The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

Ben, Lindy, and Tom hadn't even wanted to go to the zoo that day, but when the Professor they met there posed the question, "If you're looking for something really unusual, have you ever considered a Whangdoodle?" their lives were changed forever. A Whangdoodle, if you're unfamiliar with the term, is a creature who has antlers, rather short legs, and grows bedroom slippers on his feet - new ones every year. He can also change colors to suit his mood.

The reason the Whangdoodle (and the Prock, Whiffle Bird, the High-Behind Splintercat, Swamp Gaboons, and so on) are names you've never heard before is that they live in a land you can only reach by using your imagination. Many years ago they lived on earth, but as people became more "sophisticated", they stopped believing in such creatures. As a result, all the magical beings started to disappear. In a great effort to preserve as many as he could, the Whangdoodle created this land and took with him all the magical beings that he could save.

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles is a very fun story about how Ben, Tom, Lindy, and the Professor reach Whangdoodleland and meet the Whangdoodle himself despite the efforts of the Prock, who wants to keep them away. Julie Andrews Edwards (yes, the same Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music) has created a great adventure, which is aimed at younger children but is a fun read for anyone.

She also manages to very carefully address larger issues, which creates an excellent opening to teaching younger children about genetics, imagination, belief, creation, and the art of listening - because what someone says might not be exactly what they mean! The question of morality in genetics is one that the children face, and this is what Ben says when his dad asks him about it: "'Well, whether we like it or not, I think genetics is here to stay, Dad, and it could be the answer to a lot of things.' He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. 'We will have a tremendous responsibility on our hands. If we're going to play God we must try to do it with honor and decency.'"

This book is such a delightful adventure that I don't think kids will even realize that they're learning! It's a great tool for parents who are starting to teach their kids about scientific responsibility, and it's also a pleasure to read!

Jacob Have I Loved

I have read this book several times and every time I come away feeling a little bit differently about it. I think I'm starting to understand it more, but I still think there is something else there and that this is one book I may always learn from.

It's the story of Louise, a girl growing up on Rass Island in the Chesapeake Bay. Louise is adventurous, tomboyish, and has always felt unloved because of her twin sister Caroline. When people tell the story of their birth, everyone talks about how Caroline didn't breathe at first and was in the hospital for such a long time, but no one seems to remember where Louise was. When they had whooping cough as children, their mother thinks Louise got sick enough to need a tent, but everyone on the island remembers that Captain Billy had to be woken in the middle of the night to ferry Caroline to the hospital. Louise is the only one who ended up with scars from chicken pox. When Louise asked whether she was a good baby, her grandmother (who had been her caretaker while Caroline was in the hospital) said she couldn't remember, and her mother said, "You were a good baby, Louise. You never gave us a minute's worry." Louise says, "She meant it to comfort me, but it only distressed me further. Shouldn't I have been at least a minute's worry? Wasn't it all the months of worry that had made Caroline's life so dear to them?"

Caroline is beautiful, talented, cheerful...she's the kind of sister that everyone thinks is great until she's their own sister. Jacob Have I Loved begins the summer they were thirteen. Everyone has a rough time at some point during their teen years, but most of us don't have a "perfect" twin to make it seem even worse. That summer, Louise and her best friend Call meet the Captain, a man who lived on the island when he was young and has just come back.

It seems like the beginning of the perfect summer, but then Caroline starts to befriend both Call and the Captain. For Louise, who feels like she's always had so little to herself, it's the end of her rope. She angrily starts closing off her heart from her friends and family, and it gets even worse when her grandmother (who Louise takes too seriously because she doesn't realize the old lady is suffering from dementia) quotes Romans 9:13 to her, which says "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." Louise looks up the verse, sees that it's God talking, and decides that since Caroline seems to get everything good, God must have decided to hate Louise even before she was born. The book does end on a happier note, but I'm determined not to give away any endings in my posts so you'll have to read it yourself to find out what happens.

I think the book is a very interesting look at sibling rivalry and family communication. If Louise had realized her grandmother was mentally ill, she wouldn't have listened to her so seriously and been so upset about everything she said. Louise is overly sensitive to other people's remarks (which is common at 13!) and blows things out of proportion, which just ends up making her miserable. All of us do that to some extent as teenagers, but Jacob Have I Loved shows a girl who takes that to such an extent that she almost misses the chance to change.

It's a good book for teens because it's about a girl dealing with the same frustrations and emotions that they feel, and it's a good book for the rest of us because it reminds us of how we felt during that time and can perhaps make us a little more patient and understanding.

The Paradise War

Don't you love that title? It gives me chills - The Paradise War. It's the first book of a trilogy, so when I've finished the next books I'll review them as well. An introduction to the book: it was written by Stephen Lawhead (an author you'll no doubt see here again, as I love everything he's written) and is set in Britain. The time of the book is harder to pin down - it starts in modern times and then the main characters accidentally find themselves in Albion, which is a timeless place that is perhaps best described as a prototype of our world. Albion is what Britain (and apparently it encompasses the rest of the world too, but you don't get to see that) really is underneath it all. It feels like we've gone back in time about a thousand years or so to the time of the Picts and Scots - the main difference being that these people apparently don't age. The idea behind it all is that whatever happens in the manifest world affects what happens in Albion and vice versa - so that if Albion were destroyed, our world would be devastatingly affected by it. As Albion goes, so goes Britain - and as Britain goes, so goes Albion.

