Who Eats What?, the Borrowers, Works of Mercy & more

For the Littles:
Who Eats What?: Food Chains and Food Webs by Patricia Lauber
This brightly colored, slightly 70’s looking book details the food chain. My 7-year-old daughter was enraptured with this book, particularly the drawings that showed what ate what by illustrating the creatures inside bigger creatures bellies, and it inspired some good conversations about where our food comes from. We followed up reading this book by making a food web drawing of our lunch. If you have a kid that is interested in science and likes nonfiction, this book is a winner.

For Family Readaloud:
The Borrowers Afield and The Borrowers Afloat by Mary Norton
We are continuing on our Borrowers journey. The end of the first book leaves much unresolved—what happened to our intrepid Clocks family?—so the second book picks up where it left off. The world of the Borrowers and the idea of the Borrowers—not just tiny, fairy-sized people, but ones that are cutely parasitic to human homes—is captivating. My children quickly take up games where they pretend their dolls are Borrowers, decking them and their Borrower homes in elaborate repurposings. For The Borrowers Afloat, I recommend skipping the second chapter, which is almost word for word from the previous book. For better or worse, Norton tends to want to situate her reader as to where we are in the story, to the point that one would not have to necessarily begun the series at the beginning.

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
The first in a series of four books about a Jewish family living in tenement housing in New York in the 1900s. The family has five daughters and no sons (hence, “all of a kind”). What I think sets this book apart from other books of its kind is the detailed look at what it was like living in Jewish culture during that time; the books go into detail on the religious holidays and customs. While it can be episodic, each book builds toward a bigger story, and we enjoyed them all.

For Myself:
Works of Mercy by Sally Thomas
This book was simply incredible. It is a quiet literary novel, that lures you in with scenes of an old lady adopting a blind kitten, then completely gut-punches you with sorrow! Kirsty is an old Catholic widow living out her days in a small rural North Carolina town, though she is originally from the Shetland Islands. Much of the novel deals with questions of regret, loneliness, and faith.

If you don’t often read literary novels, what I would tell you to expect is that it starts out a little slow as the author situates you with the main character and people in her life; you are getting to know them and to know Kirsty’s backstory. About 1/3rd of the way into the novel though, that deep understanding of the characters begins to pay off. Kirsty is learning to let people into her life, but to do so she has to deal with the grief of her past.

But There’s So Much DIY to IVF That We Can’t Be Sure by Toby Goostree
This collection of poems is an up-close look at what it is like going through IVF to conceive a child. Many of the poems directly connect Old Testament characters with the writer and his wife’s personal journey through IVF (one of my favorites was “Moses,” which you can hear the author read aloud on his website). Another of my favorites was “The Blessing,” which recounts in brief the story of Jacob wrestling, connecting it to how one may wrestle through prayer, and ending on the question “Why did we close our eyes if / not to be vulnerable?”. I’m going to be honest, sometimes the poems told me MORE than I wanted to know about IVF, but, as someone who has read Sharon Olds, nothing shocks me anymore.

Writing Updates:
my poem “My Children Growing Older” is up in the August issue of The Christian Courier (pg. 15)
another children’s poem in Story Warren: Beads and Buttons (inspired by my dau