- Anna Maria Junus
Reading Rush: The First Four
It is day four of Reading Rush and I have finished four books and I'm reading my fifth. Yay. Although I suspect as I also come up to the beginning of my paying job work week, and I'll be tackling bigger books, I just might not get all 7 done.
But as you recall, I gave myself permission to fail. And I didn't get involved with community nor did I keep track of how many pages I read a day. I just did this on my own.
So here are the ones accomplished.
1. Read a book with a purple cover.
From Anna
Jean Little
This one was such a moving delight! It begins in Germany in 1933. Anna lives with her parents Ernst and Klara and her siblings Rudi, Gretchen, Fritz and Frieda. Anna is the youngest and doesn't seem to fit in. She's awkward and clumsy and her siblings tease her mercilessly, while her mother is frustrated with how slow, inept and prickly she is. Only her father understands her and recognizes how bright she is. Living in Germany is getting increasingly scary. Neighbors are starting to disappear and although the Solden family isn't Jewish, it doesn't look good for anyone.
When Ernst brother who has immigrated to Canada and has started a grocery business dies and leaves his property to Ernst, he decides that now is the time to immigrate. So in spite Klara's protests the family prepares by learning English, and moving to Toronto.
It's in Toronto that a doctor discovers that Anna has very poor sight and soon a pair of glasses is given her that opens up her world. She is taken to special classes for children who have vision problems and there she gets a teacher who instead of demeaning her as her teachers did back home, tells her how smart and talented she is.
This was a wonderful story with great insight as to how a child could be so easily misunderstood and how a little love and understanding goes a long way. Recommended for all ages. Yes, it is a juvenile book, but the story within it is ageless.
And see my purple badge?
2. Read a book in the same spot the entire time
Four Seasons of Flower Fairies
Cicily Mary Barker
I've been a fan of Barkers beautiful and often humorous fairies for years now, so when I saw this lovely book in a thrift store I grabbed it. I did not know at the time that Barker was also a poet.
This book is four books in one. Each section focuses on flowers of each season. Barker drew from life, both with the flowers and the fairies. No, she didn't see fairies, but she used the local children as models. The result is a fanciful feast and you wish that when you go walking you would actually come across these beautiful creatures.
As for the poetry, it works well with the pictures and in the following excerpt shows some amount of humor and how the fight with the dandelion has been going on for a long time. This was published in 1925.
The Song of the Dandelion Fairy
Here's the Dandelion's rhyme:
See my leaves with tooth-like edges:
Blow my clocks to tell the time:
See me flaunting by the hedges, In the meadow, in the lane,
Gay and naughty by the garden:
Pull me up - I grow again,
Asking neither leave or pardon.
Sillies, what are you about
With your spades and hoes of iron?
You can never drive me out -
Me, the dauntless Dandelion!
As for where I read this book - on a lounge chair with my feet up on my back deck surrounded by flowers while I watched humming birds and bees. I read this in one sitting.
5. Read a book with a non-human main character.
Ribsy
by Beverly Cleary
I'm not a fan of animal books, but with Beverly Cleary you can't go wrong.
Ribsy is part of the Henry Huggins series. Henry and Ribsy was the first book published by Cleary and it told the tale of how Henry got Ribsy and their adventures on Klikicat street.
In this book, Ribsy gets lost. It begins when he's left in car at the shopping mall. He manages to escape to find his boy, only he gets lost trying to make it back to the car. Instead he ends up in a different car and the family there decides to take him home.
Although the family means well, all those girls giving him a flowered smelling bubble bath make Ribsy unhappy and soon Ribsy escapes only to have one adventure after another on his way to finding Henry
again. He runs into a little old lady that likes to dress him up, he's a mascot in a second grade classroom, he becomes a hero in a high school football game, and a celebrity in the newspaper.
As always with Cleary this was a fun read and you can certainly see why a dog would behave the way Ribsy does in the way she tells it from his point of view.
6. Pick a book that has five or more words in the title
The Inn at Eagle Point
by Sherryl Woods
Admittedly this one was a bit of a cheat because I was already reading it before I even found out about this challenge. Still I did have 200 pages to go so I think it's fair.
This is the first in the series of Chesapeake Bay. We meet the O'Brien family. Dad Mitch has actually built the town, Mom Megan has left leaving teenage Abby to mother her four younger siblings along with their Grandmother.
The story begins several years later. Abby is now a highly successful stock broker in New York, divorced, and the mother of five year old twins. When her youngest sister Jess calls asking for help, she agrees to come and packs up the kids for a visit home to Chesapeake Bay. Jess has bought an Inn but before she can even open the bank is threatening to foreclose because she got behind in her payments. Turns out although Jess is extremely talented, she doesn't handle money well and has sunk everything into getting the run down Inn into shape. And so begins the story of romance and new beginnings.
It's actually a typical romance but has received enough attention that it is now a series being shot on the island where I live. Some scenes just walking distance from me - although I never know when they are shooting. And here's the badge.
So my favorite that I've read so far in ths challenges is "From Anna" by Jean Little. Although I'm sure I read it as a kid, I don't remember the story, so it was all new to me and absolutely lovely.
*****
The Canadian Woman is...
Alice Munro (1931 - ) Munro is a celebrated and awarded short story writer from Ontario. All right, I admit it. I haven't read her work - yet. But I do know the name.
