Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audiobook which I picked up because I'd very much enjoyed the last book I listened to by this author, and while the reading voice of Alison McGhee was quite a pleasure to listen to in this volume, the story was rather less than satisfying.

We're pretty much expected to believe that a young girl's sister dies by drowning, through her idiotic practice of running in the forest by a dangerous section of the river, but of course her body is never recovered. I found it hard to believe that there was no effort made to have divers find the body.

Apparently someone else had died here too, but there was no fencing and no signage that I heard of. That part was realistic because humans are morons when it comes to safeguarding lives, and in particular the lives of children. There have to be multiple deaths before preventive action is taken. It's the rule. Also, it's the rule in this book because everyone seems to be dying: people and animals alike! It's the Appelt Book of the Dead!

Anyway, sister one goes running off (for a ridiculous 'mission' she has to complete, which is later revealed for the stupid thing that it is), and is magically reincarnated as a fox. Why? Who knows? Maybe the author does, but she doesn't care to tell us - not in the part of this I could stand to listen to anyway, since this was a DNF for me.

A better question though is 'who cares?' because we're given no reason to invest in these people. The characters were uninteresting and uninspiring, and they did not draw me in. Adults are essentially non-existent and vacuous when they are. Children don't have childish thoughts.

The story was way too long and boring because it moved so slowly, which is ironic given that much is made of the speed of the running sister and of the fox she returns as. Given that the foxes have very human thoughts, leaving a ribbon for the sister to find as some sort of a message made no sense. Why not simply scratch the message in the dirt with a claw? Plus foxes are like dogs: they don't see green. An author writing about foxes ought to know this.

I was truly disappointed in this one. It was such a sorry contrast to The True Blue Scouts of Sugarman Swamp, and I cannot commend it.

Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach

Rating: WARTY!

I came to this by way of the Netflix TV show of the same name which derived from it, and I have to say the TV show is significantly better in my opinion. I honestly could not for the life of me figure out why 11 publishers would bid for this novel (which is what The Guardian says happened).

I know it's very likely a debut author's dream to have that kind of demand for her work, but I'd be embarrassed to have anyone bid for this novel had I written it. I'd be more likely to post it for free on my website or in some fan fiction site. On the other hand I would never have written this. If that means I'll never have a bidding war, or a TV show made from one of my books, or a best-seller, it's fine with me. I don't work that way. I want to be proud of what I've written, not embarrassed by it a few years hence.

The problem was that the book simply wasn't interesting and was poorly written. Main character Leila discovers a chat board (how quaintly antique!) called Red Pill - named after the pill scene from The Matrix. She is groomed by the site's owner, Adrian, and then offered a job of impersonating Tess, who evidently wants to kill herself, but also to have her life continued by another person for a while before being slowly faded to black so that no one knows what happened to her.

None of this makes any sense given Tess's spastic, manic, random, scatterbrained personality. I assume it's because of that very personality that she cannot do this for herself, but to be told that someone with that same personality is planning this happening, stretched credibility too far. When did she ever plan anything? Why would she care if her life ended suddenly or was faded out? From what we learn of her, she wouldn't! The TV show scenario made far more sense.

Leila pretty much immediately volunteers for this role, and starts interacting with Tess for the purpose of learning her life. Never once does dumb-ass Leila think for a second that Adrian might be setting her up. Again the TV show did it better, and certainly better than the idiotic back-cover blurb writer who makes the brain-dead claim that this is an "ingeniously plotted novel of stolen identity."

Now admittedly I ditched this halfway through and had some suspicions of my own about what was happening, but up to the point where I quit reading, there was nothing stolen here! Tess voluntarily gave up her identity to Leila because she wanted this. The blurb outright lies as blurbs all-too-often do. Shame on blurb writers!

It occurred to me that Adrian might be behind this whole thing: that Tess had no intention of dying, and that Adrian planned on killing her, and while the exchange was confined to email and IM chat, this would have worked, because he could have readily impersonated her, but then Leila was having face-to-face skypes with Tess, so unless Adrian had access to some really good emulation software, this impersonation idea seemed a stretch, but maybe that's how it went.

