Backyard Giants

The Passionate, Heartbreaking and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever

by Susan Warren

I should have guessed that in the world of competitive vegetable growing, there's people whose goal is to produce the biggest pumpkin ever. When this book was written, men aimed to break the record with a pumpkin that weighed over 1,500 pounds (now the world record is 2,624 pounds). This story focuses on a group of giant pumpkin growers in a Rhode Island club, telling the ups and downs that several of them face through one season. The opening and closing chapters, which are mostly about the individuals and their competitiveness, the history of record-breaking giant pumpkins, and the weigh-in that closes the 2006 season, were not that great for me. The writing style tries a little too hard to be enthusiastic and felt awkward in some parts. Nearly stopped reading after chapter three. However the bulk of the book, about how the pumpkins are actually grown and tended, was more to my interest- I can relate as a gardener. Careful selection of seed, testing and prepping the soil, germinating and tending the young plants, setting them out then protecting them anxiously from rough spring weather, pruning and feeding and spraying against pests all summer, fretting over disease and disaster (hungry wildlife, cracked skins, even in one case a suspected fellow grower who jealously poisoned someone's plants!) I'm not a competitive person myself so I don't really understand the fire that makes them work for huge fruit with so much effort- forcing the plants to strain to the max without cracking, rotting or collapsing. I'd rather have something beautiful, useful, or good to eat, than just a right to brag about "mine's the biggest"! But if I ever go to an agricultural fair I'll be sure to stare at prize-winning pumpkins with different eyes now, knowing all that went into getting them that huge size. They do look rather obscene, though.

Rating: 3/5                256 pages, 2007

Living with Bugs

Least-toxic Solutions to Everyday Bug Problems 

by Jack DeAngelis 

     This book is very straightforward: an entomologist who worked for the Oregon State University Extension Service for some twenty years, wrote it to inform the general public about bugs. The book identifies the creepy crawlies that are commonly found in homes in the States and tells a little about their life cycles noting which ones are problems to be concerned about, and which you can just ignore because they don't really harm anything. Also noting how they all have a useful role in natural ecosystems and so we shouldn't just wipe them out en masse because we don't like them. When insect infestations are a problem, there's information on how to control numbers or eliminate them from the home, with non-toxic methods recommended first and insecticides or poisons used as last resort. In most cases, the advice was simply to keep things clean! Moths in the pantry? throw out the infested flour, clean up spills and seal the food properly. Bedbugs making you itch at night? wash your sheets every week. Holes in the favorite sweaters you only wear in the coldest month of the year? make sure they're laundered before going back into storage, and kept in a tight plastic container. And so on. I actually found the little details about the small creatures pretty interesting, although seeing closeup photos of cockroaches and lice and engorged ticks is really unpleasant. I learned some interesting things, such as that silverfish can jump (by flipping their bodies), boxelder bugs feed on maple tree leaves (which is why I have lots in my yard every summer), and the wasps that make a paper nest with open cells are predators useful in the garden that rarely sting people, while the yellowjackets that make large roundish paper nests without visible cells, are the ones that might attack people who disturb it, and should be removed.

In all, I found this book useful and informative- but there is one little aggravation which I must remedy someday. My copy is missing pages 33-64! Not torn or cut out, the book was bound very neatly without them. So I didn't get to read about lice, ticks, mosquitoes, carpenter ants, termites, powderpost beetles, horntail wood wasps or carpenter bees. Some of which I have personally encountered so it would have been nice to have this author's take on them. Curious how many other copies of this book out there are missing several signatures, I looked for other reviews online. Found just a few- none of them mention absent pages, and one says that the section I'm missing is the best part of the book! That's a bit disappointing. I did acquire my copy used- now I know why someone else discarded it. Maybe I'll find another someday, and this time scan the pages thoroughly before bringing it home.

Rating: 3/5                 176 pages, 2009

Saving Dove

by C.S. Adler

     I read this book in a hot bath, just under two hours. It's a horse story where the whole narrative arc is about how to procure treatment for an injured horse. It has a lot of difficult things going on: Jan's father has recently died in an accident, she and her mother are still grieving. They had to give up their large ranch house to live in the small "casita" that used to be for hired hands. Her mother still makes a living boarding and caring for other's horses, and taking guests on trail rides, while their original house has been converted into an assisted living home for the elderly. When Jan's horse goes lame it turns out to be more serious than just a bruise or sprain- he needs an operation. Jan's mother takes a second job but it still isn't enough for the cost. The girl is desperate to find a way to save her horse but can't think of anything. She's more distracted than usual from school, and can't relate to the other kids who don't seem to have any of the same worries (though one girl is nice to her and that might turn into a friendship). One day she's outside with her horse and meets two old ladies from the assisted living home, out for a walk. Mattie commiserates with Jan over the horse's condition, says she used to have a horse when she was young, and invites Jan to the house to see photos. Reluctantly Jan complies and to her surprise finds she rather likes the older woman. She visits her now and then, while still trying to figure out what to do: can she get a job herself? could she lease a "share" of her horse to someone who wants to ride and doesn't own one? It turns out that Mattie might have an answer to her problem, but then she worries about the morality of accepting the offer. This story surprised me with its depth, for such a short book it sure hits some serious issues. And I didn't even mention all of them! Have to leave the reader something to find out. There was only one conversation near the end of the book that struck me as awkward, the rest felt very real and easy to read.

