New Thing #361: Wonder

I didn't think I'd be able to squeeze another book New Thing into this year, but so I have. It's Wonder, the debut novel by R.J. Palacio.

A bunch of people have recommended it to me, since most of the book deals with fifth grade.

Some have just suggested I read it.

Others have suggested we should read it with students.

I'm here to suggest that every parent should read this book with their children when they're around 10 years old.

Here's the premise: August has an extremely rare genetic syndrome that has resulted in multiple facial deformities. He's been homeschooled for his whole life up to this point partly because of how he looks but also because of the accompanying medical issues which would have forced him to miss school.

The book is about how he adjusts to finally going to school in his fifth grade year, and how his classmates handle going to school with him.

I had a general idea of that premise, but you don't appreciate just how much goes into that premise until you read the book.

And the author does a nice job of helping to convey just how much goes into that premise by telling the story from a bunch of different perspectives, though August's is the main point of view for the majority of the book.

It's a wonderful (no pun intended) story.

It's very frank, addressing the realities a real-life kid like August must live through. And it highlights the best in human behavior…as well as the worst.

I think, if we want our children to treat others with kindness, parents should read this book with their children to spur conversations about how they would act if they were in certain characters' shoes.

I know the book made me think about those scenarios. I also know that some of the characters in the book exhibited some extraordinary behavior, and I don't know how realistic that is. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been that empathetic as a fifth grader.

I wish I was more like the character Summer, who quickly became one of my favorite book characters ever because of what she did in the book.

I like to think that if this book is widely read, more young people might want to be more like Summer.

Now that would be wonderful.

New Thing #352: The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

You may be aware that on Christmas Day there's a version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty coming out, starring Ben Stiller. Or perhaps you've seen the one that starred Danny Kaye.

Or perhaps you've read the original short story.

I never saw the movie nor had I read the story - to be honest, a week ago I don't even know if I could have told you whether it was a story or a movie or a legend or what.

But because of the new movie, there was a writeup on the story and the movies in "The Riff" section of The New York Times Magazine last weekend, and that inspired me to finally read the story.

I had certainly heard of Walter Mitty before I read the story, but I don't know in what context. I don't know if I knew of him as a character or as the title of a story...

I certainly had no idea that Walter Mitty is this daydreaming character that originates from a short story that is only about two magazine pages long.

In case you're like me and you were in the dark, the story, by James Thurber, debuted in the March 18, 1939 issue of The New Yorker - and it is a GREAT short story. (And, considering it was written almost 75 years ago, it holds up incredibly well.)

I guess this is what I think of when I think of the term "short story". (You may remember when I was a little bit thrown by the genre in terms of George Saunders' newest book back in March.) It's a good stand-alone story. Sure, it could continue if you wanted it to, but it makes its point in a few short pages. It's well-crafted. It's what I remember O. Henry stories being like…though I admit it's been a while since I've read anything by O. Henry.

I've never been a big daydreamer. I've had daydreams, but none to the extent of Walter Mitty (or David Fear, the guy who wrote about the story in The New York Times Magazine). I used to imagine certain cartoon characters would visit me at elementary school, but I don't think those were exactly daydreams. I think it harkens back to the fact that I was a weird kid.

But I know people who daydream. I remember one time at work more than a decade ago when a co-worker was kind of staring off and I interrupted the staring to ask a question and I could tell that I snapped her back from some far-off place. I think I apologized, but she didn't mind. "I was just having a daydream," she told me. It was the first time, I think, I had heard the term used as a noun rather than a verb. Usually people say "I was daydreaming", but she said it the way I might tell someone about the dream I had when I was sleeping. Her dreams came during the day. It was a small moment, but it stuck with me. It really turned on its head the way I thought about certain things…and the way I saw that other people experienced the world, to be honest.

It's not unlike the way Thurber's character will stick with me. Before I got a page into the story I was in awe of the writing.

I'm a little embarrassed I've gone this long without having read this story.

