Hole In My Life

Hole In My Life

by Jack Gantos

c. 2002

This is the story of how the author of Joey Pigza grew up and learned how to write. It’s not the story I imagined when I read Joey Pigza and probably not the story you imagined either.

Jack Gantos grew up as the son of a carpenter. When he was in high school, his parents moved to an island in the Caribbean to work. Jack chose to move back to Florida and room in a hotel to finish high school. After high school, he joined his father just as the race wars took over the island and there was no money or work to be had. So, he took a job building crates which landed him a job on a boat smuggling hashish into the United States….which led to him being arrested on drug smuggling and sales charges and being sent to Federal Prison where he was lucky enough to get a job as an x-ray technician.

Jack had a long, lonely road to sobriety and uprightness but he took it–eventually–and found a college which would take him in their writing program.

This is not for faint-hearted or “virgin-eared” readers. This is the cold, hard truth about growing  up on your own with your parents a thousand miles away. Mostly this is about his time in prison–what he did to get there, what he did and saw while he was there, and how he managed to get out and not go back.

A great work and a good read but it does have some language and some mature situations due to violence.

The Glass Cafe

The Glass Cafe: Or The Stripper and the State; How My Mother Started a War With the System That Made Us Rich and a Little Bit Famous

by Gary Paulsen

c. 2003

Don’t let the title fool you–this is a good book and totally suitable for children. In fact, this would be a great book to introduce children to writing.

Given to me by someone who should know better as a biography, it’s not. It’s a work of fiction by a fiction master. But instead of living in the wild by himself, this boy is living in an apartment with a mother who works as an exotic dancer. Meanwhile, he is challenged by an art instructor to draw–so he does. He asks permission to draw the other ladies his mother works with–but only in the dressing room while they are off work. He shows nothing pornographic but captures the weariness of work and the worry and tension of their inner feelings on their faces.

His art teacher, enraptured by his ability to capture the inside and show it on the outside, sends his drawings to an exhibit–and that’s when someone objected and turned his mother in for child abuse. And when the investigator came, it went from bad to worse and suddenly he was on the front page of the newspaper along with his mother and in a courtroom with restraining orders….

This is about a boy growing up with hidden talents that teachers encourage and to which some people object and the incredible wrongs we have in “the system” that was put in place to “protect” children. And it’s written from the inside as only Gary Paulsen who lived on the edge of “the system” as a child can write.

There is nothing vulgar or objectionable to the book–just a good look inside the wrongs of the system. An added plus is that the boy is the one writing the story and explaining the concepts of writing he is using while he does it.

This is funny, poignant and sensitive to what too many children go through though most don’t come out as well as our main character. A quick read and useful for the classroom. Gary Paulsen has another winner.

Outcast

Warriors–Power of Three: Outcast

by Erin Hunter

c. 2008

Getting more mystical than the previous Warrior’s series’ of tales. This one involves Lionpaw seeing and being trained by the “ghosts” of his grandfather and uncle Tigerstar and Hawkfrost as well as mysterious visits from an ancient ghost cat named Rock to Jaypaw.

This book is almost parts of two books pressed abnormally together. First we have the story of the three apprentices, children of Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight trying to come to terms with their gifts and trying to understand what they should do with them and wondering why the other cats couldn’t see them.

Then, midway through the book, we have visitors from the mountains telling of the Tribe cats in serious trouble. This revives the travelers from The New Prophecy to reunite and go to the mountains taking along the three gifted apprentices and Crowfeather’s son, Breezepaw whom no one, including Crowfeather, likes.

Along the way, they meet up with Purdy, the former kittypet loner who helped the cats along on their first journey. The apprentices arrive at a new appreciation for loners and kittypets but the reason is never clear what his presence is suppose to accomplish in the story.

When they arrive in the mountains, they are told to go home as they are not wanted. Meanwhile, intruders are stealing prey from the Tribe and the Tribe is all but starving, retreating to its cave behind the waterfall. While the Clan cats sleep, Jaypaw joins Stoneteller in a journey to visit with The Tribe of Endless Hunting. They have no answers for the Tribe of Rushing Water and abandon them. When Jaypaw confronts the ancestral tribe, they tell him they don’t have answers and the Tribe must make its own way, move or die.

Over time, Brambleclaw manages to convince the Tribe to try some Clan ways but it is met with opposition as those are Clan ways and not Tribe ways. In the end, they discover that the Intruders have no honor, they fight a battle the Tribe and Clan cats win but even with promises by the Intruders, there is no real hope of a lasting peace.

