Grids Gone Wild

For those of you with preschoolers, the summer looms long with relentless requests for snacks and hulu cartoons. In order to thwart the boredom (and get my 4-year-old ready for kindergarten), I've been researching different ways to review (and expand) her math, reading, and writing skills. Here are three resources I'm counting on for math.

Much More Than Counting: More Whole Math Activities for Preschool and Kindergarten by Sally Moomaw and Brenda Hieronymus

In the 48 hours since I checked this book out from the library, I've created about 10 different grid games (hence the post's title). A grid game consists of two pieces of card stock marked with 16 (more or less) squares. You fill in the squares with stickers or pictures related to a children's book or theme. For example, for the book The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash by Trinka Hakes Noble and Steven Kellogg, we filled in our grid with pictures of t-shirts. Then, the first player rolls the die and picks out that number of markers (in this case mini-clothespins). The player then places the markers on the grid (or not). Once you begin playing with a preschooler, you realize why the authors didn't include more rules. My next obsession? Path games.

Math Detectives: Finding Fun in Numbers by Ricki Wortzman and Lalie Harcourt

Are you a square or a rectangle? If you didn't guess already, I'm a square. This book points out that numbers are all around us if we just take the time to look. From figuring out how long is a minute to mastering the basics of playing Nim, this book can be adapted for younger kids but seems geared toward older ones. It includes illustrated directions for each household activity and a notes section in the back gives additional information for those so inclined.

Math-terpieces by Greg Tang and Greg Paprocki

This beautifully illustrated book focuses on grouping. How many ways can you combine Cezanne's citrus, Seurat's circles, and Picasso's features to add up to the target number? It would be helpful to own this one, so younger ones can cut out the pictures and practice combining. If I can't find it at Half-Price, I may just have to attempt a little forgery.

Lent

This is not about giving up chocolate. It's about sacrifice, mourning, and forgiveness. And a cello.

Jeffrey Lent's After You've Gone tells the story of Henry and Olivia. And Henry and Lydia. And Henry and his cello. Henry takes us from his childhood in Nova Scotia, to his marriage and professional career in New York, and finally to a sabbatical in Amsterdam. But not in that particular order.

Having read Lent's works A Peculiar Grace and Lost Nation (in that order), I braced myself for tragic clashes, piercing descriptions of setting, and even bloodshed or rape. However, this story seems mellower, though it does contain its fair share of heartache. Before reading this novel, I've never had a particular desire to travel to Amsterdam. If anything remains of Lent's account of its 1920s beauty, I probably should add it to my list.

I'm still mulling over the ending. Not to give anything away, I'll just say it was all wine and roses - and even chocolate- in none of the right places. But since it's Lent, all is forgiven.

A Homemade Life

The library finally had a copy of Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life. I've only begun the introduction, but I'm already as charmed as I was by her blog.

A Cultural Revelation

In 1979 China, it's a fresh torment at every turn in Muddy River.

First we follow Teacher Gu. His daughter Shan has been sentenced to die. Gu seeks help from the Huas to give her a proper burial.

The Huas, having lost their own adopted daughters, cannot help Shan, but they try to help the crippled girl Nini when they can.

Nini, twelve, eats wall paste to ward off hunger. She is being courted by nineteen -year-old Bashi.

Bashi woos Nini with a roasted hedgehog and poisons a dog called Ear just to see if he can.

Ear's master, Tong, attends a memorial rally for Shan coordinated by Kai. Tong signs his father's name to a petition.

Kai is the voice of Muddy River's radio station. She is married to Han, the son of a well-connected political family.

Han moves out with their son Ming-Ming.

Ming-Ming doesn't attend the denunciation ceremony of his mother Kai.

Yiyun Li's The Vagrants will not lift your spirits. It will not serve to pass the time waiting in the dentist's office. Instead, the novel demands constant vigilance. Your first seemingly watertight impression of either place or character will soon be found flawed. And therein lies the humanity of Li's characters.

Berne by Berne

I first heard of Suzanne Berne last November. Although The Ghost at the Table is about coming home for Thanksgiving, it proves timely no matter what the season.

Cynnie lives on the West Coast writing historical fiction for girls. Her latest book is about Mark Twain's daughters. Her sister Frances (decorator/homemaker) lives back East. Their father has recently suffered a stroke and their step-mother no longer wishes to care for him. Cynnie agrees to visit for Thanksgiving to help her sister transport their father to a rest home.

Through Cynnie's eyes, the author takes us from her arrival on Frances' doorstep back to her teenage years and her mother's illness and then returns us to a train wreck of a holiday. As the novel progresses, I found myself trusting Cynnie's version of events less and less. And as the drunk Cynnie tells a devastatingly sad tale of Twain's treatment of his family, we find ourselves revising our own opinion of Cynnie from the sad, charming cynic to just sad cynic.

Taught my lesson not to trust appearances, I turned to an earlier work of Berne's called A Perfect Arrangement. Mirella is a lawyer. Howard is an architect. Their house is a mess, their son Jacob's not talking yet, and their daughter Pearl frequently throws hair brushes. In short, they need a nanny.

Randi arrives on their doorstep, entices Howard with visions of home-cooked meals, and has Jacob talking in no time. She even cleans out the cellar. But as we follow Mirella, Howard, and Randi through their days, we realize that (in no particular order) false references, unwanted pregnancies, and intern affairs will soon knock the perfect balance out of whack again.

Berne achieves an admirable level of suspense that will keep you reading -leaving your own kitchen a shambles. But you'll be thankful for the mess.

Doritos are Flammable

George moves to Des Moines, meets the crush of his life (and her sister), and wrestles. Off the mat, he grapples with his feelings for Emily. Meanwhile Emily's little sister Katie gifts him with homemade comics and promises him a time capsule.

Upon opening the pages of Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter, the reader also slips into a high school time capsule (if you were born in or around 1976). Emily scores an extra spot on the set of The Bridges of Madison County and George rollerblades. But as the title portends, life is not all sappy adultery and hockey.

Michael J. White's debut blazes, but it might leave you with a peculiar orange residue of images and conversations not easily rinsed away.

Wait...what?

I'll admit it. The thought of time-travel boggles my mind. So it was with some trepidation (years after hearing of this book) that I finally sat down with The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

I first knew I was in trouble when I realized each section of the novel begins with the day, month, and year as well as the ages of the two main characters. For example, the book opens in 1991 when Henry is 28 and Clare is 20. They are meeting after a two-year absence. Clare hasn't seen Henry since she was 18. Henry hasn't seen Clare since he was 36.

Here's where the title of this post comes in. If you need to go grab some Advil, I'll wait.

Better? Yes, initially the dates and ages gave me a headache, too. But persevere, suspend disbelief, and you too will be enthralled. (I'm not alone in this. Praise for this book takes up the first three pages. My favorite of which is "dizzyingly romantic.")

We read backward into the early days of courtship. We leap forward into the troubled years of marriage. We're taken back again into Henry's childhood and forward into Clare's old age. Then we are back again to discover the first physical strains of time-travel and look forward hopefully for a cure.

And if nothing else of the above compels you to open the pages, I'll just have to leave you with one other detail. One of Henry's "cures" for preventing unwanted disappearances from the present is sex.

It's worth the wait.