Shala K. Howell's Blog, page 7

Taking stock of 2020

It’s the quiet time between Christmas and New Year’s, when we are supposed to reflect on the year past and make plans for the year to come.

The year that was



The first photo I took in 2020 was of a sunrise over the ocean at New Smyrna Beach, Florida on January 1. (Photo: Shala Howell)

I started my culturally required annual reflection by flipping back in my planner to review the goals I’d set for myself at the beginning of the year. That… was hilarious. I laughed so hard my husband came to check to see whether I was ok. Reader, I was not.

But you lived through 2020 too. You know how it is.

Since I shared one of those goals here on the blog, I’ll let you know how that one went. Remember how back in January I posted that my goal for the year was to finish the books I had started? My hope was that through diligent effort, I could prune my out-of-control Goodreads Currently Reading list from 45 books to a mere 2 or 3. There are still 22 books on my Currently Reading list.

That was the closest I came to achieving any of my goals for 2020.

The first blanket I completed in 2020 was this one I crocheted for my sister Meg back in the spring. Crocheted with six strands of soft grey yarn held together, it has the comforting heft of a weighted blanket without being so heavy it hurts your back to lie under it. I loved it so much I made a second one for us with cream, tan, rust, and brown stripes. (Photo: Shala Howell)

The one thing I did well this year was make stuff from yarn. I knitted and crocheted at an astounding pace this year. In the Before Times, it would routinely take me two years to complete a blanket. This year, I have knitted and/or crocheted at least 9 blankets, a Christmas tree skirt, multiple stuffed animals and cacti, an advent calendar, several pairs of fingerless mitts, a cat bed, and a distressingly tall pile of washcloths and kitchen scrubbies.

The crocheting project that has brought me the most joy in 2020 is this cat bed I made for Canelo in December. I had intended to give it to him for Christmas, but he hopped in it as soon as I was done, and has spent a part of each afternoon snoring softly in it ever since. (Photo: Shala Howell)

All that knitting came in handy at Christmas.

The year to come

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you about all the things I’m going to accomplish in 2021. I cannot. In fact, I am pretty irritated by all those articles and posts popping up on Twitter filled with people’s resolutions for 2021. How am I supposed to make resolutions right now? You may have noticed there’s a pandemic. See also: Faltering economy that won’t get better until we control said pandemic. How is a person supposed to make creative, aspirational plans in the midst of all of that?

My face when articles filled with people’s resolutions for 2021 pop up on Twitter. (Photo: Michael Howell)

At the same time, when I look at my goals for 2020, I find I still want to do all of those things. Can I just ignore that for another year? What if 2022 is even worse? How many years can I keep putting this stuff off? Am I just supposed to give up on what I want?

I may not be ready to make fixed plans in a pandemic, but I don’t want to lose sight of my long-term goals either. So instead of making specific resolutions this year, I brainstormed a list of projects I’d like to do and changes I’d like to make, if life and family needs permit. Instead of stopping there and calling them resolutions like I would in a normal year, I stack ranked them. This left me with a list of goals for 2021 that looks like this:

“If I can only do 1 thing this year, I would do [this].”“If I can only do 2 things this year, I would do [this] and [that].”“If I can only do 3 things this year, I would do [this], [that], and [this other thing].”“If I can only do 4 things this year, I would do [this], [that], [this other thing], and [that too].”And so on [if you must]

I like this approach because it puts words to what I’d want from 2021, in the order in which I want them. If I find I need to drop some things in order to take care of other more important, urgent, or unexpected things, I already know which ones to set aside first. That makes it clear where to put my energy as I have it to spare, without burdening myself with any sort of expectation that I’ll finish all or even most of it.

If there’s one thing I don’t need in 2021, it’s the burden of extra expectations.

What about you?

Are you making plans for 2021? If so, how?

Related Links:

Reading Goals: 2020 (Caterpickles)

Happy Holidays!

Thank you for spending another year with us here at Caterpickles. Regardless of how you spend your day today, I hope that this holiday season is filled with some measure of peace and joy for you and yours.

Christmas ornaments hanging from a tree in Palo Alto, California. (Photo: Shala Howell)

Book Reviews: I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen and A Bedtime for Bear by Bonny Becker

NOTE: This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that provides financial support to local, independent bookstores. By the time I wrote this post, Bookshop.org had already raised $9.8m for local bookstores. If you use the links in this post to purchase a book or two on Bookshop.org, I’ll earn a commission on your book purchase, as will your preferred independent bookshop. You can also these books in the new Caterpickles Bookstore. Regardless of whether you use my links or visit the Caterpickles Bookstore, I’m glad you spent part of your day reading Caterpickles. Learn more about Affiliate Links, the Caterpickles Bookstore, and why I decided to become a Bookshop.org Affiliate.

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

Genre: Picture Book

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Year Published: 2011

Format: eBook

Source: Library

My Rating:

Book Summary: I Want My Hat Back

“A picture-book delight by a rising talent tells a cumulative tale with a mischievous twist.The bear’s hat is gone, and he wants it back. Patiently and politely, he asks the animals he comes across, one by one, whether they have seen it. Each animal says no, some more elaborately than others. But just as the bear begins to despond, a deer comes by and asks a simple question that sparks the bear’s memory and renews his search with a vengeance. Told completely in dialogue, this delicious take on the classic repetitive tale plays out in sly illustrations laced with visual humor — and winks at the reader with a wry irreverence that will have kids of all ages thrilled to be in on the joke.”