The book ends abruptly with Jaypaw learning from Rock that the Tribe used to live where the Clans do now and telling his siblings that Star Clan did not send them nor did Tribe of Endless Hunting request them–they are there for themselves. And then as he launches into a story, the book is over.

Not a satifactory ending though it does lead the reader into the next book. We are left with no hope for the Tribe, no return home for the Clan, and no answers for Stoneteller or the Apprentices. Rather than a story well told, this is more like a Soap Opera. And with the Ancestors of the Tribe abandoning the Tribe, it either lends to the notion that there is no one all-knowing or all-powerful or that ancestor worship doesn’t work, or both.

Go back to your first series Erin and try to recapture the way the story was put together. It used to be about cat and Clan interaction. Now it’s about mysticism and dreams. Let’s go back to reality and have cats helping cats rather that walking with shadowy ghosts and in a dreamworld.

Holly, Reindeer, and Colored Lights

Holly, Reindeer, and Colored Lights: The Story of the Christmas Symbols

by Edna Barth

c. 1971

A comprehensive look at Christmas the world over from a secular point of view. And the secular is my only complaint about the work.

Edna Barth has done a lot of research on the origins of the various things we think of as belonging to Christmas from mistletoe to Christmas trees to Christmas cards and foods of all sorts. The adaptation of the pagan rites and rituals into what we know in America as traditional Christmas symbols is both fascinating and frightening.

Everyone who thinks they know why they put up greens and Christmas trees and mistletoe should read this book then reconsider why the think of those things as being part of Christmas. And, yes, they are still in my home.

A great work to be read over and over again.

Come Let Us Adore Him

Come Let Us Adore Him: Stories Behind the Most Cherished Christmas Hymns

by Robert J. Morgan

c. 2005

A great work that should be shared. It can be used as a devotional, a study or an introduction to the Christmas Carols listed inside.

Thirty carols are here along with the stories behind each and its author and sometimes the composer. Each is well researched and interesting as well as short enough to be shared or read in just a few minutes. Coupled with saying by literary figures, Christian leaders, and scripture.

A wonderful addition to Christmas.

Tales From The Teacher’s Lounge

Tales From The Teacher’s Lounge

by New Season publishers

c. 2005

This is a funny collection of sayings that came from the teacher’s lounge–I’m sure it did because I’ve been in the teacher’s lounge and this sort of thing gets said all the time.

It’s a short book that can be read in five minutes or less but, especially for teachers, this is soooo funny, it deserves being passed around–but probably not in the teacher’s lounge because there will be finger-pointing and names named.

A classic work for teachers but may not be understood by those who have never experienced either a teacher’s lounge or public school.

It’s so funny, I had to stop reading so I could breathe.

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens

c. ?

Once upon a time, Christmas was all but extinct. Then Charles Dickens wrote a series of chapters in the newspaper which changed it all. Today, most of us celebrate Christmas.

But the story is deeper than just the keeping of Christmas. The story is of inner inspection. Scrooge is forced to look at who he had been–a hurt little boy–and come to terms with what he had allowed life to do to him. He had allowed his pain to make him into a hard, money-making, uncaring man, not unlike the father he feared so much as a child. And because of it, he was doomed to spend the end of his life alone and unloved as he had spent the beginning of it.

Or was he?

Because of the visit of one come from the dead and three spirits, Scrooge finds the child in himself and the love for his fellow man that he had lost along the way. He began to see his miserliness as sin and repented along the way. He feels regret for the way he had become and becomes, instead, a generous, compassionate, happy man who did not die alone but, instead, loved his nephew and same as adopted his clerk’s family as his own.

In the end, Scrooge finds it nearly impossible to pretend to be what he was before. This shows a complete change from the inside out. And that sort of change can only be brought about by a true relationship with Jesus Christ. In other words, Scrooge found the God that Tiny Tim reflected.

God Bless Us, Everyone.

A Renegade’s Guide To God

A Renegade’s Guide To God: Finding LIfe Outside Conventional Christianity

by David Foster

c. 2006

David Foster is a self-described renegade for God. He doesn’t like legalism–not one bit. He doesn’t think everyone should worship the same way nor does he think everyone should dress, act or “do church” the same way. And he sets out to show other renegades how to get in touch with their way of worship.

