I have been blessed (or cursed) with a vivid imagination since childhood. Add to that the fact that my first three years were spent on a farm in Maine with nobody around but my mother and my sister, and I grew into a person who is happy alone and making up stories. After my family moved to California, I went to school with all colors, races, and religions and my sense of inclusiveness is abundant. Most of my stories deal with unfairness imposed upon humans by other humans. Nearly all of my books are funny, too, even when I don’t mean them to be. Absurdity is my pal.
When I was a kid, I read aLife Magazine article about elephants. Specifically, it shared how the elephants tried to keep an old, beloved family member alive and mourned his passing. It touched my heart.
Set in French Equatorial Africa, The Roots of Heaven is about Morrel, who attempts to stop the extinction of elephants. It’s an uphill fight for Morrel and those few who work with him and is basically a metaphor for humanity’s struggle to survive.
I loved this book for a number of reasons, not the least of which was how hopeless Morrel’s task seems, and how he keeps fighting anyway. I feel hopeless and helpless much of the time as I watch humans kill not merely each other but the earth itself. The Roots of Heaven shows that light can still shine in the murk of destruction.
The Roots of Heaven takes as its subject the deliberate and relentless hunting and killing of elephants for their ivory. Morel, a former dentist whose survival in a Nazi concentration camp he attributes to his fixation on the freedom and companionability of elephants, travels to Africa intent on stopping the slaughter. He circulates a petition demanding their killing be made illegal. It attracts two signers: a disgraced American from the Korean War and a call girl described as "just another animal who needed protection." From here things get really interesting―politically, socially and culturally. Morel realizes that action is necessary; a…
This is the story of Jack Crabbe. Jack was reared by both white and Cheyenne folks.
His story is a masterpiece and describes the destruction of Native Americans along with their way of life (including the bison they relied on). According to Jack, he even participated in the Battle of Little Big Horn and was the only white man who survived.
I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in American history and who wants to read about it in an entertaining way. There’s no way to disguise the hateful way European settlers wiped out native tribes and/or enslaved Natives and Blacks, but at least this is an engaging account thereof.
'I am a white man and never forget it, but I was brought up by the Cheyenne Indians from the age of ten.' So starts the story of Jack Crabb, the 111-year old narrator of Thomas Berger's masterpiece of American fiction. As a "human being", as the Cheyenne called their own, he won the name Little Big Man. He dressed in skins, feasted on dog, loved four wives and saw his people butchered by the horse soldiers of General Custer, the man he had sworn to kill.
As a white man, Crabb hunted buffalo, tangled with Wyatt Earp, cheated Wild…
Head West in 1865 with two life-long friends looking for adventure and who want to see the wilderness before it disappears. One is a wanderer; the other seeks a home he lost. The people they meet on their journey reflect the diverse events of this time period–settlers, adventure seekers, scientific…
This book made me fall in love with the mystery genre.
It’s set on an unnamed Canadian island after WWII, and features two children, Barnaby and Christie, who at first hate each other, and then become pals and schemers in the murder of Barnaby’s uncle before the uncle can kill Barnaby in order to gain Barnaby’s inheritance.
Enhanced by wonderful characters, including an RCMP sergeant (the only survivor of all the islanders’ sons who fought in WWII and feels guilty about it), a one-eared cougar, a vicious bull, and a village idiot, I fell in love with everything about this book.
It was published in 1963, and still holds up today in all its eccentricity, wit, and a little (or a lot of) darkness.
When recently-orphaned Barnaby Gaunt is sent to stay with his uncle on a beautiful remote island off the coast of Canada, he is all set to have the perfect summer holiday. Except for one small problem: his uncle is trying to kill him. Heir to a ten-million-dollar fortune, Barnaby tries to tell everyone and anyone that his uncle is after his inheritance, but no one will believe him. That is, until he tells the only other child on the island, Christie, who concludes that there is only one way to stop his demonic uncle: Barnaby will just have to kill…
Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill was once a beautiful residential area of Victorian homes of wealthy Angelenos.
In the early 1960s, most of the homes had fallen into disrepair and were being demolished (LA isn’t renowned for his love of history). Leo Politi, prolific artist and writer, documented the area in words and pictures so people could still see what it looked like.
I’m a native of the LA area (Pasadena, to be precise) and a historian at heart. I love this book and Leo Politi, whom I met several times when I worked in the Pasadena Public Library. The almost vertical funicular railroad, Angels Flight, connects Bunker Hill to downtown LA. It also features in some of my books.
The president of the Angels Flight Society said they relied heavily on Mr. Politi’s Bunker Hill when they were refurbishing the railroad. You can still ride on Angels Flight today! Pay your dollar and get into either Sinai or Olivet (the two cars) and zip from Olive to Hill Streets and back again.
This stunning work constitutes Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Leo Politi’s love letter to Bunker Hill. In the 1960s, during a period of urban renewal, Los Angeles chose to demolish the 30 blocks of 19th-century homes that Politi had called home for several decades of his life. Here, in strikingly colored line drawings and readable prose, Politi shares his remembrances of his neighborhood and neighbors, bringing the Hill back to life.
Taking only what they can quickly pack, 11-year-old Mardella and her mom secretly move away from their abusive home to start a fresh life in Haven, MN. But Mardella’s sure she's to blame—if only she hadn’t dialed 911, her dad wouldn’t be in jail, her mom wouldn't have been fired,…
This book taught me to love reading when I was in the third grade. Jane, Mark, Katharine, and Martha are suffering the summertime-boredom blues when they find a grimy old coin.
By accident they discover the coin is magic; however, it’s so old it only works part-way. The adventures they have while trying to figure out what’s going on are charming and hysterical. I always laugh when the cat tries to halfway express itself because the children forgot to double the wish they wished.
Anyone with a sense of humor, adventure, and who misses (or missed) the delights of childhood should read this book. It was published in the 1950s, is set in the 1920s, and is still in print! That’s the hallmark of an excellent book.
Book one in the series called "truly magic in a reader's hands" by Jack Gantos, Newbery Medal winner for Dead End in Norvelt.
It all begins with a strange coin on a sun-warmed sidewalk. Jane finds the coin, and because she and her siblings are having the worst, most dreadfully boring summer ever, she idly wishes something exciting would happen.
And something does: Her wish is granted. Or not quite. Only half of her wish comes true. It turns out the coin grants wishes—but only by half, so that you must wish for twice as much as you want.
In the 18th adventure of Daisy Gumm Majesty Rotondo, Daisy, and Sam have finally married and are settling into a happy life together. As they work in their backyard, hoping to plant Cecile Brunner rosebushes on either side of an arbor, Spike, Daisy’s dachshund; and Yuyu, Mr. Lou Prophet’s mangled cat (“Ain’t my cat,” according to the battered old one-legged former bounty hunter) unearth human remains.
Daisy and Sam attempt to identify the owner of the bones in their yard. During this process, Spike the dachshund brings another, older skull to them. Thus begins the task of reuniting the skull and its spirit, those of a Tongva Native, with its family so that the Tongva fellow can finally rest in peace.
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