From the book description on Bookshop.org

My Review:

I haven’t treated myself to a picture book from the library in years, and that’s a shame. As I learned when my daughter was very young, picture books can be a uniquely joyful class of literature. If there’s anything my 2020 experience needs, it’s more joy. Perhaps you can relate.

Although I did not have a toddler handy to read this book with, the humor that shines through this book’s deceptively simple dialogue and the comfortingly chunky style of the illustrations gave me a much-needed chuckle on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I highly recommend it.

A Bedtime for Bear by Bonny Becker
Illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton

Genre: Picture Book

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Year Published: 2010

Format: ebook

Source: Library

My Rating:

Book Summary: A Bedtime for Bear

“Denton’s ink and watercolor illustrations ably express the dry humor of Becker’s dialogue and personifications, which make this a bedtime standout.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Bear must have absolute quiet when he goes to bed. But the effervescent Mouse, small and gray and bright-eyed, finds it terribly hard to be as quiet as a . . . well, you know. With masterfully paced slapstick humor, droll repartee, and comic visual details, the curmudgeonly Bear and his irrepressible friend Mouse return in another wry adventure.

From the book description on Bookshop.org

My Review:

When she was small, my daughter was many things, but flexible about bedtime was not one of them. Like the grumpy old Bear in this charmingly illustrated picture book, my daughter needed everything just so before she could relax into sleep. She wouldn’t even consider going to sleep unless she had this many blankets, this particular set of stuffed animals, that type of pajama, this setting on her Twilight Turtle nightlight, exactly three stories, and the Making Light of It album by Pierce Pettis playing softly in the background. For years, this rigid set of requirements meant that sleepovers anywhere other than Grandma and Grandpa’s were just out of the question.

Grumpy old Bear with his nightcap, precisely fluffed pillow, and need for absolute and utter quiet perfectly captures that stubborn inflexibility of childhood, the excitement of sleepovers, and the worry many of us feel that the change in our sleep routines means we won’t get any sleep while our friends are there.

What about you?

What have you been reading lately?

Related Links:

Reading Goals 2020 (Caterpickles)OcTBR Challenge: Time to Take on Those TBR Towers

“What was it like to get a mortgage in 1875?”

One of the ways I’ve been keeping myself amused during this pandemic is by finally going through the old family journals I inherited from my grandparents back in late 1990s.

My great-grandfather Charles was quite strict about only using his accounting ledgers for accounting. His books meticulously record every cent spent on or earned from his farming and sheep breeding activities. They also include several pages of loans he made to various people, including his father, and whether, when, and how much they had paid him back.

My great-grandfather, Charles A. Phillips, may have kept meticulous accounting books, but his father, Nathaniel Phillips, kept getting distracted by life. If he kept a list of accounts due, they were invariably short. Nathaniel often relapsed into something approaching money management, but he rarely kept it up for long. What accounts he kept are constantly interrupted by emotional comments about his life. Sometimes, these notes are just a couple of lines dropped into a page of numbers.

On a typical page, my great-great-grandfather Nathaniel Phillips records both the sale of 1 1/2 bushels of corn and 3 lbs of pork and the fact that it has been almost nine months since his beloved wife Emily died. (Photo: Shala Howell)

The above excerpt is a typical example. While recording a sale of 1 1/2 bushels of corn ($0.90) and 3 lbs of pork ($0.24), Nathaniel is invariably reminded of the woman who used to cook said corn and pork for him.

“April 4th: Nearly nine months since Emily died. Oh how I wish that I might call her back.”

On the next line he’s back to recording sales to various customers. (Or maybe debts he owes them? The context isn’t exactly clear. The page itself is labeled “Apple Accounts,” but it has relatively few mentions of apples actually on it.)

Other times, those complaints come in the form of page after page of close writing, such as the two pages near the end of one ledger in which Nathaniel recalls what happened when he was forced to go to Rochester, New York to take out a second mortgage on his farm.

Having taken out mortgages on a couple of houses over the years, I was fascinated by this particular entry. At first, I was pretty jealous of how little paperwork was involved. Of course that was before I got to the bit about the bribery and back-room dealing.

What happened when a relatively poor farmer from upstate New York asked a banker in Rochester, NY for a loan in 1875



The first few lines of my great-great-grandfather’s entry describing his trip to Rochester, NY in search of a loan. (Photo: Shala Howell)

His handwriting is much neater than mine, but I’ll transcribe the entry for you anyway. (Note: Nathaniel consistently writes morgage instead of mortgage. Because that word appears frequently, I’ve corrected it in the following entry. The rest of the errors I left in place.)

