Lift Up Your Hearts!

The Winged Watchman by Hilda van Stockum (1962)

When I was a child our family hardly ever bought books.  We were great readers—we didn't own a television set until I was seven years old—but books were too expensive to buy when the public library was free.  If our tiny village library in Scotia, New York did not have what we needed, an expedition to the Schenectady city library was usually sufficient.  (There was no Inter Library Loan at the time.)  Imagine the glory when we moved to the Philadelphia area and I discovered that their incredible Free Library was only a train ride away.

Printed books were also (relatively) more expensive then, as this was before the explosion of available paperback books and well before the view of books as disposable items.  Nonetheless, one of the great things my parents did for me was to sign me up for the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club, which periodically delivered a brand-new hardcover children's book to our door.  I still have many of the books, and am surprised at the consistent, excellent quality (considering how many bad children's books are now available), even looking back from the perspective of over half a century.

One of those books was The Winged Watchman, a story of Holland during World War II.  I had passed my copy on to our grandchildren, but it was recently returned because they had acquired another copy through their homeschooling curriculum.  Naturally, I couldn't resist re-reading one of my childhood favorites.

The Winged Watchman is still a favorite.  It's a glimpse of another culture in very difficult time, historically accurate without being depressing or overly graphic, and fits well my definition of a good book.  (A good book inspires me to be a better person.)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

I don't remember when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird.  Or even if I read it at all.  Did I read it in school, and was it therefore in my mind consigned to the Pit as worthless?  (I am an avid reader and re-reader, but no thanks to school, which utterly failed to reveal to me the good qualities of any book we were forced to read.)  Did I read it after meeting Porter and learning that this is his all-time favorite book?  Or did I only watch the movie?  If I did read it, I know I was not impressed, because books that I find worthwhile I will read over and over again, soaking them into my very being—and I know I didn't read To Kill a Mockingbird twice.

I'm really curious:  Did I make my judgement on the movie alone?  Movies rarely impress me the way books can.  Or was I just not psychologically ready to appreciate Harper Lee's masterpiece?  The latter is possible.  If I read it under Porter's influence, I would still have been very close to my school years and thus predisposed to being negative about "important" literature.  More to the point, I was at that time in my life extremely prejudiced against the South, and would have had little appreciation and less sympathy for the tribulations of small-own Alabama and its people.  I also had much less appreciation for good writing then than I do now.

Whatever the case, I was inspired by two recent events to give To Kill a Mockingbird another try.  First, we attended a local theater presentation of the story, which was excellently done and served to reveal that I'd clearly gotten nothing out of my first experience, be it book or movie.  Second, Heather was given some lavender bath salts that she had passed on to me, and I wanted to try them out.  I love to read in the bath, but my current reading was on my Kindle, and the combination of electronics and bath water sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.  So I pulled To Kill a Mockingbird off the bookshelf and dove into new waters—both physical and metaphorical.

It took me nearly half a century to discover it, but Porter was absolutely right:  this is an astonishingly wonderful book.  I knew in the first two pages that if I had ever read it before, I certainly hadn't read it.  What wonderful writing!  What a beautiful and important story!  If I had to boil my definition of a good book down to one sentence, it would be this:  A good book inspires me to be a better person.  The character of Atticus Finch alone can provide a lifetime of inspiration.

C. S. Lewis once wrote that it is easy for an author to create evil characters, because he need look no further than his own heart for inspiration, but to be able to create a credible portrait of good is a rare gift.  Lewis was, in that instance, praising the Scottish author George MacDonald, but I'm certain he would have said the same about Harper Lee.  Atticus Finch is as inspiring a noble character as could be wished.  At the same time, there is not a whit of sentimentality anywhere in the book.  There is real life, hard times, hard-core racism, poverty, incest, drug addiction, mental illness ... heroism, understanding, self-sacrifice, duty, love ... above all there is grace ... all in a package that I would not hesitate to recommend to our 11-year-old grandson.

The movie version with Gregory Peck is well-known, but I wouldn't go there.  Nothing less than the book could possibly do justice to the story.

For certain if I read To Kill a Mockingbird in the past it was well before homeschooling was ever on my radar.  Else how could I possibly have forgotten these passages?  Minor though they certainly are in the course of the story, they are nonetheless brilliant.

Scout's first day of school:

Then [the teacher] went to the blackboard and printed the alphabet in enormous square capitals, turned to the class and asked, "Does anybody know what these are?"

Everybody did; most of the first grade had failed it last year.

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.  Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.

"Teach me?" I said in surprise.  "He hasn't taught me anything, Miss Caroline.  Atticus ain't got time to teach me anything." I added, when Miss Caroline smiled and shook her head.  "Why, he's so tired at night he just sits in the livingroom and reads."

"If he didn't teach you, who did?" Miss Caroline asked good-naturedly.  "Somebody did.  You weren't born reading The Mobile Register."

"Jem says I was.  He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch instead of a Finch.  Jem says my name's really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I got swapped when I was born and I'm really a—"

Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying.  "Let's not let our imaginations run away with us, dear," she said. "Now you tell your father not to teach you any more.  It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind.  You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage—"

"Ma'am?"

"Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now."