Rating: 3/5

The Rapture of Canaan

by Sheri Reynolds

     I was skeptical about reading this book because I thought it would have a strong religious bent, but found that once I started it, I simply couldn't put it down. It is about religion, but not the way I had guessed. It reminded me a lot of Witch Child- by the tone, and how it's about a young girl who doesn't quite fit into a secluded community.

Ninah belongs to the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God's Almighty Baptizing Wind- invented by her grandfather who gathered his family members, their spouses, offspring and cousins as his followers. There's about eighty people in the congregation and they live together on a communal farm. (They raise tobacco as a cash crop and the leader divides the profits among the members, but seems to keep most for himself). In this group, strict obedience is required, it seems like any kind of pleasure is forbidden, and harsh punishments are meted out. Infractions such as talking back to elders, drinking alcohol, or women cutting their hair are met with punishments like wearing barbed wire under your shirt, sleeping on nettles and thorns in the bed, having to lie in a freshly-dug open grave all night, or being locked in the cellar for weeks. The followers are taught that they must be pious, constantly pray and wait for the rapture when the righteous will be lifted up to heaven. They speak in tongues during some wild-sounding church meetings, really unlike anything I've read about before. It was something to see- how the author wrote this character made me finally comprehend (a little bit) how a person could get caught up in that kind of belief system.

Ninah isn't sure she believes, though. She's afraid of the punishments and wants to feel close to God but also questions some things and finds herself growing attracted to James, her prayer partner. She's allowed to have private prayer sessions with James because the older folks see them as making a good match someday, and counsel the young people to seek out their hearts in prayer together. This goes in another direction, when Ninah and James convince themselves that their growing feelings for each other are a manifestation of God's love, so thus it can't be a sin when they express those feelings. Ninah ends up pregnant. The community does not react positively, to say the least. What follows is not at all what I expected, and I was gripped to the last page to find out what would happen to Ninah and the baby. Some parts of this story made me scratch my head, or roll my eyes- it's really weird in a few parts- and I wasn't too taken by the weaving metaphor- but the voice is lively, and the story compelling, of this young girl trying to find her way and lift her voice above all the strictures she lives with. (Especially as she sees how other kids are different, because she attends public school). The ending felt rather abrupt, but not enough to make me actively dislike the book. I would have liked to know more about how things worked out, but at least the community was starting to turn in a different direction by then.

Rating: 3/5                        320 pages, 1995

All My Patients Have Tales

Favorite Stories from a Vet's Practice 

by Jeff Wells, DVM

     A nice read from a veterinarian who worked in mixed animal practice, first in South Dakota, then in Colorado. Part memoir, mostly stories about the animals he treated, with a broad dash of humor. He tells about going through vet school, first days on the job, attempts to prove his knowledge and skills to the clients, and most of all about the animals in need. Funny or interesting case studies and the outcomes. Similar to James Herriot, if not quite the same quality (sometimes the humor got a tad tedious in my opinion). Most of the stories are about pet dogs and cats, though there are also cattle, potbellied pigs, and even a yak. Note: he doesn't shy away from telling how unpleasant some aspects of the job can be- in particular how much feces and other bodily fluids can get all over the place (quite literally). And while most of the stories have positive outcomes, not all the animals make it. Just a sampling of the stories: a supposed tomcat that surprised its family by having kittens, a puppy that ate too many grasshoppers, horses with injuries on their legs or faces, cows that need help birthing, dogs that repeatedly tackled porcupines, a cat that swallowed a fishhook, a hound that ate rat poison, an elderly cat that became diabetic. There's also an errant bison that escaped its field and needed to be sedated for re-capture before it bred all the neighbor's prized cows. I found that Wells wrote a second book titled All My Patients Kick and Bite, which I think I'd also enjoy. 

Rating: 3/5                    226 pages, 2006

The Flight of the Horse

by Larry Niven

     I think I got this book at a library discard sale or thrift shop- where I recall snatching it up immediately. I recognized it was book I'd read decades ago as a teenager. It's a collection of short stories by sci-fi writer Niven, in which he diverges more into fantasy (I've never read any of his sci-fi). The first part of the book was very familiar on this re-read, the second half not. (I don't know whether that means this was originally a DNF for me).

It has seven short stories. The first five are about a time-traveller named Svetz who goes from the distant future into the past to collect animals for his employer, at the capricious whims of an all-powerful idiotic ruler. By some odd shift, the time machine keeps sending him into alternate versions of the past, where fantastical beasts exist. In Svetz' time, animals of any kind have long been extinct and he only has a few old illustrations to base his search on. In the first story he brings back a unicorn, thinking it's a horse. This tale also had a fun quirk of suggesting that Svetz' appearance to some locals he ran into might have caused them to think he was an angel, from the light bouncing off the 'balloon' that holds breathable air around his head (because the future has such a polluted environment humanity evolved to, that now he can't breathe the cleaner air of the past) or that a girl he met would start the idea of witches on broomsticks when he left his 'flight stick' behind and mused if she would try to use it. Also, he attempts to retrieve a gila monster in another trip, and brings back a fire-breathing dragon for the menagerie

In the second story he is looking for a whale, finds and struggles with a vast sea serpent, and in the end retrieves Moby Dick, sporting injuries and broken spears. In the third story (my least favorite because its premise was so absurd I couldn't suspend disbelief at all), Svetz gets an ostrich from the past. A scientist presumes the ostrich is a neonatal form of a different, much larger bird- and does something to this individual ostrich to make its genetics change so that it literally grows into a giant roc. The fourth story has Svetz collecting an arctic wolf that turns out to be a werewolf. In that journey he also meets men who evolved from wolves, who keep primitive humanoids as pets and guard animals (they're very good at throwing rocks). In the fifth he encounters the character of Death, as a ghostly skeletal figure that grapples with him in the time machine and argues about things. He has to regain control to return safely. (This was my least favorite of the time travel stories).

