Review of "Given" by Wendell Berry

In Animal Vegetable Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver wrote glowingly of her friend, Wendell Berry. When I learned that Berry is a Kentucky farmer, activist, novelist and poet... I knew I had to check him out for myself. My husband's cousin is pursuing her MFA in poetry this fall, but I haven't read much poetry since high school, so I thought I'd start culturing myself with this slim volume from my local library. "For those who believe that life and the world are gifts, this is an invaluable book," reads the Booklist quote on the cover of Given: Poems. I'm a fan of Ann Vosskamp's "One Thousand Gifts," so the recommendation sold me. The first half of the book is made up of  two chapters: "In a Country Once Forested" and "Further Words." These are mostly short poems observing nature's beauty and honoring his wife and other loved ones. In these poems, he lovingly paints a word portrait of his wife's white head in the fields.  In a series of Spring Haikus, Berry describes a wild plum tree as a bride dressed in white blossoms and a cluster of Mayapples as a crowd under little umbrellas. In "How to Be a Poet," Berry reminds himself to find a quiet place away from screens and electronic distractions and really listen for "what comes from silence." As I read and reread these gentle words, it seemed to provide instructions for more than just making good poetry. The third section is written as a play called "Sonata at Payne Hollow," and read like an enchanting dream. The fourth section, "Sabbaths 1998-2004" features poems written on his long Sunday walks around his farm. As the name implies, these poems often have a spiritual substance to them, pondering life, death, God and our purpose as reflected in nature. Poem VIII from 2004 spoke of our yearning for "the Word that calls the darkest dark/ Of this world to its lasting dawn," and describes people as "separate as fireflies or night windows," who piece together "a foredream of the gathered light." So beautiful.

I enjoyed Given and read through the entire book twice, lingering on a few of my favorite poems longer. I also checked out Berry's "The Mad Farmer Poems," but couldn't quite get into them. Berry has written several novels, and I felt as though Mad Farmer poems were told in the voices of his characters, without the benefit of the back story to enlighten me. They have an angry, activist tone to them, which some readers might find more exciting than the contemplative tone of Given. If you, like I, enjoy staring out the window or listening to bird sing or contemplating how a river has shaped the terrain through which it runs, I think you'll enjoy the imagery in Given. If you feel that God cares for His creation beyond His initial act of speaking it into being, then I also think you'll enjoy Berry's words.

Words can hurt or heal with Rosemary Wells

Stephen and I really enjoyed Rosemary Well's newest book, Stella's Starliner, which tucks a deep message into a sweet, sparkling picture book. I grabbed it off the library shelf because I grew up with Wells and I thought from the title this one might include some imaginary space travel. Actually, the story is mostly grounded on earth, with one fantastic sky travel scene in the middle. But I still highly recommend this one!

Stella is not rich in material possessions, but has a life rich with pancake breakfasts, farmer's markets, bookmobile visits and weekend fishing trips. Her compact but practical trailer home is replete with fun hiding places and novelties like a sofa that converts to a bed with the touch of a button. Cherished by her mom and dad, Stella feels secure in knowing she "had everything she needed in her silver home." It seems nothing can shake her idyllic childhood until a band of sneering weasel bullies berates poor Stella and her silver home. Their jokes "stung Stella's heart like the sting of bees." (After just one read through this book, Steve recited that line back to me in a very serious voice.) I always thought that the old rhyme about sticks and stones and words that can never hurt me was unhelpful, especially when it seems that words are what can most damage a tender heart. In Stella's case, the weasel's jibes pricked so deeply she couldn't eat or sleep that night.

I won't give away the ending, which, of course, is a happy one. The message of this story? Just as cruel words can cause people to see their glasses half empty, some encouragement can set things right. Always on the look out for books that promote simplicity, I was happy to find another book can help children see that happiness is not in wealth, having stuff or pleasing everyone. It also promotes loving family relationships, finding joy in the little things and speaking positively. So go out and get Stella's Starliner, and start talking with your pre-K to early elementary students.

Stephen's Pick: Munching Machines

Stephen enjoyed another robot related book from our local library, Junkyard, by Mike Austin. He calls it "Munching Machines" because that's what the author calls the two bots who crush, crunch and munch their way through am unwieldy salvage yard before planting a garden, sculpting mountains and upcycling garbage into cool playground equipment. I recommend this richly illustrated picture book with fun rhyming text for young robot lovers and parents who like a subtle environmental slant. The story celebrates two hardworking, resourceful robots as they create beauty out of garbage.

