Jacqui Reads Her Children Books That Other People Think Are Bad For Them

Elise Murphy started it. She vowed to read a banned or challenged book a week until October 4, in honor of the ALA's Banned Books Week. She invited her readers to join her Banned Book Challenge.*

You should know that the topic of other people, particularly hateful, closed-minded people, telling me what it's okay for my children or me to read gets me so worked up that I can't post intelligently about it or I would end up in a big, bad-word-laden snabblefrug. My heartrate is skyrocketing just mentioning it here. Breathe, Jacqui, breathe. You can play with your closed-minded voodoo dolls later.

I wanted in on the challenge. But I already have too many books on my To Read list. So, I decided I would choose from amongst the many horrible, permanent-emotional-injury-causing banned and challenged picture books. I promised Elise I'd read one to my children each week, and post about it on Friday.** Which gives us a new temporary weekly feature here in Jacqui's Room:

Jacqui Reads Her Children Books That Other People Think Are Bad For Them

Week One:
And Tango Makes Three
by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry Cole

The story of two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who fell in love and raised baby Tango together. Based on a true story.


My review: I love this book. Borrowed it from the library and went out and bought it today. The story-telling is simple and straightforward, the illustrations adorable. The whole book rings with love and you can't help but get caught up in it.

I discussed it with Tinkerbell after we'd read it:

TINK: It was awesome.
JACQUI: What did you like about it?
TINK: Everything. I love everything. Can we read it again?
JACQUI: No, it's bedtime. Some other time. What did you not like about it?
TINK: Nothing.
JACQUI: Tink, there are some people who think kids shouldn't be allowed to read this book.
TINK: Why?
JACQUI: Well, remember when we talked about how there are some people who think men should only be allowed to fall in love with women, and women should never marry other women and all that?
TINK: (not at all making the connection) Yeah?
JACQUI: Well, those people worry because in this book a male penguin falls in love with another male penguin.
TINK: So?
JACQUI: So, those people worry that if you read this book you'll think it's okay for people who are the same to love each other.
TINK: So?
JACQUI: So they think then maybe you'll want to go out and marry another girl and be in love with her and they think that would be bad, bad, BAD.
TINK: That is dumb.
JACQUI: I think so.
TINK: Tango is so cute, Mama!
JACQUI: (to herself) Take that, book-haters...


*No, the challenge is not to see how many times I can use the words "banned books" in a tongue twisting paragraph. That part was accidental.
** Yes, I am well aware that Friday was yesterday. If only this were the only thing on which I am at least a day behind...

Dancing by the Light of the Moon

In which I butcher Edward Lear's lovely work.

Captain Destructo's note from day care this afternoon mentioned that he was "even more busy than usual" today. Tinkerbell, meanwhile, has had more sugar in the last two days than in her whole life so far, I think. The two of them giggled for ten minutes at dinner over something only they understood; I thought he'd be older than one before they had private jokes! In any case, insisting on a joint bath was probably my first mistake...

The Captain Destructo and Tinkerbell

Captain Destructo went to sea
In a beautiful bathtub boat,
He took some buckets, and plenty of duckies,
And a worn out purple goat.
Mom rubbed him down with a bar of Dove,
While he ate a plastic car,
“Oh Destructo! Destructo, my love,
What a beautiful baby you are,
You are,
You are,
What a beautiful baby you are!”

Baby said to the Mom, “More more wa-duh!
Want Sissy!” (he pointed at Tink)
So Mom called Sissy to come to the bath
“Leave the toothpaste in the sink!”
They played and played, till Destructo said,
“Duck duck duck go potty!”
Tink was first to decipher those words:
“Mom! Into the bath he peed,
He peed,
He peed!
Gross! Into the bath he peed!”

The Baby face planted in the water,
While Tink jumped out with howls.
One hand saved the son; one grabbed the daughter.
But which box holds the towels?!
“No, don’t drink that! Get off the cat!”
Mom shooed them from the room.
Baby banged his head. Now they’re on the bed,
Dancing naked by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
Dancing naked by the light of the moon.


In other news, I am already one day late for Elise's Banned Book Challenge. I promise to catch up tomorrow.

After the Games

In which I describe the book I want you to write, which will have a far better title that the one above.