In all of these I rather enjoyed the humor, how inept Svetz seems when at the same time he usually manages to survive these wild creatures attacking him and actually bring them back to his future time intact. He grumbles about his employer's unreasonable demands and has difficulty with changing technology which isn't explained to him (as the time machine gets updates and new features). The feel of it reminded me of 1960's Star Trek episodes, and all the time-travel jargon brought to mind Doomsday Book.

At the end of the book are two novellas, Flash Crowd and What Good Is a Glass Dagger? I am pretty sure that when I was a teen Flash Crowd was completely over my head- but as an adult I found it an interesting premise, if a bit dull as a storyline. It posits a future where vehicles are obsolete (except for small airplanes and motorbikes used for fun) because teleportation has been developed. All over the world people can literally go anywhere instantly by stepping into a glass booth and dialing a number. It's narrated by a news reporter who comments on not only how cityscapes have changed (he remembers when cars still existed in his childhood) but how the instantaneous travel has affected human society as a whole. It all revolves around a riot he witnesses at a mall- and is blamed for instigating with his hasty reporting. Refusing to accept that, he claims the 'displacement booths' are the main problem- because they enable people to instantly converge on a scene in huge numbers. Another part of the story demonstrates how this also affects the environment when it draws people in sudden hordes to see a natural phenomenon, or to swarm exotic retreats that once were difficult to access. Mostly though it's the reporter investigating what's behind the manufacturing of 'displacement booths' and how they actually work. A lot of those details I didn't really follow, but since I couldn't judge if the science behind teleportation would be plausible as described, I was able to go along with it and just enjoy the story.

The final novella, What Good Is a Glass Dagger? is a setup for a world the author details in other novels, which I'm not familiar with. It has a werewolf pitched into a thirty-year struggle with a wizard who placed a glass dagger in his heart when he was caught attempting thievery. The werewolf guy then spends years travelling trying to find someone who can remove the dagger, but he's hampered by having to avoid areas where magic won't work- and the wizard has a device that can drain magic out of the world- imperiling all the magical creatures. I don't know if it was my mood or what by the time I reached this story, but although many readers state this was their favorite piece in the collection, it didn't really hold my interest. I skimmed a lot of it. I might read it again at a later date; keeping this one on my shelf.

Rating: 3/5              212 pages, 1973

The Heart of the Continent

A Novel of Australia 

by Nancy Cato 

Story of two women, mother and daughter, who worked as nurses in the far Outback during the late 1800's and early 1900's. The first woman, Alix MacFarlane, was eager to study nursing even though her well-to-do parents frowned on it- nursing wasn't considered a proper occupation for a lady then. She worked where she was needed in a few different remote areas, until fell in love and married. Then went to live with her husband's family on the father-in-law's cattle station. Where the livestock did poorly because of harsh conditions but the old man never wanted to give up. Still very much invested in nursing even though she didn't have a post, Alix started holding a clinic for the Aborignal people who lived or worked around the station- especially the children- which her mother-in-law really disapproved of. The second half of the book is mostly about Alix's daughter Caro (short for Caroline) who grows up on the cattle station then goes away to school and also becomes a nurse. And a pilot, when planes were new, relatively fragile things and women weren't expected to do such dangerous jobs. She becomes part of the Flying Doctor service, travelling back and forth across Australia to get medical care to injured and sick people living remotely. Reading about all that, and the medical cases (although they were very briefly detailed) was interesting. I also learned quite a bit about Australia and its landscape, how badly Aboriginal peoples were treated, and the country's involvement in wartime. The story overlaps both World Wars- affecting the characters very personally. This novel has a lot- medical crises, wartime, some romance, plane crashes, adventures, and just plain living. I was surprised at how common it seemed in this book for married couples to live apart- doctors living away from their wives for years on end, or how Alix traveled from the cattle station to a proper town when it was time for Caro to be born (so the father first saw his baby when it was several months old). I liked this book- and yet I just didn't care much about the characters. Some were nice decent people, others quirky or interesting, but the writing was just rather plain- lots of tell instead of show- so even when on occasion someone in the book died, I felt very little reaction. I'm glad I read it but don't think it will merit a repeat.

Rating: 3/5              478 pages, 1989

The Listening Silence

by Phyllis Root

     This is a short J fiction book I picked up on a whim secondhand. It's about a young girl in a Native American tribe. At five years old, she's been living alone with her parents for some time. Her father leaves on a hunting trip and when he doesn't return, the mother goes out to find him. The girl Kiri waits and waits but nobody returns. A couple from another tribe comes across her tent and takes her in. She is at first shy in her new surroundings, not used to being around so many people in the new tribe. Kiri has a special ability to "put herself into the eyes of others"- I guess you would say she's an empath, able to deeply feel what others around her experience, and also to see the world through the eyes of animals. This can be useful- she can put herself into the eyes of a bird overhead and see something far off, for example. It's also hard to deal with in close quarters with other people, as when she can't avoid feeling the anger and resentment of a boy in the tribe named Garen. Seeing how disconcerted she is among others and recognizing her gift, the tribe's healer adopts her so she can live in relative seclusion in his tent, and learn his skills. But when she's asked to help him heal a sick person, she flinches away from the strong feelings of loneliness and pain that overwhelm her at the bedside. When Kiris turns thirteen, she has to go on a solitary journey to seek a spirit vision that will let her know what her purpose in life is, and her role in the tribe. She expects that it will be as a singer and healer. But she's afraid, doesn't feel ready for this responsibility. On the journey she runs into a storm and her boat is wrecked, leaving her stranded on a riverbank in unknown territory. So it turns into a survival story- how she finds food, builds a shelter, and so on. She finds an injured wolf, and tries to heal it. Then Garen shows up- he's been out on a spirit journey too, and he's hunting the wolf that she befriended. He's also half-starved and needs help. Kiri is torn between protecting her wolf companion or helping this disgruntled young man she's never really liked. Of course she does the right thing, even though it's hard- and when she finally reaches out to Garen with her healing skills, she finds to her surprise that they have something in common- a deep loneliness each has been carrying around for years.