I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church was it then I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills To Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow, anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem called the Dewey Decimal System was school wide by the end of my first year, so I had no chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only look around me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything, at least, what one didn't know the other did. Furthermore, I couldn't help noticing that my father had served for years in the state legislature, elected each time without opposition, innocent of the adjustments my teachers thought essential to the development of Good Citizenship. Jem, educated on a half Decimal half Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a poor example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from getting at books. As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at home, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.

From Atticus' speech to the jury:

"Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority."

Finally, though it has nothing to do with education, this one was just what I needed after attending a shower given to Heather and Nathaniel by some very nice and generous ladies at their church.  When I can, I try to avoid gatherings that openly practice discrimination, and thus wasn't thrilled that this event had blatantly excluded men (except for the guest of honor).  But as its purpose was to bless my daughter and grandson, I mustered the courage to attend, despite agreeing 100% with Scout:

Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere....

Gifted Hands:  The Ben Carson Story.  This movie needs no more review than this:  See it.

But of course I can't leave it at that.  There are so many films, shows, books, and even Great Courses lectures I'd love for my grandchildren, especially the older ones, to experience, but there's always something that turns a great story into something NSFG.  We used to be able to portray the rawer side of life in a way that left something to the imagination, but that sensitivity is now out of style.  Gifted Hands, despite being non-rated, is a happy exception.  There are some difficult situations and heartbreak, but nothing to detract from the story.

Ben Carson from inner-city Detroit, raised by a single mom (but what a mother!), failing in school, headed for trouble.  Dr. Ben Carson, world-famous director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.  Gifted Hands tells the tale—fictionalized and condensed, but remarkably accurate for all that—of the transformation.  The movie is enjoyable on many levels, from watching Ben's mother inspire her children to learn, to getting a glimpse of the Biltmore House library (professor's house in the movie), to realizing that it's possible to be both a top-notch neurosurgeon and a humble and good-natured person.

Great story.  No caveats.  Much inspiration.  Enjoy!

Legally Kidnapped: The Case Against Child Protective Services by Carlos Morales (Amazon Digital Services, 2014)

Legally Kidnapped is probably good for any parent to read who either (1) has childrearing philosophies and/or practices that differ at all from the current norm, or (2) thinks they might at some point tick off a family member, friend, or neighbor.  There are frightening abuses taking place under the authority of Child Protective Services (name varies by state), where vulnerable children are ripped away from their families for days, months, or years, and for no reason other than ignorance and reasonable philosophical differences.  The author says, and I believe him, that "children are much more likely to be kidnapped by State workers than by strangers."

It happened here just a few months ago, basically because the mother was a vegan.  A doctor friend in New York told me (without names, of course) of testifying in favor of a family whose children had been taken from them:  the excuse was an infected cut, but he said the real reason was the animosity of the social worker to the family's religion.  And it's not just in the United States:  Germany and Sweden have separated children from their families simply because they were being educated at home.  It is a problem, and Carlos Morales, a former CPS agent who knows the system from the inside, offers some helpful information to educate, inform, and assist parents who might find themselves at risk.  Some of the most important:  record (preferably video) all encounters and interviews, never let your children be interviewed alone, always be calm and polite.

That's the good news.  Sadly, I can't really recommend the book.  The author, perhaps driven by guilt because of his former complicity, is too strident and extreme.  He could have used some of his own advice about being calm and polite.  Also, the book is replete with basic punctuation and typographical errors, which rightly or not steal credibility from its message.

Still, if anyone wants to glean what is good, it's short (95 pages), the price is reasonable ($2.99 Kindle price on Amazon, and I got it free when they were running a special), and Amazon tells me that I can lend my Kindle copy out one time for 14 days at no charge.

I'll say more later about the extraordinary television show NCIS, which has captivated me in recent months, but can't wait for a major review to comment on yesterday's show, House Rules.  This is the 12th season of NCIS, so there have been many, many episodes, and with the exception of a couple of this season's, we've seen them all.  House Rules ranks as one of the all-time most beautiful.  It was their Christmas show, and I don't believe I've ever seen a show that captured the basics of the holiday more effectively, efficiently, and beautifully.  It's all there:  law, grace, repentance, redemption, fatherly love.  It's really an amazing show.  The only thing that keeps me from unequivocally recommending it is that I fear that much of the effect would be lost on those who are not long-time viewers.  The flashbacks and tie-ins to previous shows that are part of what makes it so powerful would seem disjointed and confusing to those without the proper background.

But I'm in awe of the writers and actors who made it happen, and glad we took time out of a busy holiday schedule to experience it.

Wool by Hugh Howey (2012)

Despite being a die-hard science fiction fan in my younger days, I rarely venture into the genre now.  But I found my sister-in-law's description of Wool intriguing enough to request it from our library.  And it is an intriguing story.  Or, rather, set of stories, as this was an omnibus collection of Wool, Wool 2, Wool 3, Wool 4, and Wool 5.  The 532 pages slipped by quickly, though I was surprised at how dissatisfied I was.  The premise is good, the characters interesting, the plot twists satisfying, and as far as I can tell the author writes well.  The ending did not disappoint.  So why the dissatisfaction?