“I went to Rochester to get money. I went to Powers Bank. I saw the Cashier and asked him if they had money to loan on a Bond & Mortgage – and he told me that they did not let money in that way – But said that he could refer me to a Party who had money to loan on a Bond & Mortgage. I ask him who it was and he refered [sic] me to Geo. H. Humphrey. I went to Mr. Humphrey’s Office, and found him, told him my business, and who sent me there. He asked about the security. I told him that it would be a second mortgage – and he said he thought that he could not induce the party to take such security. I told him that I would pay him well if he would get it for me. He inquired of me if I knew anyone in Rochester. I refered [sic] him to W. H. Bowman. He said that he would go and see Mr. Bowman. He went away and was gone awhile. Came back and said that he had seen Mr. Bowman – And that he thought if I was willing they could get it for me – But said that I must not expect to get the face of the mortgage as nobody would give the face of a second mortgage — His plan was this – To make a Bond & Mortgage out to W. H. Bowman & Bowman & Humphrey were to take the mortgage and go & sell it to their party for what they could get for it. And I was to have the proceeds – and I agreed to it – and was to pay them well for doing it if they could do it. This was about the 7th of March 1875. On the tenth day of March my wife & I went to Rochester … to W. H. Bowman’s Office. Mr. Bowman made out the Bond & Mortgage. My wife and I signed it. Mr. Bowman wrote out his check on the Bank of Monroe for thirty five hundred Dollars and gave it to me & I gave him the Bond & Mortgage. When Bowman gave me his check he told me to put it in my Pocket and keep it there. Not to go to the Bank with it for he had no money to buy it with. He & Humphrey could take the mortgage and go & sell it if they could. And if they sold it I was to have the proceeds of the sale – and I was to give him back his check. If they did not succeed in selling the Bond & Mortgage I was to give Bowman up his check and he was to give me up the Bond & Mortgage. For he said to me I have no money to buy a Bond & Mortgage. Mr. Bowman & Humphrey went away – were gone perhaps two hours and they came back. I was in Bowman’s Office waiting for them to return. Bowman said they had sold it. I asked him how much they got and he said they got thirty three hundred Dollars. And he thought they had sold it well. I then gave him his check and he gave me a check on Powers Bank for thirty three hundred Dollars. He told me to go and get it cashed and then I must settle with Humphrey & him for they had done a good thing for me. I went down and got it cashed – went up to G. H. Humphrey’s office and asked him how much I should pay him for his trouble – and he said he had done a good thing for me and he thought that I ought to pay him one hundred Dollars which I did pay him. I then went to Wm. H. Bowman’s Office and asked him how I should pay him and he said fifty Dollars. I paid Wm. H. Bowman fifty Dollars. I then had left, for my mortgage of thirty five hundred Dollars, thirty one hundred & fifty Dollars. This was all that I ever received for it.”

That last line gets me every time. It so clearly paints a picture of a man who knows he’s supposed to be stoic, but is nonetheless a bit of an emotional mess. Aggrieved, convinced he’d been swindled, and acutely aware that he was in no position to do anything about it except make a careful log of events in his diary in case his circumstances changed. Having done my share of documenting events as they happen in case I need a reliable account of them later, I recognize this behavior in someone else.

Bonus: Bank letters calling in mortgages looked a little different then too

Given the bank, Rochester Savings, and the date, 1894, I assume that this note refers to the first mortgage on Nathaniel’s farm, not the second mortgage he eventually obtained from Powers Bank, thanks to the “good thing” Humphrey and Bowman did for him in 1875.

Handwritten letter dated September 24, 1894 from the Bank of Rochester telling my great-great-grandfather that his mortgage is due.

In case you have trouble reading it, the note reads:

Rochester, N.Y. September 24, 1894

Mr. Nathaniel Phillips
Dear Sir,

The Bank has made a call on your mortgage for $500 payable November 1, 1894.

Truly Yours
James Brachett
Pres

Related Links:

“What was Dr. Hess’s Poultry Panacea?” (Caterpickles)

Hello, world!

(OK. I know this isn’t really my first post, so I really shouldn’t use the traditional first post “Hello, world!” title. It’s just my first post in a while, and I thought a greeting of some sort was in order.)

What I’ve been doing instead of blogging



1. NaNoWriMo

I disappeared in part this past month because in November there’s this little thing called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where writers all over the world attempt to write 50,000 words during the month of November. I don’t do it every year, but I’ve been struggling to get any writing done this year, and I thought an external deadline might be useful.

My goal was to edit 50,000 words worth of the next book in the Caterpickles Parenting Series, tentatively titled An English Major’s Guide to Raising a Critical Thinker. It’s been drafted for almost 3 years now. It’s even been through a professional editing cycle. I’ve been putting off doing the resulting revisions because I decided they could wait, while a couple years’ worth of other things could not.

I am pleased to announce that I did ok this year.

[image error] My fancy NaNoWriMo badge. (Photo: Shala Howell)

50,000 words down. Only 40,000 words to go and An English Major’s Guide to Raising a Critical Thinker will be ready for my editor (again).

2. Thanksgiving

We typically don’t travel at Thanksgiving, even in normal years. Our closest family members are 1700+ miles away. Even if we fly, we’ll be spending two out of our four vacation days traveling with 25 zillion of our closest friends and neighbors. I’m just not that fond of it.

My extended family is more generously spirited than I am when it comes to Thanksgiving travel, and most years some of them come visit us for a week instead. This year, though, we neither traveled nor had visitors.