In the end Kiri finally resolves having felt abandoned by her parents so long ago, and returns to her adopted tribe with confidence and peace. It's really a nice story with some complexity and depth of feeling I didn't expect for how short it is. I read it in one sitting. I really wished it had been twice as long- I wanted more of every aspect! There's also throughout the entire book, words like korlu and skirre which kind of threw me out of the narrative because I spent way too much time trying to figure out what they were. Every single animal in the story has a foreign word instead of English (and I have no idea if this is a real tribe depicted, or a made-up one). While there's a glossary, it doesn't say wolken- a wolf but instead wolken- an animal with slender legs, bushy tail, pointed nose, and keen eyesight and hearing. Is it a wolf? or did she befriend a fox? I just want to know and I wonder if kids would puzzle as much over this as I did, or just gloss over it and be absorbed in the story. The illustrations by Dennis McDermott are beautiful, rich with texture and detail that add a lot to the book.

Rating: 3/5            106 pages, 1992

Onions in the Stew

by Betty Macdonald

  

     You know a book is going to be good when you're already laughing aloud on page four. Very lively and funny, this. It's about when Betty Macdonald lived on Vashon Island (across the sound from Seattle) with two daughters and her second husband. Time period is the late forties. Some things like doing the cooking and housework for a family with reluctant pre-teenagers, are awfully familiar and relatable. There are awkward houseguests and kids' friends coming and going, changing fashions you can't make sense of, hectic rushes to get out the door for school or work on time (in this case compounding by the narrow margin of trying to catch the ferryboat) and lazy weekend mornings. Babysitting for the neighbors, kids navigating their first jobs, fibbing about trouble in school . . . I'd feel like I was reading about a family I might have known growing up, or my own. Then there's details about using a phone line shared with fourteen other households, frequent power outages, using a washing machine that's a huge tub with a wringer (filled by hand), war shortages and news from overseas, Japanese neighbors that are never mentioned again after being "sent to internment camp", and an incredibly casual attitude towards smoking that soundly reminded me this wasn't of my time. And of course the styles. It mentions several times plans in the making for a floating bridge from Vashon to Seattle, which apparently this family looked forward to, as the ferry could be unreliable. Turns out it never happened as enough Vashon residents protested the bridge plans, not wanting their island to become built up and "commercialized".

This book charmed me as The Egg and I did, because it's set in a locale I know well, having grown up in the Seattle area. It's a lot more like Macdonald's other book Anybody Can Do Anything in tone. I kept alternately picturing the beach cabin near Copalis that my family spent holidays in when I was a kid, and my great-aunt's place on the shores of Lake Washington, while reading this book. The rain and slippery trails on bluffs thick with huckleberries and oregon grape. The rocky shoreline and beaches where they dug clams  (a few recipes are included, which sound scrumptious). Beachcombing forays and attempts to garden on the hillside around their house. The antics of their dog, the constant quarrels of their children, and yet how calmly things fall together in the end. It was familiar and curiously unique at the same time. Fun.

I also have her book The Plauge and I, which fits between Anybody Can Do Anything and this one chronologically, but I skipped and read them out of order. Because when my nine-year-old year old saw The Plauge and I on the shelf she asked me, sounding quite appalled, if it was about corona, or maybe the black plague? (which we've discussed a few times). No, it's about when the author had tuberculosis. Somehow that put me off reading it right now though.

 

Rating: 3/5               242 pages, 1954

More opinions: Blue-Hearted Bookworm

anybody else?

The Gift of the Deer

by Helen Hoover

     This is a nice little book about whitetail deer in northern Minnesota. The author and her husband lived in a remote cabin in the woods. They habitually put out food for the birds and squirrels in winter and one particularly hard year, a starving deer showed up. They helped the buck survive- cutting cedar branches for it to eat (recognizing that corn would be too rich and a shock on its system). They named the deer Peter and he became very accustomed to hanging around their cabin, even stamping on the porch to demand food if it wasn't set out yet. Before long other deer joined Peter in their yard, and then the Hoovers watched fawns appear with the doe they named Mama and grow up, several years in a row. The narrative describes the woods and other widlife- birds, squirrels, a bobcat and lynx that seemed to be companions, a moose that trampled their garden, a groundhog that ate cookies from their hands. A young bear that they were troubled to see tourists feeding (yet they had no qualms about feeding the deer and other wildlife themselves). Mostly though it's about the deer, and the social interactions they observed which was really interesting- especially as I was able to connect some details with information I'd learned in Heart and Blood just prior. Sadly and not surprisingly, it turns out that the deer, now being partially tame, were more vulnerable to hunters who showed up even though it was private land with posted signs. In the end I think they regretting having fed the deer so regularly, and were relieved to see the animals grow more wary of people following the hunting season. The author has published several books with titles including A Place in the Woods and The Years of the Forest, which I'll probably pick up if I come across them someday.

