Books Completed in August 2026

 The Painted Queen, Elizabeth Peters & Joan Hess
Elizabeth Peters (in real life Barbara Mertz) had just begun to write her latest Amelia Peabody novel and had a partial manuscript and an outline written when she passed away. In 2017, after Joan Hess had been asked to finish the manuscript, with help from an Egyptologist, this book was published. I was crazy about the Peabody books and bought it the moment it came out.

And am ashamed to admit that it took me this long to read, due to family health crises, other real-life interruptions, and just plain other books coming up--and perhaps just a little fear that a Joan Hess-completed Amelia couldn't be as good as a total Peters authorship. I wasn't totally disappointed; the story cracks with action, Nefret is back to her normal self (after a disastrous first marriage to the odious Geoffrey Godwin), and everyone is back (this is one of Peters' "fill in" novels after actually completing the Emersons' saga in Tomb of the Golden Bird) including David and the indomitable Fatima. They are back at Armana, and what they seek is the famed painted head of Queen Nefertiti, which has vanished and already dozens of fake versions are being produced.

SPOILERS (if there can be spoilers on a nine-year-old book): But, I thought the idea of Geoffrey's five maniac brothers all having the name of famed assassins (apparently this was their mother's idea) and being taken down in the same fashion as the person they're named after was absolutely absurd. If this was Peters' notion—I'm sorry, it took me out of the story. The ending is also rather abrupt.

 Grammatically Correct, 2nd edition (Writer's Digest Books), Anne Stilman
I saw this, passed it up, and then drove back out to get it. One of the best books on grammar and writing I've ever seen, with examples from actual published books rather than invented examples to show you how its done. I learned all this stuff years ago and still took notes. A valuable edition to any writer's library.

 Album of Dogs, Marguerite Henry
I've wanted this book ever since I read Album of Horses. Marguerite Henry talks dogs? And with 23 full-page color drawings (as well as sketches) by Wesley Dennis? Count me in. But it was out of print.

Until recently. Yes, it's as beautiful as I expected, even if I'm not the age for it any longer.

 Sisters in Crime, edited by Marilyn Wallace
Another booksale find and another good collection of crime short stories written by and mostly featuring women protagonists (the first story was about a man and a teenage boy, which I didn't quite like so much, and the story about the man trying to write the perfect sentence was just plain strange). The second story is a corker, though, about a female cop's first time at a crime scene. Best yet, there are stories from Gillian Roberts (the Amanda Pepper mysteries), Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels (the same person, author Barbara Mertz), Sue Grafton, and even a V.I. Warshawski story by Sara Peretsky.

 Amazon to Zodiac: 101 Scientific Curiosities Across Time and Space, Barry Evans
Mix science and history and you have a book I love! Everything from our past—Neanderthal man, anyone?—to space exploration, and everything in between: Galileo and his moons, ancient maps, insomnia, the long history of anti-vaxxers, the Latin—and Runic—alphabets, Otzi the iceman, the Number of the Beast (is it really 616?), and more.

Reading the table of contents again makes me just want to re-read this.

 The Western Star, Craig Johnson
Thirteenth in the Longmire series, this is a flashback story to when Walt was a newly-appointed deputy to Absaroka County Sheriff Lucien Connally, unsure that he really wanted to be in law enforcement and smarting from a recent argument with his new—and newly pregnant—wife Martha. He and Connally board a train on the annual sheriff's junket, the cars pulled by the vintage steam engine "Western Star." Somewhere along the way one of the sheriffs is murdered, and Walt is suspected of the crime after someone knocks him out at one of the stops, making it look as if he ran away.

So, this is a Longmire mystery, and y'all know Walt is innocent—the fun is in watching his dogged pursuit of the truth, and figuring out how the crime was done, especially after the dead man's coffin turns up empty. It's also enjoyable seeing him as a young man just back from his service in Vietnam, and as an inexperienced husband and father-to-be. Yes, Henry Standing Bear shows up!

 Writers of the 21st Century Series: Robert A. Heinlein, edited by Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg
A series of nine essays about Heinlein's works. My favorite was the first, because it addressed the juveniles, which have always been my favorite (my first Heinlein was Have Spacesuit, Will Travel). Another chapter addresses Stranger in a Strange Land, the book I had to buy behind my mother's back because she objected to the description of it as "an underground classic."

While the essays address different aspects of Heinlein's books, there is a clear emphasis in several of them about Time Enough for Love and Lazarus Long. Also discussed are the Future Histories, politics and social Darwinism, and lots about sexuality, since "Woody" takes up a good deal of discussion. Glad I bought it, even if a couple of them dragged.

 The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Loren D. Estleman
Some Holmes pastiches are great, this one is just okay, but then I found it at a book sale and didn't expend much money on it. It contains some stories I'd already read, like Doyle's own parody of his Holmes stories, and an effort by J.M. Barrie. There are some interesting bits, including Holmes on the Titanic, where he meets Jacques Futrelle, who created a 19th century "Sherlock" nicknamed "The Thinking Machine." One doesn't even involve Holmes, but is about a man who solves a mystery ala Holmes. The titular adventure has Holmes teaming up with the American action detective Nick Carter. Good for some hours of amusement, but not top-notch pastiche.

Books Completed in May 2025

  Novel-in-the-Making, Mary O'Hara
Wyoming Summer is one of my comfort reads, but I didn't realize O'Hara had two more nonfiction books! This one is the story of writing her novel The Son of Adam Wyngate. It begins with her driving east with her collie after her divorce from Helge Sture-Vasa to re-establish herself in Connecticut, and thinking on what she wants to write next, a family drama based on her own father. I was heartened by reading about how many false starts she had! At one point, she envisioned it as a trilogy and began writing the second book first. It was quite encouraging to know that even as an experienced writer, she had so many false starts.

The book also makes me glad I live in the computer age: her talking about having to edit her drafts by cutting and taping multiple pages of typewritten manuscript together made me exhausted.

  Any Trope But You, Victoria Lavine
Margot Bradley's once-flourishing romance writer career has gone down the tubes: someone found her private file, the one the now-cynical author kept to herself because she wrote unhappy endings to all her famous rom-com epics after an epic breakup with her fiancé, and broadcast it to the world. Her sister Savannah, who has chronic autoimmune disease, proposes that she go away for six weeks to a lodge in Alaska and write in a new genre: mystery. But no sooner does Margot arrive in Alaska than she runs afoul of Forrest Wakefield, a former researcher who is now taking care of his invalid father and is guilty because he wasn't there to care for his mother.

Two cynics, in this genre, equal romance, although neither of them will admit it at first. Great fish-out-of-water protagonist who discovers the "cozy lodge" comes with physical challenges, and a hero with heart.