We did have video and phone calls with various relatives all during the day and a video call scheduled for Thanksgiving dinner itself. But when it came to the food served at that dinner, we had no one to please but ourselves this year.

In an effort to keep things as normal as possible, I asked Michael and The Thirteen-Year-Old for a list of their essential Thanksgiving foods so that I could make sure those foods at least made it to the table. Michael cooked half the list, I baked the other half, and that, my friends, is how we ended up with a Thanksgiving dinner completely devoid of non-starchy vegetables.

Whoops.

I have suspected it for some time, but Thanksgiving really drove home how happy we would be as a family if carbs, meat, fruit, and a selection of carefully curated dairy products were all you needed for a balanced diet.

3. It’s starting to look a bit like Christmas

I am very slowly rolling out the Christmas decorations. So far, I’ve accomplished one light in the front yard (one of those projector things that makes the side of your house or a favorite tree sparkle — not this exact one but something similar), a playlist with assorted holiday songs to play in the background of whichever room we’re in, and stuffing our perpetual Advent calendar with chocolate and daily notes for Michael and The Thirteen-Year-Old.

At some point this week or maybe next, the three of us will decorate a Christmas tree, which our cat Canelo will spend the rest of the season working tirelessly to knock down. Eventually I might even get a wreath for the front door and hang the stockings.

All of the Christmas trees, wreaths, and ornate outdoor decorations that have been popping up on my Facebook feed all week are doing their best to make me feel behind. But their social conditioning messages are consistently and beautifully undercut by the maple tree in my front yard, which didn’t even realize that it’s fall until last week.

[image error] The maple tree in our front yard. (Photo: Shala Howell)

If Mother Nature is so relaxed about the meaning of time this year, there’s no reason for me to get all worked up about it. The obvious fix here is simply to stop logging into Facebook.

What about you?

What have you been up to?

Related Links:

More Pandemic Diaries on CaterpicklesThe Six-Year-Old discovers the thrill of NaNoWriMo (Caterpickles)My carefree, no-fuss Thanksgiving (Caterpickles)“Mommyo, can we have an old-timey Thanksgiving this year?” (Caterpickles)

What I’ve been reading in between bouts of doom-scrolling the news

The world is a bit of a dumpster fire today, so let’s distract ourselves by talking about books, shall we?

NOTE: This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that provides financial support to local, independent bookstores. At the time this post was published, Bookshop.org has already raised $7.7m for local bookstores. If you use the links in this post to purchase a book or two on Bookshop.org, I’ll earn a commission on your book purchase, as will your preferred independent bookshop. You can also find many of these books in the new Caterpickles Bookstore. Regardless of whether you use my links or visit the Caterpickles Bookstore, I’m glad you spent part of your day reading Caterpickles. Learn more about Affiliate Links, the Caterpickles Bookstore, and why I decided to become a Bookshop.org Affiliate.

Allies by Alan Gratz



[image error]

Genre: Middle Grade Fiction

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Year Published: 2019

Format: ebook

Source: Purchase

My Rating:

Book Summary: Allies

“Alan Gratz, bestselling author of Refugee, weaves a stunning array of voices and stories into an epic tale of teamwork in the face of tyranny — and how just one day can change the world.

“June 6, 1944: The Nazis are terrorizing Europe, on their evil quest to conquer the world. The only way to stop them? The biggest, most top-secret operation ever, with the Allied nations coming together to storm German-occupied France.

“Welcome to D-Day.

“Dee, a young U.S. soldier, is on a boat racing toward the French coast. And Dee — along with his brothers-in-arms — is terrified. He feels the weight of World War II on his shoulders.

“But Dee is not alone. Behind enemy lines in France, a girl named Samira works as a spy, trying to sabotage the German army. Meanwhile, paratrooper James leaps from his plane to join a daring midnight raid. And in the thick of battle, Henry, a medic, searches for lives to save.

“In a breathtaking race against time, they all must fight to complete their high-stakes missions. But with betrayals and deadly risks at every turn, can the Allies do what it takes to win?”

From the book description on Bookshop.org

My Review:

Alan Gratz’s novels fly off the shelves at the middle school library where I volunteer, and after reading Allies, I can see why.

Much of the book follows Dee, a German immigrant to America turned U.S. soldier, whose family failed to notice the Nazi rising in Germany until it was too late to do anything but flee. Dee has volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army in an attempt to help put right what his family failed to stop at home. Dee’s storyline has a particular resonance for us now, as does the tale of Henry, a black medic who must overcome discrimination in both small and large ways just to give his fellow soldiers the life-saving care they need.

Gratz changes the timing of several events in his book, a fact readers will miss unless they read the Author’s Note at the end of the book. Still, I highly recommend it due to themes such as the rise of fascism, civil rights, and discrimination that are so relevant to our experiences today.