This week's Thursday News of the Absurd Will Someone Please Write This Book Inspirational Moment (TNoftheAWSPWTBIM) focuses on where I want your next book to be set.

From Martin Rogers at Yahoo Sports:

Beijing Trumps Athens...and Then Some

Apparently, the pundits* are impressed with Beijing's handling of the Olympics, and how the Chinese used the Olympics to create structures that will continue to serve the city. Athens, in contrast, is apparently not doing as well:

"Four years since the Athens Games, a Greek tragedy is taking place. Incredibly, many of the 22 Olympic venues now lie abandoned, as a sad and litter-strewn reminder of sport’s greatest festival.

Gypsy camps have sprung up in the shadow of stadiums where the world’s finest athletes once battled for gold. Graffiti is scrawled over the outer walls of many sites, and it has been reported in Greece that upward of $1 billion has been spent simply to maintain these ugly wrecks."

Sad, I know. But will someone please write me a mystery set in Athens post-Olympics??? I want Blue Balliet's Chasing Vermeer, but scarier. Make it set in modern times, but with shadowy hints that the ancients are involved. Make Greek mythology and history central to solving the mystery.

Mostly, I want a spooky abandoned arena with baffling graffiti and definitely rats. Give me the main character exposed and alone in the middle of the field at twilight as his pursuers gather in the stands. He can't see them because stands are in shadows, though a fading golden sun still lights the field. He can't hear them because the gypsies outside are too loud, speaking in a language he doesn't understand that joins with the whispers of the ghosts of the ancients to form a modern Greek chorus singing his doom...

Will someone please write me this book? And it will be called... Oh, my title muse is nowhere to be found. Ideas in the comments, please!

*You know, all those experts on post-Olympic status of a city as compared to its rivals.

You Know That Feeling?

I am thinking of Proust today, and of his remarkable ability to describe subtle, very specific moments of human emotion.

Tinkerbell turns six this weekend, in case you are one of the two or three people in the world to whom she has not already announced it. She's having a Spiderwick Chronicles theme birthday party.* Everyone is asked to dress as his or her favorite character in the Spiderwick books. Tink is going to be Mallory, I am to be the green-eyed elf, the Mighty Thor has been asked to impersonate an ogre, and Captain Destructo is, of course, a house brownie. Our whole house will be transformed into Spiderwick mansion, with the forest outside decorated** to hint at fairies and unicorns living there. The cake will be covered with spiders, enough for each of the 11 guests to have one, and will read "Happy Birthday" in the same font as the book covers. The kids will go on a giant scavenger hunt, pound flowers into handkerchiefs to dye them, and have the best. party. ever. At the end of it all, Tink will be six, 6, SIX! No more baby five-hood, good bye, she will fly away on big, grown-up fairy wings.

Or so she sees it. We will try. But the disconnect between how kids imagine their birthdays and how birthdays can ever really be is vast and disappointing, I know. And the feeling I am pondering comes at the birthday party. It's the "this is not how the party is supposed to go" feeling. It's the "this house doesn't look like the Spiderwick castle, and the field sprites are paper, and my friends are supposed to be doing what I say, not playing in the forest, and hey! I feel the same just like I did when I was five, and where is my big moment? Where is the Magic Moment that was supposed to happen? And, now I have to wait a whole year which might as well be forever to do it right this time?" feeling. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.

Today, I am thinking about that feeling. That exact moment when you realize just how vast the disconnect between your dreams and reality is. Before you get depressed about it, when you are stunned and casting around for someone to blame. You know that feeling?

In the meantime, anyone have good ideas for a Spiderwick birthday cake???

*the books, not the movie, which she's never seen and probably won't for a while given that she still sometimes freaks out during the chase scenes in Curious George
**in an eco-friendly way, of course

I don't know what you heard...

... but I certainly didn't stay up until 1:30am to finish Eclipse all in one night and Breaking Dawn* the next. No sirree, not me. I was busy reading Faust. What kind of dunderhead would stay up all night to find out if Bella picks the vampire or the werewolf when she has a book to revise, children to raise, a ... blog ... to ... wri ... zzzzzzzzzzz.

I hate myself.