  The Rhine, Ben Coates
The Dutch are different, but then so are the Germans. And the Swiss, and all the other countries along the length of the Rhine River. Starting in Amsterdam, Ben Coates follows the path of the Rhine all the way to its source at Lake Toma, covering the history, sociology, and current political and social customs of the countries he travels through, comparing and contrasting the people, the food, and the treatment of the river.

Sometimes Coates has his tongue more firmly planted in his cheek than perhaps he should have, but I enjoyed his journey up...down?...along one of the most notable rivers in Europe. I bought this book because I was tired of all the good travel narratives being about France!

  Juneau, the Sleigh Dog, West Lathrop
Grosset & Dunlap's "Famous Dog Stories" series. I ate these up as a kid. Nope, didn't want to read about girls dating and gushing over boys, or, when I was younger, little girls simpering over their dollies and having tea parties. Adventures. I wanted adventures! These, along with Albert Payson Terhune's wonderful collie stories, captured my imagination.

Got this from a friend who knew I liked old dog books. It's a corker: an engineer and his son are on vacation in Alaska. Dad is called away unexpectedly for a few daysand wants to take son Pierre with him, but Pierre persuades him to leave him at the cabin with Juneau the husky, knowing a neighbor, Andy, will help him if there's a problem; besides, he's in the care of their Native-American guide Ka-uk, a member of the Tlingit tribe.

Alas, these books were not exactly enlightened: Ka-uk deserts the boy and proves to be treacherous, and Pierre and Juneau are obliged to fend for themselves. Considering when this was written, I was impressed that Ka-uk's problem didn't stem from being "naturally bad" due to his heritage, but because he was an outcast from both his own people and from white people. Pierre gains maturity and experience during his unfortunately long ordeal, and the dog is magnificent.

  Fake Heroes, Otto English
Nobody's perfect.

This is a book about ten heroes--historic and celebrity-- whose lives were not what the public believed. I admit, I bought this book because the first chapter was about Douglas Bader, a World War II pilot whose positive press covered up the fact that he wasn't who he seemed; my husband, the consummate fan of aviation heroes, had read about him and scorned his fame. My mother, the ultimate JFK fan, knew all about his peccadillos and, later in life, knew about his illnesses. Almost everyone knew he didn't write Profiles in Courage; Ted Sorenson did. And once Mother Teresa died, the word about her forcing people to suffer without painkillers because "suffering was good for them" became known. And how many people didn't know Coco Chanel was a Nazi collaborator?

English offers up as well, in each of ten chapters, people he believes more worthy of the honors.

  The Curse of Penryth Hall, Jess Armstrong
Ruby Vaughn had one chance at a good marriage, but was "ruined" by an in flagrante reveal. After serving in the first World War, she now lives in England working—and sharing a house with—an elderly bookseller, who unexpectedly asks her to travel to Cornwall to deliver some esoteric books to a folk healer. Ruby is reluctant to go because her old friend Tamsyn lives there after marrying an English aristocrat. Mr. Owens' client turns out to be the town Peller, a cross between a healer and, from what Ruby can gather, some type of witch.

When Tamsyn's husband turns up dead, everyone is under suspicion, including Tamsyn.

An atmospheric thriller set in the 1920s with lots of twists (although the characters seem to spend most of the book soaking wet).

  Re-read: The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by William Anderson
There is some meat to this collection of Wilder letters, including some of the letters she and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane shared about the editing of the "Little House" books. Sadly, Rose burned most of the letters, especially those from the 1940s, so we will never know the full editorial partnership she shared with her mother. There is an impassioned letter of Laura's insisting that The Long Winter be confined to the Ingalls and Wilders with a few supporting characters rather than a full pallet of townspeople as Rose wanted to give full import of the isolation families faced during that hard winter of 1880-1881, which showed she did have the flair for storytelling that some literary scholars have denied her. But most of the letters are banal little responses to schoolchildren, with a few lovely gems.

The trouble is, I've read so many books about Wilder, including the recently published Pioneer Girl, that I've already seen many of these "surprise bits" (like the fact that a young couple and their baby lived with the family during the long winter), so the revelations aren't. It's also sad to read Wilder's last letters with her longing for her late husband clear even in the few paragraphs, and it's also obvious that the sisters did not remain very close after Ma and Pa and Mary died.

I've been a Laura "junkie" since I first saw the television series and wanted to know "the real story," so I'm glad I picked this up, but if you have less of an attachment to her, I would invest in one of the biographies instead.

  The Pocket, Barbara Burman & Ariane Fennetaux
What's the one thing women always complain about in modern clothing? Of course, not enough pockets. From 1660 through 1900, however, most women did have pockets, often capacious ones, which tied around the waist and went under their skirts (the skirts usually had a slit/slits to access the pocket(s).

This is a history of those pockets, most made of cotton, some of wool or leather or linen, some embroidered and many plain, and what women kept in them, from valuable things like coins and keys, to items for beauty (powder compacts, rouge), to things like snacks, books, visiting books, and sentimental objects. Often the pocket(s) were the only private places women had for their cherished items and they were often stolen by cutpurses who cut the tie strings or brazen thieves who reached under a sleeping women's pillow for her stash. Other women used their pockets as shoplifters hide things under their coats, to steal.

This is a scholarly study, but an interesting one.

  Modern Loss, Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner
These are selections from a website called "Modern Loss," where stories of grief are shared. One of the stories from the co-authors sounds like it came out of a Law & Order episode: her father and stepmother were killed by a handyman who, a few weeks earlier, had done repair work at their home. He intended to just rob the house, but when he found them at home, he beat them both to death.

This book made me more depressed, so, obviously not what I needed to be reading at this time.

  A Musical in the Making, Mary O'Hara
This book was interesting to me not only about how she developed, then wrote and re-wrote, her musical play The Catch Colt, but how much work some of the process was. Since she was composing the music and writing the book, she had quite a load on her shoulders, but I never realized how laborious the orchestrations were! Fully half the book is about how she had to work and work on these orchestrations, and then she had to finally sell the play. I've seen behind-the-scenes of play production, but not ones that include the writing and the music. Pretty much just for O'Hara or play fans, though.

  Anything from Nothing, edited by Mercedes Lackey
The 2023 collection of Valdemar short stories. Much better than Shenanigans, which I really didn't like at all. The quality in this volume is pretty solid, from the opening story about a blacksmith's son who feels stifled in his small town and requests that a Herald take him away to Lackey's own tale of a small town under siege. Several of the stories are serial in nature, so we continue the stories of Healer Erenal and Nwah the kyree being held captive. One of my favorites was the story of a traveling carnival, "What a Chosen Family Chooses," and how they help a captive in a stifling village. "Needs Must When Evil Bides" is another good one, about a herbalist who helps a servant rescue a wealthy family taken hostage by bandits.