Trickster: Native American Tales, A Graphic Collection edited by Matt Dembicki



[image error]

Genre: Middle Grade Graphic Novel

Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing

Year Published: 2010

Format: Paperback

Source: Purchase

My Rating:

Book Summary: Trickster

“2010 Maverick Award winner, 2011 Aesop Prize Winner – Children’s folklore section, and a 2011 Eisner Award Nominee.
All cultures have tales of the trickster – a crafty creature or being who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. He disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself. In Native American traditions, the trickster takes many forms, from coyote or rabbit to raccoon or raven. The first graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of comics. In Trickster, 24 Native storytellers were paired with 24 comic artists, telling cultural tales from across America. Ranging from serious and dramatic to funny and sometimes downright fiendish, these tales bring tricksters back into popular culture.”

From the book description on Bookshop.org

My Review:

There was nothing difficult about reading this book. Each tale is a delightfully illustrated story of devious trickery. Beautifully drawn in a range of styles from the serious to the seriously silly, Trickster is a wonderful companion for a bleak day when you could use a bit of cheering up.

Thin Wood Walls by David Patneaude



[image error]

Genre: Middle Grade Fiction

Publisher: Houghton Miflin

Year Published: 2008

Format: ebook

Source: Purchase

My Rating:

Book Summary: Thin Wood Walls

“Eleven-year-old Joe Hanada likes playing basketball with his best friend, Ray, writing plays and stories, and thinking about the upcoming Christmas holiday. But his world falls apart when Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor. His country goes to war. The FBI takes his father away. And neighbors and friends in his hometown near Seattle begin to suspect Joe, his family, and all Japanese Americans of spying for the enemy.

“When the government orders people of Japanese heritage living on the West Coast to move to internment camps, Joe turns to the journal his father gave him to record his thoughts and feelings. Writing journal entries and haiku poetry offers some relief as Joe struggles to endure life in Tule Lake War Relocation Camp—days filled with boredom, concern for his father, and worry for his brother, who joins the American army to prove the bravery and loyalty of Japanese American citizens. Thin Wood Walls is a powerful story of a boy who grows up quickly in a changed world.”

From the book description on Goodreads

My Review:

This is one of those middle grade books that doesn’t shy away from making you cry. Based on a series of stories a friend’s family told Patneaude about their internment on the West Coast during World War II, this book had me questioning why this bit of U.S. history wasn’t featured more prominently in my middle school history classes, and worse, if we are capable of doing this sort of thing again. A deeply moving story that pairs an unflinching look at prejudice with enough humor and optimism to see readers through.

Terrible Lizards with Dr. David Hone and Iszi Lawrence




[image error]

Genre: Podcast

Date: November 4, 2020

Source: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, etc.

My Review:

Episode Description: Terrible Lizards, Series 2, Episode 8

“It’s the end of series questions episode. This time Iszi and Dave… well Dave mainly answer Patrons’ Dinosaur questions. Including How would dinosaur evolution panned out if the asteroid had missed? Could sauropods swim? Is the Blue Whale REALLY larger than dinosaurs? Were there dinosaur KT extinction survivors in Antarctica? The ‘Friends’ question… Velociraptor toe functionality… Bird Brains… How do we differentiate species? And if we know anything about how social dinosaurs were? With massive thanks to all our patrons, and especially Geraint Lewis, Shala Howell, Eric Farenger, Gutza1, Joe McLachlan, Javaraptor (G Hancock), Andrew White, Aisling Spain and Richard Bald.”

From the episode description on the Terrible Lizards podcast

My Review:

As the great political writer Charles P. Pierce at Esquire Magazine is fond of saying, “Dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.” That has never been more true than in 2020. The Terrible Lizards podcast is an invariably entertaining listen, full of weird tidbits for The Thirteen-Year-Old and I to marvel over at dinner.

Longtime readers may remember that about eight years ago, while watching the 1925 movie The Lost World, a lively debate broke out at Caterpickles Central about whether or not sauropods could swim. As far as we could tell, most people would and could agree that sauropods waded through water. But is wading really the same as swimming? We couldn’t decide, so when Dr. Hone and Iszi asked their listeners for questions, we duly sent in our question about whether sauropods could swim. You can imagine how excited my daughter and I were when we realized that Dr. Hone and Iszi had actually answered it.

[image error]

They mispronounce my name, but then, pretty much everyone does (soft a’s, y’all, like the “sha-la-la” chorus in a 1950’s song). However, that’s a small price to pay for a great answer and a shoutout on our favorite podcast.

What about you?

What have you been reading and/or listening to lately?

Related Links:

Reading Goals 2020 (Caterpickles)“Could sauropods swim?” (Caterpickles)OcTBR Challenge: Time to Take on Those TBR Towers

My OcTBR Reading Challenge – Update

The more targeted approach to tackling my To-Read pile inspired by the good folks at The OcTBR Challenge has resulted in me reading a ton of great books this month. In today’s post, I’ll tell you about four of them.

NOTE: This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that provides financial support to local, independent bookstores. At the time this post was published, Bookshop.org has already raised $7.4m for local bookstores. If you use the links in this post to purchase a book or two on Bookshop.org, I’ll earn a commission on your book purchase, as will your preferred independent bookshop. You can also find many of these books in the new Caterpickles Bookstore. Regardless of whether you use my links or visit the Caterpickles Bookstore, I’m glad you spent part of your day reading Caterpickles. Learn more about Affiliate Links, the Caterpickles Bookstore, and why I decided to become a Bookshop.org Affiliate.

Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed



[image error]

Genre: Middle Grade Fiction

Publisher: Puffin Books

Year Published: 2020

Format: Audiobook

Source: Library

PGR:

Book Summary: Amal Unbound

“Twelve-year-old Amal’s dream of becoming a teacher one day is dashed in an instant when she accidentally insults a member of her Pakistani village’s ruling family. As punishment for her behavior, she is forced to leave her heartbroken family behind and go work at their estate.

“Amal is distraught but has faced setbacks before. So she summons her courage and begins navigating the complex rules of life as a servant, with all its attendant jealousies and pecking-order woes. Most troubling, though, is Amal’s increasing awareness of the deadly measures the Khan family will go to in order to stay in control. It’s clear that their hold over her village will never loosen as long as everyone is too afraid to challenge them–so if Amal is to have any chance of ensuring her loved ones’ safety and winning back her freedom, she must find a way to work with the other servants to make it happen.”

From the book description on Bookshop.org

Pandemic Guest Rating (PGR):

Twelve-year-old Amal lives in a small largely agricultural community in Pakistan. When the son of a powerful local landlord, Jawab Sahid, runs over Amal in the street, she allows her anger to get the best of her. After a public altercation in which Amal flatly refuses to hand over the produce she has purchased for her own family, Jawab Sahid retaliates by abruptly calling in the debt Amal’s father owes Sahid’s family. When Amal’s father can’t pay, Amal is forced to go work in the Sahid home as an indentured servant.

Although at first glance, a middle grade novel that deals with issues of indentured servitude, class, and resistance in a small village in Pakistan seems like it must necessarily describe a completely different world from the one I inhabit as a white woman living in California, I found Amal Unbound to be a profoundly relatable story about hope, perseverance, and the importance of education for women around the world.

I highly recommend it.

Strange Birds by Celia C. Pérez



[image error]

Genre: Middle Grade Fiction

Publisher: Kokila

Year Published: 2019

Format: ebook

Source: Purchase

PGR:

Book Summary: Strange Birds

“From the award-winning author of The First Rule of Punk comes the story of four kids who form an alternative Scout troop that shakes up their sleepy Florida town.
“When three very different girls find a mysterious invitation to a lavish mansion, the promise of adventure and mischief is too intriguing to pass up. Ofelia Castillo (a budding journalist), Aster Douglas (a bookish foodie), and Cat Garcia (a rule-abiding birdwatcher) meet the kid behind the invite, Lane DiSanti, and it isn’t love at first sight. But they soon bond over a shared mission to get the Floras, their local Scouts, to ditch an outdated tradition. In their quest for justice, independence, and an unforgettable summer, the girls form their own troop and find something they didn’t know they needed: sisterhood.”

From the book description on Bookshop.org

Pandemic Guest Rating (PGR):

Set in modern-day Miami, this book is just a joy to read. The relationships between the girls weren’t all smooth sailing, of course, because as at least two of the girls frankly admitted, they hadn’t had all that much practice with friendship. There’s plenty of humor to leaven out the emotionally difficult bits.

A great book for sparking conversations about allyship, friendship, and how kids can create positive social change within their communities.

More to the Story by Hena Khan



[image error]

Genre: Middle Grade Fiction

Publisher: Salaam Reads/Simon & Schuster Books for You

Year Published: 2019

Format: ebook

Source: Purchase

PGR:

Book Summary: More to the Story

“From the critically acclaimed author of Amina’s Voice comes a new story inspired by Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic, Little Women, featuring four sisters from a modern American Muslim family living in Georgia. When Jameela Mirza is picked to be feature editor of her middle school newspaper, she’s one step closer to being an award-winning journalist like her late grandfather. The problem is her editor-in-chief keeps shooting down her article ideas. Jameela’s assigned to write about the new boy in school, who has a cool British accent but doesn’t share much, and wonders how she’ll make his story gripping enough to enter into a national media contest. Jameela, along with her three sisters, is devastated when their father needs to take a job overseas, away from their cozy Georgia home for six months. Missing him makes Jameela determined to write an epic article–one to make her dad extra proud. But when her younger sister gets seriously ill, Jameela’s world turns upside down. And as her hunger for fame looks like it might cost her a blossoming friendship, Jameela questions what matters most, and whether she’s cut out to be a journalist at all…

From the book description on Bookshop.org

Pandemic Guest Rating (PGR):

The author describes this text as a love letter to her favorite book: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It’s a lovely and emotionally resonant story that draws on the parallels between cultural norms and expectations in modern Pakistani-American families and the lives of the March sisters in Alcott’s original 1868 text to explore several issues, including microaggressions, ethics in journalism, supporting a loved one through a severe illness, and coping with familial expectations that clash with society at large.

I adore this middle grade novel.