Or perhaps Tess didn't plan on dying, just on disappearing, and had no idea Adrian planned on killing her, so this is why this seemed to work. Either way there was no identity stolen! I don't know what the plan was or how it actually played out, or even if Tess was dead at all, but by halfway through I wasn't even remotely interested, because the story had become such a drudge to read that I couldn't have cared less, and not one of the characters appealed to me.

The story actually wasn't too bad until Leila went to Spain trying to track Tess down. At that point, the entire thing came to a screeching halt and boredom set in like chilled molasses. The story was all over the place to begin with - not linear at all - so it was at times hard to follow. Here it was easy to follow but completely lacking in anything remotely interesting. The story literally did not move a millimeter. Leila constantly complained about the heat in Spain (which stays mainly in the plain), but when she had a chance to go to town and could spend some money, did she buy a cola, or ice water, or lemonade? Nope. She bought a bag of salty potato chips. Not realistic - unless of course my theory that Leila is a moron is correct.

This pointless bumbling around at this 'hippie' commune camp in Spain was a major turn-off. It went on endlessly and it was tedious in the extreme. I mourn the trees which were sacrificed because of this author's evident inability to self-edit or to know when enough is enough. It should be needless to say that I lost all interest and I quit reading. I cannot commend this book.

They say Blue by Jillian Tamaki

Rating: WORTHY!

I commend this book! Reading it was like reading a series of haikus. The theme is color and it meanders all over the world and the seasons, starting with the blue sky and ocean in summer, and drifting through the seasons. It was beautifully written and gorgeously illustrated and I fell completely in love with it. I enjoyed Jillian Tamaki's drawings in Gertie's Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley, which I favorably reviewed back in June of 2016. It's nice to see her out on her own. I recommend this nook, even if you don't have children!

The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen Minor Works

Rating: WORTHY!

As I mentioned in the previous review, I checked this out of the library at the same time as the other, only to discover that they pretty much contain the same material, so you takes your library card and you pays your respects, I guess. These can probably be found online these days so maybe a trip to the bookstore or library isn't necessary.

This volume contains very much the same thing the other did, but in a different order, this one being more chronological, and largely in reverse order of the other, strangely enough. Up front is young Jane's 'juvenilia' so-called, which consists of literary efforts preserved (and thankfully so) from her childhood which are amusing and very interesting for Austen fans. This is followed by Lady Susan a very short epistolary story which may have been written as early as the mid 1790's when Jane wasn't even in her twenties, but which wasn't actually published until almost a century later. Lady Susan is quite different from her other work.

There is also The Watsons (rather a prototype of Pride and Prejudice) and Sanditon, aka The Brothers, which was uncompleted at the time of her death. This book also contains quite a few poems written by Austen which make for interesting reading. I recommend this as a worthy read.

Sanditon and Other Stories by Jane Austen

Rating: WORTHY!

I got this from my local library out of curiosity. I got a companion volume to it also, but both volumes contain pretty much the same thing: the Jane Austen works that didn't quite make it big!

This volume contains what is commonly called Sanditon, which was the novel Austen was working on when she died. Her own title for it was The Brothers. Many people have pretentiously tried to 'continue' this novel since it was incomplete, but unsurprisingly, it has never taken off as her other major works did.

It contains Lady Susan, about a very aggressive and self-possessed older woman, which Austen finished right before she began work on "Elinor and Marianne" which came to be known as Sense and Sensibility, and following which she began her second full-length novel, "First Impressions" which is known today as Pride and Prejudice.

It also contains The Watsons - the story of Sherlock Holmes's famous companion before the two of them met. Just kidding! Seriously, The Watsons is about an invalid and impoverished clergyman and his four unmarried daughters. Sounds remarkably like Pride and Prejudice, doesn't it?!

