Books to Drool Over, May edition

Welcome to Books to Drool Over, in which I share the cookbooks that have caught my interest over the past month. I have two to share with you this month.

Elsie's Turkey Tacos and Arroz Con Pollo (2007), by Elsie Ramos, is subtitled Latin-flavored Great-tasting Recipes for Working Moms. I've never understood the concept of cookbooks for "working moms"--as if we stay-at-home moms were spending our days kneading bread and making our own granola. I so admire working parents for all the balls they juggle, but I'm generally throwing dinner together at six o'clock right along with them. This looked like a good source of quick, stress-free recipes for all of us.

I don't watch cooking shows, so I had no idea who Elsie Ramos is (she was on the first season of Hell's Kitchen). Ramos is of Puerto Rican descent, so the recipes are different from the Latin-influenced food we're used to, and sounded tasty. No pictures, though.

Will I use it? A lot of these aren't doable for me, unless someone knows of a source of calabaza (a kind of West Indian pumpkin) and dried codfish in Portland. There are seriously a LOT of recipes with dried codfish, and no recommended substitutions. It also puts me off when cookbooks use another recipe (sofrito, for example) as an ingredient. I'm not going to make up a big batch of sofrito to have on hand. Please list the ingredients within the recipe so I can make my shopping list. Thank you.

I did mark several recipes to try, but after a month the only one I got around to making was Platanos Dulces, which is fried plantains. I've never made plantains that I liked before, and these were delish! Normally they're too starchy for my tastes. The key was to let the plantain ripen until there were lots of black spots on the skin.

Rachael Ray's Yum-O Family Cookbook (2008). Did I mention I don't watch cooking shows? I knew nothing about Rachael Ray except that my friend Glenda had one of her cookbooks. I grabbed this book off the library shelf at the beginning of May because it said "family cookbook" and I needed another book to feature. When I first skimmed through it I immediately started marking pages, and then I stopped because, what's the point in marking pages if you mark every other page? These recipes looked so good, healthy, and different from my usual fare without being any harder to make. Enticing color pictures, and tips on how kidlets can help, add to the book's appeal.

Will I use it? I used it all month long! I made Greek Goulash and my own variation of Ground Meat Goulash with Macaroni (I was on a goulash kick apparently. They were more different than they sound, I promise). I made Jerk Chicken With Roasted Vegetables and Pineapple, and then used the leftovers as instructed to make Sweet and Spicy Sesame Noodles with Shredded Chicken. (Rachael Ray has yet another recipe to make with that chicken but I didn't have enough leftovers to do both). This was a big hit with everyone in my family and super easy to make.

Rachael Ray has a Yum-O website dedicated to empowering kids and their families to develop healthy relationships with food and cooking. A lot of the recipes in this book are on the website, but I'll be keeping the book around for further inspiration in the months to come.

TSS: Struck Wordless

For the past three days I've been sweating over my review for Ron Carlson's The Signal, which comes out tomorrow. Carlson is the author most recently of Five Skies (2007) and several other books, including my favorite collections of short stories. The trouble is, I like the man's work too much.

It can be a little terrifying, requesting to review the latest release by a favorite author, because what if it doesn't measure up? With a library book it's easier to quietly slip the book back into the book drop and pretend it didn't happen. Or with a new-to-you author, you can say "this wasn't for me," and move on. But after you've gone on and on about how wonderful someone's writing it is, it's humbling to have to say, "I didn't like it much."

And if the book is everything you'd hoped it to be? What do you say then?

"Go buy this book! Read it, read it, read it! Do! It's so...it's just so...it's really, like...you know? Really-really-really good!" Knowing that the author may at some point read this babbling, could be reading it and thinking "This is the kind of person my books appeal to? Christ."

But, hey, Dr. Carlson teaches creative writing at college. He's surely been exposed to worse than I can come up with, with the possible exception of the paragraph above this one. I'll try to do the book justice in my write-up, and then I'll force myself to hit Publish and move on.

Tomorrow.

Do you ever feel intimidated when writing about a favorite author? Which author or book has been the hardest for you to review?


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This week's giveaway winners: (this giveaway continues for two more weeks, go to parenting/nutrition giveaway and leave a comment to enter).
Dr. Sears' N.D.D. Book: Lisa
G-Free Diet: Korah and Carleen
If Your Kid Eats This Book: GShome and SpiralMama

Do-Over--Robin Hemley (book review)

When I first saw the cover of Do-Over, I thought the poor man had gone back to kindergarten for an entire school year. Then summer camp, then prom. I worried for him.

It was a relief to learn that Hemley only spent a week in each place, as well as redoing several other grades, and the high school exchange program he hadn't completed in Japan. (The Japan trip doesn't appear in the subtitle, but it may be the most entertaining and touching part of the book).