A Moose Boosh: A Few Choice Words About Food by Eric-Shabazz Larkin




[image error]

Genre: Children’s Poetry

Publisher: Readers to Eaters

Year Published: 2014

Format: Paperback

Source: Purchase

PGR:

Book Summary: A Moose Boosh

“Where there is food, there will be laughter (and crumbs).
In more than 40 exuberant poems and ‘vandalized’ photographs, you’ll meet a city kid who fantasizes about farming on a stoop, a girl with crumpets and crèpes in her head, and a boy with a pet cabbage. ‘Doctor Food’ prescribes good food as medicine and ‘Dancing Kitchen’ will have you shimmying with your skillet. From the amuse-bouche to the very last pea on the plate, A Moose Boosh celebrates food–growing it, making it, slurping it and especially sharing it with loved ones at the dinner table. Bon appétit!”

From the book description on Bookshop.org

Pandemic Guest Rating (PGR):

If Shel Silverstein wrote a poetry book about food, it would read a lot like this one. Targeted to readers in Grade 3 and up, the poems in Eric-Shabazz Larkin’s A Moose Boosh tackle everything from getting up the courage to try new flavors to countering life in a food desert through the magic of container gardening.

A great book to jumpstart conversations on sustainable food production, urban food deserts, access to food, and related issues.

What about you?

What have you been reading lately?

Related Links:

Reading Goals 2020 (Caterpickles)OcTBR Challenge: Time to Take on Those TBR Towers

Introducing the Caterpickles Bookstore and a word about affiliate links on Caterpickles

Like most bloggers who have been around a while, I am routinely contacted by people advising me to monetize my blog in some way — either by paying me to write a promotional post about their product, allowing them to purchase ad space on Caterpickles, or by telling me about the amazing amounts of money to be made from joining various affiliate programs.

To date, I have ignored them all. I even pay extra so that my readers don’t have to endure the sometimes randomly placed automated ads that WordPress drops into blogs that use its hosting service. Until now, my posts have always featured plain old links to the book description or product listing on Goodreads and/or Amazon.

However, as this pandemic rages on, it’s come to my attention that while Amazon will be fine, independent bookstores are suffering. (“Indie bookstores are fighting to survive the pandemic. A new movement may have the answer” Time Magazine)

Starting in October 2020 and continuing at least for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, my book review posts may contain affiliate links pointing to Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that provides financial support to independent bookstores nationwide. Bookshop.org also enables me to add a little online bookstore to my blog. I curate the collection in the Caterpickles Bookstore, but Bookshop.org fulfills all of the orders.

Why did I choose to become a Bookshop.org affiliate?

Bookshop.org’s goal is to give away 75% of their profit margin to stores, publications, authors, and others who depend on a thriving independent bookstore industry.

To that end, Bookshop.org directs a portion of every sale either to a specific bookstore selected by the customer or to a general fund that is split equally among independent bookstores nationwide. If you arrive at Bookshop.org through one of the affiliate links on Caterpickles or make a purchase in the Caterpickles Bookstore, I’ll earn a small commission on your purchase as well. It’s a nice balance between supporting a cause I believe in and generating the funds I need to keep this site going.

At the time this post was published (October 2020), Bookshop.org has already raised $7.4m for local bookstores.

I’ve ordered books from Bookshop.org several times over the past few months, and have been extremely happy with their service, so feel comfortable recommending them to you.

If you would like your purchase to support a specific bookstore, find that store on Bookshop.org’s map and your favorite independent bookstore will receive the full profit from your order. Every time you make a purchase, you can choose a different independent bookstore to receive the profits. If you don’t choose a store, the proceeds from your purchase will go into a general fund that will be split equally among independent bookstores nationwide, regardless of whether those stores use Bookshop.org themselves.

What you’ll find in the Caterpickles Bookstore



[image error] You can access the Caterpickles Bookshop through the site’s main menu above. That $7.4 million in the image refers to the total raised by Bookshop.org, and not the amount raised through the Caterpickles Bookstore. Still, it doesn’t hurt to have goals, am I right? (Image: Shala Howell)

The new Caterpickles Bookstore stocks my own What’s That, Mom? book, my husband’s book on Understanding Healthcare Delivery Science, and a curated collection of the various books I’ve reviewed here on Caterpickles over the years. As with the affiliate links, a portion of each purchase made though the Caterpickles Bookstore will help support Caterpickles and raise money for local independent bookstores. Plus, you’ll get a great book. Now that’s a win-win-win!

Take a peek at the store so far. I’d love to get your feedback, whether you have recommendations for other books I should stock in the store, or ideas for curated lists that would be useful for you as you shop for books for yourself or others this year.

NOTE: Sales made in the Caterpickles Bookstore are billed and fulfilled by Bookshop.org. If you need help with your order for any reason, please contact Bookshop.org here.

Thank you!

Regardless of whether you use my affiliate links or the Caterpickles Bookstore to purchase new books, I’m always glad you chose to spend part of your day reading Caterpickles.

Thank you.

What are we going to do about Halloween?

Quick post today, as the work is definitely piling up here. Still, last week our local public health office released official guidance for how to mitigate the risk of spreading COVID-19 during Halloween and Día de Los Muertos celebrations. I wanted to share it quickly with you here, in case your family, like mine, is trying to figure out what those celebrations will look like for you this year.

What our local health officials want us to do

No surprise, our county public health officials want us to avoid traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating, large gatherings, or traveling to fall festivals outside our home communities.