All the stories are worth reading.

Books Completed in April 2025

  Re-read: The Call of the Wild, Jack London
I read this first as a Whitman classic, back at a single-digit age. It's not a children's book, but I loved it: it was about a dog, a dog who survives the worst humans and nature can throw at him, and emerges triumphant.

I hadn't read it in a while, but found a lovely, illustrated copy at Barnes & Noble the other day. It's terrible and savage, but beautiful and wonderful, and I had forgotten so many brilliant passages. The story of Buck is timeless.

 The Science of Sherlock Holmes, E.J. Wagner
Sherlock Holmes was one of the first popular detectives to use what we now know as forensics, the science behind the evidence in crimes, from the Great Detective's study of bruising on bodies to his knowledge of tobacco ash. This book discusses real-life Victorian crimes that parallel crimes in the Holmes canon, from poisons to blood evidence, disguises on both sides of the law (the Crippen case is featured, of course) and the examination of crime scenes, ballistics and footprints, and more. For fans of the canon or of the history of forensics.

  Re-read: The Rock That is Higher: Story as Truth, Madeleine L'Engle
This was my Good Friday reading for this year; I usually just read until three o'clock comes, but this year, with the loss of my husband, I had to finish. L'Engle has been my soul-ease in bad times for years.

  Damn Glad to Meet You, Tim Matheson
Matheson, who started his acting career under his real name, Tim Matthieson, is probably best known for being (1) the voice of Jonny Quest and (2) "Otter" in Animal House. This is a jaunty (but occasionally serious) recollection of his career, including his sojourn in the Marines while in the middle of finishing the film Yours, Mine, and Ours.

Matheson, a familiar television face from when he first appeared as one of Beaver's friends on Leave It to Beaver, gives us a bird's-eye-view of the television and movie industry, including behind-the-scenes peeks at how acting, directing, and producing works. It's a lively narrative with lots of name-dropping, and never a bore.

  Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
I was waiting for this book to come out in paperback.

I needn't have wasted my money. Elizabeth Zott is a brilliant scientist, but it's the early 1950s, and the misogynist scientists at the institute where she works want her to go back to the kitchen, get married, and have babies. Luckily, there's one scientist who appreciates her mind, brilliant but absent-minded Calvin Evans. They begin living together without benefit of clergy and Elizabeth is pregnant. A co-worker steals her work plus she's an unwed mother, so for many years she and her child struggle. However, a later, chance encounter at her daughter's school leads a harassed television producer to create a local cooking show for her, Supper at Six, where she not only teaches cooking, but the science behind cooking (kind of a female Alton Brown in the 1960s). It becomes a hit.

So basically it's Elizabeth Zott against the patriarchy of the 1950s at its worst. The absurd plot includes a dog named Six-Thirty who thinks and comments on events in the story, like Cleo the basset hound in The People's Choice, an old 50s television series. This is supposed to be an indictment against the prejudice against women in the workplace in the 1950s. Instead, it's just silly. The only interesting part is about Calvin and his past.

  Last Chance Books, Kelsey Rodkey
I enjoyed this new adult romance about Madeline Moore, who's off to university in the fall, but who looks forward to coming home after her education to run the family bookstore, Books & Moore, owned by her aunt Astrid, who brought up both Maddy and her half-brother Benny. Throwing a wrench in her summer plans: her peripatetic mother, Dahlia, who never stays around very long, is planning to return to town.

And then Prologue, a chain bookstore owned by the Hamada family, opens across the street, and Jasper, the youngest son, starts trying to steal Books & Moore's business. Next thing you know, it's a spite war between Maddy and Jasper, while secretly the two are attracted to each other.

The story not only touches on the romantic rivalry, but touches on the more serious themes of how parental neglect affects children and unlikely expectations.

Books Completed Since September 1

  Winter's Gifts, Ben Aaronovitch
A re-read in real book form: FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds, who was introduced in Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" in Whispers Under Ground, is the focus of this short novella with a seasonal theme (after The October Man and What Abigail Did That Summer). A retired FBI agent calls in an alarm about a mysterious event in Eloise, Wisconsin, that no one understands until Reynolds finds out about it. She travels to Eloise to find that portions of the town have been destroyed by an "ice tornado," the FBI agent is missing, and some ominous creatures are wandering the shore of the nearby lake.

This starts out slowly, with Reynolds narrating her involvement due to her knowledge of esoteric activity that she learned from Peter Grant during his involvement in the previous case and talking about her past. However, the pace picks up very quickly as odd "monsters" creep out of a blizzard and wreak havoc in the town. The end is a tense chase straight out of a horror film as a long-buried curse has been unearthed involving Native American spirits.

I enjoyed this although it was a different narrative from the British-set books. Some British-isms do creep in, but I don't find them all that distracting. Reynolds herself is an interesting character because she was brought up as a strict Christian, but is now dealing with otherworldly events with no relation to the beliefs her mother tried to instill in her. I also liked the slow-attraction romance that is very peripherally part of the story (the ending is particularly sweet).

  Magical Meet Cute, Jean Meltzer
Faye Kaplan is an imperfect potter. Due to an abusive childhood, she has an injured hand, so her creations always turn out a little wonky, and she hates them for being imperfect. She lives in Woodstock, NY, with a rescue dog who's definitely not toilet trained, and feels her life is finally going the right way—until anti-Semitic flyers are scattered across town. Faye, who has embraced a future as a "Jewitch," in a drunken panic creates a protective golem which she buries in the backyard.

Next day, on the way to an emergency meeting at the local synagogue, she strikes and knocks over a man with her bike. Upon waking up, "Greg" can't remember anything about himself, so in a fit of remorse Faye welcomes him into her home to nurse him while he recovers. Did I mention Greg was a hot redhead, and looked a lot like the clay golem she created? Did I mention he was very sweet, but Faye was afraid he was going to end up like every golem in literature?

A whimsical story about magic surrounds a serious plot about growing anti-Semitism in the suburbs, as Faye fights the loathing of her imperfections and the growing kindness of Greg with the help of her elderly, hoot-and-a-half neighbor Nelly. A sweet, not spicy, romance about a serious subject from an unusual angle.