Perhaps because it was just a bit too gritty for me.  I enjoyed the first book most, and thought that perhaps our oldest grandchild might like it.  But it seems as if the author's critics told him after each book that he needed more profanity, gore, and action scenes.  True, it all fits into the story, but made it much less pleasant to read.  (Though it did remind me of one reason I prefer books to movies—it's a lot easier to skim through the fighting.)

My dislike of violence and profanity does not mean I like insipid books.  I've read plenty of squeaky-clean books that left me feeling as dissatisfied as Wool.  I prefer a book, like The Lord of the Rings (NOT the movie) where the paragraphs are a delight to read and the complexity and depth stand up to multiple re-readings.

I believe my dissatisfaction came because my strongest and most important criterion for enjoyment of a book, play, movie, or television show is whether or not the experience leaves me wanting to be a better person.  It doesn't have to be super-spiritual, but I want to be inspired to be kinder, to be more clever, to make our home more inviting, or even just to run a little faster—but to be better in some way.  Wool left me feeling that I had read an interesting tale, but nothing more.

The ending cleverly left room for many more books in the same setting, and there are at least four more available, though not at our library.  If, someday, the library chooses to add them, and if I'm in the mood for something merely relaxing, I may return to the story:  there are a few characters I'd like to follow further....

Something Other Than God:  How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It by Jennifer Fulwiler (Ignatius, 2014)

I've been a fan of Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary blog since it was called Et tu?, which takes me back at least as far as 2008.  Granted, like Free-Range Kids and the Front Porch Republic, it has gotten short shrift in the last year or so simply because I like it so much:  not only was I spending a lot of time reading (which I could have managed) but it too often inspired me to spend much more time writing (which I couldn't).  I long to get back to these excellent blogs again, but only after I've acquired more control over responsibilities closer to home.

Be that as it may, when I discovered that our library now has copies of Something Other Than God, I grabbed it, all other responsibilities notwithstanding.  Having followed the conception, gestation, long-and-agonizing labor, and finally birth of this book, how could I not?  Okay, a real fan would have bought a copy, rather than waiting for the library, but if possible I like to know what I think of a book before I spend money on it.

This one is well worth spending money on, if you can't borrow a copy.  (Heather, the Concord library has it.)  Jen writes really well, even without an editor, and if I can perhaps detect a little heavy-handedness on the part of that editor ("you need more adjectives"), I can still say with assurance that the agonizing re-re-re-writing process resulted in a well-told, powerful, and entertaining story.  My current Kindle-read was set aside once I opened the book, and I finished it two days later—it would have been sooner had I not had some discipline to avoid seriously compromising my other responsibilities.  It's a compelling story, serious and funny, and seriously fun to read.

Something Other Than God takes its title from C.S. Lewis, who wrote:  All that we call human history ... [is] the long, terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.  Jen's journey from fire-breathing atheist to devout Catholic is not only for people who appreciate conversion stories; even those who are certain the pilgrimage took her and her husband in the wrong direction can appreciate the humor and the sheer humanness of the story.

The back-cover endorsement written by Gretchen Rubin (author of The Happiness Project) says it well:  Thought-provoking, honest, and often hilarious.  It will strike a chord with anyone who ever posed—or tried unsuccessfully to avoid—the big questions of life.

But those who are familiar with Jen's blog will be disappointed to learn that there is no scorpion story.  Not one.

Your Life Calling:  Reimagining the Rest of Your Life by Jane Pauley (Simon & Schuster, 2014)

This is why we have friends.  I would never have picked out this book to read.  For one thing, I tend to avoid books by or about celebrities.  For another, I in no way can identify with people who, when their children go to school, or leave home, or when they turn 50, or retire, say, "What on earth am I going to do with the rest of my life?"  I don't need a new life; I have enough planned in the one I have now to see me through more productive years than I can possibly have left.

But a friend highly recommended Pauley's book, and I'll admit that it kept my interest even though I didn't buy into its focus.  The Penzey's fans among my readers will best understand the effect that Your Life Calling had on me.  It was very much like reading a Penzey's catalog, where I find myself repeatedly annoyed by the self-aggrandizement, the leftist slant, and the in-your-face distain for several of my strongly-held principles—yet I keep reading, because the stories are interesting and inspiring.

Pauley premise is that our generation is the first to have the long lifespan and the leisure to "reinvent" ourselves, possibly several times as we go through life.  Today's young people are already doing it ("what we call reinvention is just 'the churn' for them").  In fact, for them it may be more of a necessity, given the pace at which technology (and thus the job market) is now changing.  (The last sentence is my analysis, not Pauley's.)  But it's new for us.

You may be surprised to know that people over fifty-five represent the largest age group of owners of new business start-ups.  At an age when our own parents and grandparents expected to wind things down, people are getting a second wind.

The Stanford Longevity expert, Laura Carstensen, notes that withour new vitality come some pretty big questions.  She says, "Those of us living today have been handed a remarkable gift with no strings attached—an extra thirty years of life for the average person.  Now that gift is forcing us to answer a uniquely twenty-first-century question—what are we going to do with our supersized lives?"