My problem with the book is either (a) I’m already there and already go to a church that is renegade friendly or (b) he fails in showing how to go about being a renegade.

I simply didn’t find anything new in this book. I did find several thoughts in the book that legalist friends should embrace, however. The problem is that being legalists, they would toss the book simply from it being offensive to their way of worship.

Church attendance and the relevance of salvation are falling off big time in the United States. In fact, according to Foster, only 15% of Christians now live in the US. The rest of Christianity is abroad. And for a good reason–the Christians who remain in this country are too caught up in making this country a “Christian nation” instead of actually bringing the love of Jeus Christ to a dying world.

Foster notes that when Jesus came to the earth, He wasn’t political. He didn’t overthrow the government. He didn’t try to pass laws to make His way of life the only way of life that was legal.

He went to the people who were living in sin and loved them. That was all. He didn’t challenge their lifestyle or look down His nose at them. He simply loved them as they were and as they realized who He was, He helped them to change.

And that’s what Foster does in this book–he encourages natural born renegades to embrace who they are and who Jesus is and get on with loving people the world over in the name of Jesus Christ.

The Gifts Of The Magi

The Gifts of the Magi: Gold and Frankincense and Myrrh

by Carolyn Vaughn

c. 1998

This well put together gift set comes complete with gold leaf, frankincense and myrrh in a display box. It is beautifully illustrated with adoration of the magi paintings from around the world and published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Carolyn Vaughn has done a wonderful job of research of the origins of frankincense and myrrh and their harvesting. She reports the value of each of the three gifts during Jesus’ day as well as at the time of publication. She looks for the homelands of the magi, the origin of the name, why there are thought to have been three, and, more importantly, the meanings of the three gifts.

In a way only God could have arranged, the magi were probably the descendants of the wise men taught by Daniel during the exile in Babylon and the gifts all, in their own way represent Jesus’ Divinity, Royalty and Humanity. Each was chosen to remind us that He was equally God, King and Sacrifice.

This is a short and concise book and easy to read and understand. Well worth the time to own and re-read this time of year as well as t share with others.

Dark River

Warriors–Power of Three: Dark River

by Erin Hunter

c. 2008

Now that Erin Hunter is fairly well-known and the authorship has moved to more than two using the same pen name and the Warriors series is fairly well established, I’m starting to see more astrology and mysticism in the story line.

This is the second book in the Power of Three series of the Warriors books. In this book, River Clan has moved from their territory to the island which is neutral territory but without explanation other than the move would be temporary. This raises suspicion in Wind Clan that River Clan will take over their territory causing them to start hunting closer and closer to Thunder Clan territory. And the closer they come, the more they view the prey as theirs no matter which side of the border it’s on. This only breeds the beginnings of a border war.

Meanwhile, the three grandkits of Firestar are apprentices and coming to terms with their individual gifts. They are also slowly being recognized by the clan for their gifts though they sometimes feel resentful that the clan only wants the gifts used on their terms.

Jaypaw, the blind kitten is now fairly well established as a medicine cat apprentice. He has the gift of dream sight which the clan only wants him to use or to believe when it suits their purposes. It was fine for him to find his sister when she disappeared for a few days but not for him to find out what was wrong with River Clan.

Hollypaw’s gift is not as well established but she has compassion and the desire to help her clan. Unfortunately, she forgets to get permission and thinks that her desire to help should supercede the clan leader’s orders. In this, she is a typical teenager, though this is not well established in the story line.

Lionpaw is also acting like a typical teenager. He forms a friendship with a female apprentice in Wind Clan (a recurring theme in the books) and they discover an underground set of tunnels between their two clans. There they meet and form their own clan at night until their apprentice skills begin to suffer. Lionpaw is also haunted both by his grandfather Tigerstar and uncle Hawkfrost’s ghosts who try to turn him into a rogue warrior who will take over the clan.

In addition to the ghosts of Tigerstar and Hawkfrost, we have Cinderpaw who unknowingly is the reincarnation of Cinderpelt. When she breaks a back leg in a fall from a high tree, Cinderpelt’s apprentice Leafpool panics and put her every effort into making sure that this time Cinderpaw will be a warrior and not a medicine cat.

We also have a mysterious cat who appears to Jaypaw when the tunnels flood, a smoothe stick with strange markings, and Fallen Leaves who drowned in the tunnels long ago.

Still a good story of loyalty and obedience but ancestor worship and reincarnation are starting to make an appearance as well.