  Sensational: The Hidden History of America's "Girl Stunt Reporters," Kim Todd
In 1885, an "anxious father" wrote to a Pittsburgh newspaper asking what to do with his five daughters. They had graces but no marriage prospects, and everyone knew that all girls were "fit for" were having babies and marrying. A young woman who wanted to do neither wrote an impassioned response that women had brains and could do many things—if men would permit it. Invited to the newspaper office, spunky Elizabeth Cochrane was offered a job. Later she moved to New York City and became famous as "Nellie Bly," the woman who infiltrated a Gotham madhouse and told the truth about how the women were treated there—and that some people there weren't even insane; they were just there because they wouldn't do what their husbands or fathers told them.

Thus began the era of the "girl stunt reporters." After Bly's exploits, all the big newspapers wanted one; sales improved! They infiltrated sweatshops, visited abortionists, and generally went places a male reporter would have been seen as suspicious. They brought to light all sorts of social injustices and did bring about change. However, the rise of newspapers taking sides in political issues and promoting wars and colonialism brought the crusading women down: they were accused of contributing to "yellow journalism."

Fascinating study of Cochrane, Ida Tarbell, Helen Cusack, Elizabeth Bisland, and the other women who tired of reporting social events and clothing styles and instead went undercover in hidden places.

  Lunar Love, Lauren Kung Jessen
Olivia Huang Christenson is taking over her grandmother's matchmaking business now that her Aunt Lydia is retiring from Lunar Love, their family business based on the twelve signs of the Chinese Zodiac. Olivia believes in doing things the old-fashioned way, with strict adherence to the signs, and is dismayed when Bennett O'Brien, biracial like herself, sets up a "fun new dating app" ZodiaCupid that uses the same idea—sort of. Bennett, however, believes in only a loose approach to the Zodiac idea. It's even more awkward when Liv realizes Bennett is the cute guy she flirted with at her favorite bakery!

Slow moving but sweet romance about differing opinions (and emotions; Liv is reluctant to veer from tradition after her own match didn't work out and she lost a friend over another), plus enjoying the cultural traditions of the mixed Chinese families portrayed in the story. I never did figure out what Cookie Day was, but, no matter.

  Mrs. Moreau's Warbler: How Birds Got Their Names, Stephen Moss
Long ago, a boy named Stephen Moss was fascinated by the name of a small bird, "Mrs. Moreau's warbler." Who was this Mrs. Moreau, and why did she get a bird named after her?

You'll find out this and the origins of other bird names, from the old, traditional ones which come from now-disused languages or onomatopoeia—did you know the oldest surviving bird name in English is probably "goose"?—to later words that relied on descriptions, to the development of scientific names.

Note that this is a British book and mostly British bird names, but some American English bird names are included. Along the way you meet the amateur and then professional ornithologists who gave us the names. Great fun if you are both interested in birds and love etymology.

  When Dogs Meet People, Gladys Taber
When they say "they don't make 'em like that anymore," it certainly applies to this book. It's a collection of Taber's short stories that would have been at home in any women's or general American magazine of the time, all concerning people and their dogs. Some are wartime/postwar stories, including the initially grim story of a soldier trapped in his wrecked tank and the tale of a shell-shocked man who's about to give up on life. Some are fit for teen magazines, like the opening story about a dog training club that admits a new member or the funny "Just a Little Havoc" about a young man who babysits his girlfriend's Irish setter.

All warm and cozy like a fleece blanket and hot chocolate on a winter's day.

Books Completed Since August 1

Much of this month is devoted to a perennial grade school favorite, Lois Lenski! Found a bunch of her books, including ones I had never read, on archive.org and Kindle Unlimited.

 Journey Into Childhood, Lois Lenski
This is Lenski's autobiography (much of which she fictionalized in her first two books, Skipping Village and A Little Girl of Nineteen Hundred), which includes the backgrounds of how she wrote some of her books (the Davy books, for instance, were inspired by a small boy named Davy, and the Mr. Small books were written for her son). I wish she had talked about how she researched all of them. She did reveal that A'Going to the Westward was inspired by the true experiences of her German ancestors, and that there really was a little girl left behind like Betsy Bartlett!

The first part of the book is rather fun, where she talks about growing up in Ohio, her loving but stern minister father, and the rest of her family. She goes off to study art, and then suddenly she is marrying Arthur Covey, a fellow artist (a muralist) and a widower with two children. This portion of the text seems rather stilted and dry; she uses the old-fashioned reference of referring to her husband as "Mr.Covey" and while I can see that as an older woman not into "kiss and tell" she would not get deeply into her relationship with him, the descriptions of their relationship seems rather loveless. She seems much more taken with her stepchildren Margaret and Laird, and with their child together, Stephen.

 The Outermost House, Henry Beston
This is a nature classic, published originally in 1928. Beston, the owner of a small cottage called the Foc'sle near Easton on Cape Cod, visits the cottage one August, and, instead of leaving after two weeks, he decides to stay the winter. Laying in supplies and wood, Beston settles in for a serene autumn, a wild winter, and the beauty of spring, observing the birds and animals of the shoreline, the fierce nor'easters, the spreading beauty of the night sky, the call of the gulls, the yearly migration of birds, the running of the alewife, the dying of the year and then the birth of the following one. Of wonderful interest is his chronicling of the courageous work of the coast guardsmen who patrolled the beach nightly, and went out to shipwrecks in roiling waves and blinding lightning to remove survivors from the ships.

Beston's beautiful prose is poetic and evocative, bringing to mind the crash of the surf, the mewling of the gulls, the endless swish of the grasses in the ocean breeze. You can smell the salt air and the fish, the tang of his wood fire, the scent of his coffee percolating on the stove. For anyone who wants  to know what it's like to live in close harmony with the sea.

(Alas, the little "outermost house," which survived the frightening storms Beston described, the whirlwind that was the Hurricane of 1938 and many hurricanes thereafter, was felled by the deadly winds and tides of the Blizzard of 1978. It lives on in this book.)

 Underland, Robert MacFarlane
"Underground." It's always been a mysterious word in the English language. Underground can mean a root cellar, but it also calls up visions of caves, of tunnels, of hasty escapes, of the unknown and of mystery.

MacFarlane investigates all these aspects of "underland," from Bronze Age graves in Somerset, England, to an observatory for Dark Matter deep underground (where particles from Dark Matter are best distinguishable) to funghi on the forest floor. He also visits the underground labyrinth of sewers and rooms below Paris, where explorers find new levels all the time and tours exist, the underground Timavo River, caves in Slovenia in which hundreds of victims of the Nazis were interred, a dangerous journey into Norwegian caves to see prehistoric cave paintings, another Norwegian sojourn visiting a traditional fisherman and his wife, a visit to a glacier and a dangerous moulin (a vertical shaft within a glacier) in Greenland, and finally a radioactive materials' burial site in Finland.