Permit me an exasperated wail at yet another expert who misunderstands the term "life expectancy."  But aside from that, it is true that our generation finds itself thinking in terms of second, often radically different, careers more than previous generations.  One only needs to listen to someone of my parents' generation talk to realize that the men, at least, defined themselves very much by their careers.  Of my generation this is less true, mostly I think because we were betrayed by the "be loyal to your company and your company will be loyal to you" compact.  What is "me" is not my employment, and therefore I am free to move on to something entirely different.

That I get, as evidenced by my need to elaborate on it.  I also appreciated Pauley's description of Imposter Syndrome:

I'll never forget how [David Letterman] described his television career.  He said, "It's like robbing 7-Elevens.  The money's good, but sooner or later you know you're gonna get caught." This was a perfect depiction of a popular psychological term—that wouldn't be coined for another two years—"imposter syndrome."  There was a lot of that going around.

Apparently a lot of people feel that way.  The most amazing choir I've even been in was the work of an extremely gifted and experienced musician who couldn't get over the feeling of having to prove that she was not an "imposter."  I've met great teachers who deny that they do anything more than keep one step ahead of their students.  I myself received A after A after A in school without ever being convinced I understood any of the material I was supposedly learning.  I think there's more to it than Pauley's suggestion that maybe we're all in the wrong career, but the following point is certainly true:

You've got to have the goods to get that promotion, to get through medical school, to be the successful job applicant.  But a successful career isn't necessarily a happy one.  And a proficiency is not the same as a passion.

Most young people I know would say amen to this one, a quote from Paul Giannone, a successful Information Technology professional suffering from Imposter Syndrome, who reinvented himself as a New York City pizza restaurateur:

I just thought that you go out, you pick a career, you work, eventually you build up a retirement fund, you retire, and you go do something you like.  I wish they had told me that you need to find something that you like and do it right now for the rest of your life, because that's what everybody should do—find your passion and do it because you're gonna be good at it."

Pauley adds, "Sometimes it takes the better part of a lifetime to find out what your passion is, but in my observation, if you do, it might be the best part of your life."

Later, Pauley says of Paul,

If you're ever in Brooklyn, drop by Paulie Gee's for some great pizza!  Paul Giannone is always there.  I asked him how many days a week he worked.  "Seven," he said.  Then quickly blurted out, "No!  I work no days a week.  I haven't worked in over two years.  I really haven't.  When I come in here I'm not working."

Your Life Calling is full of stories like this, of people who have taken on second, often radically different careers.  I find in the collection and interesting and contradictory charitable selfishness, or selfish charity.  Seeking more meaningful use of their time, several of the "reinventees" went into fields, from teaching to social work to drilling wells in Africa, where they could have a direct, positive impact on others.  At the same time, there's a disturbing thread of hyper-individualism in most of the stories:  My children are out of the house, so it's my turn; I'm going to make my own life.  I've just been divorced; now I'll do what I want to do.  Worse still:  My husband won't accommodate my new life, so I'll ditch my family and go my own way.  Not all the stories are like this—one woman's reimagining was going into business with her son.  But I found so many of the stories sad, even as they were inspiring.  There's too much self-centeredness, too much divorce, too much of the attitude that you have a small number of children and get them quickly out of the way so you can live your real life.  As if family responsibilities end there.  Haven't these people heard of grandchildren?  :)

Still, as I said the stories are both interesting and inspirational.  I'm grateful for my friend's recommendation.  And I've tried not to hold against the author the fact that the otherwise-rational-sounding husband Garry she keeps talking about is actually Garry Trudeau, creator of the comic strip Doonesbury.

The Brainy Bunch by Kip and Mona Lisa Harding (Gallery Books, 2014)

Facebook, like smartphones, can enslave or empower.  Or both at once.  At the moment I'm feeling grateful to Facebook, and the friend who posted a link that eventually led me to this Today Show feature about the Harding family and their book.

As most of you know, education has long been my passion, particularly the education of young children, and most especially my belief that most children can learn and do so very much more than we give them the opportunity to achieve.  It will thus come as no surprise that when I heard of a family where seven (so far!) of the children had gone to to college by the time they were twelve years old, I immediately ordered the book from our library, and finished reading it the day after I picked it up.  If read with an open mind, this is a book that can blow away a number of stereotypes and presuppositions, and not just about education.

Although a large number of homeschoolers are Christians, including many who have spectacular records both academically and socially, as the movement has grown there have slso been examples of less-than-stellar achievement, especially in academics.  It is unfortunate that when many people think of "Christian homeschoolers," it is the latter example that comes to mind.  The Harding family is a stunning counterexample, especially since The Brainy Bunch bristles with buzzwords that set off alarm bells:  Mary Pride, A Full Quiver, Josh Harris, early marriage, Michael and Debi Pearl (at least they label the Pearls' book "a bit legalistic"), creationism, the Duggar Family, and others that might send some running for the hills.  But hang on—they also mention John Taylor Gatto, Raymond and Dorothy Moore, unschooling, and the Colfaxes, quite on the opposite end of the spectrum (inexplicably leaving out John Holt, however).  Mona Lisa and Kip sound like people after my own heart, able to take the best from many sources and leave aside what doesn't work for them.  In any case, the family deals a clean blow to many prejudices, including that of the college student who once told them, "Children in big families have low IQs."

