Understood Betsy

Understood Betsy is a children's novel written in 1916, but I had never heard about it before.  I learned about it in home education circles, and read it aloud with Owen. I'd say that it's of equal or higher caliber than the beloved Little House in the Big Woods. 

In the story, young orphan Elizabeth Ann lives with her aunt and her aunts mother.  Her aunt takes care of her every need and shelters her from anything unpleasant, and prides herself in truly "understanding" the needs of Elizabeth Ann in a way she was never understood as a child.  When her aunts mother gets ill and needs to move somewhere where she can get well again, her aunt sends her to go live with the Putney cousins, whom Elizabeth Ann had always overheard are undesirable people--who don't understand children at all and make them to do horrible things called chores.

With the Putneys, Elizabeth Anne, becomes known as Betsy, and is exposed to a manner of living she's never seen before.  However, as "terrifying" responsibilities (like walking herself to school) are placed on her shoulders, she comes to realize that she is equal to the task, and capable of far more than she ever knew. 

This story contains quite a lot of the explanations of interesting daily tasks that are so fascinating to us these days, like in the Little House books, but there is so much more depth to this story.  I was amazed by the moral lessons that were woven throughout, and I struggled wile reading aloud to choke back tears through a few parts.  I had never heard of this book before, but I'm glad I found such a true classic while my boys are still young so I'll have the chance to share it with all of them. 

Made from Scratch

    I recently re-picked this book up from my library (I picked it up once before but had to return it before I finished).  The book Made from Scratch by Jenna Wogenrich is subtitled "Discovering the pleasures of a handmade life."  This isn't an intense DIY kind of book--if that isn't really your thing.  This book is more of a memoir of a young woman who decides to rent a farm to live on when she moves to Idaho for her IT job rather than renting an apartment. This book chronicles her experiences and the pleasures she finds in doing so.
  
    The book is not chronological but based on subject.  On chapter will be about keeping chickens, one will be on beekeeping, one on gardening, one on mountain music.  Each chapter begins with the author talking about her personal introduction to that aspect of homemade living, and her experiences with it.  She had some great successes and epic failures and shares them all alike.  She makes some good friends as well, learning how much handmade living involves community.  The second half of each chapter is a toe-dip of beginner's information to get started in that venture yourself.  As a long-time homemaker and city homesteader most of the "instructional information" was below my own level of expertise.  This was fine because I could easily skip to the beginning of the next chapter and bypass the how-to section. 

    The one chapter that totally captured my attention (I even read the how-to part of the chapter) was her chapter on work-dogs.  At the beginning of the chapter she writes about taking her two sled dogs out on fresh snow, sledding--in the Yukon definition of the word- on her property.  I read with fascination the process of training dogs to carry packs and pull sleds.  And I have to say, that for the first time (to Jeremy's great joy) I could actually see us getting a dog once we had some property.  One of my big arguments has always been that they don't provide me anything--like wool or eggs.  But I would love having an animal that could help out with work like that.  You know. . . if we lived somewhere that had work to do.

This book was really fun to read since each chapter was on a different subject.  That made it easy to pick up and put down as well.  I would also say that because of the chapter layout (where the first half is her personal story and the second half is the how-to) that is is even good for people that aren't interested in the how to, but are interested in reading a clever retelling of the ups and downs of learning to live made from scratch. 

Domestic Mysteries

I've discovered a new genre of fiction, and I'm dubbing it, "Domestic Mysteries."  They are murder mysteries where the main character is of the highly domestic type.  I love them and that makes me such a nerd!

The first one I found just by chance on the shelf when looking for another book.  The main character has a home business selling homemade soaps. (Apparently this is the second in the series, and the first one was more about soap and called Lye in Wait).  In Heaven Preserve Us the mystery revolved around home canning.  Though it did talk about some of the characters' other domestic forays as well.  The main character is volunteering at a local helpline, and after getting a strange call from a suicidal man (that her boss calls a hoax, and hangs up on) she starts getting stalked around town, and her boss ends up dead.  I read this one earlier in the summer, and don't remember the story in as much detail, but I definitely remember it getting intense, and wondering how she'd ever make it out alive!

I picked up A Deadly Grind, from  my library's "New" shelf last week.  In this book the main character is collecting vintage Pyrex, and kitchen tools and adapting vintage recipes to write her own cookbook.  She picks up this vintage Hoosier cabinet at an antiques auction, and realizes she may have brought home more than she was bargaining for.  This book seemed to be kind of predictable at first, until I realized that all my predictions were wrong!  So I really enjoyed having that surprise. 

I haven't read mysteries for a while, so it was really fun to read a few, and yes, I thought it was really fun to read books about people with my same quirky hobbies!  And a great bonus is that both these books have recipes in the end. 

Divergent

I love a good futuristic dystopian novel.  They are a little bit in the pop culture right now, but it's always been my thing.  Fahrenheit 451 and the short stories of Isaac Asimov for example.  What I love about them is the exploration of society.  The question of what would life be like if these people were in power, or this mindset reigned supreme, or suddenly this aspect of culture or technology were to change. . .