I love reading MacFarlane's books. His words in Underland fit the mood he is trying to create: dark, mysterious, primal, evocative of the mood that deep darkness engenders. He makes you chill in the narrow moulin, feel the squeeze of a particularly tight passage in a cave, gape with wonder in the rooms under Paris. I was so sorry when the book was finished.

 The Happy Hollisters at Sea Gull Beach, Jerry West
The Hollister children's Uncle Russ begins their next adventure by writing to them from a place called Sea Gull Beach. He's there making sketches for his cartoon work, but lets the Hollisters know there will be a kite-flying contest there soon and tells them about a pirate ship, the Mystery, supposedly lost in the sands. Then a lighthouse lamp Uncle Russ sends them is accidentally broken, and an emerald falls out!

This is only the beginning of the Hollisters' adventures as the family travels to Sea Gull Beach, where they make a new friend in a girl named Rachel who happens to be the granddaughter of the woman who made the lighthouse. A troublesome boy, Homer, who's like the Hollisters' neighborhood bully Joey Brill, also causes excitement, and the family befriends an old beachcomber named Scowbanger, who's also looking for the Mystery.

As always, the kids go from one breathless adventure to another, finding and then losing clues, competing with Homer, and having enough adventures in one week to last all summer. These books are so much fun to read and the author, Andrew Swenson, a.k.a. Jerry West, kept the usual 1950s sexist boys and girls stuff to a minimum, so the books are still very readable today, although today's kids used to organized activities and helicopter parents may gape at the freedom the Hollister kids have. They may end up wishing they were back in the 1950s!

 We Live in the North, Lois Lenski
Lenski was most known for her regional book series, but she also did a series for younger children, Roundabout America, most of which are comprised of three short stories with a common theme. This volume takes place in Michigan, the first tale about a family of Polish-Americans whose father works in an auto plant in Detroit, the second relates the tale of a widowed woman of Finnish extraction who tries to make extra money as a cherry picker in Traverse City, and the final story is about a Christmas tree farm in Muskegon Heights. Wondering what today's kids would make of the hobby of the kids in the Detroit story: they have founded an animal cemetery where they hold funerals for both wild animals and pets. A subplot concerns the kids' Uncle Eddie, who won't settle down to a job and who's considering changing his name to sound more American. The Johnson kids in the cherry story have various adventures as their mom and their aunt pick cherries that reminds one of Judy's Journey. The last tale is just a year in the life of a Christmas tree farm family, and one of the daughters saving up the money she earns to buy a horse. Cute for the younger kids, but lacks the meat of the regionals.

 Corn-Farm Boy, Lois Lenski
Well, I always wanted to read these when I was at school, so I might as well now that they're online. This is the story of Dick Hoffman, who lives on an Iowa farm where his father grows corn and they raise some cattle but more hogs. Dick is good with animals and is always either raising a runt farm animal or nursing a wild one who is hurt, and he hates when neighbor boy Elmer kills for fun, but what he wants most is to drive the new tractor his Uncle (who is half-partners in the farm with his father) Henry has bought; however, he's still sickly due to a bout with rheumatic fever. The story follows the spring and summer activities of the family, including wearying-sounding chores like getting cockleburrs out of the cornfields and de-tasseling corn (which is what Dick's older sister does during the summer to earn money for clothes). It chronicles all the fun—raising animals, summer picnics, playing with friends—and the trials—a farm injury, Dick's health problems, a little sister lost while playing hide'n'seek—of living on a farm. Not Lenski's most interesting, but definitely all true teaching children what hard labor goes into raising their breakfast foods.

 Coal Camp Girl, Lois Lenski
Of all the Lenski books I have read, this has come the closest to touching me personally.

Christina Wilson and her family live in West Virginia, where her father is a coal miner. The children manage to have fun despite the ugliness of their landscape: the hills of discarded slate everywhere, the dirty air (the kids have to pull Mom's laundry off the clothesline every time a train comes by), Dad coming home black with coal and having to take a bath before he can even eat dinner. Tina would just like to have one of the pit ponies as her own, but her brother constantly gets in trouble trying to sneak into abandoned mines with his friends. They quarrel with one contentious neighbor kid, but otherwise manage to have fun—at least when their daddy is working and they have enough food.

My mom would have been born in and lived her early years in a place like this, only in Ohio. When my maternal grandparents came over from Italy with their young son Tommaso, my grandfather found work as a coal miner, and my uncle Tommy worked in the mine once he was old enough. Mom talked about her father having to wash up in a shed before he could come in the house, since he didn't want to dirty the inside with coal dust. They would have burned coal in their stoves, used scrip at the company store, and mom and her older brothers would have gone barefoot in summer and had to wash their feet before coming inside. What would Mom's life had been like if Grandma had not come down with "coal dust lungs"? Would she have also grown up to marry a coal miner and had her heart in her throat every time the whistle from the mine blared in a long, steady wail, signifying trouble?

Needless to say, among the other troubles the Wilsons endure in the book, there is a mine cave in. I cried at the outcome, thinking of Mom and of Grandpa.

 Flood Friday, Lois Lenski
I grew up on the stories of the granddaddy of all New England hurricanes, the one in 1938, and its destructive 1954 successor, Hurricane Carol, but I had never heard of the horrifying flooding that occurred in Connecticut in August 1955 after not one, but two hurricanes within a week, Connie and Diane, caused rivers to overflow. Sally Graham lives in Farmington, Connecticut, with her family, and when the ground becomes saturated, her neighborhood, then her home, begins to flood. Sally and her friends and neighbors head to a school which is on high ground, and for days they must camp out on the floor, eat communal meals, and hear terrifying stories of homes swept away. Eventually they grow restless and wonder if they'll ever make it back to their homes.

Lenski paints a very realistic view of a natural disaster from a child's point of view, from seeing your home engulfed by water to living for days at close quarters with hundreds of people to returning home to find it filthy with mud. This is an unusual Regional as it deals with an event rather than a way of life.

 Mama Hattie's Girl, Lois Lenski
This is probably the rarest of Lenski's regionals and one I didn't know existed for many years. Lula Bell is an African-American girl living in the south with her mother Imogene, a talented seamstress, and her grandmother, known to everyone in the Hibiscus Street neighborhood as "Mama Hattie." Imogene is tired of living in a small town where everyone knows her business, and longs to be up north with her husband. She's also frustrated with her mother falling for every slick salesman who comes around and buying yet something else "on time," and not taking care of her health (she has high blood pressure and insists on eating fattening foods with lots of salt).