The Hardings insist, however, that their IQs are strictly average; their children are not geniuses.  This bothered me at first, as it seemed almost a reverse boast, as if there were something wrong with being smart.  But I think I know why they make this point, and it's important.  There are a surprising number of people who have gone to college at an extremely young age (here's a list of the ten youngest), but they are generally prodigies with super-high IQs and extraordinary skills.  This does nothing to encourage most families to believe that early college entrance is possible for their children.  Or desirable.  Despite its title, The Brainy Bunch shows that this higher-level work is well within the grasp of the average student, and why this is a good idea.

Some might even say the Hardings started out as a below-average family, or at least one with several strikes against it when it came to predicting their children's academic success.  Kip and Mona Lisa were high school sweethearts who married in their teens.  After high school, he went into the military and she started having babies.  Lots of babies.  Their life was not easy, requiring many moves, and times of great financial hardship.  And yet here they are, with their children not only college graduates but successful at a young age in many fields:  engineering, architecture, medicine, music, and more.

So how do they do it?  The book may seem short on specific practical advice, because it's a lifestyle, not a curriculum.  Here, however, is a brief timeline of their approach:

• Around age four we start to teach reading.
• By age six we start teaching borrowing, multiplying, writing short essays, and encouraging independent reading.
• By age eight we start algebra, reading real chapter books, and having the children do more writing on their own.
• By age ten they are figuring out what they really believe and why.  They continue along in math as they add in reviewing for the SAT/ACT.
• Somewhere around age eleven, they have mastered the five-paragraph essay and can produce a decent research paper.
• By age twelve (sometimes sooner) they have finished lots of high school-level books on many general subjects to fill in their transcripts.  With that and enough emotional intelligence, they should be ready for a college class or two.

Sixty-three sticky notes festoon the book, marking places I thought I might quote in this review, but I'll content myself with a few observations.  Okay, several observations.

• I've read the complaint that the book is not well written. I see the point, but I've read a lot of popular books that are much worse, trust me. I would say it's not so much that it's poorly written as that the writing reminds me of blog-writing. It's not polished. But it's not bad; rather it's like the difference between folk music and a Bach fugue. Read it for what it is, and enjoy it.
• Most people's first reaction to this idea is, "Why not let your kids be kids?"  It's a legitimate question, but as the Hardings point out, in many ways their children are allowed to be kids longer than most, since they are immersed in a loving family and don't have to face the pressures to "grow up" prematurely that are present in school.
• They make sure their children learn about creationism, but also about evolution.  They encourage independent thinking.
• They are careful that their children read good books, and partake of quality television.  They realize that the Internet can be a dangerous place, but liken it to a hot stove:  it's a powerful tool that must be used wisely.  ("The Internet wants to reveal all of Victoria's Secrets to your child.  Teach them the real secret to success in life is to overcome temptation.")  Once a child can use the Internet, the sky's the limit for learning, and parents can respond to questions with, "Go look it up and share with us what you learn."
• The book never mentions Project-Based Homeschooling, but there is a similarity in their methods.  With the Hardings, however, it appears to be much less organized and purposeful.
• Conversations, especially at the dinner table, play a key role in the children's general education, and in sparking their interests.  It reminds me of Richard Feynman's early education, given informally by his father in the form of questions and discussions on frequent, casual occasions.  It also reminds me of a family we know; although they were never homeschoolers, they were always challenging their children with questions, and encouraging the children to do the same to their parents.  Written like that it sounds unpleasant, but I observed it, and it was delightful, not at all like a test or a drill session.
• The Hardings were good at finding "back doors" when faced with locked front doors.  When they lived in California, their children could obtain high school diplomas by taking a comprehensive test.  They were nowhere near the age minimum to take the test, but there was a loophole: high school sophomores could take the test no matter what their age.  Since the children were homeschooled and doing work on that level, the parents had no trouble classifying them as sophomores.  That didn't work in Alabama, but they discovered that community college transfer credit made up for the lack of a diploma.  They used lesser schools as stepping stones.  Why not?  At that age, they had plenty of time.
• The idea of sending a child to college at middle school age doesn't seem to jibe with their emphasis on family togetherness, but again this is the advantage of not aiming for the perfect college.  The young students went to school close to home, in most cases living at home, and at first accompanied by one of their parents.  When family needs forced them to be in different states, the children stayed with siblings or other relatives.  As I recall, one child stayed in a dorm—at a somewhat older age—but the parents still managed to have plenty of contact and presence.
• Reading the descriptions of their efforts to keep their college kids close to family at all times rang a bell with me, and that's when it struck me:  Mona Lisa Harding is a Hispanic mother.  This would not have meant anything to me had our own children not attended a high school with a significant Hispanic population.  Two characteristics marked Hispanic families, as far as I could tell:  the importance of the Quinceañera celebration, and very tight parental reins kept on the girls, such as mothers accompanying their children on band trips, and a girl staying in the mother's hotel room rather than with the other students.  Suddenly I recognized the Hardings' practices as typically cultural on the one hand, and extremely liberal on the other.
• They never say it in so many words, but I think the Hardings would agree with the idea that the middle and high school years are usually the most wasted time in a child's life.  At that age they can and should be doing college-level work.  Not MIT-level, but a lot more than is generally offered in middle school and high school.  So they considered what it takes to get into college, and geared the children's early education to meet those requirements.  The kids take none of the usual standardized tests, but begin preparing for the ACT and SAT instead.  As soon as possible they begin taking classes for which they can get college credit.
• High priority is given to character education; there's no point in being academically advanced if your character development and social awareness are lacking.
• Since much emphasis is placed on the children's following their own interests, a big question is, How do you (or they) know what that is?  By doing a lot of listening, and working together, for one thing.  It's also important to note that the kids aren't deciding at age six what they want to do with the rest of their lives.  Interests are never set in stone, but are allowed to change, going one way, then another.  As long as learning is happening, the parents are happy.
• There's a lot of flexibility in the Hardings' program ("We follow more of a checklist than a timed schedule"), but here's a sample day:

  • Get dressed
  • Eat breakfast
  • Chores
  • Bible study
  • ACT review (a section a day)
  • Writing
  • Lunch
  • Reading (history and science)
  • Math (if not covered in the ACT review)
  • Spanish
  • Violin or piano (they alternate)
  • 2:30, ready or not, PLAY OUTSIDE!
  • no homework "allowed" in the evenings—just reading for fun.

One of the reasons I read The Brainy Bunch was to know whether or not to recommend it to our children.  I would say, most definitely.  Would I buy the book?  Not if I could get it out of the library.  It's definitely worth reading, but I'd read it once before committing shelf space to it.  Then I'd wait for the paperback to come out rather than paying over $16 for the hardcover.  (Hint:  it's available Interlibrary Loan in New Hampshire.)  If I couldn't borrow it?  It's under $10 for the Kindle version; I'd go for that.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)

I'd heard in high school about this exposé of the Chicago meat-packing industry at the beginning of the 20th Century, but somehow my history teachers and my English teachers didn't collaborate enough to require me to read it.  That's probably just as well, as I was operating under the all-too-common theory that if a book was required in school, it couldn't possibly be interesting.

Forty plus years later, I finally read The Jungle, thanks to a suggestion from the Great Courses' Turning Points in American History.  Contrary to my expectations, I found it riveting, very difficult to put down.  (Whether I would have found it so in high school is another question, and I don't know the answer.)  It's depressing enough, following the Lithuanian immigrant protagonist as he and his family are crushed by the dark side of the Industrial Revolution, the unrestrained and unregulated industrial monopolies, and the rampant immigration that encouraged the view of human laborers as expendable.  But it's a gripping story, which makes the end of the book all the more distressing.  I knew better than to expect a happy ending, although a hopeful one would have been nice.  I was expecting a tragic ending, and certainly there's plenty of tragedy to go around.  But The Jungle never ends.  The protagonist discovers Socialism, and after the reader is led through pages of Socialist diatribe, the book simply ends. Upton Sinclair uses and abandons his human characters for the sake of his cause, just as the industrial and political machines use and abandon them in his story.

Sinclair wanted to write a powerful book, one that would have a profound social effect, like Uncle Tom's Cabin before it, and in this he succeeded.  Emotions stirred by The Jungle, including those of President Theodore Roosevelt, led directly to the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act and the Meat Inspection Act, and eventually the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration.  But the contamination of the country's meat products was not Sinclair's chief concern; he wrote the book for America's workers, for the exploited immigrants.  As he later said, "I aimed for the public's heart, and by accident hit it in the stomach."

The Jungle has been accused of exaggeration and falsification, and no doubt Sinclair took some artistic liberties.  But all in all the experiences ring true, not only to what we imagine life to have been like at the turn of the 20th century, but also to what has been documented as happening here and now:  monopolistic practices, downward pressure on the value of labor due to rampant immigration, enslavement of immigrants, drug and alchohol abuse, sex trafficking, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and agribusiness practices that encourage disease and contamination.  We've come a long way over the last hundred years in protecting ourselves from the evils of the human heart.  But the evil in our hearts still remains.

Courtesy of the National Archives, here's an article that gives a better picture of the von Trapp family than The Sound of Music movie does.  I still like the movie, but the real characters are more interesting.

Not Exactly Normal by Devin Brown (Eerdmans, 2006)

As often happens at the Maggie P., we had some "relatives of a relative" come visit yesterday.  One of them, a nine-year-old boy, brought with him this book.  I picked it up, read a page, became intrigued, and then spent my spare moments devouring it before the family had to leave.

I appear to be on a roll here.  Like The Silent Swan, which I also read and reviewed recently, Not Exactly Normal is a book written for young people, set in a school (middle school age this time), from a Christian perspective ... and I liked it!  Two Christian authors in a row who include faith in their books naturally and reasonably, without the awkward, embarrassing, beat-them-over-the-head language of so much recent Christian fiction!  Who'd have thought?  Even though Not Exactly Normal deals with important philosophical issues, it is not what people think of as a religious book.  It's a human book.  And one with which I can identify much more than most books written for young people these days.  One Amazon reviewer said,

I wonder whether the erudite family and school setting he is privileged to have would be something a "typical" American middle-schooler could really relate to.

But the family (though sadly, not the school) experiences are exactly why I relate to it—and not to most of what's out there.  As the same reviewer also said,

Any text that includes discussion of John Donne's poetry, background on Good King Wenceslas, Pele and Mia Hamm, and excerpts from T.S. Elliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats in a way that younger readers can understand and even enjoy is definitely to be recommended.