For each "do-over," Hemley begins with an essay about what went wrong the first time--sometimes humorous (flubbing his one line in the school play, by tossing a gift box to The Littlest Angel shouting, "Here's your stupid box!") and sometimes tragic (a literally certifiable kindergarten teacher; a sister's mental breakdown when Robin was in eighth grade). Amongst the memories and adventure, Hemley sprinkles in a thoughtful commentary on the changing face of childhood in America. In the section about summer camp (read an excerpt here), he writes matter-of-factly,

No one paid attention to kids when I was growing up, not parents, not teachers, not counselors. Childhood was something you went off and did until you got over it. And camp was one of those places to which kids were exiled, almost as a form of punishment, a warehouse where you suffered while your parents went on that Norwegian cruise.

At age 48, Hemley finds that the camp experience has evolved--kids are supported in trying new things, accepted for who they are, and camp values are posted prominently and reinforced daily by counselors and staff. Revisiting the camp where he was an unhappy 18-year-old counselor, Hemley realizes:

I guess I haven't moved on. Perhaps if I'd learned better lessons as a camper, I'd have made a better counselor. Perhaps if I'd been a better counselor, I might be a healthier adult, a better father.

And this is what makes Do-Over more than just a lark. Hemley reconnects with people and experiences from his past, but more importantly, he forges ahead with the people from his present--his two daughters from a previous marriage, his wife and young child, and a baby on the way (the new baby provides the opportunity to "do-over" supporting his wife in childbirth, too--he was overseas and missed the birth of their first).

Robin Hemley has written several other books, including books about writing (when not in kindergarten, he's got a gig directing the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa), and a memoir about his sister's mental illness.

What life experience would you do over if you could? Me, I'd want to go back to summer camp, for sure. I had great camp experiences, but I'd love to redo it without the homesickness. What about you?

The soundtrack: I added one of the songs Hemley danced to at the prom: Sean Paul's Give It Up to Me. It's in the playlist in my sidebar for now, or click on the song title to find it on last.fm.

Title: Do-Over!
Author: Robin Hemley
Publication info: May, 2009 (Little, Brown & Co.) 319 pages

Secret Identity Revealed

Types faster than a speeding bullet...
Writes more powerfully than a locomotive*....
Able to read multiple volumes in a single binding...

Look! Up in the blogosphere!
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's...

Worducopia-woman! [A.k.a. the Pure Lasered Nine Tails, for reasons known only to The Hero Factory.]


Yes, it's Worducopia-woman - strange unique blogger from another planet Portland who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men (you'd better believe it). Worducopia-woman - who can read while changing the course of mighty rivers, turn pages with dishwater-soaked hands, and who, disguised as Ali, mild mannered mother of two boys, fights the never ending battle for Truth, Justice and Great Literature for all.

Worducopia-woman hopes she's not too late to win a copy of Dull Boy from Diana Peterfreund, but even if she is, she had a blast making herself into a superhero at The Hero Factory. So fun!
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*(After all, locomotives don't type very well)

Short Story Report: Unaccustomed Earth

Source: Unaccustomed Earth (2008) by Jhumpa Lahiri
Date Read: May, 2009 (#5)
Briefly: A woman's father comes to stay with her and her young son, for the first time since the recent death of her mother.
Afterthoughts: This is the title story for the collection, which I downloaded to my mp3 player from the library. The audio version is read by two narrators, to reflect the shifting points of view between Ruma and her father.

Ruma has been struggling to settle in to a new city (Seattle) with her young family while grieving the unexpected death of her mother. Her Indian roots contribute to a confused sense of duty--is she remiss by not asking her widowed father to move in with her, now that her mother has died? Her relationship with him has never been close, and as he arrives for a week-long visit she finds herself resenting him for not being the parent her mother would be. Meanwhile her father is, in his own way, trying to connect with Ruma and her son, his grandson.

I loved this story. There's so much wrapped up in this week-long visit. I related to both of the main characters more readily than those in Interpreters of Maladies. The theme of family, and striking the balance between family-of-origin and newly-created-family, is a favorite of mine. Several times I found Lahiri's way of putting things was so succinctly true to me, that it made me say "Huh!" out loud--which somehow feels sillier when listening with headphones than when reading a book, why is that? It's not like anyone heard me.

Notable Quotes: "You're always welcome here, Baba," she'd told her father on the phone. "You know you don't have to ask." Her mother would not have asked. "We're coming to see you in July," she would have informed Ruma, the plane tickets already in hand. There had been a time in her life when such presumptuousness would have angered Ruma. She missed it now.

Sunday Salon: This is me in a flurry of activity

I'm intent on getting my house in order this weekend. So far I have:

1. Made a list of things to do
2. Made ham & egg English muffins for breakfast
3. Praised Evan for his stellar job of vacuuming the rug
4. Finished reading Do-Over by Robin Hemley
5. Prevented the cat from peeing in an open drawer

Only one of these things was on my list of things to do (can you guess which?).

I enjoyed Do-Over. It's one of those gimmicky memoirs whose subtitles are reminiscent of those old National Inquirer headlines: Family spends a winter living in a tunnel! Mother deals with grief by rescuing child slaves from Ghana! Girl eats only tofu for a year! Man travels the world to find out where his clothes were made!