Additionally this collection contains what's come to be called "Juvenilia" which is material Austen composed when she was a juvenile. Some of this is really quite amusing. It also contains Austen's tongue-in-cheek 'plan of a novel' and opinions she evidently collected, expressed by friends over her (then) recently published work such as Mansfield Park and Emma.

I recommend this for real fans of Jane Austen.

Atheism: The Case Against God by George H Smith

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a book which covers the ground which Richard Dawkins was accused of failing to cover in his excellent The God Delusion, but as Dawkins himself mentioned in that book, it was never his intention to do that since it had been done already - in books such as this one! Note that these arguments are not new (indeed, the copyright on this one is some forty years old), and some of them go back to antiquity, but the refutations still stand as strong as ever since nothing new or original has arisen to overturn these.

The author opens with a discussion of the scope of atheism and the concept of a god, and then specifically looks at the god of Christianity. In part two, he considers reason versus faith, the varieties of faith, and the revelation. Part three addresses the arguments for a god tackling them one after another: those from natural theology, from a first cause, from contingency, and from design: a non-argument which has been much popularized lately by those who are clueless about science and who call themselves creation scientists. Trust me, there is no such thing as creation science unless the definition of science is changed by faith so that it equates to 'carping about things you don't like and can refute neither by logic nor by counter evidence'.

He concludes with a discussion of the practical consequences of belief and the sins of Christianity.

I recommend this as a worthy read, but please note that you can these days find pretty much everything this book contains online.

The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding

Rating: WORTHY!

Subtitled "and the best burger in Los Angeles" this book tells the story of Abby, who is working a summer part time internship at a fashion store called Lemonberry not far from where she lives. Normally the store takes on only one intern, but the manager, Maggie, is expecting a busy summer and so takes on two this year, and therein lies the problem - the intern often gets to stay on at the store as a paid employee (how that works given that they;re already staffed isn't gone into), so it means that Abby in in competition with Jordana Perez, on whom she soon discovers, she's crushing.

If you don't like cute, you won't like this because this is a very cute relationship. But that said, it's also quite stereotypical. I've read too many YA novels where there's the girl and the bad boy, and while this is an LGBTQIA story, Jordi is definitely the trope bad boy, short-haitred, dressed in black, in complete contrast to Abby who wears bright colors, often with a fruit motif. It turns out that Jordi isn't as bad as she's painted, so there is an out, but it still seemed a bit been-there-done-that to me: Abby the femme with Jordi the butch. It's right there in the names! it would have been nice had they been named against stereotype, and the fact these these contrasts between them were never really explored was a minor problem for me.

Another contrast is that Abby is overweight and Jordi is far from it. Some reviewers have outright described her as fat, but I don't like to use that word, especially in a case where we never really get an idea of exactly what body type Abby has. Ultimately, it's not important what body a person has if they're healthy and are getting some exercise, but it felt like a bit of a betrayal in that Abby seems far too comfortable in herself for the real world, and we never really get any feeling that she's had a hard time for her body.

It would be nice if that was everyone's case, it really would, but it's not, so this felt a bit unrealistic to me especially set as it was in a teen/high-school environment. Literally everyone accepted her and no one ever had a remark about her? And this is when she's hanging around with jocks because her best friend is dating one? It seemed a bit too sunshine and rainbows, especially in an era of a shameful presidency where crassness and crudity and rampant misogyny, homophobia, and racism is positively encouraged. The book was published only this year, so yes, the author knew, and I was sorry she didn't do more with that.

That said, I really loved Abby for her humor and wit, and for her observations of life around her and even for being scatterbrained at times. Her relationship with her best friend Maliah was a solid one, and even what she develops with this new guy during the course of the story - one of the jocks, named Jackson, or Jax for short. He was pretty cool despite being a dick on occasion, and be warned there is an ulterior motive!

Abby seems to be fine with how she is, but there seems to be a lot of reference to her body in spite of this. She mentions it quite a lot in contrast to her profession that she's happy with how she is, and this isn't gone into either. Nor is her mother's shameful behavior towards her which seems inexplicable and particularly with regard to the kind of person Abby grew up to be.

