Reading highlights, read alouds with my grandsons, 'warehousing' children & other topics
Now does the dance begin...
The Opening
‘Now is the shining fabric of our day
Torn open, flung apart, rent wide by love.
Never again the tight, enclosing sky,
The blue bowl or the star-illumined tent.
We are laid open to infinity,
For Easter love has burst His tomb and ours.
Now nothing shelters us from God’s desire—
Not flesh, not sky, not stars, not even sin.
Now glory waits so He can enter in.
Now does the dance begin.’
—Elizabeth Rooney
Some Reading Highlights
Crooked Cross by Sally Carson (1934) - a Persephone Book written by an author who visited friends in Germany before WWII when Hitler and the Nazis were rising in influence. The book centres on the Kluger family and the changes in Germany between December 1932 and June 1933. Carson wrote two further sequels, The Prisoner (1936) and A Traveller Came By (1938) which I’m keen to read when I can get hold of them. She died of breast cancer in 1941 and her books were forgotten up until Persephone published her book, Crooked Cross.
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (1927) - It’s taken me decades to finally read something by this author and now I’m wondering why. A quiet book that took a hold of me at the start.
This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape.
The Bishop rode home to his solitude. He was forty-seven years old, and he had been a missionary in the New World for twenty years - ten of them in New Mexico. If he were a parish priest at home, there would be nephews coming to him for help in their Latin or a bit of pocket-money; nieces to run into his garden and bring sewing and keep an eye on his housekeeping. All the way home he indulged in such reflections as any bachelor nearing fifty might have.
But when he entered his study, he seemed to come back to reality, to the sense of a Presence awaiting him. The curtain of the arched doorway had scarcely fallen behind him when that feeling of personal loneliness was gone, and a sense of loss was replaced by sense of restoration.
Rumer Godden: A Storyteller’s Life by Anne Chisholm (1998)
Rumer Godden wrote some interesting and diverse novels so I was interested to read this book about her life. Godden was born in India to English parents when British colonial power was at its height, and this biography captures her childhood in Bengal, her marriage, the birth of her two daughters, and her literary career. She always knew she wanted to be a writer; her literary career spanned six decades and included books such as Black Narcissus (1939), An Episode of Sparrows (1955), China Court (1961), and In This House of Brede (1969).
Anne Chisholm used conversations with Rumer Godden as well as access to private letters in this biography. It’s an excellent portrayal of a woman who used her own life experiences to inform her writing and it highlights Godden’s strength of character, her honesty, and her ability to deliver an emotionally powerful story.
Read Alouds With My Grandsons
For the past couple of years I’ve been doing some reading instruction with one of my grandsons but this year I’ve been reading aloud to two of them. We started with Farley Mowat’s Owls in the Family, which they loved (they are aged 7 and 5 years). After that we read The Strange Intruder by Arthur Catherall. Published by Bethlehem Books and set on the Faroe Islands, this is a great adventure story with just enough tension for boys of this age. I read this aloud to my children years ago and they loved it.
Then I thought I’d read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken, which was published in 1962. I remember that we listened to it on audio in the car when our children were younger and that it was great story, but my 7 year old grandson found it too tense (he didn’t like Miss Slighcarp - I think the concept of a nasty adult who hated children was too much for him) so half way through I put it aside and we started The Swiss Family Robinson. They are enjoying this one; the chapters are long, the vocabulary dense at times and the Dad knows just about everything about anything! Which is very helpful if you are shipwrecked (we still can’t figure out where on earth it could be - maybe the Southern Hemisphere…penguins and tropical storms??)
Books for older children:
My children have read these but I hadn’t…
Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry by Mildred D. Taylor - published in 1976, this book won the Newbery Award in 1977 and is an account of a year in the life of an American black family living in the South in the early 1930’s. A sad, well-written story of a family who own their own property, seen through the eyes of a nine year old girl.
Avalanche! by A. Rutgers van der Loeff - a wonderful story published in 1954 and translated from the Dutch in 1955, it is set in a remote village in the Swiss Alps. A group of boys from an International Children’s Village hiking in the Alps are brought to the village after an avalanche and are evacuated from there with the children & women of the town. A good book for boys.
Listening
I tend to listen to a few different podcasters, picking and choosing from their offerings. A couple that I thought were excellent were:
A Difficult Conversation About Surrogacy, IVF, and Parenthood: Winston Marshall
Katy Faust shares her personal story about growing up in an unconventional family. She discusses what children actually need and argues that modern conversations around family, marriage, and reproduction have become overwhelmingly focused on adult desires while the rights and wellbeing of children are increasingly ignored. She explains why she believes society must re-centre the child in every discussion about family.
How Universal Childcare Could Destroy a Generation: John Anderson
Psychotherapist and author Erica Komisar joins John to make the case that what happens in a child's first three years shapes their emotional security for life, that current childcare policy is built on a dangerous ignorance of child development, and it’s basically done out of ignorance.
Komisar believes that universal day care is ‘warehousing children,’ or putting them in ‘day orphanages.’ There has been a push to make people believe that daycare is good for children, or at least neutral and our current Prime Minister in Australia says he wants to be remembered for the development of universal, state-funded child care.
“Romania is definitely a very good example of a government saying that they can raise children better than you can…the kibbutz was also a failed experiment in Israel, the idea that parents and children were separated and that the children were raised by someone else…essentially by the governing body of the kibbutz, that they would be better off than being raised by the parents…the Romanian orphans were literally children that parents gave over to the state because they believed that the state could do a better job of raising their children. Their children would be healthier in these orphanages and the result of that was devastating. That these orphanages were places of great trauma and sadness.
These children did not develop in the same way. They were neglected. They were basically mentally compromised for the rest of their lives.”
The Podcast also discusses technology, especially smartphones and the damage caused by social media and screens; is ADHD actually a disorder and low birth rates.
In the mid 1980’s when I was nursing, I heard from a number of sources that a first full-term birth at an early age was protective against breast cancer but although breast cancer is regularly highlighted in the news and other media, this isn’t something that is general knowledge. Instead we are told that we can delay child bearing and IVF is pushed as a viable option.
Later this week we’re going into the city for the Sistine Chapel Exhibition:
I have two sons born when I was 19 and 21. I breastfed the first son one year and the second son two years. At age 41 I was diagnosed with DCIS in the left breast. I had a large portion of this type and it was close to becoming invasive. The surgeon said the left breast had to go. I chose to also have right breast removed. It’s a decision I’ve not regretted. My oldest sister also had two sons born in her early twenties. Interesting that she too had breast cancer in her early 40s. A factor that surely contributed to our cancers besides another woman related to our mother who had breast cancer twice, is our husbands both smoked.
I always appreciate your book reviews, even the brief ones. And thank you for the helpful gleanings from podcasts. It’s heartwarming to hear of your readings with the grandchildren ❤️