Rating: 3/5                        210 pages, 1965

Appalachian Wilderness

the Great Smoky Mountains

Natural and Human History 

by Edward Abbey and Eliot Porter

     I liked this book, but was initially confused about it. The photographer's name (Porter) is the only one on the spine and prominent on the cover, so naturally I assumed most of the text was by him- especially as some excerpts noted to be by Edward Abbey are in italics at the ends of pages indicating they pair with photos on the following spread. It wasn't until I was nearly halfway through that I realized the words I read echoed sentiments of Edward Abbey I'd read in The Journey Home. So then I thought well, this chapter at least must be by Abbey- however it wasn't distinguished from any other chapter as to the author. Not until I was looking at details of the book on LibraryThing did I at last realize that all the main text is Edward Abbey, and Elliot Porter the photographer. There are also many quotes in here by Ivan Turgenev, John Hay, Frank Russell and others, plus several poems by E.E. Cummings.

So it is in turns a picturesque description of the region especially the immensely diverse plant life, a rant against development (Abbey went on for pages at one point on his stance that only foot traffic- no cars- should be allowed into the Great Smoky Moutains National Park- even though he himself visited there in a vehicle), the history in particular of how Cherokee were forced out of their homes, the way hillside farmers make a living and their distinctive local culture and pride- and how it's been degraded by strip mining which ruins the land. Maybe it sounds a jumble but really it is very well presented together and my mind moved seamlessly from one aspect to the next. The photographs are beautiful (if a bit aged in appearance after all this book as an object is almost fifty years old) featuring waterfalls, brilliant fall leaves and bright forest floor wildflowers from the region. 

I read this book as an interlude during Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. That one is very much about how native american mindset and living is in close partnership with the land- and there's a chapter where the author takes a group of students to survey plant biomes in a patch of the Great Smoky Moutains- and I remembered I had this Appalachian Wilderness on a shelf somewhere, and wanted to see the pictures. It was a perfect pairing.

Rating: 3/5                118 pages, 1973

The Sacrifice

Animorphs #52 

by K.A. Applegate

     It's been so long. Maybe that's why this book didn't really impact or impress me much, even though a lot of significant things happen. I feel like I was reading it too quickly, being so eager to finally finish the series. 

Well- in this book it turns out that Ax has secretly been communicating with the other Andalites who are circling off-world. The Andalite commanders want to basically let the Yeerks have their way, and then they will destroy Earth, getting rid of the problem (and wiping out mankind in the bargain). Ax is appalled by this. However later on he starts to feel very bitter towards the humans himself. He finds out how Cassie had betrayed their entire mission, he witnesses more friction and division within the group, and their basic inability to make decisions based on logic and tactics instead of emotional pull. With the newer recruits and adults along (who strangely still don't have much say or leadership at all in things), they bust security to steal some trucks loaded with tons of explosives (laughably easy), acquire some backup from the National Guard, and plan to load a train full of bombs, then run it straight into the main Yeerk pool- possible because the Yeerks have built subway lines going straight to their source of nourishment. They're able to morph into indestructible forms (cockroaches) and escape right as the bomb blasts, getting out just in time (had to be on the train to trigger the bomb at just the right moment, and prevent Yeerks from stopping them of course). Thousands of innocents don't- humans who were trapped while their Yeerks were in the pool, Yeerks themselves who were actually part of the underground resistance. Even though exploding the pool was a huge success for the Animorphs team, they feel heavily the loss of innocent life they caused. 

This feels like things are very rapidly moving towards the end (they are!) but still, I was annoyed that a good twenty percent of the book seemed taken up by Ax (the narrator) explaining things to the reader. Gah, how unnecessary. It all felt like an action film with hasty argumentative planning under pressure, poorly carried out ideas (that worked in spite of what these kids did), adults coerced or easily convinced into helping them, and some very sobering moments that were glossed over too quickly. Like scenes where they witnessed train cars packed with people who had been taken from their homes and forced aboard by the Yeerks, headed to their alien enslavement in the pool- which was very reminiscent of things from WWII, some of the characters even mentioned that in an aside. As always I missed the sense of what-it's-like-to-be-an-animal, barely present in this book- they switch forms to get somewhere, or to fight and survive, none of the wonder is there. Early on in the book Ax morphs a raccoon (hence the cover) and comments on how nimble and useful its hands are, that's about it.

I did really like one idea presented in here that could annul the main conflict, if it were used properly. That is: if the Yeerks have the morphing capability, they could morph human forms (or other animal bodies) and no longer have the need to actually take over human brains. This isn't explored very much, which is rather disappointing. Seems like it would solve a lot of problems!

This copy was on my e-reader.

Rating: 3/5                   176 pages, 2001

More opinions: 

Arkham Reviews

Thistle-Chaser

the Library Ladies

Animorphology

Gift Horse

by Betty Levin

Matt has always dreamed of owning a horse. His great-uncle, a filmmaker who travels the world to find rare animals, promises to send him one, although Matt's parents think this is a misunderstanding. Matt works hard to get a space ready in the old carriage house on their property in the suburbs; his family assumes he's just playing out there. When he announces the horse has arrived (early in the morning when everyone else was sleeping) they think it's still a game and nobody goes out to see the horse for nearly a week! Then they're all stunned. Matt is crushed when his family says he can't keep the horse- but since it's an unusual breed- a Norwegian Fjord- they contact the horse farm it came from to try and find a buyer. Meanwhile Matt works hard to take care of his horse, alleviate its boredom (stuck in the stall or taking walks around the streets most of the time) and figure out how to scrape enough money for its food and other necessities. His friend next door helps out, he cajoles his older siblings to contribute, and before long all the neighborhood kids want to come see his horse, pet it, lead it around, maybe take a ride. They find someone to give some basic riding lessons, and then get a bright idea to enter the horse in a local pet show. Maybe the prize will help them keep it. It doesn't turn out perfectly, but there is a satisfactory solution in the end.