Abby got her internship because she is a blogger with a lot to say about fashion for plus-sized women. Jordi got the job because of her photography and it's this which causes some grief later in the story - a plot point I found to be a little on the thin side which is ironic give the subject of the story! Once she and Abby begin dating, Jordi starts takign lots of pictures of Abby, and Abby never objects or questions to what use these might be put, not even when she realizes that Jordi likes to show the world how she sees it, and that she has an upcoming show at a local public display area.

Warning bells should have rung in Abby's head, which is sad, because they don't and this makes her look a lot less astute about trends and signs than she's been shown to be to that point. I'm not usually good at picking these things out, but even I could see exactly what was coming from a mile away.

The blurb tells us that "...when Jordi's photography puts Abby in the spotlight, it feels like a betrayal, rather than a starring role." Yes, Abby is the star of Jordi's show. This is not a spoiler because it's no surprise whatsoever. This is followed by the truly dumb, trademark question that utterly moronic blurb-writers cannot seem to keep themselves from asking: "Can Abby find a way to reconcile her positive yet private sense of self with the image that other people have of her?" Hell no! The world will explode in a nuclear holocaust! Hell no! She's met a hot Internet celeb, and fallen in love, throwing Jordi over. Hell no, Abby is so offended by Jordi's pictorial that she's scared straight and starts dating Jax. Seriously? Of course Abby and Jordi will end up together - it's that kind of story. Duhh!

Book blurb writers must have a truly abyssal view of their readers' intellect to pose imbecilic questions like that. And they're so frequent, especially in chick lit. What does that say about how publishers view their readership?

Abby's reaction to Jordi putting her into the spotlight seemed disingenuous to me, and it completely betrays the relationship far more than Abby whines that Jordi has betrayed her. Grow a pair Abby! Her reaction is far too dramatic and written solely for the purpose of breaking them up so they can have a tearful reunion later, and this smacked of amateurishness to me. It read t this point more like fanfic than ever it did a professionally published novel.

This is the part of the book that I did not like and which seemed much more unrealistic than any other part. Some people have called out Jordi in their reviews, for her behavior, but she's behaving true to character. It's Abby who is willing to betray Jordi and her supposed love for this woman, over a thing like this which could easily have been resolved instead of discussing it with her. This relationship is doomed, trust me!

I think it would have been a better ending to have had Abby realize that she had overreacted, and had her go to reconcile with Jordi only to find that Jordi refuses, because Abby had betrayed her by showing such a ready willingness to completely ditch her and turn her back on her over a simple misunderstanding. That's how I would have ended this one.

I have to say a word about the fashion element too! On the one hand this book shows Abby as being very stylish and dressy, and on a budget too (although Abby never actually seems short of money, Where she gets it all goes unexplained). I have no problem with Abby wanting to be stylish and having an eye for it. She can be anything she wants. Even the anorexic, self-indulgent, fatuous and shallow world of fashion is waking up - begrudgingly and far too slowly - to the fact that people come in other sizes than Bulemic Zero.

But it bothered me that Abby (and the author) had nothing much to say on this topic. Just saying. It's this and the magazines, and Hollywood, and TV which contrive to make women feel ugly and poorly dressed, and unsexy and worthless, and it's shameful. This is why I have no tolerance for the fashion world. Its sole purpose is to make women feel inadequate and out of date, and thereby inveigle them into endlessly dieting and spending money they don't have on the endlessly updating latest fashions, and it's criminal, misogynistic, and disgusting. Women have enough to contend with in the academic ad business worlds without piling this on.

Once again I find myself having to talk about biceps! As in when Amy Spalding wrote: “...wrapped up in Trevor’s bicep.” Seriously, unless you’re an anatomist or a surgeon, there’s no such thing as a bicep. The bulge you see on the inside of the upper arm is the biceps, plural, because there’s more than one which combine to make the visible part. You’d have to deflesh the arm to actually see a bicep. Did Trevor’s girlfriend tear the flesh off her boyfriend’s arm? I doubt it. Does main character Abby have X-ray vision? Not that she tells us. Does yet another YA author not know what she’s talking about? More than probably.