To everyone on Hibiscus Street, "up north" is a wonderful place where good jobs are to be had and people have lots of fine clothes and furniture. So when Imogene finally gets fed up after a neighbor poisons Mama Hattie's plum tree and the local grocer won't give them any more credit, Lula Bell is torn: she wants to go "up north" where living is golden, but is going to miss her grandmother. She soon finds out "up north" is no prize either: the city streets are crowded and full of garbage, the kids in her new neighborhood bully her, and the landlord won't let her family stay with her aunt and uncle.

Lenski states in her introduction that she researched this book among children in both Northern and Southern schools, so I am guessing that the portrait she paints of both African-American experiences are authentic. However, the main problem with this book is that Lula Bell isn't really all that likeable. She brags to her friends on Hibiscus Street about going north, but misses them when she actually goes there. Once she finally finds friends in New Jersey, she's happy—but then when she goes back to Mama Hattie's home for a visit she is critical of everything: her grandma taking in boarders to make ends meet, the shabby old house she grew up in, and even her friends whom she formerly loved, and she snubs a little girl named Myrtle, forgetting how badly she was treated up north. It takes a series of disasters to make her realize how she's been acting. Lenski's leading girl characters are usually strong and speak for themselves, especially the pugnacious Judy Drummond, sometimes to the point of being occasionally rude, but Lula Bell is continually grumpy when things don't go her way. Maybe she was so contentious in order to learn a lesson about getting along with others, or a point is being made that she's not being set a good example by her mother, but it certainly doesn't endear anyone to her.

Really, the hero of this book is Mama Hattie, despite her personal weaknesses (and Imogene's perceived weaknesses of her mother). She's doing her best to keep a household together and provide a loving upbringing for her granddaughter.

 The Holyday Book, Francis X. Weiser
Having procured Weiser's other two holiday books about Christmas and Easter, I thought I might complete the trifecta. The Holyday Book covers all those Christian holidays not covered by the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany season and by Lent and Eastertide: Sundays themselves, then the church calendar beginning at Pentecost. He also covers (though not a Christian holy day) Thanksgiving, and the holydays of Corpus Christi, Candlemas, All Saints and All Souls, the "Mary holidays" like the Annunciation and Assumption, and also various saints' days by season. Traditional customs all over the world are chronicled, including processions on certain saints' days, fasting, and feasting, and there are also profiles of saints such as St. John,  St. Catherine, St. Andrew, etc. For anyone looking for Catholic celebrations and traditions.

 Joy of Nature, Reader's Digest Books
This is a big oversized volume from Reader's Digest books about enjoying nature. There are a few pages about animals, but most of it involves the earth itself: its climates, land areas (woodlands, deserts, rain forests, etc.), plants, topography, weather. There are chapters about trees, plants, mountains, deserts, tundra, geology, climate change, volcanoes and earthquakes, clouds, bird watching, butterfly study, and more, with multiple colorful photographs, maps, charts, and tables illustrating anything you need to know about the natural world. Each chapter is only two facing pages (crammed with small print), so this is perfect as a coffee table or bathroom book.

 Memory of Water, Brian Eastman/Rebecca Tope
This is the final novelization of one of the stories from Eastman's Rosemary and Thyme mystery television series starring Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris. Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme have been hired to restore an Elizabethan garden at an old country estate. The estate belongs to the Frazer family, but, because of the family setup, while Martin Frazer and his family live there in relative wealth, Martin's estranged cousin Jim lives in a old cottage in a corner of the estate. Rosemary is overlooking the river one morning when, to her horror, she sees Jim Frazer commit suicide by drowning himself. The body is later found, Jim identified and buried—then Rosemary sees the man she thought was Jim in the next town! Is Jim dead or not? And who was the man she saw fall in the river? Does Jim's death have anything to do with one of the convicts who are providing labor to restore the garden?

A humorous subplot has Laura trying to save money by having them camp in a tent on the estate. Rosemary is horrified at first, but comes to like it, while Laura, who was so enthusiastic, begins to hate it.

Tope adds many little details to what we saw on television: Rosemary making an enemy of Martin's boss, a disdainful QC, more scenes with the Frazer sons Toby and Timmy, and more scenes with Martin and his ever-patient wife Suzanne. If you enjoyed the series, you'll probably enjoy the books based upon the episodes.

 Little Sioux Girl, Lois Lenski
This is another entry in Lenski's Roundabout America series for younger readers. Instead of being divided into smaller short stories as in We Live in the North, the entire book is a year in the life of Eva White Bird, a Dakota Sioux girl living at the Standing Rock Reservation with her family. Eva's winter home is in the hills, but during the summer the whole family moves to a small house they own near the river with the rest of the tribe, where the families fish and enjoy the foods of the fields. Eva enjoys being in school during the winter, but looks forward to the summer when she can run wild after completing her chores. However, rising waters cause a flood in the area and the family barely gets out ahead of the water, with many of their possessions missing. Once Christmas rolls around, there are new surprises for Eva and her family.

Again, not as compelling as the regionals, but a good portrait of Native American life in the 1940s.

 St. Nicholas, Scribners (January - December 1880 (September missing)
Alas, I didn't notice years ago when I bought this that September was missing. Good thing there is a scan of it somewhere on Google. Otherwise this collection of "St. Nicholas" marks the first appearance in print of Louisa May Alcott's Jack and Jill. The usual collection of fascinating articles about child-life in 19th century America, with projects for children (usually boys) that would take the breath away from adults today, involving knives, saws, etc. But children in those days were brought up to be self-reliant. The 19th century travel articles are the most fascinating, seeing cultures that are untouched by American merchandising (foreign businesspeople often in American or British dress, but the average Joe in that country still in traditional garb living in traditional homes, alas, with snobbish opinions attached). Humorous but a bit sad to see them still decrying children who are "overscheduled" back then, enticed by societal influences like "big city lights" and alcohol, wondrous to read about great tracts of wilderness unspoilt by civilization.

 Boom Town Boy, Lois Lenski
This has to be the saddest Lenski book I ever read.

The Robinsons live in Oklahoma on a farm that was part of the original Cherokee Strip. Work on the farm is hard, and a drought isn't making it any easier. It's the early 1920s, and oil has been discovered near their property. Grandpa Robinson is sure there is oil on their land as well and options the land to an oil company. Meanwhile, people begin to move into the area to work on the nearby oil wells. A shanty town explodes overnight, then even a town.

