, The Lovely Bones. Of significance is the fact that the author is a survival of a brutal rape. Much of her writing continues to be her search for a life that incorporates her personal trauma. Of note also, is the short essay Sebold writes at the end of the novel which is entitled The Oddity of Suburbia. Despite the identical houses, the well tended lawns, the appearance of "normalcy", there are a thousand stories behind the closed drapes. No two of these stories are the same. Sebold calls us to "look harder in the suburbs, past the floor plans and into the human heart". I would add that the message of The Lovely Bones is precisely to look harder at each person we encounter, each behavior presented, to look into each and every persons' heart.

Reviewed by Janet Elfant

Review: Noah's Compass, by Ann Tyler

Noah's Compass, by Anne Tyler (Knopf, Hardcover, 9780307272409, 288pp.)
A Review by Janet Elfant

To understand my love of Anne Tyler, one might first want to understand my more than 30 year-old association with my much beloved mother-in-law. My mother-in-law is an artist who burned most of the food she cooked and then threw the burnt pans out off the deck. When involved in a project, she sometimes forgot to pick up her children at school and they would hike the four or five miles home in whatever weather Connecticut had to offer for that season. Yet when the "pet" donkey swallowed her youngest child's arm (he had been offering it a treat) and everyone was running around wondering what to do, my mother-in-law picked up the nearest log and hit the donkey over the head which surprised him so much that he opened his mouth and let Patrick's arm out.

Ann Tyler writes about people like my mother-in-law. Every book she has written has contained characters with various clouds of eccentricity yet each character is treated with kindness and respect in her rendition. Liam Pennywell, the main character in Tyler's most recent novel, Noah's Compass, is a philosopher, downsized to a history teacher, downsized to unemployment. He has survived two "failed marriages" resulting in three daughters with whom, in the beginning of the book, he has minimal contact. In his attempt to downsize his life, he relieves himself of most of his possessions and moves into a modest concrete apartment complex on the other side of town. An intruder enters through his unlocked porch door during the night of Liam's first sleep in the apartment and causes enough physical harm that Liam is taken to a hospital. Upon awakening, Liam has no memory of the burglary which causes him extreme distress. Liam has lost a night of his life. That loss sets the scene for the rest of the novel. What is played out for the next 200 pages are the questions of who we are, who we have been, and who we have left to be. Ann Tyler is always a surprise with her answers.

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780307272409

Staff Book Review: Little Bee

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

With reluctance, I would say that Little Bee by Chris Cleave is a must read for anyone who wants to face the horrors done to "underdeveloped" communities for the sake of export...export of oil...export of foods not available to us because of our climate...export of goods at extreme profits. Chris Cleave is an expert at character development and the reader gives her heart to the inner life of the five major characters in this novel who depict perfectly the cultural conflict between those who have relatively nothing and are content and those who are forever discontent because they can never have enough. Little Bee stands as the voice in us all as she learns how to be as English as possible during her two years in a detention camp and yet maintains the voice within her from her simple happiness with her mother and sister before the "men" came to her village. I recommend this book highly...to be read only when you can reach the last page and go sit with a dear friend at our cafe upstairs and enjoy a cup of warming tea or strong coffee.

Reviewed by Janet Elfant

Staff Book Review: Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout

Pulitzer Prize winner, Elizabeth Stout, creates yet another masterpiece with her novel Olive Kitteridge. As stated in a conversation with Elizabeth Stout and Olive Kitteridge, which the reader will find at the end of the book, "the power of Olive's character (ferocious and complicated and kindly and sometimes cruel) is best portrayed in an episodic manner". Olive Kitteridge reads more like a collection of loosely related short stories, all focused on the individuals who populate the small town of Crosby, Maine... all focused on the inner life and frailty and sufferings and triumphs of each character.

Olive Kitteridge is often seen as an utterly unlikeable, occasionally abusive, absolutely frank, judgmental character. What saves her, as the reader learns while progressing through seemingly unrelated chapters, is her valiant self-honesty, her accurate sensitivity to those around her, and her growing self awareness. We the reader are also made aware through other characters what history formed Olive Kitteridge. By her own definition she has "the strong passions and prejudices of a peasant". Olive is opinionated, quarrelsome, critical, overly sensitive, and sometimes excruciatingly kind and perceptive. And in the end Olive Kitteridge learns the value of love above all else, even if the subject of her love and comfort is a Republican who voted for an idiot.

Reviewed by Janet Elfant

Staff Book Review: Invisible Cities

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Invisible Cities is basically a series of prose poems, each describing a different city. There are only two characters in the book; the explorer Marco Polo who collects stories about cities and the emperor Kublai Kahn demands to hear about the cities contained in his falling empire. Perhaps the best synopsis of the book is the statement offered by Marco Polo that “an invisible landscape conditions the visible one.” As a surrealist, I found the book especially captivating because on one level it deals in the fantastical—cities which seem to exist in other dimensions, gargoyles which come to life, and cities that sprawl so rapidly that you cannot escape them. On another level Calvino touches on profound truths about geography and imperialism as well as the social, political and environmental forces that shape cities. I found this book to be tremendously fun, my roommates will attest that it caused me to jump up and down with excitement more than once. At 165 pages it is a quick read but it also challenged me look closer at the world around me. I’ve always imagined myself as an urban explorer but I found myself looking up and down and imagining the routes of storm sewers and buried streams with a new sense of urgency.

- reviewed by Mo Speller

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For: The Lives, Loves and Politics of Cult-Fav Characters Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice and Others, by Alison Bechdel, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Alas, Alison Bechdel has suspended her strip to work on her memoir about relationships. I forgive her, because Fun Home was awesome and I'm eager to see what comes next. But if you need to catch up on the latest antics of Mo and friends, they are newly published in this giant compendium of strips from 1988 onward.

I need it, for the sake of completeness and also the funny introduction (illustrated, of course). "Good God. I FORGOT TO GET A JOB," says Ms. Bechdel, musing on her 20+ years of documenting ordinary but imaginary lesbian lives. I think I speak for all her fans when I say that we're pretty pleased about that.

It is also worth checking out her essay in State by State, edited by Sean Wilsey, published by Ecco Press.