But all of that said, this book was cute and for the most part told a story I really liked and enjoyed. I just think that the predictable break-up was far too predictable and for the most predictable of reasons, and this betrayed the story. Plus I am not a huge fan of predictable! A little bit predictable yes, because it's comforting, and we can use a lot of that under this presidency, but not so glaringly so! That said I commend the novel as a worthy read overall.

Fearless girls, wise women, and beloved sisters edited by Kathleen Ragan

Rating: WORTHY!

Subtitled "heroines in folktales from around the world" this was a mixed quality book which I nonetheless commend as a worthy read. I picked it up because folk tales are always fun; plus I'm currently working on a book based on a fairy tale, and I was hoping it would contribute to enriching that book, but it really didn't! It did give me some entertainment, and those ideas are now percolating in my brain, which is always a dangerous thing.

This book, be warned, is a very long book, and it took me some time to get though in my leisurely, meandering, idiosyncratic manner. It's divided into somewhat arbitrary regions of the globe from which these various tales are derived: Africa, Pacific, Europe, Asia, North and South American, etc., and each story indicates the people it came from, so the variety (and the quality, as I mentioned) is immense. It does mean that there is something for everyone.

After each story, the editor adds a paragraph about the thrust of the story or adds some personal observation, or something about feminism. The book is after all, as you can guess, comprised of stories wherein the main character is a woman, and some of them are based on legends of real historical women.

My favorites were Molly Whuppie, A Wonderful Story, Davit, and Anait, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy many of the others. Now I've commended it, I can recommend it!

Sailor Twain or, The Mermaid in the Hudson by Mark Siegel

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a graphic novel written and illustrated by Siegel, which I read a while back and had forgotten to blog! I do not know how that happened, but now I'm correcting that mistake. I really enjoyed this. It went on a bit long to be truly perfect, and the ending was somewhat confused, but overall it was a worthy read.

I'm not a big fan of mermaid stories, despite having an idea for one of my own! They have never made a whole lot of sense to me, but to have the, what might be called 'vagina-shaming' and erroneous insult of a fishy smell taken ownership of in so graphic a manner whereby the lower half actually is a fish, is too delicious and intriguing a concept, and I have to love it.

My lack of fanship for these stories is admirably attested to by the fact that I've reviewed only one mermaid book in my entire blog of many hundreds of reviews, and I liked that one. I know I have another somewhere on my shelf which I should read and blog, but for now, this is the only other one. That said, I watched and enjoyed an entire TV series about these mermaids who live on the coast of Queensland, Australia. it was called H2O and had a kick-ass theme song (Ordinary Girl) written by Shelly Rosenberg and performed by Kate Alexa.

The reason I made this drastic decision was that I was working on my Terrene World novel Seahorses, a follow-up to Cloud Fighters, although featuring a different cast (I'm not a fan of series!). My characters are not mermaids, but they do have special powers in this environmentally-themed, female-empowerment novel for middle-graders which was also set in that same general vicinity, and I wanted some local flavor and accent, and in the end I became quite a fan of the show because it was so cute and amusing! Plus I've always been a softie for Australians.

Anyway! Sailor Twain plies the Hudson river in New York and he lands a mermaid one day. She's sick and he keeps her hidden in his cabin as he nurses her back to health whereupon the two become quite attached. The story then becomes highly embellished with shady characters, mysterious females, and undersea enchantments, and apart from the somewhat confused ending, it tells a fun story of intrigue, fantasy, and mystery and does quite a good take on mermaid mythology. I recommend it. Or maybe just commend it. I mean, why would I recommend it when I haven't commended it in the first place? Okay...so I commend it, and now I recommend it! Yeah, that's it!

Essential Art History by Paul Duro, Michael Greenhalgh

Rating: WORTHY!