I'm a sucker for these. I don't know why.

The gimmick of Do-Over is that Mr. Hemley decides to go back and relive the experiences that hold regret for him. So, at 48, he spends a week as a kindergartener, a week as a camper at summer camp, a week attending the boarding school he dropped out of before Prom, and so on. I'll be reviewing it next week, for now I'll just say, gimmicks aside, this was a good read.

Next on my reading list is Ron Carlson's The Signal. So excited about this one! Ron Carlson is one of my favorite authors of both short stories and longer fiction. When I learned he had a new novel coming out, I was just about as close to squeeeee! as I get. But before I can get started on that, I must get to my to-do list. Item #1: Draw giveaway winners.

This week's drawing for the Parenting & Nutrition Book giveaway:

Dr. Sears' NDD Book: Pam
The G-Free Diet: Teddy Rose and Marion (I have an extra one this week because Jen, who won last week, also won the book in another contest)
If Your Kid Eats This Book: Gaby317 and last week's winner, SpiralMama (still waiting to hear from you, SpiralMama!)

Winners, please email me at Worducopia/at/gmail/dot/com with your mailing address so I can pass it on to the publicist at Hachette Book Group and get your book to you. If you haven't won yet, you'll have another chance each Sunday until mid-June, and I'm taking new entries through then.

Sag Harbor (book review)

In Sag Harbor, author Colson Whitehead revisits 1985 in the beach community where his family summered from New York City every year. The adult narrator, Benji, looks back on his teen years with about fifty percent nostalgia and fifty percent, "What were we thinking?!"

I loved the narrative voice, which frequently made me laugh. Loved the way the book was structured, starting out as surface-level as a sit-com and then deepening, almost as if the narrator waited to get to know the reader a bit before revealing his family's pock marks.

"Black barbers the world over, they use electric clippers. These are modern times. In many sectors, technological advances are welcomed and embraced. My father, however, loved his special pair of old-school barber scissors, and we loved them too, because the sound of the long, thin blades snipping against each other was the sound of his undivided attention."

Occasionally, the prose veers off onto a tangent so long that it threatens never to return. I've been known to stop reading highly esteemed writers (cough John Irving cough, cough) for this reason alone, but Whitehead pulls it off. Maybe it works because the narrator is an older version of the main character and so the diversions read with the synaptic clarity of memory. (You know, that phenomenon where one memory leads to another seemingly randomly, and only the owner of the brain can see the connection between the two events?). Or maybe it's the pacing of the novel--the long-winded musings aren't a distraction from the plot. Instead, the plot is a vehicle for the musings.

This is Whitehead's fourth book, which is good news for me--no need to wait for his next book to come out, there's a queue of them ready and waiting to find their way to my bookshelves.

The soundtrack: "At any given moment, someone was playing 'Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now.' Labor Day, we cornered the worldwide market on people playing 'Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now.' It was the black national anthem. The disco version of 'We Shall Overcome,' courtesy of Mr. McFadden and Mr. Whitehead."

Title: Sag Harbor
Author: Colson Whitehead
Publication info: April 28, 2009 (Doubleday) 288 pages

From Frances to Mole

I revisited an old friend for breakfast today. I can still remember pulling Russell Hoban's Frances books off the shelves of the library as a little girl in Wisconsin, and so I decided to use her to answer the C.O.R.A. Diversity Roll Call question. For nostalgia's sake, here's the first Frances book I remember, Bread and Jam for Frances:



I loved Frances because she was subtly snotty and got away with making comments that I never would have dared. I loved her parents because they clearly adored her and they gave the appearance of putting up with her guff, but in the end they got the best of her because she was just a little girl and they knew better. I must have identified with that. It never occurred to me to wonder what race she was. She was badger.

Which leads me to think of another Badger, and another favorite: The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame. I first read this one as an adult, it made a great read-aloud and was one of Ben's very favorite books ever. He used to pretend to be Ratty and assign me the part of Mole and his dad the part of Badger. I think Evan was Otter's son. None of us wanted to be Toad.

Again, like in many children's books, the characters are talking animals. It never occurred to me that this literary device took race out of the picture, but I think it does. On the other hand, all the major characters of The Wind in the Willows are not only different species from each other, they also come from vastly different backgrounds. There is prejudice (those nasty weasels and stoats!) but also the illumination of experiencing another culture (as Mole discovers life with the animals of the river) and the disillusionment of returning home to one's beloved mole hole, changed forever by time away.

That's what I want for my own children--first, to use books to achieve a greater understanding of the world outside their own dear mole hole. And then, one day I want them to emerge squinting into the bright light as Mole does, come face to face with some of the many different people who make the world more than one neighborhood, and make friends (weasels, stoats, and all) to last a lifetime.

Parenting/Nutrition winners, Week 1

Time to announce the winners of the first round in my parenting/nutrition books giveaway!

