My friends, books

Can we read? No. 143

Hi folks. I hope this post lands in a pocket of space in your life or your heart where it’s needed, or at least welcome. I’m finding myself fully uninterested in my inbox lately — and mostly annoyed by newsletters, my own included — but it’s my forever goal to be useful and helpful, or, barring that, to write something that lands in exactly the right way, in the right spot and the right time.

I’m not going to say that I’m drowning — not because I’m in denial or because acknowledging that makes it somehow more real — but because I refuse to frame a good, full life as something negative, over which I have no control. My good, full life is good and full because I’m surrounded by abundance, much of which I have wished for and chosen and created, and I will not denigrate that by complaining.

This newsletter is a beautiful case in point: some days I am speechless at what I’ve built here. And yet, in the past eight months or so, my ability to sustain my presence here has also been compromised. I am working harder than I have ever worked, giving more to my life than I have ever given, and I find myself fatigued by what I do here, which I’m familiar with — you can’t write a newsletter twice a week for close to five years without some valleys along with your peaks — but the degree to which I feel this has been surprising.

I often ask myself: Is anyone even reading this? Does anyone read newsletters anymore? What’s the point of what I’m doing?

Myself comes back with some nonsense — most of what happens in my head is nonsense — and then there’s a post where the comments roll in for a week or more, and — this is the best part — you talk to each other! and I question it all less. Maybe I can just do whatever I can do and let that be okay.

What a thought: maybe I can just do whatever I can do and let that be okay.

I hope wherever you are, whatever you’re going through or struggling with or feeling, you don’t forget that we can all just do whatever we can do. We don’t have to overthink any of it or expend more energy than it requires. We don’t have to over-deliver. (What?! It’s true!) We can fall back on what’s underneath us — not just the underpinnings of our character, but the good, full lives we already live, the fruit we’ve already borne. Whatever we can do is not nothing — it’s a lot, actually. It’s certainly more than we give ourselves credit for.

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My Friends by Tarō Gomi (1989)

This review first appeared in issue No. 8 — I’ve edited and updated it here

Like almost all of Gomi’s brilliant books, this is one whose simplicity shouldn’t fool you: as the reader travels along with a little girl as she explains what she has learned from each of her animal friends — “I learned to march from my friend the rooster, I learned to nap from my friend the crocodile” — we learn something from her. Namely, that everything has wisdom and value, everything has something to teach us if we only pay attention.

Gomi’s illustrations are, by now, classic and always enjoyable, but what I appreciate most about this title is how it de-centers humans and our experiences (that we absolutely take as the most superior form of knowing) and realigns us with the proper order of things.

The repetition appeals to little ones 2-4 years old but is also great practice for older emerging readers, especially if you or they are burned out on leveled readers (and who isn’t). There’s also a lovely deeper lesson here that’s valuable if readers are willing to take the time to see it.

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Daddy Makes the Best Spaghetti by Anna Grossnickle Hines (1988)

This review first appeared in issue No. 9 — I’ve edited and updated it here

This is a straightforward story — a father picks his child up from daycare, they grocery shop, cook dinner, wait for Mommy to come home from work, eat together, take a bath, and get ready for bed — but there are a couple things that stand out, and they are, in my opinion, especially unique.

First, the child’s name is only mentioned once, on the first page (“Corey”), and throughout the book, Grossnickle Hines’ illustrations leave it a little ambiguous as to the child’s gender. “Corey” could be a boy or a girl, and interestingly, when I asked my children long ago what they thought, they each had a different answer. I have no idea if the author did this on purpose — my hunch is no; it was written 30+ years ago — but I find it to be a great benefit, now, to even inadvertently present a child whose gender is not absolutely defined.

Second, not only does the father in this story do the daycare pickup, grocery shopping, and meal preparation, but the mother comes home in office-work clothes, just in time to sit down to spaghetti. It’s true that as a full-time work-outside-the-home mother, I am 100% biased in favor of this depiction, but only because it is so rarely depicted, even now. (Trust me when I say I have collected books that show this. It’s a small pile.)

Toddlers and preschoolers love this book, and I appreciate it for the ways in which it subverts the dominant paradigm on a variety of levels — that’s something worth sharing with kids.

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Orangutan Tongs: Poems to Tangle Your Tongue by Jon Agee (2009)

This delightful and laugh-out-loud collection of tongue-twisting poems hooked me the moment I saw the watercolor illustration on the inside cover, which made me laugh out loud:

The look of concentration on the face of the frog on the right 😂

This is the rare poetry title that has a real chance at entertaining readers of all ages. With poems like “Overeager Ogre,” “Purple-Paper People,” “This Zither” (a killer!), and of course, “Orangutan Tongs,” you’d have to be basically dead inside not to laugh at these inventive, hilarious, and difficult tongue twisters.

Agee’s images are always whimsical and charming, and they add a whole other layer of humor here, complementing the wit and energy of the words. If you have a kiddo who’s into wordplay — or you’re looking for a new (or another) way to encourage children to engage with language in a creative and joyful way — don’t miss this one.

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Kareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadi (2024)

I received a copy of this book from Penguin Young Readers — all opinions are my own

I will give pretty much any verse novel a chance — I’m a massive admirer of the form, and I believe novels in verse can often be less intimidating, and therefore more accessible, to kids still growing into their skills and identities as readers — but this one still took me by surprise. As in: I can count on one hand the number of books that have ever made me cry, and Kareem Between changed that tally from two fingers to three.

Kareem is a 7th-grade Syrian American who dreams of being on the football team, but there’s one big obstacle: a jerkface who, as the son of the coach, ropes Kareem into doing his homework by dangling the carrot of (fake) social acceptance and another chance at tryouts. To make matters worse, Kareem has been saddled with showing the new kid, a Syrian refugee, around school, he’s worried about his grandfather’s health, and his mother has suddenly disappeared overseas, a victim of unexpected travel restrictions due to the 2017 executive order better known as “the Muslim Ban.”

This is a sports book (I cried at a sports book!!), but it’s also a book about integrity, family, and the ways we conduct ourselves when we’re faced with heartbreaking challenges, uncertainty, and fear. This one is for the upper range of middle-grade readers (11-12-year-olds), even as a read-aloud — Saltagi Safadi’s writing is technically accessible for younger kids, but the themes here are, I think, a little too serious to throw into the lap of an 8-10-year-old without discussion, and may simply be too emotionally heavy for more sensitive readers.

That’s a caveat, though, not a criticism — this book is engrossing, even important, and beautiful in so many ways. Highly recommended.

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Thanks for reading today, and thanks for the efforts you’re making in your own homes, classrooms, libraries, and beyond. In case no one has told you lately, you’re doing an amazing job.

Sarah