Now back to some books I can get behind! I recently published the sixth in my own Little Rattuses series for children and insane adults like myself. Titled The Very Fine-Art Rattuses, the book aimed at teaching a smattering of fine art to young children. Arts are all too often forgotten in our ridiculous addiction to sports in the USA, and it's important not to lose them or lose sight of them, especially in young impressionist...er...impressionable children! A book like this, while not itself aimed at children, is useful for anyone who wants to know more, or, like me, seeks to include art in a novel, and make it look like they know what they're talking about! Now you know my secret! I don't paper over the cracks, I paint over them!

This three-hundred-some page paperback is a literal A-Z of art terminology, a virtual encyclopedia of everything from Abbozzo (not to be confused with a bozo) to Zola, Émile (not to be confused with a bozo). I recommend this for anyone who wants a handy art book to hand, but note that this book is text only - it carries zero illustrations. This book may know a lot about art, but it doesn't show what it's like! This may strike you as odd, but it would be ten times as thick if it had illustrated the terminology, and imagery is all over the Internet these days anyway for reference purposes. I recommend it.

The Leaning Girl by François Schuiten, Benoît Peeters

Rating: WORTHY!

Since Belgium is having such a good run in the World Cup (as of this writing!) it seems like a good idea to review this graphic novel by Belgian comic artist François Schuiten and written by Benoît Peeters. It was such a weird tale that I couldn't not read it!

After a ride on the Star Express roller coaster, 13 year-old Mary Von Rathen starts going through some lean times. That is to say: she is constantly leaning in the same direction, no matter which direction she faces. So let's say purely for example, that she leans towards the east. If she's facing east, she's leaning forwards, if she's facing west, she's leaning backwards and is similarly inclined at every compass point there is. Except that she doesn't lean in an easterly direction - she leans based on something that;s not in this world - a scientific phenomenon that people are studying to find answers.

No one believes that Mary isn't faking this for attention, and she becomes an outcast and eventually she runs away and joins the circus where her balancing act (which requires no effort on her part or parts!) is a sensation, but when she discovers there may be a man who can help her, she runs away again to track him down, and ends up as one of Earth's first astronauts! There she finds what she's been seeking - people with a bent similar to hers, you might say!

This book was beautifully drawn in black and white shaded line drawings, and very well written and it mixes photography with hand drawing and real people with the comic versions. I recommend it.

Strong is the New Pretty by Kate T Parker

Rating: WORTHY!

This book consists of a series of sections showing the different ways that girls can be strong, from overcoming personal handicaps (so called) to being a good friend, excelling in some activity or other, and so on. There are pictures galore of girls who are strong, of all ages, ethnicities, interests, and social classes, and each has something pithy and engaging to say.

The sections include:

• Wild is strong
• Kind is strong
• Resilient is Strong
• Fearless is Strong
• Independent is strong

This is a powerful and dangerous book and never has it been more important than in an era where we have a weak president who won his office on a minority vote against a strong female opponent. It would make a great gift for any young girl, especially one who might be going through a tough time. I recommend this as a great ego booster and confidence builder, and a team builder, too - to show your young girl she's not alone and she won't fail.

Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt by Ben Clanton

Rating: WORTHY!

This is another in the Narwhal series, and it features Narwhal becoming a super hero - a sea-per hero? His sidekick is of course his friend, the electric jellyfish! One amusing thing about narwhals is that though they are, technically, toothed whales (akin to the dreaded orcas!), they are toothless - having only vestigial teeth loitering in their gums apart that is, from that one magnificent canine that sticks out like a unicorn's horn. The irony of this is that narwhals are a living kick in the teeth to creationists, which is one more reason to love them. You'd have to be a pretty inept or clueless creator god to 'design' a narwhal!

Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea by Ben Clanton

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a short, fun, colorful book about a narwhal and his relationship with his friend the jellyfish and other creatures of the ocean. narwhals are real, unicorns are not, and the narwhal's 'horn' isn' actually a horn, but a deformed canine tooth! Believe it or not. Narwhals are cetaceans, meaning that they are mammals just like humans - well, not just like! This book introduces the narwhal and sets up the series.