But the bottom line is I'm really glad I did.

Here's the link I found to the archived story. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

New Thing #346: My Brother Sam Is Dead

I'm pretty sure I've written before that one of my all-time favorite books is Johnny Tremain. Often, for a lot of people, Johnny Tremain is grouped with My Brother Sam Is Dead as 'books for middle schoolers dealing with the American Revolution'.

And, despite my love for Johnny Tremain, I've just never made the time to read My Brother Sam Is Dead.

But we're considering possibly adding an alternative to Johnny Tremain for the students to read this year, so I gave My Brother Sam Is Dead a chance.

Warning - this review will contain spoilers…spoilers slightly more revealing than the spoiler that is the book's own title.

I'll say it up front - I didn't love My Brother Sam Is Dead. It's OK historical fiction. But I don't love it as a book for middle schoolers. It has a lot of curses, and it's an awfully realistic portrait of war. Which, I suppose, you either love for students at middle school age or you don't.

I didn't. (I had a similar reaction to Avi's The Fighting Ground. I'm just not sure it needs to be that violent. Maybe because I hold Johnny Tremain as the standard, and that book is not about the violence.)

Johnny Tremain wins out for me because it takes place in Boston, and I love that setting for American Revolution fiction.

My Brother Sam Is Dead takes place in Redding, Connecticut, which apparently was home to the British raid written about in the book, but it just doesn't excite me in the same way.

And while you spend the whole book waiting for the title sentence to become a reality, it just doesn't happen in the way you'd expect. It happens in such an unimpressive fashion that it makes you frustrated…or at least it frustrated me.

My Brother Sam Is Dead does a good job of capturing life during the war. It starts shortly after the Battles of Lexington and Concord and continues right through to the late 1770s, and then an epilogue takes you way beyond the end of the war. Johnny Tremain ends pretty much exactly where that book begins.

And that's probably why I like it better. For me, the more exciting history is the lead-up to the war, not the war itself. I like reading about certain aspects of the Revolution, but it's basically a lot of chasing and retreating and a whole lot of down time. The lead-up to the American Revolution is where the action is.

Bonus Information: Esther Forbes, the author who wrote Johnny Tremain, also wrote a book called Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. If you're interested in colonial Boston and life around the time of the war, know that this is a great read. It may be the best non-fiction book I've ever read.

New Thing #299: Ivy and Bean

Over the past couple of years, my daughters have been fond of a book series called Ivy and Bean. They've advanced pretty far in the series...they've read at least five, possibly more. There are ten in the series so far.

Usually I'll read something before my daughters do, so I can make sure it's appropriate, but this was a series recommended for my oldest daughter by a teacher friend, so I didn't feel a pressing need to read the books before the girls.

But I was curious what the books were like.

So on Friday night, I read through the first book in the series.

At the risk of continuing my label as a guy who likes everything, I liked Ivy and Bean.

First of all, I love origin stories, whatever the situation. And this book is all about how the two main characters meet.

And how they meet is cute - it's a story of a friendship that blossoms and how first impressions can be misleading, and how you can't judge a book by its cover, and all that good advice.

It's also appropriately silly for 7-year-olds (or 5-year-olds, since my middle daughter is quite the reader)...and quite possibly 35-year-olds as well. I found some of the silliness amusing.

The books are written by Annie Barrows. She has a website all about the books, and apparently there are Ivy and Bean plays and such out there as well. She definitely knows her audience. Like the books, the website caters to a certain age group who enjoys silliness.

I would imagine, despite the two female protagonists, that boys would enjoy the Ivy and Bean series, too. But it's probably hard to get them interested because of the two title character girls.

Either way, if you have a first grader and you're looking for a book series to catch their interest, this is probably a good place to start.

The books are chapter books, too - so with short chapters they make for good bedtime story reading.

Which, if you're a 35-year-old man, is a great way to continue reading the series under the guise of "just reading it to your daughters."