I was so tired that I didn't realize what Tinkerbell was doing during the following conversation until it was too late:

TINK (to new friend's dad): You are very tall like her.
DAD: Yes.
TINK: And you have black hair, with like, some silver in it.
DAD: (laughs indulgently)
TINK: And you have that thing, that bump.
DAD (and JACQUI): ????
TINK: You know, that thing. You have that bump like her.
DAD (laughing less): What bump?
TINK: There.
JACQUI: (looks, notices small raised mole on new friend's dad's nose; reacting in slow motion due to Twilight-related exhaustion, thinks: Does she mean that mole? Who is "her?")
TINK: So you look just like her!
DAD: Who?
JACQUI: (catching on)(slow mo) Tiiiiiink! Noooooooo!
TINK: The wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz! You look just like her!


Coming soon to Jacqui's Room: How to End Your Novel, The Least You Need to Know: Agents, and Faust: the Jacqui's Room production...

*the third and fourth books in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight quad-rilogy? four-logy? series
** Oh, and for any fans out there. The answer to your next question is "Jacob. Definitely." Sigh.

Light in August: the Jacqui's Room Notes

In which my inner math geek has a field day with Faulkner.

No video today, real or imagined, as I have just written the last* new scene for my young adult novel** and am feverishly typing and compiling.***

I tried a haiku, but really I think of Light in August as more of a math problem where:

Light in August = (Mississippi + August + 1932) x (Pregnant wanderer + defrocked reverend + lying bootlegger + angry biracial murderer)

Or maybe it's a recipe: Faulkner takes vivid, yearning characters and mixes them into a broth of racial tension and southern heat...

Other thoughts (no spoilers):
1. Faulkner's characters are truly unique. They are multi-dimensional, diverse, and far from stereotypes or archetypes. Further, the setting itself, both in terms of time and place, is a character, really, acting to propel the plot as much as anyone else. The book starts as a "what do you get when you cross..." story, but Faulkner follows through and is meticulously faithful to the characters he's created and the world they inhabit.

2. This is the most hopeful depressing book I've ever read. The first character we see is Lena, pregnant and abandoned, walking across Alabama in search of the father of her child. She is convinced his message calling her to him has been lost. "I reckon I'll find him," she says. "It won't be hard." She never wavers from that feeling, and Faulkner paints her faith so simply, so without judgement, that instead of thinking, "That fool!" like everyone she meets, we want her to find him, even though we know it's unrealistic.

3. Lastly, stream of consciousness is more fun to write than to read.**** I very much enjoyed the book and the characters were the main reason why. I felt for them and wanted them all to "win" but even I had to skim towards the end when there were entire pages of internal conflict. I had the strange revelation that, like many beginning writers, Faulkner got worried that we wouldn't get it, so he diluted his beautiful story with a ton of "the point" at the end. Makes me want to go back to the ending of my own book and delete all the "hints;" if it doesn't work without them, the whole thing's not working and spelling it out at the end is far from the answer.

On to Faust...

* And by "last" I mean "last for now" or "last of the ones that weren't written at all before now, to say nothing of the ones that are just sketched out, full of gaps, or abominations to the written word."
** And by "novel" I mean "collection of scattered scenes, some old and some new, that I hope will miraculously congeal into a coherent mass as I type."
*** And by "feverishly typing and compiling" I mean "trying to find my flash drive."
**** Collective sigh of "tell us about it!" from all blog readers

August 25 - Goethe's Faust

Welcome to Week #14 of our 15 Classics in 15 Weeks project.

This week I will be reading Goethe's Faust. Don't get confused; there are a lot of Fausts out there. I am reading Goethe's. The Mighty Thor is livid because whatever version he read in college was like 1,000 pages and mine is only 200. Also I think he is still mad because his roommate acted in the production of Faust someone put up in my college dining hall and it was 4 hours long and the Mighty Thor sat through the whole thing. Nevertheless, I am excited about this play.

If you look left, you'll see next week's book is still TBA. I need your help deciding. What should my final classic be? If you joined us late, the whole point of the project was that I am pretty well-read but had holes in the canon of traditional American and European lit. So, here's the question: what is your all-time, number one, anyone-who-calls-herself-well-read-MUST-have-read-this-book classic novel (that we haven't already discussed this summer)? You can see everyone's original suggestions in the comments here.

It's like American Idol for literary dorks, isn't it? Sigh.

Also, what are you reading this week?