Dr. Sears' NDD Book goes to Andrea.
The G-Free Diet goes to that classy devourer of books, Jen.
If Your Kid Eats This Book... goes to Spiral Mama.

Congratulations to the winners! Please email your U.S./Canadian street address to me at worducopia/at/gmail/dot/com.

I'll be drawing new winners for the next four Sundays and taking new entries (and comments and blog posts and so on for extra entries) until the final drawing. This week's winners are still eligible to win the other books as well.

Jantsen's Gift (book review)

I knew right away that there was some fufu in our family's future. After all, how else could I interpret the uncanny coincidence: almost immediately after I reminisced about my introduction to Ghanaian cuisine, I picked up a memoir that takes place partly in Ghana! But I'll get to the fufu later. First, the book.

Jantsen's Gift had me hooked almost from page one. Pam Cope's memories of the grief that followed the death of her son, and her slow climb back to life, combined seamlessly with journalist Aimee Molloy's beautiful prose.

The pair capture the pain of losing a child almost too well--the first section is a hard read, emotionally. This makes the relief almost palpable when Cope first travels to Viet Nam and begins to embrace life again. The pace really picks up when she's inspired to get involved in helping orphaned Vietnamese children, and then later to help rescue children in Ghana who have been sold as fishermen's slaves by their impoverished families. When I reached the photos in the middle of the book, I was wondering where I could sign up to adopt my own. (Don't worry, it passed.)

The only trouble, for me, comes near the end of the book, when Cope describes choosing which picture to show at a presentation: she bypasses the shining faces of the kids they had rescued from slavery in Ghana, and the orphans in Cambodia or Vietnam. Instead, she chooses the picture of the boy with empty eyes who hasn't been rescued. Then she launches into how much work is yet to be done, and how even little girls have raised enough money to rescue Ghanaian slave children, and there's this undercurrent of "how can you just sit there and do nothing when I sold my 5000 square foot house to help these kids?" that makes me squirm just a little. Is that why she wrote the book, to convince people to head over to Touch a Life and donate enough money to quiet the discomfort in their hearts?

Yeah, probably not. I'm just so cynical sometimes. It's a good book, I'm glad I read it. I should just leave it at that. Let's talk about fufu.

Ben came home from his Sunday School class saying "I'm supposed to try a new food this week," so I told him and Evan the story of Andy's Ghanaian meal. They immediately wanted to try fufu. I looked up some recipes for Ghanaian food online, rejecting the ones that called for beef tripe and cow's feet or pounding cassava by hand. I ended up combining a recipe for Chicken Peanut Stew from the U. Penn African Studies dept. with one from Family Fun magazine and a few additions of my own. It turned out to be really easy to make.

Ali's Quasi-Ghanaian Meal

The Chicken Peanut Stew

1 chicken, cut up (I skinned it, too)
1 onion, chopped
1 1-inch piece of ginger
2 cups water
1 Tbs. oil
2 Tbs. tomato paste
1 28-oz. can diced tomatoes
2/3 cup peanut butter (I used fresh ground)
1 yellow pepper cut in bite-sized pieces (you could use any veggie--one recipe called for okra and eggplant)

Throw chicken in a big pot with the water, ginger, and half the onion, bring to a boil and simmer till the other stuff is ready, stirring occasionally to keep from sticking and adding more water if necessary. In 1 Tbs. oil in a deep frying pan, fry the rest of the onion and the tomato paste until the onion's cooked (about 5 minutes), then add the diced tomatoes and peanut butter. Stir to combine, then add to the stuff in the big pot along with the veggies and cook until the chicken is tender and you're done dealing with the fufu. This would also be good with rice or potatoes.

The Fufu

U. Penn said to use instant mashed potatoes and Bisquick, so that's what we did. We followed their instructions exactly and came out with a giant plop of stuff that looked sort of like really thick mashed potatoes.
Here it is on a plate, posing with the chicken. It looked better in person but I'm not a very good photographer. Ben contemplates the meal before going to wash his hands thoroughly. Those are bottles of root beer on the table, by the way.

And at last, the guys dig in, while Mom takes one last photo. They're evaluation? Evan: It burns me! (Tip: let food cool a bit before digging in with your hands). Ben: It tastes like potatoes, but not. I like it. Chris: Not quite as good as Andy's fufu. Me: Eating with your hands makes clean-up a breeze!

The soundtrack: When I sent Andy the link to my other post, he suggested listening to Amadou Et Mariam from Mali. So, here they are!

A Beverly Cleary tour of Portland

This week's Weekly Geeks topic is to take a literary tour of your hometown, which is a great reminder to me that I need to call for submissions to the Bookworms Carnival I'm hosting this summer. This collection of posts will have the theme of Local Authors. Got a post featuring an author who's local to you? I'd love to include submissions from authors writing about their hometowns, as well. Submit a link to your post (or email your article to me if you don't have a blog), to Worducopia@gmail.com. The deadline is June 26, 2009.