New Thing #290: The Great Bridge

I've been working on this New Thing for a while. I bought The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, by David McCullough, a couple of years ago. I tried reading it then, but barely 50 pages in I realized I wasn't ready to give it the necessary attention.

This summer - June, probably - I started it again. I had hoped to finish before school started, because I knew once September hit my already slow non-fiction reading pace would slow down even more.

I didn't finish before August was over and sure enough, it took another month-and-a-half before I finished the book.

But I finished it this week, and though it wasn't as interesting to me as McCullough's John Adams biography, it had its moments.

For a while I thought the book wasn't grabbing me because the Brooklyn Bridge just didn't have all that interesting a history. But then there was some corruption in the finances and some danger for the workers and the story appeared juicy enough. It might just be I don't find non-fiction about a bridge as interesting as non-fiction about a person. (Or maybe in the 30 years between writing this book and the John Adams book David McCullough became a much better writer.)

Here's one undercurrent of the book that I found interesting and that I'd like to learn more about: 19th century New York City. I don't have a full understanding of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed and the goings-on in New York City government at that time, but I know there was a lot of corruption and I feel like it's something I should look into more. The end of the Boss Tweed ring coincided with the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and there was a pretty significant crossover between those two pieces of New York history.

Probably the piece of the bridge building that I found the most interesting was the sinking of the caissons. I still don't know that I completely understand exactly how it all happened, but I had a fortuitous coincidence as I read that section of the book. In August or so and within a week or two of me reading about the caissons, Stuff You Should Know, one of my favorite podcasts, did an episode on diving bells. As an example they talked about how you can trap air in a cup when you turn it upside down and push it to the bottom of a bunch of water, like if you're in the tub. (I know I did that when I was younger.) Anyway, they also mentioned this happened with the building of the bridge. It was a serendipitous moment for me, helping me understand how people went down in these structures to dig into the earth without oxygen tanks or something like that.

The end of the book was the fastest read for me. I liked reading about the celebratory atmosphere in New York leading up to the opening of the bridge - for some reason this part was much more interesting to me than the rest of the book. (I especially liked the description of an image on display in May of 1883, when the Bridge opened, depicting how the bridge looked then and how it might look in 1983 on its 100th anniversary. I'd love to find that in some kind of New York City archival something-or-other.)

So, needless to say at this point, it wasn't my favorite book ever. But it was still a decent read. And it inspired me to take a trip down to the bridge itself.

More on that tomorrow.

New Thing #184: Reading A Book On A Nook

I had a plan for my beach reading last week on the Cape. (Little did I realize being a father on the beach significantly cuts into reading time on the beach. But it did lead to more time than I may have ever spent in the water before.)

I was going to take advantage of this opportunity to read a book on the Nook for the first time.

I finished Bunker Hill the day before we left and cleared my plate.

And on the first morning we visited the beach I set up my chair, took out the Nook, and (amid numerous interruptions from my children) read Tina Fey's Bossypants.

My wife got the Nook a few years ago. She likes it. I kind of like it because it leads to less clutter around the house of books she's started and left sitting around.

But I had never read anything on the Nook. When my wife got the Tina Fey book electronically I resolved to make that the book I read when I first tried the new piece of technology. Obviously, it's taken me a couple of years.

I did not expect to enjoy the process of reading the book on the Nook. But it wasn't bad - especially considering the sun glare I was expecting, the screen was entirely readable.

But I'm sorry to say I didn't like the Nook more than I liked it. Here's why:

-First of all, when you put the thing to sleep you have to look at images of ugly old authors. It can be jarring when you open the Nook and you have faces like this staring back at you:

-Secondly, I think it would take a lot of getting used to. Whenever the wind picked up, my hands automatically pinned down the Nook as though the pages were all going to blow in the wind. I know that's a stupid thing to not like about the Nook, but I think it speaks to how used I am to turning pages.