Instead they recommend lower risk activities, like visiting an outdoor pumpkin patch (with masks and distancing), carving pumpkins in your own home or outside with a small group of masked and socially distant friends, decorating your house, having a virtual costume party, or going to a vehicle-based activity, like a drive-in movie.

My daughter doesn’t appear interested in trick-or-treating this year, but if yours are, the guidance also includes tips for making trick-or-treating a bit safer. Not surprisingly those tips involve individually wrapped goodie bags, no eating candy on the route, wearing a themed cloth mask instead of a costume mask, and frequent applications of hand sanitizer.

Let’s put those recommendations in context.

How bad is COVID-19 in our area, anyway?

Although we’ve made quite a bit of progress since I last looked up our county on Harvard’s COVID-19 Risk Level tracker, Santa Clara County remains a yellow zone, with 5.1 new daily cases per 100K people.

(Back in August my county was listed as an orange zone, with 12.4 new daily cases per 100K people. Yay! Progress!)

Halloween/Día de Los Muertos in your community may look quite different, depending on your area’s risk level

As you are making your plans, I encourage you to visit the website for your local public health department to see if they’ve posted recommendations yet for your community.

To do that:

1. Open your favorite web browser and search for “public health [your city, state, or county]”

[image error]Sample web search (Image: Shala’s Computer)

2. Browse the search results until you spot the website for your city, state, or county. In this case, the web site I’m looking for is the top choice.

[image error]Sample search results. (Image: Shala’s Computer)

3. Click on the link for the public health department for your area. The homepage of the Massachusetts Department of Health is pretty full. We’re looking for the search bar (called out by the orange arrow).

[image error]Massachusetts Department of Public Health home page, with orange arrow added by me.

4. Use the site-specific search bar to search for something like “Halloween 2020 guidelines” or “Halloween COVID” or “Halloween coronavirus” and hit Search.

[image error]Sample search on the Mass.gov Public Health website.

5. Sort through the list of documents that calls up. Ideally the one you’re looking for will be near the top (if not actually the top of the list).

[image error]Sample search results.

6. Read the recommendations and plan accordingly. (For sake of completeness, here are the guidelines from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for celebrating Halloween this year: Halloween during COVID-19: Tips for a Safe and Healthy Halloween.)

Stay safe out there, y’all.

Related Links:

Happy Halloween! (Caterpickles)Local County Health Officials Offer Guidance on How to Celebrate Halloween and Día de Los Muertos Safely and Prevent Spreading COVID-19 Among Friends and Neighbors (Santa Clara County Public Health)Halloween during COVID-19: Tips for a Safe and Healthy Halloween (Massachusetts Department of Public Health)

My OcTBR Reading Challenge

Eighty-seven years ago, I decided that my resolution for 2020 would be to deal with all those books on my Currently Reading pile. At the time, I had 45 books that I had started and set aside for some day when I was more in the mood. They weren’t bad books. They just weren’t the right book for me at that time.

Since then I’ve gotten that list down to about 28 books, which is not bad. But I’ve still got a long way to go if I’m going to meet my 2020 resolution.

Turns out, thanks to the good folks over at The OcTBR Challenge, there’s a fall reading challenge just for people like me, who have towering To-Read piles that they want to eradicate before the end of the year.

My OcTBR Reading Challenge

One of the great things about having an excessively long TBR list is that it’s not hard to find a lot of great books to read. Here’s my tentative list for this year’s OcTBR Challenge.

My OcTBR Reading Challenge – Fiction



[image error]My OcTBR fiction list (Image: Shala Howell)

In case you can’t read all those titles, my fiction list includes:

Amal Unbound by Aisha SaeedStrange Birds by Celia C. Pérez More to the Story by Hena Khan A Moose Boosh: A Few Choice Words About Food by Eric-Shabazz Larkin Allies by Alan Gratz Thin Wood Walls by David Patneaude Necessity by Jo Walton A Ghostly Request by Krista D. Ball The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas The Magicians by Lev Grossman A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass

I can hear what you’re thinking: “That’s a lot of books, Shala. Those expectations don’t seem very realistic.”

First, I completely agree. Second, at least half of them are middle-grade novels, which I can usually finish in an afternoon. Third, you don’t know the half of it.

My OcTBR Challenge list also includes non-fiction



[image error]My OcTBR non-fiction list (Image: Shala Howell)

Still, since I can’t spend the entire month sitting in a chair, my nonfiction list largely consists of podcasts and audiobooks, which I can listen to while working on other things. It includes:

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald MaassHow to Outline a Cozy Mystery by Sara RosettiThe Terrible Lizards podcast, which is all about dinosaurs, so basically my favorite podcast of all timeThe History Extra podcast, which has a don’t miss episode on how eels became a fundamental part of the English identity in the Middle AgesThe 1619 podcast, because I definitely didn’t learn everything I needed to know about America’s history in school



Will I get through it all?

Probably not. But that’s ok. I’ll get through a fair amount, which will leave me a mere dozen or so books to plow through before the end of the year. (Assuming a miracle happens and I don’t get distracted by the next shiny book to walk through our front door.)

What about you?

What are you doing to distract yourself this October?

Related Links:

Reading Goals 2020 (Caterpickles)OcTBR Challenge: Time to Take on Those TBR Towers