And now, allow me to show you around my adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon, from the perspective of author Beverly Cleary. I grew up in Wisconsin, reading Cleary's books about Ramona the Pest and The Mouse and the Motorcycle. It wasn't until I moved to Portland as an adult that I realized that Klickitat street, where the fictional pesty Ramona lived, was a real street.
Not only that, but the characters in many of Cleary's books were inspired by the people she remembered from her childhood in Portland or from her grown-up days as a librarian here.

At Beverly Cleary's website there's a clickable version of this map that links to information about the featured places and how they relate to real Portland:Gotta mention here that we have very few cowboys hanging around and our police officers only rarely wander through the city brandishing their batons.

So, hop on your virtual bike--we're big on biking here in Portland--and come along with my boys and me for a Beverly Cleary bike ride. We're not going to Powell's City of Books, that's all the way across downtown from here, 7 miles away. You want to go on a fourteen mile bike ride? You'll have to wait for my husband to take you, I stick to this side of town. I'll take you on a Powell's tour another time. By car. Or maybe bus.

Here we are at Grant Park, which looks nothing like the cute picture on the map--it's huge and contains an outdoor swimming pool, tennis courts, a track, and a high school as well as the playground and popular soccer/kickball field. In summertime the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden is a fountain for kids to splash around in, but the water's off now, which makes it easier to take pictures. Here's Evan checking out Henry Huggins:
And me palling around with Ramona. This is what my hair looks like when I've been wearing a bike helmet. The helmet-head look is all the rage in Portland, I promise you.
I have pictures of Evan and Ben riding Ribsy from when they were tiny tots, but here's today's version. They're not as unhappy as they look, I think the sun was in their eyes.:
My favorite picture of the day, I think it's kinda artsy. I call it Whose Shoes?:

OK, now we'll leave the park, and head over to the--

Evan: I just need to ride on the tire swing.

OK, first we'll ride on the tire swing, and monkey around on the bars, and swing a little, and take pictures of a dog, and then we'll head over to the library, where there's a display dedicated to Beverly Cleary's books and neighborhood. This building was built in 2002, and even the library before it wasn't the one Beverly wrote about. The map on the wall shows Cleary-related spots. (That whitish box in the foreground is our fancy-pants self-checkout machine. Bet Ramona would have thought that was out of this world!).
Now, it's time to head home--no you can't have a popsicle from the cafe first, you could have a hundred popsicles now and still want one once we get to the top of the hill we have to climb in order to get home. But would you like a souvenir? You can buy this t-shirt at the library, or at the Friends of the Library bookstore downtown (not far from Powell's). There, now you can say you've been there, done that, and got the t-shirt.

Thanks for joining us on our bike ride! Want to see it again in person, or is Portland your stomping grounds? Do you know about the Book Blogger Retreat being planned here for this summer?

Diversity Roll Call: Children's Book Week

It's a good news/bad news kind of day for the C.O.R.A. Diversity Roll Call:

The good news: Some participants were concerned that a week doesn't leave them enough time to think through the questions and get a solid post up before the topic changes. So, from now on, you'll have two weeks between Roll Calls, which will be posted the first and third Fridays of every month.

The bad news: That means two fewer opportunities to be entered for the Mega Book Giveaway.

The good news: The Mega Book Giveaway!!! Click on the link for more details, but the basics are, for every Roll Call you participate in, you receive one entry in the drawing for books by Asian and Latino authors. (You can also receive additional entries for posting reviews of books by authors of color!)

The bad news: I'm supposed to be helping my husband with yard work instead of writing this post.

The good news: You can still answer any of the previous questions, if you haven't already, for another entry in the drawing. Links to each question are available here: Mega Book Giveaway!!!.

And finally, the question:Did you know this is Children's Book Week? It is! And it probably won't still be Children's Book Week when you answer this question, but that's okay. We're going to talk about kids' books anyway. Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

Choose one or more kids' books or stories. Could be an old favorite you remember from your childhood, or a new one that just came out. Could be a comic book (missed you last week, Rich!) or fairy tale or a ghost story. Whatever strikes you.

Did/does the world of the story match with your world? How do you think it contributes to a child's world view? (For example, I grew up in a very white, middle class American neighborhood--books could either broaden my view of the world or give me an illusion of sameness in the world). Do the characters' looks, values, social status, reflect the diversity of our world? Would it change the meaning of the story if the characters were different?

Don't like that question?: Tell us about a children's book or two that we should know about, with diverse characters, or written by an author of color, or a gay/lesbian author, or an author with a disability, or an author who is diverse in any other way.

Edit 5/31: This Roll Call is still active until June 1 but Mr. Linky is down--please post a link to your post in the comments. Thanks!

YA You Don't Know

This week's Diversity Roll call can be found at Color Online. Susan has come up with a bunch of options looking at young adult lit:

Provide a list of YA writers of color that you think deserve more exposure -or- Showcase cover art that does not reveal the race/ethnicity of the characters -or- Spotlight sub-genre YA fiction with teens of color i.e. graphic novels, romance, mystery, fantasy and science fiction -or- Briefly discuss YA novels with teens of color but race is not a dominant factor in the story -or- If you don't read YA fiction, do a little research and report back on a YA novel/comic you intend to read in the future.