-Thirdly, Bossypants features a lot of footnotes. Not the kind of footnotes I talked about last week in non-fiction books which contribute to me having trouble keeping track of the forward motion of the story, but little asterisks that contain bonus jokes in the back of the book. At least I assume they're in the back of the book in hard copy form. All I saw on the Nook were these little asterisks every so often and then at the end of the book were a whole bunch of random notes that I had to remember back to where they might have appeared. (By the way, I should mention that I really enjoyed the book. There were definitely some laugh-out-loud moments.)

-Fourthly, sometimes my reading comprehension abilities (or deficiencies?) require me to go back a page or two (or many) to figure out who a character is or where a scene started or something. That is much more challenging on a Nook than it is with a book and it's the worst thing about the Nook for me. It affected the way I read this book, because I just stopped doing it if the reference I wanted to go back to was more than a page away. (There might be ways around this that I'm not aware of, but the bottom line is it's not as easy as flipping back a few pages.)

-Fifthly (and this falls in the category of things that may have since been fixed or upgraded since my wife bought her Nook), as easy as the Nook was to read on the beach in the sun, when we were sharing a room with my daughters in the hotel and I didn't want to turn on a light to read, it was impossible to read the Nook. There was no backlight or glow option or anything. It just sat dark there in the dark.

-Sixthly, sometimes I like to write in a text as I read, John Adams-style. If nothing else it makes me feel more intelligent, like I'm engaging with my reading in a valuable way. That's impossible on a Nook.

There's a menu at the bottom of the Nook that I didn't explore all that much outside of getting into the book from the main menu. Maybe it fixes all of the things I mentioned above. I don't know. But I don't know if I'm willing to find out.

I'm not knocking the Nook for you - if you enjoy it good for you. And I'm sure there are youngsters out there who never considered reading some books and are reading on Nooks and improving their skills.

But I'll take my good old-fashioned paper book, thank you very much.

New Thing #179: Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution

I'm kind of obsessed with the American Revolution. Not even the whole war - more like I'm obsessed with colonial Boston, 1770-1775 or so.

I keep reading books that focus on that time period, and I've tried to wean myself away from them so I can learn about other times in history...or even the rest of the war once the regulars left Massachusetts.

The latest addition to my library is Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution.

And I didn't even choose to read this one on my own.

I got a text from my wife one day in May. She was leaving work to enjoy a little bit of a nice day and decided to pop into the bookstore. Did I want anything? she wanted to know. I missed the text, and saw it hours later. (I worked straight through the nice day, I guess.)

When she came home, she had bought Bunker Hill for me - it was just out recently and was getting some good press. I had read about it, and how Philbrick is a good storyteller.

I said above that I didn't choose to read this book on my own...I should actually say that I didn't seek it out on my own. Once it was in my possession I jumped it up on my summer reading to-do list, and I plowed through it pretty quickly.

It's a good book about Boston in the 1760s into March of 1776, and Philbrick is indeed a good storyteller.

I expected, based on the title I guess, the book to focus more on Bunker Hill than it actually did. It was pretty typical Revolutionary Boston fare - talk of taxes, soldiers in Boston, Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, etc. - but it was one of the more detailed accounts of all of these events that I have ever read. And there were hardly any points where my eyes glazed over or something felt boring - it was very engaging throughout.

Another pleasant surprise was how prevalent Joseph Warren was in the book. I've enjoyed learning about Dr. Warren over the years - I definitely didn't learn about him in school and I've come to learn more the more I read - but this book serves as almost a mini-biography of the Boston doctor-turned political and military leader. He's really painted as a Samuel Adams-like ringleader in making things happen that led the colonies into a war with their mother country.

Philbrick offers unique takes on the Boston Tea Party and some of the actions of the Sons of Liberty in Boston, and he spends a couple of chapters going through the events of April 18th and 19th, 1775. I love reading about the messengers (led by Paul Revere) being sent out on the night of the 18th and then the engagements in Lexington and Concord on the 19th, and Philbrick devotes a couple of chapters to these events (and the ensuing chase back to Boston that began the Siege of Boston). As a matter of fact, he spends more time writing about all of that than the title battle.