Review of "Letters from a Skeptic"

I love brainy books from time to time, and Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father's Questions about Christianity by theology professor turned megachurch pastor Greg Boyd fits the bill. Not only is the book a compilation of apologetic essays from a very smart person, but a dual between Boyd and his then agnostic father Edward Boyd as they exchanged correspondence over a period of three years back in the early 1990s, culminating with the senior Boyd's joyful conversion at age 70!

These 30 letters were a quick and interesting read as Edward Boyd raises some of the most common criticisms to the Christian faith, while also revealing deep-rooted hurts from his past, including the premature death of Greg's mother.

The father and son touch on issues that anyone seriously considering or contending for the Christian faith should chew on: reconciling unthinkable human violence with an all-powerful and loving God and understanding why God gave humans free will, the nature and occupants of hell, the sometimes odd and mythical nature of many Bible stories, and how and why Christ's death is God's acceptable propitiation for mankind's sin. I suppose some Christians might find places to nitpick with some of the responses. For example, the younger Boyd is slightly open ended about whether Hell is eternal conscious torture or whether those sent there will eventually cease to exist and cites verses that could validate either view. This might bother some Christians who feel the strength and quality of their faith relies on their level of certainty on all matters of theology. I'm not one of them, so I found Boyd's answers to be sensitive, intellectual and nuanced in a way that really invited and encouraged faith.

Overall, the author's thoughtful responses encouraged me to test the rational ground on which I base my own faith, and it was exciting to watch Edward Boyd's gradual salvation unfold. Also valuable is the way the younger Boyd models a loving, respectful, hopeful attitude as he witnesses to his father, who in early letters expresses his disbelief that his Yale and Princeton educated son would "buy into" Christian beliefs. Whether or not they agree on all the minutia of his answers, I think all Christians can learn from Pastor Boyd's example and be encourage by the result.

As with many of the books I review and reflect upon in this blog, you can find the hard copy of Letters from a Skeptic at the Hopkinsville-Christian County Public Library... as soon as I return it!

Reflections on "Half the Sky"

I've been reading Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn bit by bit over several months because the atrocities it exposes are so graphic and heart rending. While each chapter drew me in, it's not exactly easy reading because of the emotional investment. But I still heartily recommend it as an antidote to complacency and discontentment and ignorance. In 14 chapters, Half the Sky takes readers from impoverished villages in the Middle East to seedy red light districts in Asia to bare bones hospitals in Africa where corruption and indifference toward women lead to countless stories of culturally ingrained oppression and violence against women. Kristof and WuDunn also show the effects of female oppression on children and economies in general, driving home the point that injustices women face are not mere "women's issues" but human rights issues.

Despite the heavy content, I didn't close the book in despair. Each chapter begins with an impressively intimate portrait of a real woman in a destitute situation and ends with that same woman, against all odds, finding her footing and helping others. Most of these vignettes are also paired with a profile of an aid organization or another woman that helped her. The authors (who happen to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning power couple) encourage readers to take action, supporting grassroots efforts that effect the most bang for buck. They also urge people to travel and meet those they support to gain a fuller understanding of women's experiences worldwide.

Before I finished this book, I'd already followed the authors' lead and signed up for a Kiva.org account, where members can make micro loans to individuals on the other side of the globe.

Reflections on "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"

Several months ago, over a potluck meal for two of quinoa, roasted root veggies and Brussels sprouts, my journalist friend had recommended Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. I was keen to crack open the novelist's memoir of the year her family spent raising, harvesting and eating foods from their 40-acre farm in Appalachia in an attempt to quell guilt about America's unethical eating habits, but my nightstand was already stacked with a pile of books. So I declined her generous offer to lend me her copy, and promised I'd check it out from the library. I'm so glad I kept my promise; this was an entertaining, illuminating, affirming, appetizing and challenging read.

Picking up this book, I didn't really want to be converted to a new way of thinking. I'm already a fair-weather fan of farmers markets; they offer tasty heirloom produce sold by familiar faces amid the colorful bustle of my small town's downtown.  But I must confess I still do the bulk of my shopping at Aldi and Kroger for expediency's sake. Limiting my cosmopolitan taste buds to a 100-mile food radius also seemed unlikely. Growing my own food seemed even less likely. I'm a city girl with brown thumbs, inadvertently and absentmindedly killing nearly every plant I buy. Add to that my aversion to food aversions. Apart from my three-month stint with gestational diabetes, I don't bite at popular restrictive diets. My dietary philosophy, if I have one at all, is to eat lots of fresh vegetables, explore ethnic cuisines and make stuff from scratch when it's not cost- or time-prohibitive. My contribution to promoting healthful eating in the deep fried South is to sneak flax seed meal into church potlucks the way Seinfeld's wife gets her kids to eat carrot puree in their mac and cheese. All that to say I've sympathized with the slow foods, local foods, organic foods movements for quite some time, but I'm not a faithful adherent.

