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Summer is here, which means it is time for me to review the books I have read and let you know what I thought of them.

Here they are, approximately in the order that I read them.

• Darkmouth by Shane Hegarty
  I read this only because Alpha checked it out of the library. I previewed it at the library. I think Alpha actually handed it to me and asked if it was okay, probably because the cover art was a monster chasing an armor-clad boy. The way it was drawn was more campy than scary, but you never know these days.

  I previewed it in the library, and previewed it some more. It was good enough that I probably read about a quarter of it in the library. So we got it and I finished it at home and then let Alpha read it.

  It does have monsters – mostly the standard mythological creatures. And it has some violence in that the people are fighting the monsters. And there are some bad guys who do unkind things. Someone does die. There’s slight descriptions of gore, but mostly the fighting is done with – simplified here so as not to give away the plot – a sort of shrink ray that puts the monsters into small glass jars.

  My main problem with the book was that it is written as book one of a series, so the ending is a segue instead of an actual ending. But if you’re going to read the whole series together, that should not be a problem

  Maybe 4th or 5th grade on up.

• Masterminds by Gordon Korman
  The main problem with this book was that it is only part of a book. It is only about one-third of a book, not a whole book.

  This is the first book of the planned Masterminds Trilogy. The other books aren’t out yet, so I don’t know how the story ends. It might be one complete physical book, but it has only part of the story. The book ends as if it were a commercial break in a television program – a bit of the story has been finished, but you are left wanting the rest of it, to come to a conclusion.

  I’m not a fan of books that don’t have a solid ending.

  The other problem is that a major premise of the book is that all the kids are being lied to by all the adults. In other words, it is the kids’ job to work around the adults in order to figure out the truth. Adults are not to be trusted.

  Maybe that will get better (i.e. some non-villain adults will figure into the story) in the other books. But if you are concerned that your child is tending towards problems with authority figures, you might want to steer clear of this book.

  Apart from that, the book is well written in that it was hard to put down. I put it on the Captivating side of the scale.

• Savvy by Ingrid Law
  This was an engaging book. Borders on the feel of the old-time tall-tales genre, which adds to its charm.

  This would be fine for 2nd or 3rd grade on up, but I would suggest 5th grade on up because of the themes that are presented. Nothing objectionable, quite the opposite in fact, but why bother a 2nd grader’s mind with the first crushes and the appropriateness of tattoos and other such topics?

  The best part of the book was its small-town feel and values. Church is part of people’s lives. Bibles are common. The girl says she doesn’t want to be kissed and the boy says that he can wait. A variety of little things that aren’t the main plot but are part of the story. They all add up to make a positive book.

• As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley
  If you like all the other Flavia de Luce books, you’ll like this one. It’s a Flavia de Luce book, but it’s not really part of the series. It stands on its own fairly well in introduction, setting, characters, and ending. As far as murder mysteries go, it’s tame. High school on up.
• The Supernaturalist: The Graphic Novel by Eoin Colfer
  We were at the library and the boys were gathering books. I glanced through the titles, as I usually try to, and this one stood out as one I should investigate.

  I ended up reading the whole thing before we checked out. Not because it was that engaging or interesting, but because it was quick.

  It was a little darker and more violent than I liked, so I took it out of the pile, told the child the reasons I didn’t like it for him, and put the book back.

  I think he found this only because he had read some other things by this author, and because he probably figured that a comic-like book couldn’t be bad.

  I’m not outright condemning this book, but there are so many better options for your child to put into his mind – don’t waste it on this.

• The Real Boy by Anne Ursu
  Has references to magic and potions and wizards. Most of it is just which herbs to use for what – there’s probably more about traditional herbal medicine than magic. I don’t know that the herbs they mentioned are effective for the treatments described, or even if the herbs are real.

  Anyway, on to my conclusion. It’s a good book. Some bullying and mild violence, plus some worse violence that happens offscreen. Or, uh, off-page since this is a book. But there’s not a lot of that.

  Overall, I found the book to be interesting. 3rd grade on up.

  P.S. – if this book is ever made into a movie, I wouldn’t trust it. It would probably end up very creepy due to the plot of spoiler prevention activated that some directors might emphasize.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.

Hebrews 13:17

Whether I’m waiting for someone or just arrived somewhere early because I like to be early and hate to be late, sometimes I find myself with some extra time. It used to be that I would stand back and people-watch. Or things-watch. Or daydream. Or whatever – I have no problems having nothing to do.

But it does bother some people – they can’t understand that someone can just stand there and not need something to do. In the past, these people would come up to me and ask if I was okay, or if I was lost, or if I needed help.

No thanks, I’m just waiting.

They would take that as their cue to start a conversation. Something along the lines of ‘since this person has nothing to do, I will provide him with something, in the form of talking. Everyone must be bored if they are not in a conversation.’

But I was enjoying the silence and not having to talk.

But technology has furnished us with a solution – the smartphone. Or phone as it is being called these days, since just about no one has anything but a smartphone.

You can stand about anywhere, conspicuously or not, and people will leave you alone as long as you look like you are texting or scrolling through something on your phone.