I'm going to talk about two covers, I'm not sure whether they make the racial/ethnic background clear or not. I think it's up for debate.

First, Flygirl. I reviewed Flygirl a couple of weeks ago, it's one of my favorite YA novels of the past year. The cover reflects the plot beautifully, in that the model's racial identity is ambiguous. Without prior knowledge of the storyline, would you see an African American girl on the cover, or just a girl who's a pilot?

Even knowing the storyline--in which the melding of these three aspects of Ida Mae Jones's identity are key to the plot--I saw a pilot first, a girl second, and a person who might be black, third. What if the model's skin were a darker tone? I'm guessing that I'd see dark skin first, pilot second, and girl third. The big question is, why? That's a question I can't answer for myself today, but I'm working on it.

The next cover is my current read: Mitali Perkin's The Secret Keeper. I picked up this book knowing it was written by an author of East Indian descent who focuses on cultural issues, so I was predisposed to think of the main character as Indian. The graphics on the top and bottom of the cover reinforced that expectation, but I think the photograph is ambiguous. I think I'd just see a girl, beautiful and shy. Which, interestingly, doesn't really reflect the main character of the book, who is supposed to be not traditionally beautiful, tomboyish, and feisty. This picture looks more like how I picture her sister--the more traditional, beautiful, and obedient of the two girls, who also happens to have lighter skin (and skin tone is definitely an issue in this family's culture). What about you, if you didn't have expectations, would you see an Indian girl, or just a girl?

Oh, I almost forgot: by addressing one of these questions on your blog and adding your link at the original post on Color Online, you'll be automatically entered to win one of these sets of five multicultural books! Don't have a blog? Email me your response and we'll figure out a way to include you.

Nutrition & Parenting Books Giveaway update

Not sure what I was thinking, but I buried this at the bottom of another post and it bugs me every time I look at it, so I'm reposting it as it's own post. Clearly I'm more of a reader than a marketer. (If you entered at the initial post, have no fear, I've got you down.) Don't want any of these books? Leave a comment letting me know why, so I won't feel so lonely.

I have five copies of three books to give away!

#1, The N.D.D. Book: How Nutrition Deficit Disorder Affects Your Child's Learning, Behavior, and Health, and What You Can Do about It by Dr. William Sears.
Dr. Sears is the author of The Baby Book, my perennial baby shower gift, as well as a slew of great pregnancy, birth, and parenting books. I haven't seen this one yet, and I'm not crazy about the overuse of the word "disorder" to describe kids' behavior, but if this is anywhere near as good as the rest of his work, it's worth buying. But you don't have to buy it, because you can win it here! Link to this giveaway on any parenting blog or website for two additional entries--leave me a comment linking to your post (only once per person, though--I don't want anyone spamming for this!)

#2, The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide. More and more people I know are considering or embarking on a gluten-free or low-gluten diet. If you're one of them, this may be the perfect book for you! Two extra entries (once per person, no spamming) for a link to this giveaway on any nutritional or gluten-free focused website or blog.


#3, If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay. Lara Zibners, an emergency room physician, wrote this advice book to help parents know when a trip to the E.R. is in order and when it isn't. What parent couldn't use that? I'll give two extra entries (once per person, no spamming) for a link to this contest on any medical or parenting website or blog.

I'll be drawing a winner for each book every Sunday for the next five weeks. To enter, leave a comment stating which book/s you'd like to win, and a way to contact you (email, blog address, or you can check back on Sunday for winners, I'm not fussy). I'll add extra entries for thoughtful comments on other posts, or for entrants who say they were referred here by you. Stumble, Tweet or blog about this giveaway for another extra entry.

I think I just made this way more complicated than it needs to be. Clarification: enter here, spread the word, stick around, win a book, yay!

Also, check out my Diversity Rocks blog for details about your chance to win 5 free books by Asian or Latino authors! If you've posted a May book review for the Diversity Rocks reading challenge, or if you've ever participated in the CORA Diversity Roll call meme (this week's topic is YA books by authors of color, hosted at Color Online) you've already been entered once, but check out the post to learn how you can enter multiple times.

Contests!

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! My kids gave me their usual, precious Mother's Day gift: they got up early to come to my 8:25 choir rehearsal, and sat through that and the first service like young gentlemen before going to their Sunday School classes.

I did the drawing for my Beauty Books contest last week, but did I tell anyone? I did not. Given the fact that my family seems to think I blog twelve hours a day, you'd think I would have more posts to show for it, wouldn't you? So, I have winners to announce, and a new contest to tell you about.