In the book Divergent by Veronica Roth, the society has restructured after a great war into factions of people based on what they considered to be at fault for war and contention.  Thus their faction works to eliminate that weakness from among their ranks, developing instead the positive opposite character strength that they believe will help rebuild a better society.  These traits are selflessness, honesty, bravery, knowledge, and kindness.

Children are brought up in the faction of their parents, but when they turn 16 they take part in aptitude testing and then a choosing ceremony in which they can choose to remain in the faction of their parents or based on their aptitude results and preferences can choose to leave their faction and go through initiation to join another faction. 

The main character, Beatrice, grew up in the faction of Abnegation with her mother, her brother and her father, who--as a man valuing selflessness-- is a member of the government leadership.  Beatrice has never felt as effortlessly-selfless as her mother appears to be, yet her aptitude test results surprise her, and ultimately, so does her faction choice. 

As Beatrice learns more about herself, she also learns more about her society around her.  The factions are not all working together toward a common good, as she once believed, and she has a secret role to play in the unfolding events.  As she hones her strengths she comes to realize, with the help of a friend, that what she believed were her weaknesses may not make her so weak after all. 


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That was my Reading Rainbow style book review in which I end by telling you to go pick up this book in your local library today!  Of course it may be a little difficult right now because the second book Insurgent just came out two weeks ago.  Jeremy and I are reading them together.  There is enough action for him, but not too much of the other kind of "action" that guys don't like reading about.

The Language of Flowers

I've heard of the language of flowers before.  Like the time Jeremy was reading an article on the Art of Manliness about wearing boutonnieres which warned of not wearing just any flower because you may not realize the "message" you are sending with that flower.

The Language of Flowers written by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, is about a difficult 18-year-old girl being "emancipated" from the foster care/group home system.  She has often used the language of flowers to communicate with people around her without them realizing her meanings.  As she works on creating a life for herself as an "adult" we also get glimpses of a significant period of time from her past, then watch the connection between the two become apparent.

As her story progresses, she has the opportunity for happiness, but she holds herself back from allowing that to happen.  She allows her damaged past to keep her from feeling deserving of happiness or success in her relationships and her life.  For a period of time she looses everything that she had been able to achieve, and it is only after she learns to accept herself and to allow herself to have imperfections that she is able to allow herself to have happiness and success in her relationships an life.

I loved this story and immediately began to reread it upon completing it.  I wanted to go back to reread the passages now that I understood how the whole story worked out together.

Lately I have pondered over the topic of whether or not it is appropriate for me to "like" books in which the characters are not living the moral standards that I believe are important.  This book would fall in that category.  But the ending message of the story is definitely appropriate and important.  Victoria's past was not perfect, and she felt like that meant she could not have a perfect future.  I have an imperfect past.  There are many things in my life that are far from the ideal circumstances I would have hoped for.  So do I allow myself to believe that I have no chance for a happy future?  I love how Victoria came to understand that she could accept her past and just let it be and not allow it to keep her from the possibilities of her future.

I now have an aching desire to propagate Moss in my garden.  Moss which means "maternal love" grows without roots.  And I can use motherhood as a metaphor for my whole life and accept that goodness can grow notwithstanding a lack of what I might consider necessary roots.

Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin

"I felt sad that they [my nieces and nephew], like most of the next generation of children growing up in China, would have no brothers or sisters [because of the one-child policy]. We had survived through generations of dark and impoverished living because of this one strength, because of the unconditional love and unselfish care of each other within our family unit. It was all we'd had." p. 413 This amazing book is a biography of the internationally renowned ballet dancer, who was taken from his family in a small Chinese commune to be preened and groomed as a communist puppet to promote Madame Mao's cultural plans. It is an incredible story of oppression and poverty, starvation and hopelessness that changes with one small taste of personal freedom. It is also a story of determination and drive beyond one's natural abilities in order to achieve a dream. I love a book that teaches me, inspires me, and that makes me appreciate the countless blessings I enjoy in my life.  I want to see the movie now, so I need Netflix!

Wild Swans

"I realized then that when people are happy they become kind."  "Having been brought up in a privileged position, I did not realize that in China dignity was a luxury scarcely available to those who were not privileged."  "I could understand ignorance, but I could not accept its glorification, still less its right to rule."  "In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred.  But how much individual responsibility ordinary people should share, I could not decide."  This amazing book is the history of a grandmother, mother and daughter who lived in the last 100 years in China.  The grandmother was a foot-bound concubine of a War Lord, the mother is a devout communist (until it all goes wrong), and the daughter is an intelligent girl whose country closed schools for 8 years during the Cultural Revolution.  The book is banned in China for the truth it exposes.  I never realized how bad things really were there (as it was so well-hidden from the western world!).  Poppy read this book cover-to-cover and that's rare for him!  It's enthralling and engrossing and I promise you will learn so much, mostly to be grateful for democracy!  But it's not a "beach read"--you have to dig in and it will leave your head spinning--but what a ride.  I feel like I've taken a full semester course in Chinese history.