I found in Kingsolver's memoir just the right mix of personal narrative, ethical reflection and factual sidebars to cause me to reevaluate some of my spending and eating habits. Essentially, her choice was a matter of conscience. She and her family no longer felt justified consuming gratuitous amounts of fossil fuel or support inequitable economies just to enjoy a Costa Rican banana with breakfast. Having dabbled in raising chickens and turkeys before, Kingsolver couldn't in good conscience support industrial agriculture that dooms livestock to a cramped, sunless existence, gorging on corn mixed with their own excrement until their death. Yeah. Pretty gross. I haven't been able to buy my usual Valu-Pak chicken breasts from Kroger since. And because, as Kingsolver observes, even chicken labeled as “free range” might live confined with 20,000 others as long as the building "has a doorway leading out to a tiny yard, even though that doorway remains shut for so much of the chickens’ lives, they never learn to go outside" (122) I found it hard to buy any meat after spending several minutes squinting at the packaging.

In fact, this quote from the opening chapter describes perfectly my weekly quandary at the grocery store:

"Knowing how foods grow is to know how and when to look for them; such expertise is useful for certain kinds of people, namely, the ones who eat, no matter where they live or grocery shop. Absence of that knowledge has rendered us a nation of wary label-readers, oddly uneasy in our obligate relationship with the things we eat." (10)

And here, in a nutshell, is Kingsolver's thesis:

"The best and only defense, for both growers and the consumers who care, is a commitment to more local food economies. It may not be possible to prevent the corruption of codified organic standards when they are so broadly applied." (122)

She also talks truth about our insistence on having the world's foods at our fingertips at all times and our bemoaning the higher price of organic foods:

Bizarre as it seems, we’ve accepted the tradeoff that amounts to: “Give me every vegetable in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self.” 54

And:

"It’s interesting that penny-pinching is an accepted defense for toxic food habits, when frugality so rarely rules other consumer domains." 115

Beyond reminding me of my priorities, Kingsolver did something else unexpected by winning me over to the wonderment of farming. I mentioned that I'm no country girl; I'm not into farms, or allergy-inducing animal dander, or the shoe-staining rust red Southern dirt, but I seriously began picturing myself (or my sons) some day raising some chickens for eggs after reading this particularly adorable description of Kingsolver's daughter's brood of baby chicks:

"From time to time one of the babies would be overtaken by the urge for a power nap. Staggering like a drunk under the warm glow of the brooder lamp, it would shut its eyes and keel over, feet and tiny winglets sprawled out flat. More siblings keeled onto the pile, while others climbed over the fuzzy tumble in a frantic race to nowhere." (89)

And even plants become people in this poetic passage:

"This is why we do it all again every year. It’s the visible daily growth, the marvelous and unaccountable accumulation of biomass that makes for the hallelujah of a July garden. Fueled by only the stuff they drink from air and earth, the bush beans fill out their rows, the okra booms, the corn stretches eagerly toward the sky like a toddler reaching up to put on a shirt." (174) 

Other enjoyable and envy-inducing adventures included an anniversary jaunt through the farms of Tuscany where every meal is apparently the best you've ever eaten, a cheese-making workshop in New England and a series of beautiful food-centric celebrations that brought family and friends together in real community.

The author's teenage daughter, Camille, offers recipes at the end of each chapter. I'm keen to try her Grated Zucchini Orzo on my kids. Kingsolver also promotes the gorgeous vegetable-rich cookbooks by Deborah Madison. (I've already checked one out from my library and have been drooling over it.) Despite the romance of laboring over luxurious slow-food cuisine, the author admitted to a less fussy approach to daily putting food on the table. She describes her go-to dishes for using up their local produce as frittatas, pastas with meat and seasonal veggies, homemade pizzas, stir-fries and Crock-Pot soups "in endless variations," which made her family's diet sound an awful lot like ours. And her assertion that "cooking is the great divide between good eating and bad" is something I often think to myself after eating a disappointing restaurant meal.

Ultimately, what most won me over to Kingsolver's raise-it-yourself mindset is her desire to make consumer choices with true, lasting positive impact on her family and society. It's planted in me a vision for my own family: Growing a garden, teaching my boys to cook and making a habit of sitting down together for home-cooked meals that enrich our community without taking away from others.