First, the winners--please email me (Worducopia at gmail dot com) with a U.S. or Canadian street address to have Hachette Book Group send the book to. (I'll make every effort to contact winners I don't hear from but if I'm unable to get an address by the end of the week I'll have to draw a new winner)

Winners of Bobbi Brown's Living Beauty are:

1)Lenore
2)Angie J.
3)Tracie

Winners of How Not to Look Old are:

1) Glenda
2) BermudaOnion
3) Tara

Water Ghosts--Shawna Yang Ryan (Book Review)

I don't like ghost stories. So, what was I doing reading a book called Water Ghosts? I blame Shawna Yang Ryan and Twitter.

First of all, @Penguinpress offered out a few review copies on Twitter. When I checked into the title, I found that Ryan, a Taiwanese American, had set the story in 1928 in Locke, California, the only U.S. city built entirely by and for Chinese immigrants. And me with my Diversity challenge! Plus, I'm a sucker for small towns and their histories: the nearly-forgotten stories, the houses that are named for people long gone (just, not so much the haunted ones).

Actually, the ghost part wasn't too "whooooooooooo" for me. Water ghosts are a part of Chinese folklore, so that aspect tied together really well with the way so many of the characters cut themselves off from their homes and families in order to seek out a new life.

And now (she says with a flourish of her magic handkerchief), I shall take Water Ghosts through the five questions from Mitali Perkin's article, as assigned by me on Diversity Roll Call (be sure to check out the other posts on this topic, they're fascinating!).

1. Are the nonwhite characters too good to be true?
The white characters and the Chinese characters are equally flawed. You've got your brothel run by a Chinese psychic woman with white prostititutes. You've got your your imperfect (Chinese) preacher with his imperfect (white) wife and their imperfect (both) daughter. And your Chinese creepy-women who smell bad and leave weird white dust behind them wherever they go.

2. How and why does the author define race?
Interesting question. It's a Chinese-built town, and the ties to China are crucial to the plot. But what about the caucasian characters? Would it be the same novel if everyone was Chinese? I think it would work either way. The inter-relations between the two groups make for a more complex story, though, and the presence of Chloe, a white prostitute, makes the theme of disconnection from one's roots more global, rather than just a statement about the roots of Chinese American cultures. Chloe's family is close enough for her to run into her brother in a movie theater, and yet they are strangers.

3. Is the cover art true to the story?
Yes, it's spooky and ethereal, and has some chinese characters or something? (My version doesn't have the red ink). There aren't any people in it.

4. Who solves the problems in the story?
I don't think I can answer this without giving away too much of the story, but it's definitely not a case of white people swooping in and solving the Chinese immigrants' problems. The people who do swoop do more shaking things up than solving problems.

5. How is beauty defined?
I'm sure there are places where the characters are described, but at the moment I can't find them! And yet, I could picture each of them perfectly. Here's a description of Richard, through former-lover Poppy's eyes--never does she refer to his looks, and yet (in the context of knowing he's a 38-year-old Chinese man in 1928), can't you just see him?: "Scents spin off his body, so strong they are almost visible to her--the slick, wax smell of Bryllcream in his hair; the sweat coming through his suit; body scent, unrelieved by soap and cologne, that lingers behind his ears and in the lines of his throat." Have I mentioned the writing is beautiful? It is.

The Soundtrack: The Chinese Blues was written in 1915, but to me this ragtime song sounds like exactly what you'd hear coming out of Richard's gambling hall, The Lucky Fortune. [Edit. 6/3/09: For more songs related to Water Ghosts, see the playlist Shawna Ryan created for music blog Largehearted Boy.]

First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria--Eve Brown-Waite (book review)

I'll never forget the day my friend Andy came over soon after he'd returned from two years spent in Ghana with the Peace Corps. He sheepishly told us that after grappling with an insatiable hunger all morning, he'd grabbed his mother's box of tapioca and cooked up a big pot of it for breakfast--the closest thing to the starchy fufu (made from cassava root, like tapioca is) he'd been eating three times daily for two years.

I think I said something like, "Foofoo? They actually call it that with a straight face? Foofoo?"

"Yeah, I'll make you some. Takes some getting used to, but it's good with stew."

He did make us fufu one night for dinner, along with a peanut stew. We scooped it out of a communal bowl with our hands (okay, I eventually bailed on the communal bowl and dished myself a plateful) and he told us stories about the Ghanaians and Peace Corps volunteers who had been his neighbors and friends. Afterwards he thanked us heartily for letting him share a little bit of Ghana, but it's been nearly twenty years since that night and I've never forgotten it. Thank you, Andy.

Reading First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria is a similar gift--like having a friend return from abroad and give you the real scoop on the wider world. Brown-Waite manages the tricky business of communicating homesickness and culture shock while respecting different approaches to life, without coming across as a whiner. The contrast between her reactions to things and her "Peace Corps poster boy" husband's reactions adds humor and perspective.

The Soundtrack: This was a tough one. I couldn't find anything on Playlist. Found a video of Philly Lutaaya, a Ugandan singer who did a lot towards publicizing the AIDS situation in Africa. Almost perfect (Brown-Waite worked on AIDS education while in Uganda), but long, and I'm not crazy about the quality of the video. So I went with the upbeat song instead. This is Ragga Dee, with Ndigida.