This book has a lot of amusingly ridiculous scenes, some honestly portrayed sibling and parent/child dynamics, and an unexpected ending that was nice. I liked the mention of other exotic animals- there's a small local zoo/museum that features rare animals and teaches the public about endangered species, a neighbor science teacher who wants to raise emus and keeps hibernating bats in his fridge, and the great-uncle is on a trip to Australia searching for the presumed extinct thylacine. When the kids use finger paint to make the Fjord horse look like a zebra, they run out of paint and instead turn him into a quagga for the "costume" contest in the pet show. Except nobody knows what a quagga is, they think the kids made it up. (I looked online because I've heard about the quagga breeding project, and there's actually zebras been bred now to have a very similar appearance). 

Good horse kid book, though the writing is simple enough I don't think I'll find it appealing as a re-read. I'll see if my fifth-grader might like it. Incidentally, this one reminded me a lot of Zoe's Zodiac by Mary Jo Stephens.

Rating: 3/5                  168 pages, 1996

A Fish Caught in Time

the Search for the Coelacanth 

by Samantha Weinberg

The story of this fish is just amazing. The coelacanth, closest fish relative to tetrapods (ancestors of all reptiles, amphibians and mammals) was thought to be extinct for over three hundred million years until one day in 1938 when a fisherman in southern Africa offered part of his catch to a local museum curator- including a large and very strange fish. She was unable to properly preserve the specimen, so soon hoped to find another- it didn't happen for thirty years- but then when rewards were offered, fisherman began pulling coelacanths out of the sea rather regularly (considering how long they'd been so hidden). This narrative describes the scramble of scientists and museums to get their hands on coelacanth specimens, and the struggles to procure a live one- even though the fish has an oil-filled organ in lieu of a swim bladder (so it doesn't suffer from decompression when brought up from the great depths where it lives) yet all the coelacanths caught and brought to the surface soon died from the stress and other factors. It was rather stunning to read the description of the first person who built a submersible and was able to dive deep enough to view the coelacanths in their habitat- and find out where they were actually living. There are two known extant populations- one off the Comoros Islands near Madagascar and the other off the coast of Indonesia. (They have different colors- the African coelacanth is dark blue with white markings, and the Indonesian one is brown speckled with gold). When the ancient fish was first discovered the scramble was to procure specimens for study, but then people realized it had a low reproduction rate - giving live birth in small numbers compared to oviparous fishes- and they switched tactics to make fisherman release any coelacanth caught instead of rewarding them for bringing them in. I looked it up and there are still the only the two known populations so it's very rare. Makes you wonder what else is out there, lurking in caves under the ocean, that we don't know about!

The book is pretty engaging, but was a lot about the people involved in the discovery, including political squabbles over who had rights to the first coelacanth specimens- rather than details about the fish itself. I would really like to read some of the firsthand accounts or more about the physiology of the living coelacanth, but this was a really good introduction to the species and its wonders. Here's an article I found about the species (which relates a lot of the same found in this book) with a video of a live coelacanth.

 

Rating: 3/5                220 pages, 2000

The Field of the Dogs

by Katherine Patterson 

    I was kind of surprised that two books I read as interlude to a hefty doorstopper, had lots of similarities. Both feature animals that can talk to a kid, who gets subtle help from them in dealing with an unpleasant relationship. In this case, Josh has many unpleasantries to deal with- his family has just moved, there's a new baby and a stepfather in the house, and a kid at school picks on him. He's not used to the deep snow and cold of Vermont, and the other kids call him "Flatlander". One day he trails his dog to an empty field where it romps with some other neighborhood dogs. He's surprised to hear the dogs talking to each other, although when he confronts them about it, they just wag their tails and pretend ignorance. Josh soon finds out that his dog and its buddies have a problem with a gang of bigger dogs threatening them. He hatches a plan to solve both his problem with school bullies, and scare off the bigger dogs- but it involves sneaking his stepfather's gun out of the house, which he's forbidden to touch. Although the same in length, this book is much more serious than the pony one. Fair warning: there's dog fights and other injuries that occur. I was a tad disappointed at some lack of depth- for example, when Josh helps take his dog to the vet, she tsks at how many dogs have been getting hurt lately, and tells him how to care for the wound at home, but there's no description of her inspecting or cleaning it herself! I found omissions of some detail like that odd. But it's still a good story. I also liked that the dog isn't suddenly talking all over the place and making plans with the kid. Even though the dog knows that Josh knows- he still keeps to just ordinary dog behavior most of the time, not acting otherwise unless really compelled to.