And, I might add, computing square roots by hand.  (Taught in the classroom, though unfortunately not demonstrated in the book.)

The Locust Effect by Gary A. Huagen and Victor Boutros (Oxford University Press, 2014)

First world problems, even for the poor, really are different from those of the developing world.  That doesn't mean they're not problems; dearth and excess are both damaging.  Think starvation versus industrialized food and an obesity crisis; no schools versus an educational system with a stranglehold on our lives; lack of basic medical care versus a health care machine that takes birth and death away from home and makes us dependent on drugs.

We also have a hyperactive legal system that shackles our lives and has taken common sense out of the rule of law.  The developing world?  Rampant, violent crime and a legal system that protects the perpetrators and victimizes the victims.

Nearly fifty sticky-notes festoon my borrowed copy of The Locust Effect, but I don't have time to type them out.  I could wait, but I'll never have time to do justice to the book—or more importantly, to its ideas.  So I'm going to take the easy way out and suggest, strongly, that you check out the websites of The Locust Effect and of the International Justice Mission.

The Locust Effect is an extremely important book.  Essential, really, for anyone who cares about the poor and suffering of the world.  It lays out a strong and effective case that the most basic, most critical, and least recognized problem of the world's poor is the lack of an effective system of justice to protect them.  Occasional police brutality and corrupt lawyers notwithstanding, we take it for granted that our legal system is there to protect us from crime.  For much of the world, however, that is simply not the case.  What good is it to provide seeds and farming tools if the land with all its crops is likely to be stolen?  To promote the education of girls if they can expect to be raped on the way to school—or by the teacher?  Why provide medical care if the man cured from his disease then rots in jail for 30 years just because he happens to be walking down the street when the police are out, press-gang style, looking for someone, anyone, to convict for a crime committed by someone who has paid well to be acquitted?

If the websites don't convince you, then by all means read the book.  If you worry that the authors would take anything away from programs that feed the hungry, provide microloans to impoverished women, build libraries and schools, or otherwise meet other critical needs, then read the book.  If you believe the need, but fear the problem is hopeless, read the book.  The book's 346 pages provide exhaustive documentation of both the problems and approaches that have shown great success.  But "exhaustive" is the operative word.  As befitting lawyers, the authors dot every i and cross every t, and like Presbyterian preachers make their points over and over again.  I highly recommend reading the book, but if there are easier and faster ways to get to the ideas, I'm sure the authors would still approve.

Violence against the poor is a difficult and dangerous problem to solve, but not impossible.  There is no magic bullet; it takes courage and hard work and a whole lot of patience and perseverence.  The first step is bringing this hidden and unacknowledged crisis to light, and The Locust Effect does that well.

The Silent Swan by Lex Keating (AltWit Press, 2013)

Having found myself in the vicinity of Stephan's Kindle, I could not resist reading his copy of The Silent Swan.  Were it not for his positive review, I would have passed on the opportunity, as coming-of-age stories and romances are both near the bottom of my genre preferences.  (You can read his review here.)  However, The Silent Swan is so much more than that.  (The cover is unfortunate.  Maybe not for the author, since in my observation that kind of cover sells.  But it hardly does justice to the book.)  What really hooked me is that the story is a mystery, and I'm a sucker for mysteries.  Trying to unravel the truth kept me reading, and the ending did not disappoint.  Overall, I give the book four of five stars.  But for the romance/teen angst/school story genre, it deserves at least a ten.  Ditto for the "modern Christian fiction" genre.  The bar is really, really low in those categories, which makes The Silent Swan a standout.

It almost lost me in the first chapter.  I suppose that if a character is going to develop gradually over 580 pages, it helps to start from a bad place.  I really hate it when people do stupid things in books, and the protagonist was being really stupid.  Granted, the action takes place in a school, among hormone-laden teenagers, which is practically a recipe for stupidity ... but still.

I've said this before—in my review of Stephen Lawhead's The Skin Map—but it's equally true here:  "My least favorite [parts of the book] were the drawn-out descriptions of the physical appearance of every female character encountered, and the even more interminable battle scenes, both of which were obviously included for the more testosterone-laden among us."  The Silent Swan is clean, almost grandchild-safe (and probably better than much of what our eldest has already read), but violence and sex still sell to some segments of the audience.  I found the brotherly squabbles (and fights) annoying, even boring; and if this story provides an accurate description of what goes on in a teenage boy's mind whenever he sees a woman ... let's just say I'm feeling a lot better about burqas.  It's not porn, but even I am enough of a feminist to find it outrageously insulting.  (Yet this is 'way better than so much of what's available and aimed specifically for the teenaged audience.)

There are some points where the story stretches my "willing suspension of disbelief" too far.  It is unfathomable that in any family these days, let alone a family with a full-time employed mom, kids could grow up so ignorant in the kitchen.  Haven't they heard of cookbooks?  Or allrecipes.com?  I can see asking them to have meal responsibilities, but what parents expect so much from someone with no preparation at all?  I actually know someone who was taught to swim by being thrown into the middle of a lake—but even then the instructor was there to keep her from drowning.