The story is told from the point of view of 11-year-old "Orvie" (Orville), and through his eyes we see the placid family farm which his older brother really loves working on and the creek bed where Orvie and his little sister play, sometimes alone and sometimes with their Native American friends on the nearby Reservation. As the oil men and workers move in, the wells despoil the countryside and the peripatetic oil workers strew trash, steal, and bring alcohol into the formerly "dry" countryside, and Orvie even learns the meaning of murder. Around the Robinsons, some of their neighbors "strike it rich," and the new "boom town" of Whizzbang seem exciting to Orvie. But he has hard truths to learn, and so do the members of his family, as the oil boom continues.

The Robinsons live a hard life without electricity or indoor plumbing, but the whole oil boom coming to town is like a trainwreck. Well-meaning wildcatters ruin the peaceful countryside and turn previously happy neighbors into rivals. Thankfully there's a ray of hope at the end.

 My Love Affair With England, Susan Allen Toth
This is the first of three books Toth wrote about traveling in England. She became an Anglophile at an early age, and has retained a love of the country that continues into the present, despite the protestations of her daughter, who doesn't understand what Mom sees in the country. (Of course, as you read, you'll discover Jenny had a very different first experience in England, living as a student with a very odd family.) This is not a tourguide or a biography, but just a series of essays by Toth talking about various memorable visits to "old Blighty," including her first trip in the 1970s with a post airline flight complete with a hot meal, daytripping with the old London A-Z guide, and going to the theatre; a trip where she visited supposedly haunted homes; showing her husband the English countryside she loved for the first time; attending a real sheepdog trial (not watching it on the telly); the story of how she took students to England one year, beset by one problem after the other; walking the myriad walking paths through the countryside, and more. It's her love letter to England, and I truly loved it myself.

 Re-read: The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
I went to put this Tasha-Tudor-illustrated hardback downstairs, and after reading the Toth book couldn't resist re-reading it first. Willows was another one of those children's classics that I never read as a child, since I preferred books about real animals (Call of the Wild, the Silver Chief books, Big Red and sequels, etc.) even if the animals talked among themselves as in Black Beauty and Beautiful Joe. Of course I'd seen Disney's Ichabod and Mr. Toad, but Toad always got on my nerves.

Well, Toad still gets on my nerves. I'm sure the naughty Toad is someone small children can identify with, but I find him very annoying, and think Rat, Mole, and Badger are very patient in trying to reform him. The only Toad adventure I find tolerable is the first one with the gypsy caravan (until Toad spoils it). My favorite chapters are about Rat and Mole's friendship and adventures, such as when the Water Rat follows the imprudent Mole into the Wild Wood, the lovely "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" story, the temptation of poor Rat by the seafaring rat (O I understand that call of travel!), and my favorite of all, "Dulce Domum," about Rat and Mole's Christmas. The little mouse carolers get me every time.

Best of all are Grahame's lovely descriptions of the countryside, and the darling little English cottage fixings in the animals' burrows. When I read these things I want to grab all my money and go find one, which is ridiculous because they're not owned by poor people anymore and I wouldn't have a tenth of the money I need. But they're sure pretty to read about, and Willows has lyrical, dreamy descriptions of animals, seasons, and nature that make you feel as if you are there. 

 Dead Blow, Lisa Preston
Second in the "horseshoer mystery" story series, featuring Rainy Dale, the daughter of a rancher and a narcissistic actress who has worked through personal problems to become a skilled farrier, and who now lives and works in Oregon, where she's engaged to chef and foodie Guy. In Dead Blow, Rainy is hoping to get a new account at the ranch of Donna Chevigny, who has just become a widow; her husband Cameron (who had a roving eye) died recently after his tractor tilted and then rolled over him, an event originally considered an accident. As she helps Donna get her horses shod, Rainy finds an odd aluminum shoe on the land where Cameron died, and then Donna's goofy dog turns up a riding glove with a human hand in it. Soon a police officer named Melinda Kellan is sniffing outside Rainy and Guy's door, wondering if Rainy was one of Cameron Chevigny's conquests, and if she had anything to do with Cam's death. And then there's the crazy bull, Dragoon, who's on rangeland bordering the ranch. If Cam's death wasn't an accident, how did someone get past the bull?

I still like Rainy and her unorthodox narration and ways, but I have to admit this was not as compelling as the first book, where her history is peeled back little by little to show you why she is as she is. So while I still enjoyed the mystery, there was a little less meat to the characterization. In fact, she seems to have become more "country" since the original book. The mystery is reasonably perplexing, and you get a lot of the feel for ranching people rather than the urban Oregon denizens you usually see in the media, and of course there's Rainy's wry, often amusing commentary, which is a big plus to the narrative.

 About Time: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who, 2008-2009, Series 4, the 2009 Specials, Tat Wood and Dorothy Ail
This covers the rest of David Tennant's tenure as Doctor #10 including the three "gap year" extended episodes, his appearance on the BBC "proms" concert, and even his guest appearance on The Sarah Jane Adventures, from "Partners in Crime" wherein the Doctor is reunited with runaway bride Donna Noble, to "The End of Time." As always, Wood and Ail supply a summary, a cast list and where you've seen the guest performers, the ratings, notes upon filming, and then long, long notes about episode events, inconsistencies, questions, etc. It's the most thorough dissection of Who ever, and each chapter also contains an essay about questions raised by the series and by individual episodes, like "What Constitutes a Fixed Point [in Time]?", "What Happened to UNIT?", "Why Can't Anyone Just Die?",  "What Were the Strangest Online Theories?", and the question that's been on every classic Doctor Who fan's mind for years: "Where's Susan?"

For the devoted Doctor Who fan, perhaps not always, but you definitely have to be interested in the series and know its past and its stories to truly appreciate these books.

 The Secret Life of Movies, Simon Brew
A chill-out summer-read of a book about Easter eggs and other trivia about movie scenes. Was the big shocker in the Star Wars franchise hiding in plain sight? Sure was. In The Winter Soldier, what events did Steve Rogers miss while he was out of circulation? Depends on what country you watched the film in. What films were pioneers in CGI? The results may surprise you. What's the clue to the theme of Inside Out? Watch the physical features of the emotional characters!

There are interesting (and sometimes not so interesting) tidbits like that for films that range from the silent era all the way to Bohemian Rhapsody. Along the way you'll discover the story of a piece of rare artwork that turned up as a set decoration in a family film, what films surreptitiously photographed at places they weren't supposed to, the rather extensive changes a Disney animated film incurred before release, how a popular crime film features a Christ figure, how a spectacular action shot in the early war film Hell's Angels was filmed, and more.

Most of the info is taken from websites, so if you're a movie geek and particularly read many sites that feature this type of info, you'll probably know all these. Otherwise, it's a relaxing way to kill an afternoon.

Note to the publisher: Enjoyed the colorful look of the pages! But the ones with black type on dark purple backgrounds? Uh...no.