Rating: 3/5                   99 pages, 2001

Legacy of the Cat

the Ultimate Illustrated Guide 

by Gloria Stephens 

     A showcase of some forty-seven cat breeds (I think there's a newer edition as someone else's review on LibraryThing mentioned fifty-one). It has a short intro with basics of a cat's body, very brief history of the species' evolution, and then a more detailed explanation of genetics that determine the many breeds' eye color, coat color and pattern, plus some of the unusual traits (like curled ears, bobbed tails or hairlessness). I read through the entire section on genetics because hey, I like to learn stuff- but I did not get it. I felt like the author, who herself is a cat breeder, knows the subject so well she doesn't realize how little ordinary people grasp it. I then read the entire glossary so I'd understand all the unfamiliar words, and some of it is still incomprehensible to me. Well, that's fine, because the photographs by Tetsu Yamazaki are really what make this book stunning. Most of the book is breed profiles, many with two or three pages showing different colors and expressions of the breed, very beautiful and expressive pictures. My nine-year-old demanded that I give her this book when she caught me in the middle of reading it, because she wanted to look at all the adorable kitties! (I refused and loaned her my cat encyclopedia for bedtime reading; tonight we're going to trade).

There's one odd page, right before the glossary, that has a blurry graphic of a cat running, black with red outline- very rough and feel completely out-of-place in a book full of exquisite photographs. Why they didn't just put another cat photo on that page- like on the title page and front flap- I don't get. Also, I learned a sad fact about the Manx- correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like the gene for tailless is dominant, and must be paired with a recessive gene for regular tail, which makes the cat born with no tail. If there are both dominant genes, the kittens die before they're born because the spine never forms completely. So that's why the Manx is rare, because so many kittens die for every healthy Manx that lives. I think that's very sad. (The Japanese bobtail has a different gene that causes its short tail, with no issues). Also I was surprised the book didn't mention health issues for other breeds- Persians and exotic shorthairs having flat faces which affects their breathing, for example.

Some photos in the book show cats in home settings, and this one is my favorite:

Rating: 3/5              137 pages, 1990

Sarah's Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay

     This novel has two overlapping storylines, in alternating chapters (until near the end, when it drops to one perspective). The first is about a young Jewish girl who lives in Paris. It's 1942, and when French police come in the middle of the night collecting Jewish families on orders of the Germans, Sarah's terrified four-year-old brother hides in a secret cupboard in the wall of their bedroom. She locks him in and pockets the key, promising to come back when the police let them go. But of course, they never do let them go. Sarah ends up in a camp, eventually separated from her parents, suffering from hunger, deplorable conditions, and horrific sights. All the while desperate to escape and return to the apartment where her little brother is waiting in the dark. It's such a sad story. The other storyline is modern time, about an American-born woman Julia, who lives in Paris working as a journalist. She is writing an article for the anniversary recognizing the day over 10,000 Parisian Jews were taken from their homes, an event which most locals around her seem to want to forget. She has a hard time finding people who remember the day and will actually talk to her. Her research leads her to the names of Sarah's family, and then it turns out she has a personal connection to the apartment where the little boy was left in the cupboard. As the two stories continue to dovetail, Sarah trying to find out what happened to her brother, and Julia attempting to track down the remnant's of Sarah's family, there's also a lot about how Julia's marriage is slowly unraveling, and how her life is changed by her research into the events of sixty years ago.

I thought I wasn't going to like this one, honestly- I had the impression it was over-hyped back in the day when it was all over the book blogs. Actually, it's a good read, very heartfelt, and I'm glad that the ending didn't have the final pat coincidence I thought I saw coming. It's been a long while since I read a Holocaust story. They're often hard for me to get through. This one was a fairly easy read and worth it.

Rating: 3/5              293 pages, 2007

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The Rent Collector

by Camron Wright 

     Based on a real place, but the story is fictional. About a family in Cambodia that lived on the outskirts of the largest waste dump in the country- making a meager living by picking through the trash for recyclables. Each day they barely earn enough to eat that night, and their young child is chronically ill. Sang Ly, the mother, despairs about the misery of her life- until she suddenly finds out that the short-tempered drunk woman who collects their rent (for a shack made out of tarps and cardboard on the edge of a cesspool) is literate. She convinces this woman to teach her to read- hoping it will somehow help her family improve their circumstances.

It does, but not at all in the way I expected. I thought- oh, they'll be able to read instructions on the medicines foreign doctors at free clinics keep giving them, that never seem to work, or they'll learn that having to pay rent for the crummy place where they live is a scam, or they'll be able to leave the dump and find better employment, thanks to becoming literate. Nope. Instead, woven through the whole length of the book are lessons on living true to yourself, making the best choices, rising above your circumstances, etc- all presented in the snippets of poetry and literature that the rent collector teaches to Sang Ly. Who, by the way, learned to read incredibly fast and was soon presented with summarized versions of Moby Dick and Romeo and Juliet by her teacher. I found that really hard to swallow the idea that her reading skills would have progressed so quickly. There are many Cambodian fables and myths as well- including their version of the Cinderella story- which I enjoyed and found very interesting. As the relationship between Sang Ly and her teacher grows more trusting, she starts to learn things about the rent collector's past- which makes everything start to appear in a different light. The ending has some very tidy connections, that are emotional but also a tad unbelievable. Through the novel there are glimpses of other aspects of life in Cambodia- a bit about the horrific history of the Khmer Rouge (which I know a little of from watching The Killing Fields), a look at life in the countryside when Sang Ly visits family, mention of child trafficking when an orphan girl in the dump faces the threat of being sold into prostitution by her older brother who's in a gang. I was puzzled when Sang Ly's child was given a traditional cure by a healer- and then afterwards seem miraculously better. My western brain tried to figure out how this worked- and my best guess was that the healer fed the child charcoal mixed into paste which absorbed some toxins the child had in its body from living in a waste dump his whole life. But really, who knows. I don't have to have an explanation, it's a story.