The main female character is also omni-competent in so many areas that for some that will be the least credible part of the book, but I see it as a strong point:  I know teenagers can be and do so much more if allowed to break out of their media- and school-induced comas!  If she is a bit too much of a superhero, she's also the most human and reasonable of all the characters, and in her courage, perseverance, intelligence, and (non-romantic) love is a positive female figure—something I find very rare.

I mentioned that The Silent Swan is a standout in the modern Christian fiction genre.  Frankly, I don't know whether or not the author intended it to have that label.  Certainly J.R.R. Tolkien would not have accepted such a designation for his works, and they are some of the best Christian fiction extant.  But it deserves consideration, because I could see this book selling in a Christian bookstore.  Certainly the cover looks like the Christian romances I've seen there.  Yet one of its strengths is that it's a Christian novel that is hardly recognizable as a Christian novel.  It's not The Lord of the Rings, but is nonetheless infused with Christian attitudes and values while completely eschewing overt Christian language.  Stories with altar calls just. don't. work.  At the same time, it's not one of those books by postmodern Christian authors, who throw in bad language and questionable content just to prove they're "authentic" and without religious hangups.

The Silent Swan is both too hard and too easy on the foster care system, so I'll average that out to okay.

All the sibling violence to the contrary, the protagonist's family is solid, full of mutual respect and love, and with no quarter given for disrespecting the parents.  That, sadly, is a rare quality in the books that are pitched to children these days.  And if his mind starts out one-dimensional when it comes to women, he does grow considerably, and in all the right directions.  Respect for family; love as something greater than sex; the idea that life might be more serious than going to prom; basic honesty; resisting seduction; the importance of setting oneself up for success in potentially risky situations (e.g. being in a group rather than alone with your girl on a deserted beach)—these are not popular attitudes, especially in young adult books, but are presented as good, reasonable, and believable in The Silent Swan.

The Silent Swan is a well-constructed and clever take on one of Grimm's fairy tales, The Six Swans.  I won't say the writing is great, but it's good, and that's saying a lot in these days of slap-dash writing, and of editiors and proofreaders who apparently have time to do neither.  I've recommended it to our library for purchase, and I hope Lex Keating has another book in the works.

Note:  Now that I have a Kindle, buying books is a harder decision.  Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Renaissance World is still on my Amazon wish list; I would have bought it months ago if I could only decide whether to get the physical book or the Kindle version.  Unfortunately, it's not part of the Kindle Matchbook program, where you can get the Kindle version for little or nothing if you buy the printed book.  While writing this review, I decided to buy the Kindle version of The Silent Swan for myself (it's only $2.99), but then I noticed that it IS part of the Matchbook program, and what if I later decide to get the book, which at the moment is a pricey $17.99?  I would have wasted the opportunity.  Decisions, decisions.  (Amazon Prime members can read the book for free, by the way.)

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, 2010)

There are math prodigies.  There are music prodigies.  And then there is Louis Zamperini, who can only be called a survival prodigy.

Read the Unbroken before the movie comes out.  Not that I know anything bad about the upcoming film, but I do know that movies have a track record of focussing on the action while missing the subtleties.  Not that there aren't subtleties I'd rather have missed.

To summarize the story of Zamperini—Olympian, WWII pilot, prisoner of war—might give away too much.  You could read the Wikipedia article, but I don't recommend it.  Let Laura Hillenbrand be the storyteller; she does the job remarkably well.

One caveat:  Although I recommend Unbroken highly—it is a remarkable story, horrifying and wonderful—I'm not sure about recommending it to anyone with an active, visual imagination.  I'm not one who visualizes what I read well, as I'm usually in too much of a hurry to get on with the story.  But evil images can make an impression in a flash, and one particular incident haunted me for days.  It still does, though I'm getting better at banishing it when it intrudes.  I certainly can't recommend the book to grandson Jonathan, for example, though it's well within his reading ability and would give him important insights into World War II, the clash of cultures, the depths of evil, and the power of grace.  It would also scar his young soul.  As an aunt, I'm even reluctant to encourage our nephews to read Unbroken, but I have to realize that, being teens and older, their souls have probably already been scarred.  Certainly several of them are old enough to have been in the story had they lived at that time, which is another reason it's hard to read.

Three observations that should not be spoilers:

• As a child, Louis Zamperini could only be called a juvenile delinquent, despite a reasonably happy family life.  The traits that made him so were apparent even when he was a toddler, though they were exacerbated by problems at school.  It's clear that these same characteristics also drove him to be an Olympic athlete, a war hero, and a survivor in unspeakably brutal conditions.  In a society where unruly children are routinely drugged into compliance, where they have no acceptable outlet for their wild energies, where their natural talents are quashed rather then channelled—where will our heroes come from when we need them?
• The brutality of the Japanese prison camp personnel was almost beyond belief.  Take a generation or two of any society:  abuse them physically and mentally, daily and as a matter of course, in school and in the military; teach them that surrender and capture are the ultimate in shame and degradation; above all, fill them with the certainty that they and their people are vastly superior to all other beings ... and then put the dregs of that society, the failures, and the mentally ill in charge of the prison camps.  What is astonishing is not the consequences, but how quickly they come to fruition.
• Despite seeming evidence to the contrary, good is vastly more powerful than evil.