Can we read? No. 46

Your last regular weekly issue! unless you choose otherwise

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As I’ve mentioned incessantly for the last two weeks, I’m adding a paid subscription option to this newsletter. This means this is the last regular weekly issue (the numbered ones that you receive on Wednesdays) you’ll receive as a free subscriber — after August 1, you’ll get 4-5 reviews from me only once a month unless you choose a paid subscription.

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If you’re not ready right now, no worries — you can subscribe anytime going forward. (And if paid subscriptions aren’t your thing but you’d still like to support my work, it’d be great if you’d pass this on to someone who might be interested. Word of mouth will forever be the love language of the internet.)

Let’s do this.

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Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith, illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu (2000)

It’s hard for me to understand why this book hasn’t gotten more attention over the last 21 years (maybe it’s because I have only had children of my own for seven of those years, so I don’t know what I’m talking about — always possible!), but I am glad it shows up on so many booklists now, because it’s highly deserving.

This is the story of Jenna, a young girl who hopes to dance at the next pow-wow, making the same tink, tink, tink, tink sound as her Grandma Wolfe does in her dress, but first she needs to find jingles. Jenna decides to ask various women in her community for help: Grandma Wolfe, Great Aunt Sis, her neighbor Mrs. Scott, her cousin Elizabeth. Each woman says yes, each contributes one row of jingles from their own jingle dress, each has some reason they can’t attend to pow wow but each asks Jenna if she will dance for them (Jenna of course says yes).

Every night for a week following, Jenna and Grandma Wolfe sew on the borrowed jingles, and Jenna practices “her bounce-steps,” until finally the pow wow arrives. Jenna dances for each woman who supported her: for Great Aunt Sis whose legs ache, for Mrs. Scott who is busy selling fry bread, for cousin Elizabeth who is working on a big case for her law firm, and of course for her grandmother, whose love “warmed like the sun.” (Hu’s dreamy, saturated watercolors show not only the relationships and work that have gone into this moment but also the pride and emotion Jenna feels in the dance.)

An author’s note at the back states that Jenna is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and is also of Ojibway [sic] descent — Leitich Smith, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation herself, has infused this beautiful, loving story about kinship and community with details about these cultures that will engage every level of reader. (My own children had so many questions about jingle dancing when we first started reading this book repeatedly last year that we fell down a YouTube jingle dance rabbit hole more than once, much to our delight).

Thankfully the number of books that depict life in an intertribal community and family are increasing — which is absolutely as it should be — but this was one of the first, and it is incomparable. Don’t miss it.

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Mailing May by Michael O. Tunnell, illustrated by Ted Rand (1997)

Mailing May is one of those books that makes me smile just thinking about it.

In this sweet story set in early 20th-century Idaho, little May wants desperately to visit her grandmother 75 miles away, but a train ticket would cost her parents an entire day’s worth of pay. Seeing their daughter’s disappointment, May’s parents get clever — one morning they wake May up extra early and she and her Pa head to the post office, where they take advantage of some new USPS rules about mailing packages up to 50 pounds. “What you got in mind?” the postmaster asks and Pa explains that he intends to mail May.

Leonard, a family relation, will take good care of May on her trip on the mail train, and once they figure out the details — they decide to classify her a a baby chick; at 48 pounds she just qualifies, and it costs 53 cents to mail her — the problem is solved. May sets off.

The rest of her humorous (and, it’s worth mentioning, safe) journey, rendered in an especially warm and evocative way by Rand’s characteristic watercolors — including her joyous arrival into her grandmother’s arms — is truly fascinating. But the part that boggles the mind is that this is a true story, something neither I or my children can quite get over — thanks to the extensive author’s note in the back, which provides the nonfiction details the fictional text does not, we talk about it every time we read it and their eyes never fail to widen. What more could one ask for in a book?

This is a fabulous adventure tale, through and through.

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Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood (1987)

This is the truth: I avoided Heckedy Peg for several years because it seemed kind of freaky to me. But I’m glad I got past judging this book by its cover and actually opened it up and read it, because this inventive story that feels very much like a fairy tale (it amazes me that it is a modern creation) is captivating to young readers.