I really liked the parts about literature, even if they stretched my sense of belief somewhat. Aspects of the story- how learning to read opened up the world for this young woman and her family- reminded me somewhat of The Book Thief. Totally different setting and circumstances, but similar message about how books and knowledge can change lives. But- reading some other reviews (especially on LibraryThing) and finding out how about the author's inspiration for this story- how much he appropriated from a poor family who probably never saw any benefit- makes me feel uneasy about liking it. 

Rating: 3/5           271 pages, 2012

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The Stranger in the Woods

the Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit 

by Michael Finkel

     I hadn't heard of this story before- in 1986 a young man named Christopher Knight drove as far as he could on back roads in rural Maine, left his car depleted of gas, and walked into the forest. Eventually he found a hidden clearing in some very thick tangled trees and brush, where he made a camp and lived alone for nearly three decades. Very like Into the Wild. This Chris however, was successful for a long time. He had survival skills, he was adept at moving quietly through the trees without leaving tracks, and he had a steady source of supplies- stealing from nearby vacation cabins around a lake. Was ashamed of his thievery but kept doing it- for twenty seven years!- until finally he was caught. He only wanted to be alone, to live in solitude, he never accepted handouts people offered on their porches when they got tired of the break-ins. He suffered a lot living out there in the winter- from hunger and cold for months on end. Kept himself occupied by reading books and magazines (stolen of course), listening to a radio or just sitting quietly thinking. Once apprehended he was incarcerated for a while, then forced to live in society again. Where this journalist found him and gained his trust enough to be able to write his story (but later kept approaching him when Chris obviously asked to be left alone). It also includes the perspective of the vacation home-owners around the lake, some of whom constantly felt uneasy, or their children fearful of the thief, while at their cabins. There are brief examinations of various people who have lived in seclusion throughout history and what compels them to do so, and some criticism of Walden. Many people who profess to be modern-day hermits shun the North Pond Hermit (as he became known by those in the area) for his criminal ways. The story is kind of a quandry for me. I get a lot of what Chris said- I'm an introvert myself, I know what it's like to feel more comfortable in quiet places, apart from the noise and bustle and pretense of general society. As a kid I used to daydream about living in the woods off survival skills (but knew very well I didn't have any!) But to do so for decades by stealing- this man did so literally hundreds of times, from some thirty families- even though it was for the most part inexpensive items- I can't condone that.  There's several news articles about him if you do a quick search.

Rating: 3/5            192 pages, 2017

Walden and Other Writings

by Henry David Thoreau

     I finally read this, after two previous attempts (years ago) and a break in the middle for something easier. My copy contains not only Walden: or Life in the Woods but also Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown and Life Without Principle. 

Here's the thing: this is not at all what I expected. I always thought it was some wonderful if slightly archaic nature writing full of observations on the weather, birds and creatures, growing things etc. Not really. It's a lot more about politics (as they were back then), protests on slavery, umbrage at modern developments ruining mankind (there's pages and pages about how the train makes people hurry and rush about), how government should or should not affect our lives, why people should be engaged in something useful and soul-lifting instead of just working to earn money, etc. He criticizes his fellow man a lot. He does mention a few birds here and there, how peaceful it is to just sit under the trees, how much he appreciates the simple life. But he wasn't far off in the woods in isolation. Tons of people visited him all the time it sounds like, really curious what he was doing out there by himself. The train ran very close to his cabin, the pond was a regular fishing spot for many, farmers and kids out picking berries walked close by, and he could hear cattle in the adjacent fields. It was walking distance to the village. He eschewed coffee and other so-called luxuries to live pretty much just off what he grew or gathered (I think): mainly his beans, and fish he caught. I thought there I would relate, there's a whole chapter about cutivating the bean plants and I'm a gardener too, but nope. It starts out about hoeing the beans and how nicely meditative that task can be, but soon unravels into other lofty topics that supposedly relate to what bean plants with their nice broad leaves made him think of but I can't make head or tails out of it.

That was my main problem. Thoreau is very much a philosopher and it either makes my mind wander, or go in circles, or I have to read a passage three, four, five times in a row and I still don't get what he was saying. So many pages of this book I was actually thinking about something else as the printed words marched through my head unheeded (so now I know how a fellow book-blogger could sing while she reads, which I didn't comprehend before). The parts I liked? where Thoreau describes in detail the ice on the pond, the air bubbles into it, the way it forms and later on breaks up in the springtime, the industry of hired people who come to cut blocks of it, harvesting for use in summer- people had ice-boxes back then, not fridges and freezers, so this was interesting to read how that was done and how it was stored to prevent melting. How mud makes weird shapes during the spring thaw (but again he turned this into some lyrical comparison I did not get). The voices of owls, a mouse that got used to his presence, the geese he observed on the pond and fish under the clear water. I liked reading how he undertook to plumb and measure the pond's depth, as people in the vicinity claimed it was bottomless, but nobody had ever really tried find out. I liked a lot of his sentiments and agreed with many of his opinions on what's valuable in life etc, but it sure was tough to wade through all the words. Philosopy and political rants are really not my thing. 

Note on below: this is obviously one of those great books which I personally have difficulty appreciating. I didn't exactly enjoy reading it, though I do feel enriched by it. It was pretty hard to get through. If it had been easier and more enjoyable, definitely would have given it a 4. The publication dates noted span the five works in this volume.

Rating: 3/5                368 pages, 1849-1863