And he provides some of the goriest details of all of those battles that I've ever read...which paints the writing as realistic, because those were some gory days. (I had never before read about 78-year-old Samuel Whittemore, who killed several regulars on April 19th, then "took a musket ball to the jaw and was bayoneted repeatedly before being left for dead." He then lived for another eleven years.)

I've written before, I think, about my love for Johnny Tremain - a young adult historical fiction novel by Esther Forbes. Much of the book is historically accurate...and some of the incidents in the book that I thought might be somewhat fictional were supported by fact in this book, such as the saying that the regulars marched out on the morning of April 19th whistling 'Yankee Doodle', but would hear it sung back to them before the end of the day, or something along those lines. According to Philbrick, that actually happened...give or take a few details.

One detail I was surprised not to read about in this book was that after Joseph Warren was killed in the Battle of Bunker Hill (spoiler alert!), I had read that his body was so badly disfigured that it could only be identified by his teeth. I had heard this was done by Paul Revere (who made Warren's false teeth), but Philbrick writes it was done by Warren's brother.

I half-read/half-skimmed the notes at the back of the book - they're thorough, citing where Philbrick got all of his information. (And the way I read non-fiction books, I was glad he went with pages of notes at the end rather than footnotes - I always feel obligated to look up footnotes when I come across them. It's hard for me to read books that way.) They're also, by the way, indicative of Philbrick's writing ability - they're very readable. Anyway, I was hoping to see some mention of the Revere/teeth story in there but there was nothing. So I hope I'm not making that up.

I admire the work that goes into a book like this. Sometimes I wonder if I have a work of non-fiction like this in me - I certainly have the passionate interest in the subject matter...I just don't know if I know how to go about writing the book.

But that's what I leave you with today - this was a great book...and it's books like this that inspire me to think about someday writing something that comes close to it.

New Thing #121: Gone Girl

Over spring break I read Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. (FYI, her name is pronounced with a hard 'g', not like 'Jillian'.)

I had heard an interview with Flynn on the 'Bullseye' podcast back when the book came out (well, I didn't hear the podcast when the book came out - but I listened to the episode from that time recently. Also, while we're going down the parenthetical road here, that podcast is also how I knew how to pronounce her name.), and it piqued my interest.

I'm not so sure it was as good as advertised, though.

It was an entertaining enough read. It wasn't "I can't put this down it's so good!", but it still made me want to pick it up to finish it. More of a "I'm very interested in how this turns out, so I'm going to read it some more. But first I'll do a couple of other things."

I'm not going to ruin the book on you here, but I am going to give the same type of allusions to the plot that I was given in the podcast. I pretty much guessed at what was going to happen based on those allusions. So if you plan on reading the book and you're wary of any kind of a spoiler, I'd stop reading if I were you. And if you don't stop reading...don't hold me responsible if the book is ruined.

See - there's a twist. I don't know if I hadn't heard the podcast whether I would have seen the twist coming. It seems to me like it's almost an obvious twist...but since I guessed ahead of time at what might happen...it really might have colored my enjoyment of the book.

I might have gone from reading it and enjoying it to reading it to see when the twist I was expecting to happen would happen.

The book is about a married couple, and on their wedding anniversary, the wife disappears. The book is told in alternating points of view - the husband's as the investigation unfolds, and the wife's as journal entries leading up to the disappearance.

And I think that's all I'll give you about the plot.

Remember when I wrote about Tenth of December? How my biggest complaint was that the stories were so open-ended? Well, there's a satisfaction for me in reading a novel with an ending.

I just wish it was a novel that lived up to all the hype I heard about leading up to it.

New Thing #88: Liar & Spy

I guess I've been doing more reading lately. It's also funny how some of these New Things come in waves.

For more than 80 days, no books...and then two in one week.