Getting to Albion seems a little too easy and makes me want to try it. All you have to do, according to the book, is get to one of the markers the ancient Celts made (standing stones, stone circles, etc) at the "time between times" - that is, dawn or dusk - walk around the thing a few times and the door will open. If I am ever in the British Isles again, you can bet I'm going to try it! :)

The characters in this book are what make it interesting in my opinion. The plot and storyline are excellent, as they always are in Lawhead's books, but I am very caught up in the characters themselves. The two main characters are best friends who met their first year at Oxford. One, Simon Rawnson, is a wealthy Britain of good birth. He's had bred into him the idea that he deserves what he has simply because of who he is. The other, who is telling the story, is Lewis Gillies, an American student who has worked for everything. He describes the difference between them like this:

"Everything he had - everything he was - had been given him, granted outright. Everything he ever wanted came to him freely, without merit. People made allowances for Simon Rawnson simply because of who he was. No one made allowances for Lewis Gillies. Ever. What little I had - and it was scant indeed - at least was mine because I had earned it. Merit was an alien concept in Simon's universe. It was the central fact of mine."

I think this is the central point of the development of these two characters. Thrown into a world where they are unknown and life is completely different from anything they have ever known, Simon still believes he deserves honor and privilege because of who he is, while Lewis works to earn it. In the culture in which they find themselves, ruling power flows not by birth but by merit. Lewis, as an American, understands and accepts this without question, while Simon bucks the system because of his belief in "divine right". When lines are drawn, Simon sides with the son of the king - even when the son opposes his father - because of his birth, while Lewis stands by the king himself because of his merit.

I think if the two men had stayed in their own world they would never have seen their personalities and abilities develop so strongly and so clearly, but being in Albion seems to make everything bigger and fuller. As they learn to survive in a new culture - students becoming warriors - parts of their personalities that they never knew existed come to the forefront and change them forever. It makes me wonder what I would learn about myself if I were thrown into a similar situation - and would I be pleased with what I saw?

In His Steps

My husband asked last night what book my first post would be about, and I'm sorry to say that I lied to him. I told him it would be The Paradise War by Stephen Lawhead, since that's what I finished reading yesterday, but it's going to have to wait because today I picked up In His Steps by Charles Sheldon and realized that there's a lot more to this book than I remembered. Of course, the last time I encountered this book I was about 13, and my mom was reading it to me. I don't think I paid attention very well, because I remembered the book being rather boring and I found quite the opposite to be true while rereading it today. The language is a bit dated, but the story moves along fairly quickly and the characters are interesting, if a bit unrealistic. (Honestly, does anyone go to church with an heiress, the best female vocalist in the country, a railroad superintendent, a newspaper editor, a novelist, an extremely successful businessman, and a college president? I could accept 2 or 3 of those together, but not the whole list.)

The saddest moment of the book is when Jasper Chase (the novelist) realizes that his chances with Rachel Winslow (the singer) are completely gone and so he turns his back on his vow to ask "What would Jesus do?" before anything he does. He purposefully continues to write a book that he knows Jesus would not write, and Sheldon quotes Luke 9:62 in which Jesus says that "no man having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God." I had never before seen that verse illustrated so well and I was struck by the intensity of Jasper's loss, and also by the sorrow that Jesus must have felt when he said that. I had always thought that verse was rather condemning and harsh, but in light of Jasper's deliberate decision not to follow Christ, it makes much more sense. Jesus was not saying that if we have doubts we are unfit, but that we are if we start on the way of following Him and then deliberately change our minds.

The paragraph which most struck me is at the end of chapter 13. To quote, "...that obedience to their pledge had produced in the heart of families separation of sympathy and even the introduction of enmity and hatred. Truly, a man's foes are they of his own household when the rule of Jesus is obeyed by some and disobeyed by others." Now, I had a hard time with those sentences because I always believed that if you were doing the will of God, then your family would be pleased and it would create harmony instead of dysfunction. I've learned that this is unfortunately not true, and I've seen families torn apart because one or more members refused to follow Christ's example, but it is hard to understand why God would allow that. In the instance in the book, Alexander Powers (the railroad man) discovers proof of illegal activity within the company. He does the right thing and as a result loses his job, his social standing, and subsequently the love of his wife and daughter. It simply is not fair and makes me mad.

The next two sentences are what particularly caught my attention though. Sheldon says, "Jesus is a great divider of life. One must walk parallel with Him or directly across His way." I have never heard anyone say that before. I have never been told that if I am not walking in His will, following His steps, then I am at cross purposes with Him - there is no middle ground, no wandering along near Him. I am either walking in His way or walking completely opposed to it. That is a strong sentiment, and one I will be spending considerable time contemplating.

I wonder if I am committed enough to make Rev. Henry Maxwell's pledge - for an entire year to do nothing without first asking what Jesus would do. Would the results really be as revolutionary as Sheldon seems to think? How much would it affect our communities if our churches resolved upon that course? Would the social ills of our country be solved by it as Sheldon proposes?

My Envoy to the World of Blogging

I've kept journals (albeit somewhat irregularly) over the years, but never seriously considered blogging until very recently, when I decided that I really do want to share my thoughts about the books I read. I love reading. No, seriously. I am not happy with my day until I have read something. So, this is my blog about books. I will talk about the books I am reading and perhaps foray into books I have read in the past and loved. Maybe this will serve as a book review source for some people, or perhaps will simply be my chance to talk about what I love with a captive audience. :)