Once there was a poor mother who lived with her seven children, each named for a day of the week. One day, as a reward for their helpfulness, the mother asks each child what they would like from the market, and each has a special request: “Monday asked for a tub of butter, Tuesday asked for a pocket knife, Wednesday asked for a china pitcher” and so on. Of course, the mother leaves the children with those age-old warnings never to open the door to a stranger, and never to touch fire.

A witch arrives — Heckedy Peg. The children reject her, so she asks for a burning straw for her pipe, which they also refuse, but she brings out a bag of gold that they simply cannot resist, and [ominous music], they open the door. Once inside the house she turns all the children into food and hies back to her hut to eat them.

When the children’s mother returns home it doesn’t take her long to figure out what happened, and she immediately goes to confront the witch, tricking the witch in turn until she is standing in front of a table full of food — a table full of her children, as it were, whom the witch will gobble up if the mother cannot guess which child is which.

In a twist that still blows my mind — I can’t imagine how Audrey Wood ever came up with it — the mother uses the knowledge of each child’s requested gift to identify her trapped children* (Monday asked for butter so she must be the bread, Tuesday asked for a pocket knife so he must be pie, etc), and like traditional tales the world over, good wins out over evil and justice is served. (You should know right now that I never, ever resist a pun.)

This story would have been fascinating enough as an picture-less read-aloud but Don Wood’s detailed oil paintings heighten the suspense and the creepiness (some images might be downright scary for more sensitive children so this is one to preview) and add much here. If you have readers who are grabbed by any kind of darkness — or just a tale well told, and who isn’t grabbed by that? — check this one out immediately.

*I used to dream of being trapped inside a giant chocolate chip cookie and having to eat my way out. True story.

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A Boy Called Bat by Elana K. Arnold (2017)

This is how my children and I came to read — or, more accurately, tear through — A Boy Called Bat: on a Sunday night a few weeks ago I was browsing the bookcase in my guest room where I keep chapter books intended for read-alouds/when my children are older and can read for themselves, and I plucked this off the shelf because I remembered picking it up at a library sale last month but never really looked at it.

Fast forward 30 minutes and 1/3 of the book later, and I hadn’t put it down — I really couldn’t put it down; I brought it to bed with me to keep reading — and the next morning I think I woke my eldest up by saying, “I FOUND A GREAT NEW BOOK FOR US TO READ, YOU’RE GOING TO LOVE IT, IT’S ABOUT A BOY AND A BABY SKUNK, LET’S START IT TODAY.” She refused (calmly and in lower case), advocating to finish our current read-aloud first, so we compromised by agreeing to that but also looking on Hoopla to see if Bat was available on audio: it was, and we started listening immediately, and in the five minutes it takes us to drive to daycare, she was hooked, her sister was hooked, and I was waiting impatiently to catch up to the part where I’d forced myself to stop the night before.

This is all to say: this is highly enjoyable story about a little boy called Bat, whose life is turned topsy-turvy (in the best way) one day when his veterinarian mother brings home an orphaned skunk kit who needs a home for a short time before he can be sent to a wildlife rehabilitation center. Bat — who has autism — thrills at the chance to be the skunk kit’s caretaker, and the story centers around his sweet determination to be a good one, as well as all the things in Bat’s life that sort of get in the way (his every-other-weekend time with his dad, his mother’s insistence that they cannot keep the skunk kit, his reluctance to trust a potential friend with the baby).

Normally I might find the best part about this book to be the fact that Bat’s autism is a holistic part of the narrative (i.e., this is not “a story about a boy with autism”), which is both unique and refreshing, but no — the best part about this book is the story that just completely sucked me, us, in.

If you’re looking for your next read-aloud (or audio listen) this short and delightful tale is full of messages about acceptance, friendship, family, and love — it’s the most entertaining book we’ve read in awhile, and that’s saying something.

(It turns out this is the first in a trilogy — we’ve already finished the second and started yesterday on the third. We adore them all.)

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📝 Lastly, an important-to-me (and maybe to you) note: I am working on alt text for every image I include in this newsletter, whether it’s the cover of a book or otherwise. If you use a screen reader (or use alt text for another reason) and have feedback about this, I would deeply appreciate hearing from you. Ditto if there is any other way I can make my content more accessible.

Paid subscribers — see you next week! The rest of you, see you next month… unless you want to change that 😊

Have a good one,
Sarah