I can continue doing things as I used to, now I just hold my phone in front of me and people leave me alone. ‘He must not need me to start a conversation with him since he is already in a texting conversation with someone else.’

We finally moved. After about 3 years of looking, we found a house we both agreed on and that the sellers agreed with us on the price.

The good news is that it was only a few miles from our old house, so we could move things in stages. First, some boxing up some things and moving them over. Then, one big day of moving furniture. Then, more cleaning and boxing of secondary items.

The bad news is that it was only a few miles from our old house, so we didn’t have to move everything at once. We can keep going back to the old house for things we forgot or weren’t important at first. Which means that the move is dragging on. A bunch of stuff (e.g. boxes of winter clothes) is still at the old house, because it didn’t have to move. Now we still have to get it out of there, but there is not as much motivation any more.

I’m finally back to a zero balance at the library. We had overdue books since April.

They weren’t accumulating fines since April. As soon as I realized they were overdue, we renewed the check-out to stop the fines.

The fine was $11. And it cost $4 to pay to replace the book if you give up and say it’s lost. But the library is generous in that whatever you pay to replace the book is applied to the fine.

But along the way, other books came and went and accrued fines. Here’s a tip: if you let a 3-year-old check out books on your account, don’t let them out of your sight. He will set them down somewhere and then promptly forget where.

So the total was $17 today, and we are the proud owners of two small books.

… if we can find them.

We understand there are 5 physical senses that the human body has. People have tried to introduce various things as a 6th sense, but that is still nebulous.

Having observed current culture, I see the need to document the 5 cultural or social senses.

• Sense of entitlement
• Sense of outrage
• Sense of unoffendability
• Sense of awareness
• Sense of immediacy

But these 5 senses have come at a cost – they replaced other senses that had withered due to lack of use. Here are 5 senses that people used to have, and what they should have instead of the senses listed above:

• Sense of responsibility
• Sense of direction
• Common sense
• Sense of shame
• Sense of purpose

It’s not unusual for one or more of our boys to grab some sticks or leaves to play with and then try to bring them in the house. So when my wife came home and saw this:

she assumed one of the kids was playing with some nature and left it outside the front door.

Then she looked up.
(more…)

For some reason, I’ve been reading books when it’s not summer vacation. Rather than wait until my annual summer book review and write an interminably-long post, I decided to write about them now.

Here they are, approximately in the order that I read them.

• No Talking by Andrew Clements
  Story about kids in elementary school. I read this just because Alpha was. It was mildly amusing. Nothing objectionable that I remember.
• A Love that Multiplies by the Duggar Family
  This is not a sequel to 20 and Counting. It is about one-third rehash and two-thirds new stuff. The other book was more about their life stories and this one is more about how and why they do the things they do. Not necessarily for children to read. Most parts are fine, but some topics are geared more towards those familiar with, umm, childbirth-type topics.
• Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax
  I laughed, I cried, I worried.

  What is our transition event for manhood? What ritual must American boys complete in order to be considered a man? And I mean a good, positive cultural event. Killing his first antelope maybe?

  It’s a little reminiscent of the point of the movie Courageous.

  There are a lot of things working against males in the world today – that was the part that had me worried. Mainly the various chemicals. Don’t believe me – read the book.

  Not for kids, but I think parents – especially parents of young boys – should read this book. And his previous book Why Gender Matters. His religious and cultural views don’t always align with Christianity, but his conclusions are good.

• Good Pictures Bad Pictures by Kristen Jenson
  Preventative maintenance is recommended for a number of things – your car, your water heater, your furnace, etc. How about preventative maintenance for your child’s mind? Specifically your child and the internet. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? A few minutes here and there going through this book with your child and discussing expectations and preparing him to avoid bad things online will save him from bigger issues later in life.

  This book is for a parent to read to a child. Have it on hand and go over it with him before you hand him the keys to the internet.

• Your Legacy by James Dobson
  This reminded me a little of what Rob Rienow talks about. Interesting background into his family history. The stuff that’s not family history is stuff you probably already know but need to be reminded of anyway. It’s meant for parents, but if your upper elementary-aged child wanted to read it I wouldn’t see why he shouldn’t.
• The Search for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi
  Good book. Interesting and imaginative world.

  This is the first book of a trilogy, but it stands on its own – the ending is satisfactory without any other books.

  I’d say 3rd or 4th grade on up. There is a bit of violence, but most of it is of the dissection-of-animals variety.

• A Hero for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi
  Second book of the series. It doesn’t stand on its own – the ending does not feel like an ending. There is one bad word – but it is not so bad that the FCC bans it.
• The Battle for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi
  Third book of the series. And the final book, as far as I can tell. A little more violent than the others, but nothing particularly gruesome unless your child is a vegetarian for humanitarian reasons.

  One of the characters does go into some vague musing about truth and it could possibly confuse young minds. Set those minds straight with the poem of the Blind Men and the Elephant. And evolution is mentioned in passing – more of a synonym of “change” than of a belief.

• Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
  Science fiction by a classic author not normally associated with stories of outer space. It was more interesting than I expected but, as it was written before people actually flew into space, it feels dated. I’d say high school on up.