We Love the Library by Mike Berenstain

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a short, fun, colorful children's book about a trip to the library. There's not much to say about that, except that anything which encourages kids to read is to be encouraged itself! Reading is truly an important thing in a child's growth, and that;s why I think books like this are a good reading tool. I recommend it.

Birds of a Feather by Lorin Lindner

Rating: WORTHY!

This book is subtitled "A True Story of Hope and the Healing Power of Animals" but too often in reading it, I wondered if that subtitle should have read, "A True Story of Finding the Love of My life" given how much of the text is devoted to the author's partner, who was one of the vets she help bring back into society through what might be loosely described as her 'pairing with a parrot' technique.

There were so many vets who needed this help and according to the text, they got it, but only two of them seemed to get anywhere near the coverage that her husband gets. I found this to be peculiar and slightly annoying. I know he's more important to her than anyone else, but objectively, he's not more important than any other vet, nor was his case unique in any significant way. To be frank, I felt this rather cheapened her message and demeaned other veterans a little bit, but overall, I thought the story was too important and valuable to dismiss it on these grounds alone.

So that irritation aside, I found this book to be a worthy read because it really does get into the problems that both the birds and the vets have, although I could have done without the totally fictional account of the early life of one of her feathered charges named Sammy. Although the story of her capture is firmly rooted in the reality of the abusive wild capture of these magnificent and intelligent birds, the story she told in this particular case was way too anthropomorphized and melodramatic, and it almost made me quit reading the book in disgust.

After that though, things looked up considerably. We learn of how the author, in training to be a psychologist, came to be the caretaker of Sammy, a salmon-crested cockatoo, also known as a Moluccan cockatoo, who had been kept in the most appalling conditions. These birds are a part of the parrot family, although they are not true parrots, and most of these creatures are used to living in flocks. They are very intelligent and they suffer considerably when confined to cages, and neglected through lack of attention and stimulation. I noted at one point that the author erroneously describes budgerigars as “frequently but erroneously called a parakeet” but budgies are indeed parakeets! The author is in error!

This suffering of intelligent animals applies to very many sentient creatures of course, but some such as the parrot family, the corvids, the cetaceans, the canines, along with elephants, monkeys, and great apes, feel it much more because they are so very intelligent and sensitive. It isn't surprising, in this regard, that people do anthropomorphize them, and though I balk somewhat at that, I do not have any doubt that they need to be treated much more like humans - or perhaps more like children - than ever they are at present.

That does not mean they necessarily think as we do or perceive things in the same way we do, but it does mean they must be treated with respect, and as individuals, and as thinking, feeling beings, not as "nothing but animals." This is why owning a parrot is an unwise move. As the author points out, they form attachments and are long-lived. Additionally, they need the freedom to fly and explore, and they need frequent companionship.

It's downright cruel to buy one and stick it in a cage in the corner of the room and think you are caring for it. You're not. It's equally cruel to care for one and then give it up after it has formed an attachment to you. It seriously hurts them and it takes them a long time to recover and re-socialize. It's far better not to own any sort of parrot, especially if you want your house to be quiet and your furniture to remain intact....

The book is short and has short and quite pithy chapters, although there is some repetition in the pages and the story is more about the author, her husband, and parrots than it is about veterans although the latter are not exactly neglected by any means. The author tells us her story of how she first got to caring for parrots and how she also, through her work, got to caring for troubled veterans, and how purely accidentally, these two aspects of her life came to coincide with the sum being far greater, more amazing, and infinitely more worthwhile that either section was on its own.

Although, as I mentioned, the story is irritating at times, overall - be warned! - it's a real tear-jerker and the stories of how both the veterans and the parrots are treated - or more à propos, mistreated, can be heart-breaking, but the author, through her sterling efforts created, with the help of the veterans, and advised by the parrots, a haven, and the result is truly startling and exemplary. I recommend this book fully.

Polar Bear's Underwear by Tupera Tupera

Rating: WORTHY!