This one is called Liar & Spy, and it's a book for middle schoolers.

But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it.

And I did.

First, a word about the author. Her name is Rebecca Stead, and I became a fan a couple of years ago with a book called When You Reach Me, which is kind of science fiction-esque, with a great story that I won't say any more about because it's that good and I don't want to ruin any of it on you.

Liar & Spy is a much different book, but it has a similar amount of mystery that builds to a big reveal at the end.

And it's quite moving, which I didn't expect from this book.

I think I read about When You Reach Me in the New York Times Book Review, and sought it out on my own afterwards. It won the Newbery medal in 2010...I'm not sure if that was before or after I read it.

Funny thing about the Newbery Medal, now that I think about it. One time in elementary school we were given bookmarks that listed all of the Newbery Award-winning books. I went down the bookmark and crossed off the books I read. (I want to say this was in 1986 or so, because Sarah, Plain and Tall stands out in my mind. This memory made me go look up some of the books - here's a list of the award winners.) For those of you who know me well, this was probably one of the first times I had one of those all-to-common-now obsessive needs to cross things off a list.

If you're reading this and judging me for reading a lot of children's books you need to understand two things: 1) I'm a teacher, and this is part of my job, and 2) there are a lot of excellent, excellent children's books out now. It's incredible. I'm sure they're better now than when I was a child.

This book was an option for summer reading for students - I think it's too mature for the audience we were thinking about...but I'm glad I got to read it.

And it's interesting that I read it the same week I wrote about George Saunders' Tenth of December. Because here's the deal - I appreciate those short stories for what they are. But when it comes right down to it, maybe I'm better suited to children's stories. I like closure - I need my stories wrapped up in a neat bow.

Even if they do make me want to cry.

New Thing #85: Tenth Of December

You'll have to forgive me if you're a big reader and what follows sounds ridiculous to you. I just haven't had much time lately to read books written for adult audiences.

I read magazines, I read children's books (for school, of course)...once in a while if I read a regular, age-appropriate book it's a non-fiction book...usually sports, sometimes history.

In short - I rarely read literature. And even more rarely do I read contemporary literature.

So I wasn't familiar with George Saunders before I saw, right around New Year's, the New York Times Magazine article titled, "George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You'll Read This Year."

I was intrigued, to say the least.

Tenth of December is the book, and it's a collection of short stories.

I'm not sure - outside of maybe high school, which I barely remember - that I've ever really read a collection of short stories. Short stories are kind of a weird thing.

On the one hand, it seems like a big deal to come up with ten good, gripping stories, anywhere from 3 pages in length to more than 60. Is that harder than one long story? I don't know.

For me, it was a little difficult to be thrown into a story, and then right when you pick up the flow, it's over.

In some ways that makes me feel like short stories are kind of a cop out - why not write a full-length novel? (Or 10.) But in other ways, it is probably a sign of really good writing that you can get someone that attached and into a story in such a short amount of time.

There's a lot of open-endedness. I don't know if I love it - I want an ending. What happened? Is this character good or bad? I'm not sure I fully understand what's going on here. Are you telling me I need to think deeply about what I just read? I also wonder how one decides which of the short stories becomes the title story for the book. In that way I almost feel like a book of ten short stories is like a band writing an album with ten songs.

That said, these were good stories. I enjoyed reading the book. I think it's too soon to make a final call on short stories in general, and George Saunders in particular. By all accounts he's a good writer - he teaches at Syracuse, he's been awarded a MacArthur genius grant.

I just don't know if I'm ready to say that "George Saunders has written the best book I'll read all year." I'll say this - I also heard an interview with Saunders on the 'Bullseye' podcast - I really enjoyed listening to him and hearing him talk about where some of his ideas for some of these short stories came from.

So I think I'll be reading a couple more of his books...as far as I know none of which was billed at the dawn of a new year as the best book of the year.

At the very least it's an opportunity for me to read something else that's written for adults.