6 Wordless Wonders

I've been meaning to post some fun wordless picture books for a while, but I keep finding more that I like! They work well for young readers/listeners a number of reasons-- firstly, with the bulk of the storytelling resting on the images, all the illustrations will immediately draw in little ones' attention. You don't have to worry about reading level, as you can add as many or as few words to the story as you like. You can even make your child "read" the story to you. Another option I've enjoyed with my five-year-old is having him tell the story on one page, then I'll tell the story on the next page. Most of these are from our local library.

Journey by Aaron Becker
A recent Caldecott Honor book, Journey is like an elaborate version of Harold and the purple crayon. I this story, the protagonist is a little girl, who after failing to gain the attention of her father, mother and older sister, draws a red door on her bedroom wall, opens it and disappears into an enchanted forest. As interesting as this alternate universe is, it seems the young heroine is still alone in her adventure as she must draw herself out of close encounters with a series of mysterious villains. But eventually, by showing kindness to another creature in distress, she finds a kindred spirit with a magic crayon of his own. After I read this one with Stephen, I decided to page through it again. The illustrations are truly magical.

Flotsam by David Wiesner
Another great library find, Flotsam, chronicles the mysteries of an underwater fantasy world through the snapshots-- presumably taken by sea creatures-- from a camera that washes up on shore into a little child's hands. Many of the scenes appear to depict the "normal" wonders of the ocean floor at first glance. But a closer observation reveals interesting antics and characters. Both my older boys are fond of the beach and sea creatures, so this was a hit with them.

The Secret Box by Barbara Lehman
Another wordless story based on mysterious photographs, The Secret Box transforms a box of old-timey snapshots hidden in an attic into a treasure hunt for the carefree fun of a carnival from another era. The friends that piece together the clues from the photos and memorabilia in the box eventually bring the story full circle, contributing their own images for another group of children to discover in the next generation. I enjoyed this the open-endedness of this cartoon-styled narrative, but the boys didn't get into it as much... perhaps the subtle twist at the end was lost on their five- and three-year-old minds.





The Adventures of Polo by Regis Faller
A wordless cartoon told in several chapters, Faller's picture book follows the whimsical dog, Polo, as he climbs strings to outer space, joins a band of monkeys in their tree-top soiree, sails to a deserted volcanic island and roasts his dinner over a lava flow, and slides down rabbit-holes to the middle of the earth where glowing pea-like beings march around luminary mushrooms. Polo makes plenty of silly friends and does many nonsensical things. There's not really a moralistic take-away here, but The Adventures of Polo is just plain fun. Stephen loves to narrate Polo, and this book has been great for long and far less adventurous drives from Kentucky to Illinois and Ohio.

The Chicken Thief by Beatrice Rodriguez (first installment to trilogy including Fox and Hen Together and Rooster's Revenge) A fox stakes out the home of some woodland friends, then bursts from the bushes and snatches up a chicken, much to Rooster, Bear and Rabbit's dismay. The chase is on, and Rodriguez tells the story through breathtaking panoramas over hills, into mountains and through valleys, owing much to the book's unusual 6 x 10-inch dimensions. **Spoiler Alert** At the end of this wordless tale, the foxy villain turns out to have had a change of heart (or perhaps purer intentions all along?) for taking Miss Hen, as the pair are eventually discovered sipping cocoa by a cottage fire and invite their "guests" in to join them. I'm ambivalent about the story's twist. Perhaps it is a testimony to the happiness many culturally-crossed couples find despite their families' best attempts to thwart the union? As the product of a mixed-race marriage myself, I'm hard-pressed to dislike this message. However, the fact that the chicken didn't seem to be aware of the romance before being whisked away kind of taints that interpretation. There's nothing cute about stalking, kidnapping and imprisoning your crush until she loves you back. I'm probably over-thinking this. Whether or not you take umbrage to the moral of the story, the beautiful illustrations are worth a look at this wordless book. And the fact that there's no words means you can interpret it however innocently as you please.


The Giant Seed by Arthur Geisert

While the premise of this book is really quite odd, Stephen really liked this and another porcine picture book by Geisert. In this tale, smaller-than-life pigs struggle to survive against the imminent danger of a sputtering volcano, which sends down ash and embers on their quaint village and sets their thatched roofs ablaze... what's not to like about that? The pigs escape the inferno by some crafty maneuvering and botanical knowledge. Like The Chicken Thief, The Giant Seed is part of the Stories Without Words series and features the lovely panoramic pages.