Tupera Tupera is a duo of authors who write children's books in Japan, where this book is known cutely as Shirokuma No Pants. The actual names of Tupera Tupera are Tatsuya Kameyama and Atsuko Nakagawa.

Polar Bear has new underwear, but can't find it anywhere! What a scare! Is it here, is it there? Is it rare to have a bare bear? The underwear is, as it happens quite close at hand, but your child will have to turn a few pages to find it unless they're very sharp-eyed! Little underwear-shaped cut-outs in every other page reveal the underwear of the next suspect in the list. Can you guess who is wearing the pants? Do they belong to Polar Bear? And why not? There are lots of questions here and each has an answer.

This struck me as a charming little book which provides a mystery and an adventure any young child can enjoy. Of course there's always the possibility that a page with a hole in it might tear if not handled gently, but children's book pages can tear anyway if the child is a little too aggressive, so I don't see this as an issue - not when compared with the activity and discovery. I thought this was a worthy read for young children, and it's the kind of adventure you can't really duplicate in an ebook. Fortunately I know exactly where my underwear is...or do I? Excuse me! Gotta run!

Round is a Tortilla by Roseanne Greenfield Thong

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a small format, short, fun book with a strong Latin influence, aimed at teaching young children simple shapes and encouraging them to find shapes in things they see. It was colorful with illustrations by John Parra that were unsophisticated, but without being too simplistic, and the text was an easy read, warmly written, and offered a look at Latin life as well at common shapes. I think this is a fun read for children and educational to boot. I recommend it.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, Stéphane Melchior, Clément Oubrerie, Philippe Bruno, Annie Eaton

Rating: WARTY!

This graphic novel taken from the original novel by Philip Pullman, adapted by Stéphane Melchior, with art by Clément Oubrerie, and coloring by Clément Oubrerie and Philippe Bruno, and translated from the French by Annie Eaton was a disappointment I have to say. The text was so-so and the artwork was blah. Really blah. It told the story in a very workmanlike manner, with no flashes of anything exciting or remarkable. The colors in the artwork were muddy, and the artwork itself really was unappealing.

I cannot recommend this as a worthy read; instead I recommend either the original novel or the audiobook version of it, which is narrated by Pullman himself along with a cast who play the characters. I like the movie, too. It’s pretty sad when a movie makes well-over a third of a billion dollars and is considered non-viable, but the USA is a very fundamentalist religious society, first amendment be damned, and this is effectively what killed this movie series, I think.

冬には動物園 (Fuyu ni wa dōbu-tsuen - A Zoo in Winter) by Jirō Taniguchi

Rating: WORTHY!

Chevalier Jiro Taniguchi (he's a knight in France!) died last year at the age of 69. I understand that this book, published in 2008, but set in 1966, is autobiographical and tells the story of how he got into manga in the first place - on the production side, not the reading side. That distinction is important, because this work almost never shows him reading a comic! When we meet him, that's all we get: someone on a voyage, or more accurately adrift, apparently never having departed a port. There's no history here excepting in what we learn tangentially as he floats along, carried by life's currents rather than rowing his own passage. As an autobiography it also drifts from reality in that he's a character with a different name in the story.

He is working in a small textile business and hoping to get a shot at design when, on a trip to visit a friend, he finds himself hijacked into working for a major mangaka - a creator of manga. I'm far from convinced that exchanging the life he had in what I understand is a beautiful Kyoto was worth moving to megacity Tokyo for (the population there was ten million even in 1966!), but never having been to either place, knowing only what I read, I have to take his word for it! I do find it intriguing that Kyoto becomes Tokyo by simply moving the first three letters to the end of the word! This works equally in Japanese or English, but whether it means the same thing when switched in Japanese, I can’t say.

But I digress, as usual. His lowly job is filling in the blanks in the artist's work - painting backgrounds and so on. This seems highly suitable since he is himself a background to the lives of others as told in this story. Eventually he gets his own work published and the rest is history. The story is a bit weird at times and slow moving, but overall I liked it and I recommend it.