 One Giant Leap, Charles Fishman
I missed reading this one in July because James bought it and had to finish it first, so it was at the tail-end of my other reading and I wondered what it might have to say that the other seven nonfiction books about the space program that I read last month didn't.

Surprisingly, I didn't find it all that repetitive. One chapter, for instance, delves into the "fourth crew member" of the Apollo missions, the spacecraft computer. There was nothing like it at that time: other computers were no smaller than refrigerators and took punch cards to program them. The Apollo computer was a new small design about the size of a big suitcase, and it took commands through keys punched and buttons that told the computer whether the operation was a "noun" or a "verb." He devotes another chapter to Bill Tindall, the man who thought of everything that could go wrong and then challenged the software and hardware people to make certain the astronauts could recover from all of those errors, in big long memos known to NASA as "Tindallgrams." Yet another chapter addresses the long debate about how to get to the moon and the final decision to use lunar orbit rendezvous, and a fourth talks about the decision to put the American flag on the moon (an idea very contested back then). But most of all Fishman talks about the "cost" of the space program, and how, based on what was budgeted for other things, it really cost very little and brought some startling developments to technology that we still benefit from today. If you use a cell phone, get satellite television, use a personal computer, depend on GPS, and many other technologies, you are using devices that were born from all the research put in and the technology developed for the moon landing.

Very much worth reading "yet another moon book."

 Where the Lost Dogs Go, Susannah Charleson
In Scent of the Missing, Charleson told us of working with search and rescue dogs, including the training of her own dog Puzzle, a Golden retriever, and in The Possibility Dogs, we learned about her mission to turn shelter rescues into therapy dogs for anxiety sufferers. In this newest book, urged on by her father, Charleson adopts a sick, bedraggled Maltese dog before he's euthanized, and in trying to find little Ace's original owner, she delves into the world of lost pets: how your totally predictable dog may become unpredictable once thrust into unfamiliar situations, strategies for finding lost dogs, and her own stories of searching for, and mostly finding, missing animals.

Along the way, Charleson also tells us the story of her childhood with two parents who were loving of her and raised her to respect and love animals and abused or lost children, but who were both emotionally unstable. They moved house often to get away from debts, her mother suffered from panic attacks, her father was chronically insecure. She parallels her stories of growing up with her search for Ace's past, for it is obvious after a week that he was once a well-loved pet, probably owned by an elderly person, and her present-day dealings with both her parents, now divorced but still fiercely devoted to the saving of stray animals.

There's a nice balance of animal stories, biography, and "how to" in this book that I really enjoyed. A few other reviews said they wished there had not been so much of her past personal stuff and more about lost animals, but I enjoyed understanding what gives Charleson her drive to find the missing, whether human or animal, and see the past events that brought her to her present. Warning: there are many times you will tear up during this book. Have tissues handy.

 Off the Map: The Curious Histories of Place Names, Derek Nelson
I picked up this slim volume at the library book sale because I've always loved maps and dreamed about being a cartographer (among other things) when I was a kid. Place names are fascinating. Some are just plain: Johnstown or Johnston, of course, was founded by someone named John; some are named by where they are (Avonlea = a "lea" is a meadown, so Avonlea is the meadow by the river Avon), and some get very descriptive. Take Dublin, Ireland: its full name is Baile Atha Cliath Dubh Lind or "town on the ford of hurdles on the black water"—the hurdles were wooden boards put in the river to help cattle cross. Some names are even insults! Inuits prefer being called that instead of "Eskimos" because the latter is an Algonquin pejorative for the tribe. The Sioux tribe prefers their own name, "Dakotah," because rival tribes called them "Nadowessioux": "little snakes"! The Mohawks called the Adirondak tribes "Hatirontaks," or "they eat trees," an insult that meant they were terrible hunters.

Nelson relays these facts and more, about explorers giving one place a name which already has another name (or places like the Falkland Islands, which is known as that by the British, but another by the Spanish) and the naming of places yet to be explored. An interesting little volume if you have a hankering for geography or names.

 Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay, Julie Zickefoose
This book made me cry.

Zickefoose, a licensed bird rehabilitator and artist, had always wanted to raise a baby blue jay. When one was found, dehydrated and near death, under a tree, Zickefoose and her family (husband Bill, daughter Phoebe, and son Liam) pitch in to save the little mite, who has an infection contracted in the egg. Once little Jemima begins getting well, she becomes a part of the family. The Zickefooses allows Jemima to see birds like herself every day, but pretty much raise her like a tame bird rather than trying to deliberately avoid having her tainted by human contact: she interacts with the kids, teases the family dog, flies around rooms and perches on furniture. In return the family learns how really intelligent a blue jay is. But they always raise her with the intention of freeing her to the wild once she learns how to survive outside.

Life isn't always kind to Jemima: she contracts a second illness about the time she's being prepped for going into the wild, and Zickefoose must figure out how to medicate her without throwing off her timeline. One day she turns up bald! But the days are coming closer when Jemima must migrate or prepare to endure a long Ohio winter.

This is a book filled with love without being sloppily sentimental. The Zickefooses obviously adore Jemima, but want her to live a wild life. They all endure trials before their avian charge is free, including the breaking up of Julie and Bill's marriage. On their journey you will learn much about blue jays (and other birds) and their habits, and how one rehabilitates a wild creature. The book is liberally illustrated with photographs as well as Julie's lovely pieces of artwork that begin each chapter. Recommended for any animal lover, but warning that there are bird deaths/having to put sick birds down in the volume.

 To Be a Logger, Lois Lenski
As the book opens, Little Joe wants, as he always had, "calk boots" like his logger dad; as he grows to be twelve and called "Joel," he still wants to be a logger more than anything. His dad begins taking him on the job in the forests of Oregon, where he and his companions work in a National Forest, but are often at odds with the forest rangers—the loggers think they know the forests better than the college-educated men running the tree harvests. The book chronicles Joel's (and his little sister Jinx's) adventures in the Oregon woods, where various experiences make Joel question his plans for the future. And then a disaster happens to his family.

Lenski has always done her best to describe in her books the occupations of the parents of the children who are her protagonists, but I find she almost does too much description in this, the next-to-last of her regional volumes. Some pages are nothing but chronicling how "Big Joe" Bartlett and his fellow workers operate construction equipment. It gets a bit tiresome. Better are the passages where Joel wrestles with his love of nature vs. his love of machinery, and his reaction when a fearsome thing happens to him. Jinx, his mischievous sister, also adds some levity to the story: she runs away from a chore, and does other funny things that liven up the text. The next-to-last chapter is a big commercial for the Forest Service, just like a mid-1960s Lassie episode.