Secret Son

In Secret Son, Laila Lalami takes readers on a trip to Morocco, complete with sights, sounds, and smells. Nineteen-year old Youssef El Mekki enrolls in college in an attempt to rise above life in the slum he was raised in, when he learns that there may be another way out. His father, who he'd been told was dead, is actually a very successful businessman, who just might be interested in building a relationship with his illegitimate son he's never known.

Apart from the Moroccan setting--which I loved--this book didn't stand out for me one way or the other. I think someone with a head for politics would have a better appreciation for the underlying tension between different factions, which I have to admit went in one eye and out the other some of the time. And, apparently I was never fully on board with Youssef, because at times his actions and reactions had me stymied, especially near the end.

In the spirit of some of my favorite posts from Presenting Lenore, I'd like to share 8 memories of my own trip to Morocco, in college.

1. Arriving with big plans to lounge around on the beach all week, only to be told by our tour leader that all of the beaches within walking distance of our hotel were both unsafe for women and grossly polluted.

2. Finding a local bakery and deli that sold delicious round loaves of bread and several kinds of Moroccan cheese. We'd never heard of Moroccan cheese before! Lunch for the week: done.

3. Meeting Abdul, who offered to take us around to meet his "friends," all of whom just happened to sell overpriced rugs and leather to make their living.

"The government really needs to help our sector," Nabil was saying. "One problem, for example, is false guides. It's impossible for a foreign tourist to have a good time if he's going to be hounded by guides at every corner."

Impossible? Nah. Difficult, maybe.

4. Wandering among heaping piles of spices and olives at the market. The aromas!

5. Taking a bus from one town to the next, and watching them load the goats and chickens onto the top of the bus. Even more fun: watching them unload. Mehhhhh! Bawk! Bawk!

6. Making friends with a fellow tourist, a Welsh ex-con (or so he said) who was interesting to talk to, though upon further aquaintance turned out to be somewhat insane.

7. Splurging on a horseback riding and lunch tour package with a friend on the last day. Riding horses on the sands of the (safe and unpolluted) beach, then making our way back to the guide's home, where his wife made us a glorious tajine--the best (and only authentic Morrocan) food we'd had all week, unless you count the bread and cheese.

8. Coming back to the hotel from the horseback ride, telling the Welsh ex-con that our fannies were sore from riding, watching his jaw drop. Lesson learned: "fanny" refers to a completely different part of the anatomy in England than it does in the U.S.

The Soundtrack: "He played H-Kayne on the stereo every morning, as if the music could somehow conjure up his mother, his friends, his old neighborhood." H-Kayne is defined as "Hip hop made in Morocco." It has a very different sound from American hip hop, though, so even if you think you don't like hip hop you should give it a listen, in my sidebar.

Roll Call: Challenging Stereotypes

Have you seen Mitali Perkins' (author of The Secret Keeper, Monsoon Summer, and other books for young people) article in School Library Journal, called Straight Talk on Race: Challenging the Stereotypes in Kids' Books? The idea is to help teachers and librarians to guide kids in noticing how race is depicted in the books they read, but I think the issues are relevant for all of us, and all types of literature. As a fledgling writer, I have to admit it made my head spin a little bit. So, I've decided to borrow her idea for this week's roll call.

Mitali suggests picking up a novel you like and exploring one or more of these five questions. She's done this with a few books in her article, including John Green's Paper Towns and Ursula Le Guin's Powers, so you can get a feel for it before you start. Click on the question to see Perkins' examples.

1. Are the nonwhite characters too good to be true? (or do they have depth that goes beyond their race, faults and all?)
2. How and why does the author define race? (Does it need to be defined? Is their race crucial to the plot?)
3. Is the cover art true to the story? (Perkins cites as an example the cover of Cynthia Kadohata’s novel Weedflower, in which the Japanese American main character is wearing a kimono, even though she's never described as wearing one in the text).
4. Who solves the problems in the story? (Would "Dances With Wolves" have been as popular with theater-goers without the white hero?)
5. How is beauty defined?

I'm not looking for anyone to define "good" vs. "bad" depictions of race, here. Asking the questions simply offers an opportunity to think about a book on a different level. Some of my favorite books are ultra-light on the diversity scale--that doesn't make them bad books or the authors insensitive clods. But if I read the book without noticing that all the characters are white middle class heterosexuals who eat bacon and eggs for breakfast and play basketball in their spare time, I'm missing something huge.

By the way, this roll call is open to anyone, of any shade, whether or not you've participated before or ever expect to again. Post your answer in comments or feel free to use Mr. Linky to link to a post on your blog.

*This is not to say that either bacon or eggs is, or desires to be, a white middle class heterosexual breakfast food. In fact, bacon and eggs can both be eaten by any demographic, at any time of day. With the possible exception of pigs, chickens, and vegans, who are sorely underrepresented in today's literature but manage to hold their own pretty well anyway.